Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Vigil

October 23, 2021

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.23.21_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 travel with Jesus to Jericho, the lowest place on earth, more below sea level than any other location on the planet. Jesus was passing through that place, representative of the moral pit of the human world, in order to ascend from there the 15 mile road up hill that leads to Jerusalem, where he would suffer and die to lift up the human race and us.

* St. Mark tells us that as Jesus was passing through the town,  “Bartimaeus, a blind man, the son of Timaeus, sat by the road side begging.” Bartimaeus was not born blind, but had become blind over the course of time. We see that in the verb he himself uses later — anablepo — asking Jesus in the Greek to “see again.” But he hadn’t just lost his sight. To some degree, he had lost the dignity he would have had. He was sitting by the road side begging. He could not take care of himself. He needed basic help. He had hit rock bottom. He was in the depth of the valley of darkness in the lowest place on earth. But it was precisely in that spiritual poverty that Jesus would come to meet him. When Bartimaeus heard that Jesus was passing by, he didn’t cry out for alms, which would have been a small request. He didn’t cry out at that point even for a miracle. He cried out simply for mercy. “Jesus, son of David, have pity on me!” He had doubtless heard of Jesus’ reputation for working miracles to the north in Galilee and was responding in faith. The fact that he called him “Son of David” was a sign he believed Jesus was the Messiah. And his prayer would be answered.

* Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.” Like rabbis were accustomed to do on all their pilgrimages to Jerusalem for the major feasts, Jesus was teaching the crowds along the journey. When he heard Bartimaeus’ pleas, he stopped in his tracks and ordered that Bartimaeus be brought to him. For Jesus, caring for this man was more important than what he was teaching at that moment, because he was about to show the Gospel rather than just verbally describe it. He was also going to show how he responds to persistent prayer. They said to Bartimaeus, “Take courage; get up, Jesus is calling you,” words of encouragement to anyone. It would have been very easy for Jesus to have 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, he got close, but then he had Bartimaeus get up to come to him, to exercise Bartimaeus’ freedom, to stoke his desire, to grow his faith, and 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 in crying out, in taking courage and going to Jesus who was calling, he was intentionally embracing a new life and establishing a new security. He left his cloak behind, which is not just a fact but an important symbol of how he was thinking more about clinging...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the 29th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. John Paul II

October 22, 2021

Rom 7:18-25, Ps 119, Lk 12:54-59

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.22.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today Jesus speaks about our reading the signs of the times spiritually as well as we do meteorologically, to know that all of Christian life is a journey to meet the “Magistrate” and to have us reconcile with God and with others, to do reparation and restitution, as we’re heading toward the court. He urges us to settle, to plea bargain, to plead guilty, before we get to the court and receive the verdict. As St. John Chrysostom would say, now is the time of mercy; later is the time of justice.

* Learning how to read the signs of the times is important to see what we need to do with regard to the experience of concupiscence that St. Paul describes in today’s first reading. He says, “I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want.” Despite the fact that he “take[s] delight in the law of God in my inner self,” he recognized “in my members another principle at war with the law of my mind.” Jesus had warned people of this battle between spirit and flesh, telling him that “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Peter, we know, was willing to die for the Lord, but when push came to shove, he denied even knowing him. St. Paul was himself recognizing this battle between weak flesh and willing spirit. He struggled with it so much that he prayed at the end, “Miserable one that I am? Who will deliver me from this mortal body?”

* Before we answer that question, we need highlight two things we find in the passage that are key to the Christian moral life. The first is that knowing is not enough. Plato once taught that all that we need to do the good is to know the good. But that’s not true because frequently, like SS. Peter and Paul, we do not do the good we want, but rather the evil we do not want. As much as we say, “Lord, teach me your statutes” and he responds with that instruction, it’s not enough; we also need to win the battle to do what he says, having our spirit of obedience triumph over the weakness that makes obedience at times so hard. The second thing we learn is that resolutions alone are enough. We need to set them and form our will, but at the same time, it’s not enough for us to set them. Keeping them requires this same triumph over spirit over flesh.

* So we come back to the question: “Who will deliver me from this mortal body?” There are three basic answers, one we get from today’s Gospel, and two we’ll get tomorrow, as we enter into one of the most important chapters in the Bible, Romans 8, which was St. Paul’s answer to his interrogative. The first is prayer. When Jesus told Peter in the Gospel that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, he gave him the medicine for that diagnosis: to pray, that he would not undergo the test. We need to recognize our weakness and similarly turn to the Lord for help. The second is the Holy Spirit. Jesus promised that whenever we ask the Father for anything, he sends the Holy Spirit: “If you who are evil know how to give good things to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” The Father gives the Holy Spirit to those who ask him for anything. It’s the Holy Spirit, as we’ll be hearing tomorrow and early next week, who helps us to lift up our hearts to the Lord, to set our minds on the things of the Lord, to discern the signs of the times and respond accordingly. The third thing we’ll also hear tomorrow: it’s to cooper...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the 29th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of Blessed Pino Puglisi

October 21, 2021

Rom 6:19-23, Ps 1, Lk 12:49-53

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.21.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily:

* “I have come to set the earth on fire,” Jesus tells us today, “and how I wish it were already blazing!” Over the last couple of days, Jesus has described for us how he wants us to have our lamps lit for him; how he wants our loins girt to work with him for and in his kingdom and to run to bring the Gospel to others; how he wants us to be like faithful and prudent stewards who know of their master’s imminent return and care for his menservants and maidservants with the gifts he has given us for that purpose. All of this is meant to be interpreted within what he tells us today: that he ardently desires this and wants us to respond to these summons with similar fire. He wants his fire to be in us and our fire to be all-consuming. He wants us to share the fire of his love. The ignition for that world-wide bonfire he has come to set happened on Golgotha, when we were able to witness the Love of God crucified. That’s the reference to “baptism” that Jesus longed to undergo, the baptism of blood on Calvary. There’s no great witness to his fire.

* But he says that that fire comes with suffering. There were and are many who have responded to his ardent love with coldness or tepidity. There were and are many who have rejected his love. And when we’re inflamed with the same divine fire, we will experience those reactions, too. That’s why Jesus immediately after talking about the fire he seeks to set in us so that we may have our lamps perpetually lit and loins girt as faithful and prudent stewards describes the division that fire will cause. He says that he’s come not to bring “peace,” understood as a life without conflict, but “division,” and even our families would be divided. This was not because Christ is a divider — as he said during the Last Supper and we ponder each Mass: he came to give us peace and leave us his peace, the fruit of a right relationship with God — but when someone opts for Christ, others who want to be first get jealous and angry, and that’s what divides. This was true in the early Church. Often when Jews converted to Christianity, they were disowned by their family. Still today when a Muslim converts to Christianity in various fundamentalist Muslim countries, or a Hindu converts in certain fundamentalist areas in India, a contract is put out on them, most often by the members of his or her own family. Still, too, in many families, when one person becomes on fire for the faith, the tepid members of the family can begin to resist, mock and even persecute, at the “holier-than-you-goodie-two-shoes” in their midst. When one person who has caught the flame of faith wants to respond to Love with the gift of his or her life as a priest, religious or consecrated person, often other family members put up strong opposition. This is what Jesus is describing. The key for all of us is that we see that our choice for Christ must come first, above our other choices, above our other loves, even if we should have to suffer as a result of it. Jesus, after all, has made that choice for us.

* The other readings show some of the consequences of living our faith with the fire of love for God and others. The first Psalm describes the one on fire with love for God as one someone who “follows not the counsel of the wicked nor walks in the way of sinners, nor sits in the company of the insolent, but delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on his law day and night...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the 29th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Paul of the Cross

October 20, 2021

Rom 6:12-18, Ps 124, Lk 12:39-48

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.20.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Peter today asks Jesus, “Is this parable meant for us or for everyone?” There was the implication that the apostles or others might think they were exempt from the lessons. Sometimes we can think ourselves exempt from really paying attention to what the Lord is asking, as if the Lord’s call to conversion is primarily directed to others. But the Lord is always speaking for us and for others, and we need to listen to everything as words to be done, so that we can become what he describes later in this passage, faithful and prudent stewards investing his word and passing this way of life on to others.

* To understand today’s Gospel better, we can begin with yesterday’s, when Jesus spoke to us of the two essential Christian dispositions and actions: to be vigilant with lamps lit for his perpetual coming and to have our loins girt, ready to work and to be sent out by him to finish the job he started of the salvation of the world. Today he reemphasizes these two points in the Gospel when he speaks about the qualities of a faithful and prudent steward. About lamps lit, he tells us to “be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.” The Lord is, as Martha of Bethany said before Jesus raised her brother from the dead, constantly “coming into the world.” The unfaithful disciple says, “My master is delayed in coming,” and the devil is constantly trying to get us to think that the Master is delayed, that he’s not already here. But he is here and the good and faithful steward acts as if he were aware of this continual divine accompaniment. About loins girt, Jesus says that the faithful and prudent steward “distribute[s] the food at the proper time.” God has fed us, he’s enriched us, and he wants us to love others with those gifts. The devil, after he’s seduced us to think that our life is meant to be lived apart from the Master, gets us instead to “beat the men servants and the maidservants,” “to get drunk,” in short to sin. Rather than serving others and caring for their needs, both spiritual and material, he tries to get us to hurt them. He’s also trying to get us to forget that we’re really stewards called to account.

* St. Paul picks up these themes in the first reading. He talks about two types of slavery: slavery to sin, what he calls presenting our “bodies to sin as weapons of wickedness”; and consecration to God whereby we present ourselves to God “as raised from the dead to life and the parts of your bodies as weapons for righteousness.” I love this phrase. Our bodies, which are sacraments of who we are body-and-soul, are meant to glorify God, to be given to God and in God to others. So often, however, we allow our bodies to be slaves to sin, as we give ourselves to sinfulness. We see this when people get drunk. We see it when people are addicted to pleasure or sex or power or their egos. By Jesus’ action, he has set us free from this slavery. We can’t be passive, however, to this gift: Jesus, risen from the dead, has brought us fully alive through baptism; he wants us in return to present our bodies to him as risen from the dead, living a new life.

* St. Paul helps us to see that our lives are meant to be weapons. Our thoughts, words and actions can be  “weapons of wickedness,” making ours and others’ lives worse or miserable; or we can use them as “weapons of righteousness,” lifting people up. In Psalm 36,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Tuesday of the 29th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of the North American Martyrs

October 19, 2021

Rom 5:12.15.17-21, Ps 40, Lk 12:35-38

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.19.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Eight days into this 24 day feast on St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans we have every second year, we get to an important clarification by St. Paul with regard to justification. Normally we can look at sin and forgiveness as more or less “loss and restoration,” that we squander our relationship with God and then get it back, and sometimes we think we get it back in somewhat a lesser stage, wounded; if we were to put it in monetary terms, we have a $100, we go bankrupt, and then God graciously restores us, but because of our wounds we really now only have $90. But St. Paul stresses something different today. He describes that God’s response to our sin will far surpass the depth of that sin, and not only our sin but the sins of the whole world. St. Paul stresses this superabundance: “If by that one person’s transgression the many died, how much more did the grace of God and the gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ overflow for the many.” “For if, by the transgression of the one, death came to reign through that one, how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of justification come to reign in life through the one Jesus Christ.” “Where sin increased, grace overflowed all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through justification for eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” We can’t focus on that “how much more” enough if we’re really going to understand how God responds to us. Jesus alludes to this very clearly in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. The younger son who never really understood the Father’s love (just like the older son didn’t either), when he realizes he hit rock bottom and remembers that even the slaves in his father’s household were treated well, wants to come back and be treated like a slave (it’s the “lesser,” the “90” I mention above). But then the Father not only treats him as a beloved son by investing him with sandals that slaves never had but gives him things that far surpass what he had before: he puts a signet ring on his finger signifying he had power of attorney and trust, he kills the fattened calf for him (making the other brother jealous) and covered his pig-dung-infested clothes with the finest robe he had. This is a sign of his superabundance!

* At the Easter Vigil we sing of this “how much more” with words that at first glance might seem to border even on blasphemy. The deacon or priest, in the Easter Proclamation that could be called in a sense “The Gospel of Easter” or simply the Easter Kerygma, chants, “O happy Fault, that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!” The theology behind calling any sin — Adam’s or ours — blessed is described in the prayer said at the Easter Vigil, on Christmas Day, and during the Offertory of the Mass when a drop of water is added to wine when we pray, “O God, who wonderfully created human nature and still more wonderfully redeemed it.” Human nature, created wonderfully by God, is left in an even more marvelous state after sin because of Christ’s work of redemption. The phrase, “O Felix Culpa,” “O Happy Fault,” is normally attributed to St. Augustine, but it’s not a direct quotation but a paraphrase. The converted saintly bishop of Hippo actually said, “For God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist.” And it’s likely that he was influenced not only by his experience of th...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Feast of St. Luke, Evangelist

October 18, 2021

2 Tim 4:10-17, Ps 145, Lk 10:1-9

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.18.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following text guided today’s homily:  

* Today on this feast of St. Luke the evangelist, it’s worthwhile to ponder his life. He was a young doctor, very likely in Antioch. St. Paul calls him a “beloved physician” (Col 4:14). At some point, however, it appears to have occurred at Troas, he began to accompany St. Paul, based on when he started to use the word “we” in the Acts of the Apostles. He gave up his medical career in order to become a “co-worker” (Philemon 24) of St. Paul. He loyally stayed with St. Paul until the end, being the sole coworker in prison in Rome with the apostle at the end of his life when St. Paul wrote today’s first reading to St. Timothy. There’s no indication at all that he was a leading light during St. Paul’s missionary journeys. He was simply a companion and a helper. But after St. Paul died, he wrote down for a friend — Theophilus, which could have been one person, or could have stood for all of us, as a “God-lover” — what he remembered. Little did St. Luke know when he was writing his orderly account for Theophilus that billions of people would eventually read it. As a continuation of the 72 lay “non-apostle evangelizers” Jesus sent out in the Gospel, he just wanted to share the faith and God did the rest. “Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the word have handed them down to us,” he wrote in the introduction to the Gospel that bears his name, “I too have decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to write it down in an orderly sequence for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may realize the certainty of the teachings you have received.” Then he continued the story with a second book, a sequel, about how the Holy Spirit came down on the apostles and the early Church to continue Jesus’ mission.

* St. Luke wanted to write things down so that we would be certain about the things of the faith. Without his efforts, so many aspects of Jesus’ teaching we may never have learned. We wouldn’t know the details about John the Baptist’s conception and birth or the drama of the scenes of the Annunciation, Visitation, Presentation of Jesus in the Temple and the Finding of Jesus in the Temple. We wouldn’t know of the beautiful scene of the raising of the only son of the widow of Nain. We wouldn’t know of today’s Gospel and the mission of the seventy disciples. We wouldn’t have entered Bethany with Jesus to hear Jesus’ words to Martha and Mary about choosing the better part and the one thing necessary. We wouldn’t have the Parable of the Good Samaritan. We wouldn’t have the scene of the healing of the ten lepers, the encounter with Zacchaeus, Jesus’ interrogation by Herod, or two of Jesus seven last words. We wouldn’t have the scene of Emmaus, which is in some sense summarizes all that Jesus continues to want to do in the Church. So today we thank God for the great gift that he has given us through the faithful cooperation of the beloved physician who became St. Paul’s coworker faithfully to the end, as St. Paul tells Timothy in today’s first reading.

* But we should focus in a particular way about how his “orderly account” is all about how Christ has come as the Divine Physician to share his healing mercy with us. In Zechariah’s Benedictus the point is how the “Lord … has visited and brought redemption to his people,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Church of the Annunciation, Houston, Texas

Nuptial Ceremony for Ruben Flores and Amanda Pereira

October 16, 2021

Eccl 4:9-12, Ps 112, 1 Cor 12:31-13:8, Mk 10:6-9

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, the Gospel and first few minutes of which are in Spanish, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.16.21_Ruben_Flores_and_Amanda_Pereira_1.mp3

 

The following text, part of which was preached in Spanish, guided the homily: 

Nine years ago, Amanda and her parents Lucy and Al, my parents Roger and Midge, about 50 others and I went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. One of the places we were privileged to visit was Cana in Galilee, where Jesus worked his first miracle, at the intercession of his mother, on behalf of a young, newly married couple, who had run out of wine for their eight-day wedding reception. The Church has always looked at the great miracle Jesus worked as more than just a wedding gift to couple, converting 180 gallons of water into precious wine, the equivalent today of 912 750-ml bottles or 76 cases of wine! The Church has understood its deeper significance as Jesus’ elevating the “water” of the natural love between a man and a woman — the primordial “sacrament” or sign of the divine image in the union of Adam and Eve in the beginning — into the “wine” of his divine love and life, a sign and means of intimate supernatural communion with him.

In Cana, it’s customary, after pondering the various elements of miracle, for everyone to pray in gratitude to God for the gift of marriage and the family and for priests to give a special blessing to all married couples, asking God to renew them in their covenant of love with each other and with God. It’s also a place where everyone prays in a special way for those who believe they have the vocation to marry but have not yet met the person with the corresponding vocation. It was that day, after having the privilege to bless Al and Lucy, my own mom and dad, and all of the other married couples present, I asked those who were single but hoping to marry to come forward before the altar. We prayed for God to strengthen them in the grace of patience and hope during the difficult, but indefinite period of waiting. We prayed that God would nourish them during this time with the virtues they would need to be a great future husband or wife. And we prayed for whoever God had given the complementary vocation to marriage, that God would preserve the person free from harm, prepare the person inwardly, make the person strong in faith, and bless that person with the same gift.

Amanda was among those that day before the altar. She told me during marriage preparation, “For the longest time, I would always pray to God, asking Him to let me meet the man that I was meant to marry, a man who was kindhearted, respectful, good, strong and prayerful, someone who would treat me well and with respect. I stayed patient, as patient as I could, because I knew when the time was right, God would bring that person into my life, when I and my future husband were ready to be in a mature, loving relationship.” But that time was long in coming. In Cana, after I had prayerfully given the blessing and everyone had said “Amen” and lifted up their bowed heads, I noticed that Amanda wiped away a small tear, which was a tear of hope, a sign of how intensely she was praying body and soul for whoever that person was.

That day, February 25, 2012, without knowing it explicitly, she and all those present in Cana were praying for you, Ruben, that Jesus bless, preserve, protect and strengthen you. And together with her, all of us here in this beautiful Church of the Annunciation are so grateful that God heard that prayer.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

October 16, 2021

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.16.21_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 on the dialogue Jesus has with the apostles James and John and, then, with all of the other apostles, on the subject of ambition.

* The brothers James and John with great chutzpah ask Jesus for a blank check: “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” Jesus indulges them by asking, “What do you wish me to do for you?” and they reply, “Grant that in your glory we may sit one at your right and the other at your left.” The two fishermen wanted to be the Messiah’s right and left hand men, his two viceroys or executive vice-presidents, in what they anticipated would be Jesus’ glorious Messianic reign. But Jesus responded, “You do not know what you are asking,” and then gave them yet another indication of the expectation-shattering type of kingdom he would be establishing: “Can you drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized,” alluding to the cup of suffering prophesied by Isaiah and the cleansing ablution of blood that would take place on Good Friday. To his question, the brothers impetuously respond, “We can,” and Jesus foretold that they ultimately would, but reminded them that God the Father had already prepared those who would sit at his right and left, which would be the Good and Bad Thief on Calvary, the Sheep and the Goats at the General Judgment, and likely, dynamically, Mary and Joseph in heaven.

* Hearing this conversation, however, the other ten apostles objected and became angry at James and John, not because of the brothers’ impudence, but out of their own jealousy: they themselves wanted the positions that the brothers had the guts to ask for. Their anger gave Jesus the opportunity to give one of the most important instructions to the apostles and to the whole Church about the path to greatness, about the means to become like him, about the way to reign with him and advance his kingdom. We need to focus carefully and persistently on what Jesus says, because it goes so much against our worldly ways.

* Four weeks ago, you may recall, we had an opportunity to focus on ambition and the path to greatness in God’s kingdom, because the theme was a common one in St. Mark’s Gospel, because the apostles were so obsessed about which of them would be the greatest and their voracious egocentric hunger came to the surface at least four times, all disgustingly when Jesus spoke about how he would suffer, be betrayed and crucified to establish his kingdom. We spoke then about how Jesus didn’t seek to suppress their ambition but to reorient it, pushing them to become great in faith, great in humility, great in holiness, great in knowing and transmitting the faith by word and example, and great in sacrificial love. This Sunday we focus with Jesus on that last Christian ambition.

* Jesus tells the apostles, “You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them and their great ones make their authority over them felt.” It’s still the same way today. Greatness is determined by how much power one wields in politics, how much money or influence one has in business, how many magazine covers and Twitter followers one has in entertainment.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Callistus

October 14, 2021

Rom 3:21-30, Ps 130, Lk 11:47-54

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.14.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today Jesus finishes his very sharp words about those Pharisees who for all their conspicuous religious practices turn out to be murderers on the inside: in imitation of the way their ancestors killed the prophets, they would conspire to have Jesus himself killed. Their essential defect in the understanding of their relationship with God was a focus on their own external actions in fulfillment of the law of the Covenant rather than on whether they were branches attached to God the Vine, whether they were in fact loving God with all they had and loving their neighbor to the extreme or whether they were opposing God and hating or slaying their neighbor. They had become, as Pope Francis said a few years ago in a daily Mass homily, ideologues, those who were living by “moral principles” or by the “law” but were no longer truly living in a relationship with God. Jesus said they had thrown away the key of knowledge — the real, living relationship with God himself, a God who changes us — and had both failed to enter the kingdom themselves but were preventing others from entering.

* St. Paul used to be a Pharisee and lived by a principle that one became right with God — justified — precisely through one’s own deeds but he grasped in and after his conversion, as he writes today, that we are “justified freely by [God’s] grace” (which means by God’s action, unmerited by us) and the way we respond to it, “by faith, apart from works of the law.” He writes about the proper ground of justification by grace through faith working through love today because it was an issue for the Church in Rome, where there were many “Judaized Christians,” Christians influenced by a Pharisaical mentality that said in order to be a good Christian, one first needed to be a good Jew, and to be a good Jew meant to keep the Mosaic law in its entirety. The emphasis in justification in their conception was on fidelity to the Mosaic law, and St. Paul was stressing, rather, that it’s faith in God — not just a belief that he exists but a trust in Him to whom we commit our entire lives — that saves both Greek and Jew, uncircumcised and circumcised. That doesn’t mean our deeds aren’t key. God’s grace received with faith is supposed to be transformative and performative: it’s supposed to change us and that change can’t help but be seen in the way we behave, as we strive and struggle to behave more and more according to God’s grace, according to faith. St. Paul would write in his letter to the Galatians that the goal is “faith working through love,” our faith is supposed to flow in charity toward God and neighbor. That’s why we can say that, while we’re not saved by our deeds, we are judged by our deeds — see Mt 25:31-46 and the way we respond to the poor, the hungry, the sick, the stranger, the imprisoned — because the way we treat our neighbor is an indication of the type of faith we have and whether we’ve responded in faith to the grace of God.

* This year we mark the 500th anniversary of Pope Leo X’s excommunication of Martin Luther and of the Diet of Worms where Luther was called to defend his beliefs before the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and where he refused to recant what the Church was criticizing in his 95 theses and other writings. Central to the Reformation was the question of “justification,” of how we’re saved.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

October 13, 2021

Rom 2:1-11, Ps 62, Lk 11:42-46

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.13.12_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily:

* Today St. Paul tells the Jews and Christians in Rome, who were influenced by many of the thoughts of the Scribes and Pharisees from the very large Jewish community in the city, that they would be held to no less a standard than the pagans when it comes to conforming themselves to what God has revealed through nature and through revelation. In yesterday’s passage, St. Paul dissected the fallen logic among various of the pagans in Rome, who were suppressing the truth through their wickedness, foolishly exchanging the glory of God for pagan idols, the truth for lies and love for the lust of their hearts and the degradation of their bodies. Today he stresses that God “has no partiality,” plays no favorites and “will repay everyone according to his works.” He reminds both Jews and Christians in Rome that “the standard by which you judge another you condemn yourself since you, the judge, do the very same things.” They condemn themselves when they condemn others and yet, like them, worship idols, live lies, and give into sinful desires — in short when they selfishly disobey the truth and obey wickedness. He tells them that God’s “priceless kindness, forbearance and patience,” should not be held in “low esteem,” but was meant to lead them to repentance so that they, converted, would “seek glory, honor and immortality through perseverance in good works.” The most important of all of the good works is to receive God’s “priceless kindness, forbearance and patience” in the highest esteem, in a fruitful way, converting wholeheartedly and then seeking to imitate God in mercy.

* In the Gospel, Jesus is calling the Pharisees and Scribes to a similar conversion from having one standard for others and a different one for themselves, from living as if God is partial and that they are exempt from what everyone will be judged by on account of their rigorous adhesion to their external practices. These groups, which often overlapped, payed tithes, said prayers three times a day, fasted and observed the feasts, but neglected the weightier things of the law, “judgment and love of God.” Even though they claimed they were living the way God wanted them to live, even though they thought they were doing the works of the law, Jesus was reminding them that they were not paying attention to what was most important and the failure to do these works was leading to their not being right with God. He uses “woes” with them, communicating that unless they change they’re doomed because while they pay tithes on the smallest of garden herbs they “pay no attention to judgment and to love for God.” They focus on the most conspicuous seats and the greetings of others, but are spiritually dead “like unseen graves over which people unknowingly walk.”  They impose burdens on others hard to carry without lifting a finger to help them, the exact opposite of a Good Samaritan. On the outside they seemed to be doing the works of God, Jesus was saying, but on the inside they were not loving God and loving neighbor and taking a positive verdict at the judgment for granted. With priceless kindness, forbearance and patience God had been treating his people, but they could not use it as an excuse to continue to sin. They needed to change from their hypocrisy and externalism and keep to judgment, the love of God and mercy toward others.

* Today the Church marks the 104th anniversary of the last of the apparitions of Ou...