Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows

September 15, 2021

Heb 5:7-9, Ps 31, Jn 19:25-27

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Yesterday we celebrated the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. We focused on the Lord’s victory. Unlike on Good Friday when we ponder his sufferings upon the Cross, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross not only celebrates the rediscovery of the Cross after it was stolen in the early Church but the rediscovery, in a sense, of the meaning of Jesus’ triumph on the Cross as something in which we should glory rather than be ashamed.

* Today, the day after celebrating Jesus’ victory on the Cross, however, we ponder his mother weeping and sorrowful. It’s a bit of a jarring juxtaposition, one that ought to get us to ask why we would contemplate her in this way. (Starting from 1423 in Germany, there was a commemoration of Mary’s sufferings and sorrows on the Friday after the third Sunday of Easter. In 1600, the feast became popular in France and was set to be celebrated the Friday of Passiontide before Palm Sunday. Pope Benedict XIII extended it to the universal Church in 1727. In 1668, however, a separate feast of the Seven Sorrows of Mary was established, at the request of the Servites for the Third Sunday of September. In 1814, Pope Pius VII extended it to the universal Church and in 1913, Pope St. Pius X fixed it on September 15, the day after the Exaltation of the Cross.) The fundamental reason why we ponder Mary’s sorrows the day after the Exaltation is because her tears are not over her Son’s victory but over so many of us who have not yet entered into his victory. It’s not over what her Divine offspring accomplished on Calvary, but how many of us allow his gifts to go in vain, how many of us fail to make up in our flesh what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of his body, the Church (Col 1:24).

* The Church has long pondered the suffering and joys of the Blessed Virgin Mary as she accompanied her Son and shared in his redeeming work. There has for centuries been devotion to her “Seven Sorrows”: The prophecy of Simeon, when he announced not only that Jesus would be a sign of contradiction pointing to the ruin and resurrection of many but that her own heart would be pierced with a sword; the flight into Egypt after Herod’s henchmen were trying to assassinate her and God’s little boy; the loss of Jesus for three days at the age of 12; meeting Jesus on the Way to Calvary; seeing Jesus suffer and die on the Cross; receiving Jesus’ body into her arms at the foot of the Cross; and placing Jesus’ body in the tomb.

* Today is a day on which we ponder what it must have felt like to have her heart and soul pierced in these ways. Just as the Letter to the Hebrews today has us focus on Jesus’ “prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears” that were heard because of “his reverence” and his perfection in obedience, so today we acknowledge Mary’s role as a co-redeemer through her prayers, supplications, loud cries, tears, reverence and obedient fiat. As we prayed in the Stabat Mater Sequence before the Gospel, “Is there one who would not weep, ‘whelmed in miseries so deep, Christ’s dear Mother to behold?” But our meditation is not supposed to stop there. By God’s grace it’s meant to lead us to compassion, to suffering with Mary. We pray in that Sequence words we should take seriously: “O sweet Mother! font of love, touch my spirit from above, make my heart with yours accord. Make me feel as you have felt; make my soul to glow and melt with ...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross

September 14, 2021

Num 21:4-9, Ps 78, Phil 2:6-11, Jn 3:13-17

 

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.14.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Two days ago at Sunday Mass, Jesus announced the type of Messiah he would be: one who would fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy of the suffering servant, who would be betrayed, mocked, tortured and crucified, and on the third day raised. He announced that he would triumph on the Cross. And then told us that if we wish to be with him as his followers, we, too, must deny ourselves, pick up our cross and follow him. Most of us hear this news as if it’s somehow “bad news.” We accept it begrudgingly and often try to evade it. But just as the Cross is for Jesus the sign not so much of literally excruciating suffering but of the love that makes that much suffering bearable, so, too, for us the Cross is not meant to be so much a sign of pain and death but of joy and life as we, through the Cross, learn from Jesus how to love to the end.

* Saint John Paul II used to call the Cross the symbol of Christianity. We mark ourselves with it upon entering the Church. We begin and end Mass with it. We start almost every time of prayer with it. Probably every one of our bedrooms and dining rooms has one in it. All types of people wear it around their necks, from the Pope and bishops, to teenage pop stars, to newly baptized babies. The priest holds his arms in the shape of it during the Eucharistic prayer. And it is the center and focal point of every Catholic Church. The Cross is the greatest summary of our faith. St. Francis of Assisi used to call it his “book,” where he learned all of his wisdom. The Cross is also the key that opens the doors of heaven. St. Rose of Lima, the first saint of the Americas, said, “Apart from the Cross, there is no other ladder by which we may get to heaven.” If we wish to get to eternal life with God, we must climb up with Jesus by means of the Cross.

* To non-believers, to celebrate the feast of the Cross makes no sense at all. It is sheer lunacy. Crucifixion was the worst and most cruel end imaginable in the ancient world. The modern day equivalent would be the electric chair. To celebrate or “exalt” the Cross would be akin to our “lifting up the electric chair” in jubilation. To center every Church with an image of Christ’s suffering on the Cross would be similar to constructing a place of worship in which one would put a gruesome image of someone convulsing and dying in an electric chair or placing a sculpture of someone being burned at the stake. We’ve become so used to seeing the Cross that we’ve become somewhat anaesthetized to the normal shock that should be any person’s first reaction to it and we need to recover a little of the initial human horror we should have before the Cross. This is one reason why St. Paul wrote that Christ on the Cross is “a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles.” The pagans used to mock the early Christians for worshipping someone who was killed on the Cross, who suffered such a horrible, ignoble end. Because that derision was still happening even centuries after his death, many of the first Christians were somewhat embarrassed by the Cross and didn’t use it as a popular Christian symbol until the 300s. Today, there are still some Christians who are embarrassed by the Cross. We see it in those Catholic schools and universities who have removed the Cross from classrooms lest anyone be “offended.” We’ve seen it in Catholic hospitals who have removed them from patients’ rooms even though in the hospital peo...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Monday of the 24th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. John Chrysostom

September 13, 2021

1 Tim 2:1-8, Ps 28, Lk 7:1-10

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.13.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in today’s homily: 

* Today St. Paul tells us emphatically God’s will is for “everyone to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.” God’s direct will is that 100 out of 100 be saved, that all his prodigal children return home, that each receive his love and gratuitous offer of salvation and align their lives with it. That doesn’t eliminate the gift and responsibility of human freedom to accept that gift of salvation and live in accordance with it. God’s permissive will allows us to choose communion or definitive self-alienation, but God does provide the means of salvation, somehow, to everyone. That’s the context to understand St. Paul’s words that “supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings be offered for everyone, for kings and for all in authority.” He was writing this letter from a prison cell in Rome during the time of the emperor Nero, who would massacre Christians for sport. He was saying that we need to pray even for leaders like Nero who persecute the Church, just as St. Stephen prayed for Saul, just as the faithful in Milan prayed for Ambrose, just as we pray for the conversion of so many political leaders who oppose the gift of life, love or the family, and for the salvation and growth in wisdom of the good. God wills not just Jews, not just Christians, but all to be saved, to come to the knowledge of Christ the Truth incarnate, and we cooperate in that will by our prayers, petitions, supplications and thanksgivings.

* We see the beauty of God’s saving will shown in today’s Gospel, when a pagan centurion is praised by Jesus for having greater faith than he had found in Israel. We see that faith on display in the way that the centurion asks for a miracle for his dying slave. He comes to faith in Jesus in a particular through the exercise of authority. Jesus had already demonstrated in Capernaum his authority over demons, over storms, over illnesses and over the crowds. The centurion faithfully grasped that with that power came the ability to say “come” and “go” and “do this” over diseases, even from a distance. The centurion himself had used his authority to do good to others, like building a synagogue for the Jews. It helped him to grasp how Jesus could and might use his power and authority, to command even unseen spiritual realities, and to do good even to the slave of a pagan. Even though the Jewish leaders said to Jesus, “he deserves” this to be done for him as a quid pro quo for his generosity, the centurion was humble and knew that he deserved nothing, that everything would be a grace, that he wasn’t fit even to welcome Jesus into his home. And Jesus was amazed the faith he had. Even though he hadn’t received the same formation as the Jews in the Psalms, in the miracles of the Exodus, in the liberation from Babylon, in the litany of wonders God had worked, he had total trust in Jesus’ power and goodness. And that amazed Jesus. Since we need to be saved by grace through faith, this shows us the type of faith that can happen, thanks to God’s grace, in those raised with natural virtues. Jesus wants all to be saved, for all to have great faith. Today as we pray for those like the Centurion who do not yet fully follow Jesus in the way, that they may respond to the seeds of faith God has implanted and amaze Jesus and us all.

* Today the Church celebrates the memorial of St. John Chrysostom. St. Paul wrote to Timothy today,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs, Auriesville, New York

Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

September 12, 2021

Is 50:5-9, Ps 116, James 2:14-18, Mk 8:27-35

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.12.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* There’s great confusion today about who Jesus Christ is. Most everyone knows about him. About 2.5 of the 7.8 billion people alive profess themselves to be his followers. Muslims think he was just a prophet, like the other famous prophets in Jewish history. Many of the leading Jews, then and now, deem him a heretic and a blasphemer. The ancient Romans thought he was a revolutionary. The vast majority of people consider him a famous moral teacher, alongside Confucius, Buddha, Socrates, various Hindu gurus, and various figures in own age like Ghandi, Martin Luther King and others. Even among Christians, there are many who, rehearsing the Christological heresies of the first centuries, deny or underemphasize Jesus’ divinity or humanity leading to all types of issues at the level of faith and morals. That’s why what Jesus does for his first followers is so important for each of us today. He surveys first, “Who do people say that I am?” and then he asks each of us, “Who do yousay that I am?” We are the people who say that Christ is more than just a holy and good man, more than an inspiring prophet who announces divine words and ways. We are the people who confess, with Peter, who Jesus really is. This is the faith that brings us together: Jesus is not merely the long-awaited Messiah come to set us free, but the Son of God, who does not only announce the words of God, but is their Author. But our faith in Christ must be more than something we say on our lips. It must be something we confess by the way we live. And that’s what Jesus today is going to help us to do, because many of us make the same mistakes the people of Jesus’ day, even his followers, did.

* In response to the first question, the poll of what other people were saying, the disciples were eager to respond. They informed him that the people were numbering Jesus among the greatest Jewish heroes of all time, like the prophets Elijah and Jeremiah, and, more recently, John the Baptist. But Jesus didn’t stop there. First, because it wasn’t enough to rest on what the surveys said, to rely on what others believed, despite the exalted circles into which people were placing Jesus. Second, because the assessments weren’t true. Jesus was far greater than Elijah, Jeremiah and John. He was greater than Abraham, Moses, David and Solomon. Third,because Jesus didn’t want those with him merely to remain “fans” or “admirers” of him because that would not set them on the path on which he had come into the world to lead them.

* And so he asked the second question, “Who do you say that I am?” At this point, all but one of the disciples remained mute. It was easy to communicate what the crowds were saying, but to put oneself on the line, to make a personal, public confession, required courage and conviction. I’ve always found it somewhat surprising considering, for example, what the apostle Nathaniel or Bartholomew said when he first met Jesus. He said, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God, you are the King of Israel” (Jn 1:49). The latter meant he was the Messiah; the former more than the Messiah. But this time he timidly kept his mouth shut. Simon Peter, however, put out into the deep. God the Father had led him to recognize that Jesus was indeed far greater even than what the others were saying and had the guts to be the first to say it. “You are the Christ!,” he said. Christ, the Greek word for Messiah,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs, Auriesville, New York

Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Extraordinary Form

September 12, 2021

Eph 3:13-21, Lk 14:1-11

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.12.21_EF_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* Today, by means of a parable on seats at a dinner gathering, Jesus teaches us about the humility necessary for us to come to the eternal banquet. The parable flat contradicts the way many in the world, including sometimes many of us Christians, behave. We see it in the ever-growing number of award shows indulging the egos of those in film, television and music, all giving out awards for best actors, actresses, directors, producers, graphic artists, costume designers, film editors, hairstylists, production designer, sound mixers, screen play writers, you name it. We see it in the honors we give to the students who are  “Most Popular” “Most Friendly, and “Most Likely to Succeed,” to the “Best Looking” women in pageants, to the “Most Successful” sales representatives, to the “Most Valuable Player” not just of the year but of the week, and even to the “best groomed” dogs. So many of us have been raised with the desire not only tobe the best, but to be acknowledged as the best. And if we recognize begrudgingly that we’re not the best, we at least want to be better than those with whom we come into contact. We want to get our own way, rather than conceding to the wishes of another. We want everyone to acknowledge our rights and their responsibilities. We want to get the last word, rather than concede it to someone else. We want to be the ones noticed and thanked, and resent it if others get the credit we think we deserve. In short, we hunger to be noticed, esteemed, and exalted. We want the places of honor at table, first class seats on airplanes and front row seats and back stage passes at concerts. We want waiters and butlers to serve us, chauffeurs to drive us, and the rich, famous and important to call us. We long for positions of power and influence and titles of status and worldly honor.

* Today, however, Jesus calls us to a different standard, a higher standard that is at the same time, paradoxically, a lower one. He tell us, “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” He who elsewhere in the Gospel told us, “Learn from me, for I am meek andhumble of heart”(Mt 11:29), whose whole life was a lesson in humility, wants to help us learn from him how to serve rather than to be served, to seek the lowest place rather than the highest, to treasure God’s esteem rather than others’ adulation so that God may say to us, in this world and the next, “My friend, come up higher!” The way to be exalted at Jesus’ right side forever is humbly to serve at Jesus’ side here on earth, and to follow him not just in seeking the lowest places at table but in getting up from the table like he did at the Last Supper, picking up the basin and towel to wash others’ feet, and serving them in such self-effacing ways.

* Paul describes Jesus’ humility best in his letter to the Philippians, grounding our humility on the unbelievable humility the Son of God: “Do nothing,” he tells us, “from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, butemptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the p...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Vigil

September 11, 2021

 

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.11.21_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday, when we will eavesdrop and participate in perhaps the most pivotal dialogue in the Gospel, when Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” and “Who do you say that I am?”

* In response to the first question, the poll of what other people were saying, the disciples were eager to respond. They informed him that the people were numbering Jesus among the greatest Jewish heroes of all time, like the prophets Elijah and Jeremiah, and, more recently, John the Baptist. But Jesus didn’t stop there. First, because it wasn’t enough to rest on what the surveys said, to rely on what others believed, despite the exalted circles into which people were placing Jesus. Second, because the assessments weren’t true. Jesus was far greater than Elijah, Jeremiah and John. He was greater than Abraham, Moses, David and Solomon. Third,because Jesus didn’t want those with him merely to remain “fans” or “admirers” of him because that would not set them on the path on which he had come into the world to lead them.

* And so he asked the second question, “Who do you say that I am?” At this point, all but one of the disciples remained mute. It was easy to communicate what the crowds were saying, but to put oneself on the line, to make a personal, public confession, required courage and conviction. Simon Peter, however, put out into the deep. God the Father had led him to recognize that Jesus was indeed far greater even than what the others were saying and had the guts to be the first to say it. “You are the Christ!,” he said. Christ, the Greek word for Messiah, communicated that Jesus was the long awaited one foretold by all the prophets. In St. Matthew’s version of the scene, he recalls Peter’s also confessing Jesus to be more than the Messiah, but the very own Son of God. To make that admission was to bring into the foreground a whole series of expectations. The Messiah was to be the one who would bring back the Kingdom of David, who would kick out all foreign powers, who would return Israel to prominence. And as we see in other parts of the Gospel, Jesus’ closest followers were all ambitiously hoping to receive choice positions in Jesus’ messianic administration.

* That’s why, as soon as Peter enunciated Jesus’ true identity, Jesus began to teach them what type of Messiah he would be, how he would inaugurate his kingdom, and how they were share in and announce it. It blew their mind. Rather than uniting the Jews and defeating and expelling the Romans, rather than leading the twelve tribes to triumph, he would instead suffer greatly, be rejected by the chief priests, the scribes and the elders and be killed. Jesus told them all of this “openly,” St. Mark tells us, so that they would know it clearly. To get a sense of their shock, it would be like someone just won the U.S. Presidential election and in his victory speech, he said that rather than lead his supporters and the country to greatness, he would instead be seized by members of his party in collaboration with the opposing party and various foreign powers, be humiliated, tortured, and finally hung from the Washington monument.

* But Peter, emboldened by his previous affirmation and obviously desiring n...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

September 10, 2021

1 Tim 1:1-2.12-14, Ps 16, Lk 6:39-42

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.10.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Plain are all about Christian morality, about Jesus’ teaching us not only on Christian conduct but on the principles, the starting points, of Christian morality, which is God’s own life in us. Yesterday he spoke to us about the depth to which the love of God in us is supposed to take us: like him, to the point of loving our enemies, praying for our persecutors, doing good to those who do evil to us, so that we might become truly like our Father who lets his sun and rain fall on the good and the bad. Today Jesus focuses on the gift of his mercy, received with humility, so that he may train us to become like him, see things aright, and then act with mercy and love to guide others toward God.

* Jesus begins today by addressing our tendency to criticize others as a deflection of not looking in the spiritual mirror of conscience. We see others’ faults much more clearly, sometimes, than we see our own. He wants us to take out the forest of redwoods from our own eyes so that we can see clearly and afterward help our neighbor to address their own problems. In all of this, he is trying to help us see things as he does, to see things as they really are. That’s why there’s a sentence that seems out of place. After talking about the blind leading the blind and before speaking about planks and specks, he says, “No disciple is superior to the teacher; but when fully trained, every disciple will be like his teacher.” Jesus wants us to be fully trained so that we might become like him. To do that, we need to see everything as he does. We need to view everything with the eyes of faith, with the eyes of merciful love. And for that, we need to remove all of the obstacles that impair our vision.

* This is something St. Paul does very candidly in today’s first reading. Writing to his spiritual son, St. Timothy, the doctor of the gentiles expressed his gratitude to the Lord for strengthening him and considering him trustworthy for the ministry despite, he says, “once being a blasphemer and a persecutor and an arrogant man.” Blasphemer? He was a devout Pharisee who would never have cursed God. What does he mean? He wasn’t glorifying God because, like his fellow Pharisees, he was focused too much on his own deeds, his works of the law, rather than living by faith in the Lord who loved him and gave his life for him. He acted out of ignorance in his “unbelief,” he says. He was blinded by his lack of faith in Jesus, and that led him to be a persecutor and an arrogant man, refusing to accept what God was proclaiming through the members of the early Church who had been saved by Christ. God helped him on the road to Damascus. He had him see how blind he was and, after three days of not being able to see anything, scales fell from his eyes when he was baptized. That’s why he was able to glorify God by saying, “The grace of our Lord has been abundant, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.” Paul wants us to have the same experience of seeing everything by God’s light. He wishes us “grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.” When we receipt that gift to see things as they are, then we become capable of leading others to Christ. We’re no longer blind guides leading other blind people into pits, including eternal ones; rather, we’re capable of guiding them by the light of faith in faith to the celestial Jerus...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of Saint Peter Claver

September 9, 2021

Col 3:12-17, Ps 150, Lk 6:27-38

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

https://four.libsyn.com/content/embed-code/item_id/20418263

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* The most revolutionary and challenging part of the Gospel — what distinguishes Christianity from every other religion and moral philosophy — is Jesus’ command to love our enemies. He calls us to do far more than merely tolerate them or not be subsumed with a spirit of revenge. He calls us to love them, to be willing to die for them, to do good to them when they hate us, to bless them when they curse us, to pray for them when they mistreat us, to turn the other cheek when they slap our first, and give our tunic to those who take our cloak. In doing so, Jesus is trying to help us to learn how to be like him, to act in accordance with his image and likeness in which we were created. He tells us today that if we do so, we will be “children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.” We will become “merciful, just as also your Father is merciful.” He tells us that if we live by this standard, if we measure out in this way, “gifts will be given to you, a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing will be poured into your lap,” not necessarily of course by terrorists and persecutors but by God himself. If we judge others harshly, we will be judged by that standard; if we condemn others, we will be condemned by the same principles, if we refuse to forgive, neither will we be forgiven. But if we measure out lovingly, our own hearts will expand to receive more and more of his infinite love.

* We learn from Jesus how to live this Gospel. He loves those who don’t love him and even those who have made themselves his enemies through sin. He blesses those who curse him and blaspheme against him. He gives and gives and gives, and forgives, forgives and forgives. We see this Gospel put into practice in all its clarity on Good Friday, as Jesus prayed to the Father to forgive his executioners, those who were mocking him, and all those whose sins were bringing about his expiatory death, “for they know not what they are doing.” When the soldiers of the High Priest or the Roman guards slapped him on one cheek, Jesus could have easily annihilated them by his power of God, but he didn’t fight back, because he loved those who were harming him and didn’t want to harm them back. When they stripped him of his cloak, he allowed them to strip him of his tunic as well. When they bid him to walk on the road to Calvary, he walked a second mile. In all of this, Jesus tells us, “Come, follow me!” He wants us to be distinguished from all the rest by the way we, as Christians, love everyone like he does, including those who don’t love us. “For if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same.” When he tells us, “Do to others as you would have them do to you,” he is ultimately saying, “love others with the same forgiving love with which you would want to be loved by others.” Jesus is calling us to respond to evil with good, to respond to cursing with prayer, to respond to hatred with love. The word for love he uses is agape, not philia (the love between friends) or eros (the love between a husband or wife). Agape means unconquerable benevolence, that no matter what others do to us, we keep loving, we don’t descend to their level of hatred by vengeance, but seek to unite the experience to God and to respond with and like God. Note that he’s not calling us to like our enem...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

September 8, 2021

Rom 8:28-30, Ps 13, Mt 1:18-23

 

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.8.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* As today we celebrate the feast of the Nativity of our Lady, we can ponder how great was the joy of this day not only for Saints Joachim and Anne but also for God. Joachim and Anne, as we ponder each July 26, if we can accept anything that the Pseudogospel of James says, were aged in years and begging God to remove the shame of sterility from their life, as Joachim went into the desert to fast and pray and Anne wept a double lamentation. When the Angel appeared in response to their prayers, when she conceived, when she gave birth, and when she began to nurse Mary, St. Anne was ebullient with joy. But I’m sure that was nothing compared to what it must have been like for the eternal Son of God to be looking at the birth of the little girl who about 14 years later would become his own mother and give birth to him in the Gospel scene we’ve just heard. We can look at the baby Mary with the joy-filled eyes and hearts of her parents and Son as she was an infant and began to grow, thoughts that even many with strong Marian devotions seldom contemplate.

* God the Father had had Mary in his sights since the beginning of time. St. Paul tells us that he has “chosen us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world to be holy and immaculate in his sight” (Eph 1:4), and how could he not be thinking of Mary as the icon of this divine election? We know that at the very instant of the fall, her advent was prophesied as the one in whom God would place an enmity for the serpent. Today, she who had been immaculately conceived was born full of grace.

* She was born according to a template. St. Paul tells us in today’s first reading that “those [God] foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.” Mary was most certainly conformed to the image of the Holy One who would become the blessed Fruit of her womb and he, according to his humanity, would be conformed, mysteriously, to her earthly image. And this was a “shaping together” (literally con-formation) that would be manifested mutually throughout life, as her fiat would anticipate his, as her desire to help a young married couple would become his first miracle, as her pierced heart would emulate his heart pierced with a lance, as his glory would become reflected in her forever.

* It’s important for us whenever we celebrate a Marian feast to make explicit Mary’s Christocentric conformation, not just to avoid Protestant misinterpretations that we give Mary the homage that is only due to God, but also to help us deepen our own appreciation not only for our spiritual mother’s vocation and mission but for our own. Normally for us the celebration of a birthday is always an occasion to think with gratitude to God and to our parents for the gift of human life — and that is a very good thing to do! — but Mary’s birthday is a celebration of something more. As we see in today’s Gospel and know from throughout her life, she was born with a purpose, to be the Mother of God according to his humanity. She was born to conform her life to him. As we think about her birth, her early days, her upbringing and her life, it’s natural for us to think of our own, and it’s key for us to grasp that we, too, have been born with a similar purpose, to be conformed to Jesus in this life and, God-willing, forever. Sometimes in our Marian piety we can focus so much on her inimitable privileges — like her Immaculate Conception,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Monday of the 23rd Week of Ordinary Time, Year I

Mass for the Sanctification of Human Labor

September 6, 2021

Col 1:24-2:3, Ps 62, Lk 6:6-11

 

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.6.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today, on which our country marks Labor Day during this Year of St. Joseph, it is particularly important for us to focus on the Gospel of Work that Saint Joseph epitomizes and that Jesus came to restore. We remember that in the beginning God gave us a three-fold vocation to work: to increase and multiple, to fill the earth and subdue it, and to have dominion over creatures. Each part of this vocation was impacted by the original sin, in which childbirth would now take place with labor pains, subduing the earth with sweat and exercising stewardship with toil. But the Son of God entered the through and took on the human work as a tekton (builder) to make work a part of the redemption. Through the pains, sweat and toil, we would be overcoming selfishness through love. Through our work, we would be cooperating with him as he seeks to bring his work in us to completion, since we would not only be doing something objective — like making dinner, or a table, or a new piece of clothing — but making ourselves in the process through the virtues and love we brought to our labor. It is essential for us to learn this deeper meaning of human work in an age in which so many look at work begrudgingly and as something to be escaped. Bishop John Barres of the Diocese of Rockville Centre has just published an excellent new pastoral letter on Saint Joseph the Worker in which he sketches, based on the through of St. John Paul II and Pope Francis, the salvific meaning of work in the context of many false philosophies of human labor. I’d highly recommend it.

* In today’s Gospel, the miracle Jesus works of the man with the withered hand was not only a corrective of false ideas with regard to the meaning of the sabbath among his contemporaries but also, we can say, an allegory of how Jesus wanted to restore the meaning of work. Jesus had gone to a synagogue on the Sabbath to preach and teach. The Scribes and the Pharisees were in attendance not with open ears to listen to his word, not with hearts seeking to adore the Lord, but intent on “watching him closely to see if he would cure on the Sabbath so that they might discover a reason to accuse him.” They were already scandalized by Jesus’ whole approach to the Sabbath, which was in opposition to the distortion, to the idol, they had made of it, because they had lost sight not only of the principal work of God but also the way the Sabbath was to restore us in the work of the true love of God and love of neighbor in God, to liberate us from slavery and lead us on an exodus to God and in him rediscover the freedom to work in service to God and for the salvation of others. Jesus saw the man present with a withered hand and called him up to stand in the presence of everyone. And he asked those with a distorted notion of the work God was asking of them, whether is was lawful to do good on the Sabbath rather than evil, to save life rather to destroy it? Jesus was asking this question seeing their hearts, because it was on the Sabbath, in God’s own house, that they were plotting evil precisely against him, that they would leave the synagogue, supposedly out of the scandal of what Jesus was about to do,