Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Tuesday of the 33rd Week of Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Gertrude the Great and St. Margaret of Scotland

November 16, 2021

2 Mc 6:18-31, Ps 3, Lk 19:1-10

 

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:

* Jesus’ love for sinners was so profound that he literally went to the lowest place on earth in search of perhaps the greatest public sinner of that city, to reconcile him to the Father. Jesus went to Jericho, the lowest city on the planet — 853 feet below sea level — to find Zacchaeus, who was not just one of a bunch of tax-collectors loathsome to the Jewish authorities, but the chief tax collector of the region. Jesus had promised that he, the Good Shepherd, would leave the ninety-nine sheep in his fold to search out and save one lost sheep, and this is what he did, leaving the crowds behind and entering alone with Zacchaeus into his home and into his life. He called Zacchaeus, his lost sheep, by name and heaven rejoiced on that day more for him than for all the others. So, too, today and everyday, Jesus takes the initiative of knocking at the door of our souls, asking for entry, coming to us wherever we are, no matter the depths to which we’ve sunk, no matter the fact that perhaps everyone else around us might despise us. Jesus never abandons us. To the extent that we repent of whatever sins we’ve committed and accept Jesus’ gracious invitation by “welcoming him with delight,” we, too, like Zacchaeus, can have salvation come to us.

* The diminutive Zacchaeus’ climbing of the tree, moreover, is more than merely an interesting detail. In yesterday’s reading, we encountered Bartimaeus, the blind man begging by the roadside in Jericho, who cried out for mercy and when Mercy incarnate called for him and asked what he wished, he replied “Lord, I want to see.” He not only wanted to regain his lost sight but he wanted to see Jesus so that he might follow him and glorify God. Today Zacchaeus, who had not lost his physical sight, still had to work in order to see, follow and glorify. St. Luke tells us that he was trying to see Jesus, but could not because of the crowd, so he ran ahead and climbed a tree along Jesus’ route in order to be able to see him. We, too, often cannot see the Lord because other people get in the way. They block our sight in countless ways. We’re often too small of stature to see over such obstacles, and, unfortunately, too often others are too selfish, distracted, sinful, judgmental or out-of-it, to do anything to help us and bring us into the presence of the Lord. Like a little child, however, Zacchaeus climbs a tree to see the Lord. Such an act could have led to great mockery for a middle-aged public figure. Think about if you saw the head of the IRS or some cabinet official climbing a telephone pole in order to get a better glimpse of the Pope during a papal visit. But Zacchaeus didn’t care. He wanted to see the Lord and none of these obstacles was going to stop him. His example challenges each of us to consider what is the extent to which we go, what trees or obstacles we’ll climb, in order to see Jesus better and more clearly. Are we capable of being accounted fools for Christ for following those means that others might consider silly if they will bring us into greater relationship with Jesus?

* The third thing this episode with Zacchaeus teaches us is that a true conversion to God also brings about a real conversion to others. The rehabilitation of our relationship with God is not meant to remain private, but is supposed to help us reexamine our relationship with others and inspire us to rep...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Monday of the 33rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Albert the Great

November 15, 2021

1 Mc 1:10-15.41-43.54-57.62-63, Ps 119, Lk 18:35-43

 

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: 

* On Saturday Jesus gave us the parable of the importune woman bothering the unjust judge in order to convey to us the necessity of “praying always without losing heart.” Today we encounter the living illustration of what he was teaching in the blind man by the side of the road whom St. Mark in his version of the same scene identifies as Bartimaeus.

* Like rabbis were accustomed to do on the triennial pilgrimages to Jerusalem for the major feasts, Jesus was teaching the crowds along the journey. Bartimaeus was sitting by the roadside begging. He was in Jericho, literally the lowest place on earth. He heard the commotion of the crowd and asked what was happening. Upon being told that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by, he immediately began to cry out, “Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me!” He didn’t cry out for alms, which would have been small. He didn’t cry out at that point for a miracle. He cried out simply for mercy. He had doubtless heard of Jesus’ reputation for working miracles to the north in Galilee and was responding with faith: the fact that he called him “Son of David” was a sign he believed Jesus was the Messiah. But his crying out for Jesus was annoying those who were trying to hear Jesus’ teaching. So the first people in the group rebuked him and told him to shut his trap. That only led him, however, to cry out all the more, “Son of David, have pity on me!” The word St. Luke uses here means basically an animal cry, something coming deep from his woundedness.

* Jesus stopped and ordered that Bartimaeus be brought to him. For Jesus, caring for this man was more important than whatever he was teaching at that moment. Likely, if St. Luke’s account was chronological, Jesus had been talking about the virtues of prayer, like persistence in the prayer of the importune widow and humility in the parable of the publican and the pharisee praying in the Temple. Jesus was about to show how God responds to persistent and humble prayers! Jesus asked Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?,” and Bartimaeus said, “Lord, please let me see!” The word used — anablepo — means in Greek to “see again.” Hence he was asking Jesus to restore the sight that he had lost. It would have been very easy for Jesus to come to meet Bartimaeus exactly where he was begging. But Jesus loved him too much and understood the human heart too well to do that. Instead he drew near, but then he had Bartimaeus get up to come to him, to exercise Bartimaeus’ freedom, to stoke his desire, to give him greater participation in the miracle Jesus himself was about to accomplish. It takes courage to get up and leave our comfort zone to respond to the Lord. Bartimaeus had that courage and did. St. Mark tells us, “He threw aside his cloak, sprang up, and came to Jesus.” The cloak was his outer garment that kept him warm at night. It was in a sense his security blanket. It was quite valuable to him and part of his life. But he was intentionally embracing a new life and establishing a new security. He left it behind, which is not just a fact but an important symbol of how he was thinking more about clinging to Jesus and the new life for which he was hoping than clinging to the past. The second element is he “sprang up.” Even though he was blind, he got up immediately. He always raced to respond to his being called by the Lord.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Agnes Church, Manhattan

Resumed Sixth Sunday after Epiphany

November 14, 2021

1 Thess 1:2-10, Mt 13:31-35

 

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

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The following text guided today’s homily: 

* In the month of November, as we ponder the last things of death, judgment and the eternal realities of heaven and hell, it’s supposed to spur us ultimately to action. The more we recognize our time on earth is finite, that there will be on occasion when we’ll review face-to-face with the Lord how we’ve spent that time, and that our eternal destiny will be determined by the mutually obvious conclusion as to whether we’ve lived for God and others or self-alienated to live for ourselves, then the more motivated we are now to live by faith, hope and love.

* That’s why today’s readings are so helpful and challenging. Jesus speaks to us about the growth of his kingdom. It starts small like a mustard seed but then it grows into a huge shrub where so many others are able to abide. This can of course be applied to the Church as a whole, which can start with the one yes of Mary, or a small band of 12 men, or a few committed families in a parish, or a particular founder or foundress in a religious order. But it can, and is meant, to apply also to each of us. Elsewhere Jesus says that if we have the faith the size of a mustard seed we can transplant mulberry trees and even whole mountain ranges into the sea. This is a great image of hope. What happened to us physically, being conceived as a one cell embryo in our mother’s womb, growing bigger over the course of subsequent months, being born and growing still toward adulthood, is supposed to happen spiritually. Every act of faith matters. Every act of hope matters. Every act of charity matters. Not only does our faith grow like the mustard seed or human body, but we become — to use Jesus’ second image in the Gospel — like leaven lifting up those around us.

* St. Paul describes this reality in today’s epistle from his First Letter to the Thessalonians. He had planted in each of the first Christians in Thessalonika a mustard see of faith and then it began to grow. St. Paul recalled with gratitude several elements of the receptivity and response of the first Christians there. He mentioned their “work of faith and labor of love and endurance in hope.” They worked to grow in faith, they labored to love, they endured plenty of difficulties, setbacks and contradictions, but never lost their hope. He spoke to them about the mystery of “how [they] were chosen,” and they took confidence in their divine vocation. He said that they received the Gospel not by “word alone, but also in power, in the Holy Spirit and much conviction,” and that power and Spirit were at work within them, changing them and through them history. He praises them for having become “imitators of us and of the Lord,” for modeling their life on Jesus and on Paul himself, of “serving the living and true God,” and becoming themselves “a model for all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia” and “in every place [where] your faith in God has gone forth.” Their growth in faith was what the Lord hopes to see in all of us.

* Today the Church calls us to focus on one particular way we’re supposed to be growing spiritually in response to our Christian calling and in view of the last things. It’s with regard to charity. As we know, Jesus calls us to love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength and says that will be shown in the way that we love all those whom the Father loved enough to send his Son to die for. Today is the fifth World Day of the Poor, started by Pope Francis in 2017,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Missionaries of Charity Convent, Bronx, NY

33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Fifth World Day of the Poor

November 14, 2021

Dan 12:1-3, Ps 16, Heb 10:10-14.18, Mk 13:24-32

 

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

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The following text guided today’s homily: 

* Today Jesus speaks to us in apocalyptic language about the end of the world, when he says the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give light, the stars will fall from the sky and the heavens will be shaken. He said that then everyone will see him coming with great power and glory as he sends out the angels to gather the elect from all corners of the earth. He tells us that when we see these things happening, we should know that he is near, and he suggests that we should always be ready, for no one knows the time it will take place except God the Father.

* In graphic language, Jesus is describing the truth we proclaim every Sunday in our profession of faith: “he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.” But many of us are afraid of this reality. If angels were to come in vast numbers right now to announce that the end of the world were coming today, most people, including most Catholics, rather than rejoicing, would be screaming in fear. That’s not, however, the reaction the Lord wants from us, for it shows a lack of faith and love. When the early Christians reflected on this reality of Jesus’ second coming, they used to cry out “Marana tha,” “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev 22:20). They looked forward to this event with great expectation, because it would lead to their full unity in love with the Lord forever. Our attitude is supposed to be similar. We pray in every Mass, after the Our Father, “By the help of your mercy, may we be always free from sin … as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ!” The attitude we’re called to have versus Jesus’ second coming is “hope,” full of blessing.

* I remember once when I was preaching a retreat in Los Angeles, an elderly woman came to me, asking. “Father, is it sinful for me to look forward to my death so that I can, God-willing, be with Jesus forever in heaven?” I replied tenderly, but emphatically, “No. It’s not a sin!” Then she said to me, “Then why doesn’t anyone else seem to have this longing?” The reason, I think, has to do with the first part of that prayer from the Mass, and the link between our being “free from sin” and our ability to wait in “blessed hope” for the coming of the Lord.

* I like to illustrate this truth with a story from my childhood. When I was a kid, most days I would wait with eager expectation for the return of my dad from work about 4:15 in the afternoon. At about four, our black Labrador retriever would start pacing around the house with its tail wagging. Each of the four kids would take regular glances at the clock. Eventually we would hear the shutting of the heavy steel door of my father’s van and we would all hustle toward the back door through which he would come all wanting to be the first person to jump into his strong arms for a hug and a kiss. We loved our dad and couldn’t wait for him to return so that we could be with him. This was what happened, as I said earlier, on “most” On other days I would actually dread his return — precisely on those days when I had done something that I knew he wouldn’t appreciate of which my mother had promised to inform him on his arrival. On those days, when 4 pm came around and our dog began his excited daily ritual, I was looking for a place to hide in my bedroom.

* I think that experience is a parable for our disposition in front of the return of the Lord.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Vigil

November 13, 2021

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.13.21_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, in which he will speak to us in apocalyptic language about the end of the world, when he says the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give light, the stars will fall from the sky and the heavens will be shaken. He said that then everyone will see him coming with great power and glory as he sends out the angels to gather the elect from all corners of the earth. He tells us that when we see these things happening, we should know that he is near, and he suggests that we should always be ready, for no one knows the time it will take place except God the Father.

* In graphic language, Jesus is describing the truth we proclaim every Sunday in our profession of faith: “he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.” But many of us are afraid of this reality. If angels were to come in vast numbers right now to announce that the end of the world were coming today, most people, rather than rejoicing, would be screaming in fear. That’s not, however, the reaction the Lord wants from us, for it shows a lack of faith and love. When the early Christians reflected on this reality of Jesus’ second coming, they used to cry out “Marana tha,” “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev 22:20). They looked forward to this event with great expectation, because it would lead to their full unity in love with the Lord forever. Our attitude is supposed to be similar. We pray in every Mass, after the Our Father, “By the help of your mercy, may we be always free from sin … as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ!” The attitude we’re called to have versus Jesus’ second coming is “hope,” full of blessing.

* I remember once when I was preaching a retreat in Los Angeles, an elderly woman came to me, asking. “Father, is it sinful for me to look forward to my death so that I can, God-willing, be with Jesus forever in heaven?” I replied tenderly, but emphatically, “No. It’s not a sin!” Then she said to me, “Then why doesn’t anyone else seem to have this longing?” The reason, I think, has to do with the first part of that prayer from the Mass, and the link between our being “free from sin” and our ability to wait in “blessed hope” for the coming of the Lord.

* I like to illustrate this truth with a story from my childhood. When I was a kid, most days I would wait with eager expectation for the return of my dad from work about 4:15 in the afternoon. At about four, our black Labrador retriever would start pacing around the house with its tail wagging. Each of the four kids would take regular glances at the clock. Eventually we would hear the shutting of the heavy steel door of my father’s van and we would all hustle toward the back door through which he would come all wanting to be the first person to jump into his strong arms for a hug and a kiss. We loved our dad and couldn’t wait for him to return so that we could be with him. This was what happened, as I said earlier, on “most” On other days I would actually dread his return — precisely on those days when I had done something that I knew he wouldn’t appreciate of which my mother had promised to inform him on his arrival. On those days, when 4 pm came around and our dog began his excited daily ritual...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Josaphat, Bishop and Martyr

November 12, 2021

Wis 13:1-9, Ps 19, Lk 17:26-37

 

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 pondered how the Kingdom of God is among and within us because the King is here. The presence of the King and his Kingdom is not supposed to be something that’s sought all over the place in spectacle but discerned and found in ordinary circumstances.

* In today’s first reading we see that all created realities are meant to be a reminder of the King and the Kingdom. The Book of Wisdom tells us that from the “good things seen” we’re supposed to succeed in “knowing him who is.” From studying the “works of the artisan,” we’re supposed to discern the Creator. Everything — fire, wind, air, stars, water, planets — are supposed to remind us of their Author, “for from the greatness and the beauty of created things their original author, by analogy, is seen.” This is the “science” of finding God, going from the “results” or “effects” to their “causes” and “ultimate Cause.” The problem is that often we lose the connection between sign and signified, we stop at the work and fail to get to the Creator. We “search busily among his works but are distracted by what [we] see because the things seen are fair.” This was the experience of St. Augustine, when he said, “In our unloveliness, we stopped at the loveliness of your creatures.” We sometimes fail to see the created world as the footprints of God, following them back to the Creator. That’s why it’s key for us to develop the spiritual habit of reconnecting everything in the kingdom to its King. St. Paul challenged the Christians and non-Christians of his day to do make this obvious connection between creation and creator: “Ever since the creation of the world,” he wrote, the Creator’s “invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made” (Rom 1:20). St. John Paul II also underlined the same process of reason and faith. Toward the end of his papacy in 2002, he returned to his love of poetry and gave us three great poems. The first is called “The Stream” and is broken down into two parts, the first on wonder and the second on following things to their “source.” He wrote, “The undulating wood slopes down to the rhythm of mountain streams. To me this rhythm is revealing You, the Primordial Word. … What are you saying to me, mountain stream? … If you want to find the source, you have to go up, against the current, tear through, seek, don’t give up, you know it must be somewhere here. Where are you, source? Where are you, source?! Silence…. Stream, stream in the wood, tell me the secret of your beginning! … How carefully you have hidden the secret of your beginning.” The Book of Wisdom is calling us to go from the created world to its Source, to find the fingerprints and footprints of the Creator everywhere.

* This is what the Gospel is all about, the contrast between living in the kingdom with a sacramental vision and the seeming oblivion of others to it. Jesus contrasts Noah with those who perished in the flood, and Lot and those who perished in Sodom. Some were attentive to God — through the signs of Creation and otherwise — and some were not. Jesus encourages us to be similarly on guard. He says that when he comes we shouldn’t head down into the house to get possessions or come in from the field,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the 32nd Week of Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Martin of Tours

November 11, 2021

Wis 7:22-8:1, Ps 119, Lk 17:20-25

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.11.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* The Pharisees in today’s Gospel asked Jesus when the Kingdom of God would come. They were doubtless asking this within messianic expectations, presuming that the kingdom of God would erupt through fulfilling the Jewish hopes of evicting the Romans from Israel and reestablishing the Davidic throne. In the question, they were probably egging Jesus on to see whether he thought he was the Messiah and what his future plans might be. But Jesus, as he is wont to do, transcended the question. He said that the inauguration of the Kingdom wouldn’t be a spectacle to be observed. There wouldn’t be trumpets sounding. There wouldn’t be heralds indicating that the kingdom is “here” or “there.” Rather, Jesus said, “Behold, the Kingdom of God is among you.”

* This means, first, that the Kingdom had already come because the King was present. The Kingdom is where the King is and Jesus was already present. Second, the Kingdom had already come because some people had already embraced it, entered it and were living in it because they were living with the King. There’s a couplet in the Our Father in which we pray, first, “Thy kingdom come!” and then repeat it in other words, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The Kingdom of God is wherever God’s will is done, whenever one begins to live in relationship with God and his kingdom. Jesus reveals to us various other qualities about his kingdom and the conditions for entering it and living in it. He says that the kingdom of heaven belongs to those who are “poor in spirit,” to those who treasure God more than all the treasures of the world. He says that it belongs to those who “convert and become like little children,” who trust in God and accept it as a gift. He says that the kingdom is like a “wedding banquet” full of joy and those who live in the kingdom are those who are profoundly and serenely joyful. He says the kingdom grows like a mustard seed or yeast, imperceptible to people on the outside but the growth is real. Third, Jesus says that we should look for the kingdom and the King not just “among” us on the outside, but the Greek preposition can also mean “within.” We should seek to find the King and the Kingdom in ordinary life, in the gentle whisper, rather than in the earthquakes, hurricanes, and firestorms.

* Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, said very powerfully in a 2000 talk to catechists from around the world, “The kingdom of God … is ‘not a thing.’ The Kingdom of God is God. The Kingdom of God means: God exists. God is alive. God is present and acts in the world, in our – in my life. God is not a faraway ‘ultimate cause,’ God is not the ‘great architect’ of deism, who created the machine of the world and is no longer part of it – on the contrary: God is the most present and decisive reality in each and every act of my life, in each and every moment of history.” The kingdom has come to a person when God is truly God of each and every act of one’s life.

* Once we’re living in the kingdom in this way, all of life begins to change. We become more and more a reflection of the King we’re serving. In today’s first reading, we hear “Wisdom” described with a waterfall of 21 adjectives. All of these predicates can be said of the God-man who incarnates wisdom and the way the Holy Spirit, who is likewise wisdom,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Leo the Great, Pope and Doctor of the Church

November 10, 2021

Wis 6:1-11, Ps 82, Lk 17:11-19

 

To listen to an audio version of today’s homily, please click here: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.10.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* In the scene in today’s Gospel, we encounter the one grateful leper. Why does Jesus stress that he was a Samaritan, a foreigner? Why does he emphasize that none of the Jews he had healed of leprosy returned to thank God? I think the reason is because the Jews should have been particularly well-prepared to say thanks. The Jews had so many psalms of Thanksgiving that they were regularly praying — like Ps 103, which we prayed in the Office of Readings this morning — that should have made returning to thank Jesus for the miracle much easier. Is it because they were complainers, like their ancestors in the desert who complained about food much more than they thanked God for their liberation from Egypt and so many other miracles God had worked for them? Of course we don’t know why nine people who were cured of one of the worst illnesses, something that ostracized them from the community, from their families, from the Temple, when cured, failed to express gratitude for the miracle. But we have much to learn from the one who did return.

* There’s a very important dialogue of prayer that takes place in the heart of every Mass that we should ponder as to how it impacts our life. Far greater as a hymn of thanksgiving to God than the Psalms we pray together with the Jews in the Liturgy of the Hours is the Mass. In the middle of Mass, at the Preface Dialogue, the priest prays, “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God,” and everyone responds, “It is right and just.” The priest then turns to God the Father and declares, “It is right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks!” It’s not only our duty — and it is a duty for us to thank the Lord who has given us life and every other blessing — but it’s also our salvation. Just as the grateful Samaritan leper today received upon his return a far greater miracle than the cure of leprosy — when Jesus told him, “Your faith has saved you” — so when we thank the Lord we are likewise introduced into the mystery of salvation by faith. But we need to be grateful to receive the gift of the Mass, because it’s only those who are grateful who can appreciate the unmerited uber-miracle of salvation. The priest also prays, “always and everywhere.” We are called to thank the Lord at all times and in every place, in the humanly happy times of births and weddings and successes, as well as in the humanly difficult times of suffering, death and failure. I like to think that the reason why the Samaritan leper returned to say thanks is because he was thanking the Lord always and everywhere, including during his leprosy, and perhaps even because of his leprosy, since that disease had brought him to confide far more in the Lord for a cure.

* For us as Catholics, it’s essential that we learn how to thank the Lord always and everywhere as a sweet duty that leads us more securely to salvation. Like the Jews in the desert, we can often be complainers, who obsess about what we don’t have rather than gratefully thank God for what we do. We can be eaten alive by envy such that even when those we love are blessed, we can be upset about it, because we personally don’t have those same blessings. If we’re not  thanking the Lord always and everywhere, however, we will often not thank him sufficiently when he does something truly spectacular for us. Like children,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Feast of the Dedication of the Archbasilica of St. John in the Lateran

November 9, 2021

Ezek 47:1-2.8-9.12, Ps 46, 1 Cor 3:9-11.16-17, Jn 2:13-22

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.9.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* “The most holy Church of the Lateran, the mother and head of all the churches of the city and the world!” These words, in Latin, greet every pilgrim entering through the front door of the Archbasilica of St. John in the Lateran in Rome and clearly proclaim the Lateran’s significance in Christianity.  We call the Lateran the mother of every church edifice because it was the first legalized Christian Church in history. It is the head, because Rome is the principal Church of the principal local Church in the world, the Diocese of Rome, the see of St. Peter, the vicar on earth of the Head of the Mystical Body.  The Lateran, not St. Peter’s, is the Pope’s Cathedral, where his cathedra, the chair symbolic of his teaching authority, rests. The Lateran, not the Vatican, is where the Popes resided for the first millennium of legalized Christianity (324-1308). This is the reason why on November 9 every year not just the Diocese of Rome but the whole Roman Catholic Church celebrate the feast of the dedication of their Head and Mother. “With this feast,” Pope Francis said a few years ago in an Angelus meditation, “we profess, in the unity of the faith, the bond of communion that all the local Churches, spread throughout the earth, has with the Church of Rome and with its Bishop, the successor to Peter.” St. John Lateran is, we can loosely say, the Cathedral of the world.

* The history of the Lateran symbolizes, in many ways, the history of the Church for which she is its liturgical mother and head. The Lateran Archbasilica is a fitting symbol for the Church that as theologians say is semper reformanda or always in need of reform. Over the centuries, the Lateran has been multiply pillaged by vandals, three times decimated by fire, toppled by an earthquake, and neglected by the Popes and faithful sometimes for decades. After every deformation, however, the Lateran rose again, continuing to proclaim to the city and the world the Church’s faith, through the words of the popes and five ecumenical councils held there, and through the language of its art and architecture. It’s therefore a sign of hope for the Church in every age and place.

* That perpetual reform is also depicted in its name. The true and original name of the Basilica is “Christ the Savior,” which is emblazoned on the front of the Basilica’s façade. Every reshaping in Church history happens when Christians return to Christ and to the salvation he came to bring into the world. When Pope Sergius III rebuilt the Basilica after a 9th century earthquake, he rededicated it to the Savior through the intercession of St. John the Baptist, because, symbolically, we needed to hear once more St. John the Baptist’s summons to conversion, to make straight the paths for Christ, to level the mountains of our pride, and fill up the valleys of a shallow spiritual life, so that we could encounter Christ. Pope Lucius II (1144-1145) added the intercession of St. John the Evangelist to the dedication as a means to remind of what St. John wrote in his Gospel, that “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” The rebuilding of the Church always involves living more fully with the Lord who came to live with us. (The name Lateran comes from the Roman Senatorial family of Plautus Lateranus who at the time SS. Peter and Paul lived in Rome owned the vast area in which the Lateran now stands.)

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Monday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Elizabeth of the Trinity

November 8, 2021

Wis 1:1-7, Ps 139, Lk 17:1-6

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.8.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

*  “Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way!,” we pray in today’s Psalm, and the Lord responds by giving us guidance in the first reading and in the Gospel. We begin the Book of Wisdom, which we will ponder throughout this week. The first chapter sets the tone for the entire book and describes for us the everlasting way of divine wisdom. Through the sacred author, God calls us to “love justice,” “think of the Lord in goodness,” and “seek the Lord in integrity of heart.” These are all expressions that say that our hearts, our minds, and our actions, respectively, should be aligned with God and his holy wisdom, that we should be right with him, right with others, and whole. The greatest criticisms Jesus would give in the Gospel were for those “hypocrites” or “actors” who said one thing, but did another, who on the outside were beautiful in terms of their religious practice but who on the inside were sepulchers full of dead men’s bones. Some of the scribes and Pharisees, for example,  to use the words of the Book of Wisdom, had souls that plotted evil, regardless of what their lips claimed.  Jesus calls us, rather, to genuine integrity. That’s what the everlasting way is all about. God probes us, he understands our thoughts from afar, he scrutinizes us and is familiar with all our ways. We recognize that he is everywhere around us, wants to guide us, and hold us fast with his right hand. He wants to help us to grow.

* In the Gospel, Jesus specifically talks about growth in faith. After the apostles cry out audage nobis fidem! — “Lord, increase our faith!,” Jesus responds by saying that if they had the faith of a mustard seed they could uproot and transplant trees. Faith has the power to transform and do the seemingly impossible. The apostles ask for increased faith immediately after Jesus talks about two things: the evil of scandal; and the need constantly to ask for forgiveness of God and others and to give it when someone asks it of us. One of the most important parts of our life of faith — if we love justice, think of the Lord in goodness, and seek the Lord in integrity of heart — is our recognition that just as God never tires of forgiving us, we should never tire of asking him for forgiveness and of sharing a similar mercy with others. This is hard. It requires great humility to ask for forgiveness and greater humility to give it. Jesus is calling us not merely to give people a second chance, but an eighth chance (and in another part of the Gospel he says, depending upon the translation, that we need to give a 78th chance or a 491st chance, meaning, since seven was a number signifying infinity, to forgive infinitely). In order to be capable of doing this, we need the strength that comes from faith. That’s why we humbly beg, “Increase our faith!”

* With regard to the situation of scandal, we also need increased faith. In response to a scandalizer, Jesus says not that we should forgive seven times a day but that the scandalizer should have a millstone tied around his neck and thrown into the sea. There’s a huge difference between the way we treat a sinner in need of forgiveness and a scandalizer. Several years ago Pope Francis said in a homily on this passage spoke about this. A sinner repents and comes to say to God and others from the heart, “I’m sorry.” A scandalizer doesn’t repent.