Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs, Auriesville, NY

Pilgrimage of the NYC Chapter of the Leonine Forum

November 7, 2021

This talk was part of a pilgrimage and day of recollection for the New York City Chapter of the Leonine Forum. To listen to the conference given please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.7.21_Call_to_Holiness_1.mp3

 

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs, Auriesville, NY

Pilgrimage of the NYC Chapter of the Leonine Forum

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

November 7, 2021

1 Kings 17:10-16, Ps 146, Heb 9:24-28, Mk 12:38-44

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.7.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* In last Sunday’s Gospel, you remember, Jesus told us clearly what the first and greatest commandment is, the most important thing we have to do in life: to love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength. Love, as we know, is more than merely words and feelings, but is shown in deeds. Love is choosing to act for the good of another, sacrificing oneself for sake of someone or something else. In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus presents us with a standard to help us to determine, in our concrete circumstances, whether we are really trying to love God with all we are and have.

* After Jesus had finished his “formal” teaching in the courtyard of the Temple of Jerusalem, he began to “people watch,” in order to instruct his apostles about how to put what he was teaching into action. They saw the stream of people depositing money in the temple treasury, which was a large tuba-shaped receptacle leading to a secure moneybox. People would put their coins in the horn at the top, which was like a funnel, and then the sound of the coins would resonate as they rolled down the metal tubing into the box. Many rich people, St. Mark tells us, were putting in large sums and “making a lot of noise” on the treasury tuba. Some of these donors were probably a little like the scribes against whom Jesus told the crowds to beware at the beginning of the Gospel, those who liked to wear long robes, stand in market places, plop themselves in the VIP seats at banquets and recite conspicuous lengthy prayers all to be noticed and greeted — and unsuspected when they would then try, Jesus says, try to “devour the houses of widows” and other helpless people. In contrast to such ostentation, Jesus draws attention to a poor widow who came and put in two lepta, two small coins that together were worth about a penny and likely barely made a sound. Jesus gave a surprising lesson that the disciples obviously never forgot. Jesus praised the poor widow rather than all the rest, saying that she had contributed more than all of them, for they, he said, “gave out of their surplus, but she gave everything she had, all she had to live on.” This widow, because of her poverty, could easily have been excused for giving nothing. She could have justly chosen to drop into the tuba only one of the lepta and kept the other for herself. But she didn’t. She gave it all. And her generosity was praised by Jesus and will remain famous until the end of time.

* What could have moved her to give to the Temple even what she needed to survive? There’s only one reason: her deep faith. She believed not simply that God exists, or that he worked various miracles in the past to help her people. She believed so much in him and was so convinced of the importance of what was going on in God’s house that she wanted to dedicate her life and all her goods to continuing and expanding it. She accounted the continuance and expansion of that saving work as worth more than even her own life. Faith leads to that type of trust in God and generosity.

* It is this faith, rather than the fact she was a widow, that links the Gospel to the first reading. There we find another widow, in Zarephath, who during a massive drought and consequent famine was down to her handful of flour and oil. She had doubtless prayed to God asking for help for her and her son, but she was also a Middle Eastern realist who grasp...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

November 6, 2021

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.6.21_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. Last week, you remember, Jesus told us clearly what the first and greatest commandment is, the most important thing we have to do in life: to love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength. Love, as we know, is more than merely words and feelings, but is shown in deeds. Love is choosing to act for the good of another, sacrificing oneself for sake of someone or something else. In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus presents us with a standard to help us to determine, in our concrete circumstances, whether we are really trying to love God with all we are and have.

* After Jesus had finished his “formal” teaching in the courtyard of the Temple of Jerusalem, he began to “people watch,” in order to instruct his apostles about how to put what he was teaching into action. They saw the stream of people depositing money in the temple treasury, which was a large tuba-shaped receptacle leading to a secure money box. People would put their coins in the horn at the top, which was like a funnel, and then the sound of the coins would resonate as they rolled down the metal tubing into the box. Many rich people, St. Mark tells us, were putting in large sums and “making a lot of noise” on the treasury tuba. But then a poor widow came and put in two lepta, two small coins that together were worth about a penny and likely barely made a sound. Jesus gave a surprising lesson that the disciples obviously never forgot. Jesus praised the poor widow rather than all the rest, saying that she had contributed more than all of them, for they, he said, “gave out of their surplus, but she gave everything she had, all she had to live on.” This widow, because of her poverty, could easily have been excused for giving nothing. She could have justly chosen to drop into the tuba only one of the lepta and kept the other for herself. But she didn’t. She gave it all. And her generosity was praised by Jesus and will remain famous until the end of time.

* What could have moved her to give to the Temple even what she needed to survive? There’s only one reason: her deep faith. She believed not simply that God exists, or that he worked various miracles in the past to help her people. She believed so much in him and was so convinced of the importance of what was going on in God’s house that she wanted to dedicate her life and all her goods to continuing and expanding it. She accounted the continuance and expansion of that saving work as worth more than even her own life.

* The truth is that the stronger our faith, the more we are willing to trust in God and the more we are willing to sacrifice. The more we love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength, the more we will give of ourselves and what we have to the advance of his work. The first apostles, moved by faith in Christ, left fishing businesses and lucrative tax collection seats to follow Christ, even though they would have, like Jesus, no bread, no money, no bags, no change of clothes, and no place to lay their head (Lk 9:3; 9:58). The early Christians, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles, used to sell their property and lay the proceeds at the feet of the apostles in order to share with those in most need and advance the proclamat...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the 31st Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

November 5, 2021

Rom 15:14-21, Ps 98, Lk 16:1-8

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.5.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following points were attempted:

* Throughout this month of November, we ponder more deeply what we celebrated during the first two days of this month: the last things, that we will die, be judged, and eventually end up for eternity in one of two places, and that we are called and helped by God to end up in an eternal communion with him by means of his mercy and through saying yes to him in a life of sanctity. Today we are able to continue to meditate on the realities we celebrate on All Saints and All Souls Days.

* Our passage from St. Luke’s Gospel is meant to help us to prepare for our judgment by inspiring us toward a life of sanctity, if not for the right reasons — out of love for God — minimally out of eternal self-love and -interest. Jesus stresses in a brutal, cutthroat, bottom-line manner what we need to do and does so by means of what for many Catholics is the most confusing parable in the Gospel, what’s popularly called the Parable of the Dishonest Steward, something that can get some people to wonder whether Truth incarnate is praising a crooked business manager for wily deception, whether he who gave us the commandment “Thou shalt not steal” is himself praising someone for violating it. But Jesus is doing no such thing. In order to grasp what Jesus was and was not saying and what the crucial lesson is for us, however, we first need to understand better the literal sense of this passage through knowing something about the way loans were done in the ancient world.

* In the Parable, a manager is about to get sacked because he was squandering the property of his business owner. His boss gave him his pink slip and told him to do an audit of the books prior to his dismissal. So the man called in those mostly tenant farmers who owed his employer money or items and reduced their debts considerably. At first glance, this seems like dishonesty, like he was allowing these debtors to steal from his boss, but it wasn’t. In the ancient world, the way loans were conducted was that the manager or broker would be paid by adding on something to what was borrowed, rather than a percentage taken out of the master’s proceeds. For example, if someone borrowed 50 denarii or 50 barrels of oil, he would have to pay back the 50 to the master and another 10 — or 30 or 50 — to the broker, whatever the broker thought he could get. This dishonest steward was probably tacking on way too big of a commission, and, in order to maximize his profits, was probably, like Fannie and Freddie earlier this century, lending out the master’s property to very bad risks, allowing people on the Master’s fields who were going to waste it rather than produce. Hence, when the manager called in those who owed, for example, 100 containers of wheat, and reduced the amount to 80, what he was almost assuredly doing was eliminating most or all of his commission. Therefore, he wasn’t really allowing them to steal from the owner; he was eliminating his own take. Faced with the decision of saving his life by making friends with those who would take care of him after he was fired or trying to hold out to the end onto the possibility of making money via these commissions, he chose to save his life. His master — and Jesus through the master in the Parable — calls this prudent and wise.

* What’s the application to us? Jesus wants us to examine whether we are in the place of that dishonest steward. God has given each of us tremendous gifts.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

UN (Staff Recreation Council) Catholic Club

“Making the Most of the Fullness of Time”

Virtual Presentation

November 4, 2021

 

To watch a video recording of the conference, please click below: 

 

 

To listen to an audio recording of the lecture, please click below:

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.4.21_Making_the_Most_out_of_the_Fullness_of_Time.mp3

 

To download a copy of the slides of the presentation, which are more complete than those used during the talk, please click below: 

Making the Most of the Fullness of Time

 

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the 31st Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of Saint Charles Borromeo

November 4, 2021

Rom 14:7-12, Ps 27, Lk 15:1-10

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.4.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily:

* Today St. Paul summarizes one of the essential aspects of Christian identity and life: We are God’s, not as property he owns, but as beloved sons and daughters he loves. Jesus’ whole life, death and resurrection was all designed so that we might become children of God. Our behavior is meant to flow from this identity. Therefore, he says, “None of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself. For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.” In this month of November, the Church helps us to ponder how to live according to our identity. We begin the month on All Saints Day, those who truly lived for the Lord and the martyrs who similarly died for him. On All Souls Day, we not only pray for the Faithful Departed, but also consider death, so that we can learn how to die for the Lord. Throughout the month, we seek to grow in the capacity to live intentionally and to die intentionally, consecrating ourselves to God in life (which is how, from our perspective, we belong to God) and commending ourselves to him in death, echoing Jesus’ last words on the Cross.

* This sense of belonging to God as beloved sons and daughters is very strong in today’s Gospel, which is perhaps the most moving chapter in all of Sacred Scripture, when Jesus gives us the Parables of the Lost Sheep, Lost Coin and Lost Sons, all three of which stress how God’s love for us is greater than our sins and how he rejoices when he is able to restore us to our identity. When we wander away from him like the lost sheep, he never ceases to come after us to try to restore us. When the spousal significance of our life seemed ruptured — that’s what the lost coin is, because a Jewish woman would have ten silver drachmas on a head piece; losing one of them would be like a woman’s losing a wedding ring today, a symbol of one’s sense of loving belonging to a spouse — God rejoices abundantly when we rediscover it. And in the parable of the Lost Sons (which the Church doesn’t have us ponder this week, because it comes up powerfully every Lent and twice in three years in the Sunday lectionary), we see how even when the Prodigal Son treats the father as dead and the older son treats him almost as as a slave owner, the father never stops loving them both as sons, waiting for the first son’s return and encouraging the older son’s coming into the familial celebration. The main point of this chapter is how dear we are to God, how much we belong to him from his perspective, and how he wants us to grow in our identity, in our subjectively belonging to him who has objectively and lovingly made us members of his family.

* That brings us back to today’s first reading and how our understanding of this double-belonging is supposed to influence the way we look at others. After St. Paul stresses that whether we live or die we are the Lord’s because he is the Lord of the dead and the living, he asks, somewhat surprisingly, “Why then do you judge your brother or sister? Or you, why do you look down on your brother or sister?” The “then” is like a “therefore.” If we belong to the Lord of life and death, then, he implies, we should not be looking negatively or judgmentally at our brothers and sisters, because they belong to the Lord, too, and we should approach them with the mercy that befits someone who belongs to ...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the 31st Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Martin de Porres

November 3, 2021

Rom 13:8-10, Ps 112, Lk 14:25-33

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.3.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily:

* Today in the Gospel Jesus does something extraordinary. St. Luke tells us that “great crowds” were traveling with him. He had fixed his face on Jerusalem (Lk 9:51) and was on a long way of the Cross; the crowds, like the apostles, thought or at least hoped that they were on a triumphal procession for Jesus to be recognized as Messiah and unite the people to drive out the Romans. Jesus turned around to the crowds and didn’t say, “How nice of you to come!” Rather, out of love he challenged them to know what they were signing up for if they were prepared to follow him all the way. He wanted them to count the cost of discipleship and be willing to pay it, knowing that to obtain the pearl of great price would never come on the cheap. To follow him as his disciple to salvation, we have to do three things.

* First, we need to “hate” father and mother, spouse and children, brothers and  sisters. The Hebrew word for “hate” doesn’t mean “detest,” but rather “put in second place” or “knock down a peg.” Jesus, after all, calls us to honor our father and mother, not despise them. But we have to make sure that our family members don’t become gods in our life, that if there is ever a choice between what God is asking of us and what our parents, or husband or wife, or children are asking of us, that we say “God’s will be done” instead of “My loved ones’ will be done.” And we need to remember that if we do “hate” them in this way, we actually will love them more because we will love them in God.

* Second, Jesus says one needs to hate “even his own life,” “carry his own cross” and “follow” Him. We need to account Jesus’ life more valuable than our own, in imitation of him who deemed our life more valuable than His. This is the faith that led the martyrs directly to heaven. If we love our comforts, our life in this world more than we love God, then we won’t be completing the work of salvation because Jesus clearly taught us that to save our life we must lose it and that unless we fall to the ground and die like a grain of wheat we won’t bear the fruit of salvation.

* Third, Jesus says one must “renounce all his possessions.” We must renounce the stuff that possesses us and then as good stewards use everything we have and are for God and his service, giving of ourselves together with our things for God and others, because if we cling to possessions we will not be able to fit through the eye of the needle to salvation.

* In buttressing the conditions of the completion of the work of our salvation, Jesus employs two analogies that point to the cost of discipleship. He says that to build a tower, we need to calculate the cost and get the proper supplies lest we not finish what we began. Likewise, to win a battle, we have to know whether we have the resources to defeat the enemy. In building the tower toward heaven, we have to have the supplies — most notably detachment from ourselves, our loved ones, our possessions and our life — to finish the job. In fighting against the twenty thousand troops of the evil one, we have to divest ourselves of whatever will hinder us in battle, whatever earthly desires the devil can use against us. We won’t be able to finish what’s been started unless we count the cost and pay the cost, knowing that in the big picture, this is the wisest and greatest deal in life,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

The Commemoration of All The Faithful Departed, All Souls’ Day

November 2, 2021

2 Macc 12:38-46, Ps 25, 1 Thess 4:13-18, Lk 23:33.39-43

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.2.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today we come together to fulfill the sweetest of all the spiritual works of mercy, which is to pray for the dead. With Catholics throughout the world, we commemorate all the faithful departed — those who died yesterday and today, the beloved deceased members of our families, those who have died of natural causes as well the victims of war, violence and genocide, those who have died of hunger, disease and neglect, the infants who have died in miscarriages or who have been killed through exposure or abortion, the seniors who have been tragically killed through euthanasia, the Christians who have died for the faith in persecution, the anonymous who rest in common graves, and those forgotten by the world and whose names are known only by God. The Church remembers the faithful departed not just on this day but throughout the entire month of November in a special way. We begin the month, as we did yesterday, by celebrating the saints — those who are definitively in heaven, the canonized and un-canonized saints — and by invoking their intercession as we continue on our pilgrimage of faith in this world. But then we immediately turn in suffrage for all those who have died who long to share in the communion of the saints but who are not yet experiencing their joy. To pray for the dead is the main purpose of All Souls Day. We pray for the dead because we know in faith three truths: first, contrary to the popular heresy that presumes that everyone who dies automatically goes to a “better place,” the Catholic faith does not believe everyone who dies goes to heaven, especially immediately; second, the dead may need our help; and third our prayers and sacrifices can in fact help them. All Souls Day is an occasion to examine more deeply these three truths of faith.

* First, the Church teaches that to enter heaven, one must be completely attached to God and radically detached from all sin and everything that is not of God. “Nothing unclean shall enter heaven,” the Book of Revelation tells us (Rev. 21:27). There are many who do not live and die with that type of purity of life and hence they need to be purified to enter into the kingdom in which God is all in all. This state in which the dead are decontaminated from all sin and worldliness has been traditionally called by the Church “Purgatory” from the Latin term purgare, which means “to cleanse.” In 2007, Pope Benedict wrote an encyclical letter on Christian hope in which he talked about what happens after we die and who goes to Hell, Heaven and Purgatory. He described Hell as that state where those people go “who have totally destroyed their desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within themselves.” He commented, “This is a terrifying thought, but alarming profiles of this type can be seen in certain figures of our own history.” He doesn’t mention anyone by name, but we can think that some genocidal leaders, sadistic serial killers, abortionists, if their deeds correspond to what was really in their hearts and they failed to repent, would end up there. “In such people,” Pope Benedict added, “all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable. This is what we mean by the word Hell.” Hell, the Catechism tells us, is the place of “definitive self-exclusion” from God.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Anthony of Padua Parish, New Bedford, MA

Day of Recollection for Men

“Saint Joseph and the Call to Manly Holiness”

October 30, 2021

 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.30.21_Growing_in_Devotion_to_Saint_Joseph_1.mp3

 

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Anthony of Padua Parish, New Bedford, MA

Day of Recollection for Men

“Saint Joseph and the Call to Manly Holiness”

October 30, 2021

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.30.21_Joseph_and_Adjusting_to_Others_1.mp3