Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

July 3, 2021

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/7.3.21_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 as we head with him to his hometown Synagogue in Nazareth.

* It’s a scene that should bring those who truly love Jesus almost to the point of tears. Jesus came to his hometown. He already had a famous reputation for the teachings and the miracles he had worked throughout Galilee. He had cast out demons, cured the paralyzed and the sick, and taught with authority unlike any had ever heard. He visited his neighborhood synagogue on a Saturday, just like he did every Saturday as a boy and young carpenter. The head of the Synagogue allowed him to come up to teach. St. Luke’s Gospel tells us what he did (see Lk 4:16-30). Jesus unrolled the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and read the passage, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” This was a passage referring to the Messiah for whom the Jews had long waited. Jesus’ homily, his commentary on that passage, was one sentence long: “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

* Mark and St. Luke both tell us that his listeners’ first reaction to Jesus’ teaching was astonishment. They were amazed at the “gracious words that came from his mouth” and “the wisdom that had been given to him.” But that quickly changed once they began to reflect on what he said. Jesus was saying that he was the Messiah, that all the words that Isaiah wrote about the coming Anointed One were being fulfilled in him right then, right there. The future apostle Nathaniel (also known as Bartholomew) once wondered aloud whether anything good could come from Nazareth. Those in the Synagogue likely shared that sentiment, because they refused to accept that one they numbered among their own could be the fulfillment of their messianic hopes. They thought they knew Jesus.They likely had pieces of furniture he made. Perhaps he had played with their kids or grandkids when he was younger. So they murmured to themselves, to knock him down to size, “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?” Their doubts soon multiplied and, as St. Mark tells us, they began to “take offense at Jesus.” Not only would they not believe in what Jesus said, but they began to be offended by him, because if he were the Messiah, it would necessarily change their relationship with him and, in fact, revolutionize their whole life. Jesus knew their thoughts and said, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown, and among his own kin and in his own house.” That, St. Luke tells us, “filled them with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff, but he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.” In the matter of a few minutes, they went from praising Jesus with amazement, to doubts, to taking offense at him, to trying to murder him. Not only would they not accept Jesus as a prophet by heeding his words and welcoming him as they would the God who sent him, but they — like preceding generations whom Jesus would say elsewhere “kill the prophets and st...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Shrine of Our Lady of the Martyrs, Auriesville, New York

Friday of the 13th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Votive Mass of the Sacred Heart

July 2, 2021

Gen 23:1-4.19;24:1-8.62-67, Ps 106, Mt 9:9-13

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/7.2.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today the Church has us focus on the mercy and specificity of God’s call. None of us is random by God, just another in a big group. With great merciful love, he calls us by name. We see this very powerfully in the calling of St. Matthew in today’s Gospel. Matthew was a despised tax collector who used to extort money from his own people to give it to the occupying Romans. The way the Roman tax system worked was that the Romans needed to get a set fee from a given territory; everything the tax collectors got beyond that was theirs to keep. Because of this system, many tax collectors, filled with greed, would begin rapaciously to rip off their own people with the help of the Roman army. They were like modern mafia dons who extort neighborhood small businesses and even families to pay “protection fees” lest an “accident” happen to their businesses or loved ones. For Jesus to go after Matthew at his customs post then would have been as dramatic as Jesus’ entering into Al Capone’s speakeasy and calling him from his booze and hundred dollar bills or into the Playboy Mansion today and calling Hugh Hefner from his exploited babes. But Jesus desires mercy and he came to call sinners to repentance and he was going to show that by going after one of the most notorious sinners of his day. Matthew must have heard about Jesus and perhaps even stood at a distance to hear him speak, but likely thought that he would never be accepted among Jesus’ associates not to mention friends. Yet in today’s Gospel Jesus enters the place where he was working and says to him, “Follow me!” Many, as we know, objected. The Pharisees, in particular, whose name means “separated ones,” refused to interact with public sinners at all. When Matthew threw a party to celebrate his conversion and his calling and introduce his associates, friends, and others to Jesus, the Pharisees objected, saying, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus would later be dubbed, pejoratively in their eyes, a “friend of tax collectors and sinners.” But Jesus replied by saying, “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. Go and learn the meaning of the words, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

* We see there a key lesson in every Christian vocation except the sinful Blessed Virgin Mary’s. Jesus has come to call sinners. Like with St. Matthew, we wants us to leave our sins behind and then to become walking advertisements to others that forgiveness of sins is not only possible but life-changing. Jesus did the same with Peter, whose first words to the Lord were “Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man.” He did the same with Paul, who used to terrorize and kill Christians in his youth. He did the same with Augustine and so many other famous saints throughout the centuries. But he’s done so with every Christian. I don’t think we ponder enough St. Paul’s words to the Corinthians, “Consider your own calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. Rather, God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs, Auriesville, New York

Thursday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Junipero Serra

July 1, 2021

Gen 22:1-19, Ps 115, Mt 9:1-8

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/7.1.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Throughout this week, we have been focusing on faith: the faith of Jairus and the woman with the hemorrhage, the faith shown in intercessory prayer, the faith needed to follow Jesus, the faith needed to confess him and stay true until death, the faith of Saint Irenaeus, Peter and Paul, the first Martyrs of the Church of Rome, and, as always here, of Saint Isaac Jogues, Rene Goupil, Jean de Lalande and Kateri Tekakwitha. Today we have three more great lessons.

* In the first reading, we see the supreme test of Abraham’s faith, which is shown in his willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac, knowing, as the letter to the Hebrews says, that even should Isaac be slain, God would raise him from the dead since God had declared that Isaac was the son of the promise through whom Abraham would become the father of many nations. True faith in God means to trust in him and to love him above all things, including the capacity to sacrifice what is most precious to us, even our own life or the communion with those we love the most, if he asks, precisely because he is the pearl of great price we value even more.

* In the Gospel, we see the faith of the four friends of the paralyzed man, who, believing in Jesus, struggled to carry him on a stretcher to Jesus. We don’t know how far they need to carry him, but it wasn’t easy work no matter the distance, and then they got to the house, and saw how packed it was, rather than waiting, they did the very difficult thing of lifting their paralyzed pal up onto the roof, as we see in St. Mark’s and St. Luke’s accounts. They needed to keep their paraplegic or quadriplegic friend balanced as they lifted him up and then down, lest he fall on his head. What a scene the whole thing must have been, but they were not to be stopped — or frankly delayed. And Jesus went far beyond what they were asking: “When Jesus saw their faith,” St. Matthew tells us, he healed the man’s sins and then healed the man’s paralysis. It’s a reminder to us that in faith we ought to be seeking to bring our friends with all their needs to Jesus to let him surpass even our hopes for them, because God always responds to our prayers, for whatever we ask for, with the supreme gift of himself. If we’re reading the Gospel with faith, as well, we will see just how important the forgiveness of sins is in Jesus’ mission, far more important than curing paralyses, because, as Pope Francis repeatedly says, everything Jesus did — preaching, teaching, healing, exorcizing — was just part of his overall mission to reconcile us to the Father through the forgiveness of our sins.

* The third expression of faith is in St. Junipero Serra, the great apostle of California, who walked 5,000 miles in his 18th century missionary journeys spreading the faith and establishing nine different missions (of the 21 that were established in California). A few months before Pope Francis canonized him on September 23, 2015 in Washington, he visited the North American College in Rome to meet with the priests and seminarians and there he preached about the lessons of faith all of us can find in him and imitate. The first is the faith that leads to missionary zeal, like the zeal that  characterized the North American Martyrs. St. Junipero, a priest professor in his native Mallorca, left his home, country, family,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs, Auriesville, NY

Wednesday of the 13th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of the First Martyrs of the Church of Rome

June 30, 2021

Gen 21:5.8-10, Ps 34, Mt 8:28-34

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.30.21_Homily.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* In today’s readings and memorial, we find the strong and sad theme of rejection, but also also see how Jesus seeks to bring good out of those dismissals.

* We find it first in the banishment of Hagar and Ishmael. Sarah, despite having been blessed miraculously by God with her first son in her nineties, rather than being filled with gratitude was consumed by envy. Seeing her servant Hagar, whom she had given to Abraham as a concubine when she had lost hope that God would fulfill his promise to make Abraham a dad and the father of many nations, and who had become with Abraham the parents of Ishmael, she demanded of Abraham: “Drive out that slave and her son!” Abraham was deeply distressed and we hope would have refused. But God said to him, “Do not be distressed about the boy or about your slave woman. Heed the demands of Sarah, no matter what she is asking of you; for it is through Isaac that descendants shall bear your name. As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a great nation of him also, since he too is your offspring.” God reiterated that promise to the exiled Hagar a little later, when she was afraid for their survival in the desert. God told her, “Don’t be afraid; God has heard the boy’s cry in this plight of his. Arise, lift up the boy and hold him by the hand; for I will make of him a great nation.” Much like God provided a well in the middle of the desert for them both, so God, Genesis tells us, “was with the boy as he grew up.” Envy exiled the two of them, but God is the Lord of all the earth, and he brought good out of the evil they suffered.

* We see something similar in the Gospel. Jesus entered into the pagan region of the Decapolis on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee and he is met in the territory of the Gadarenes by two savage demoniacs. They had been banished by their fellows to live among the tombs. The demons within them called Jesus “the Son of God” and asked, “What have you to do with us?” His very presence was tormenting them. Jesus was going to cure them to restore them not only to their self-possession but to the community. The demons, about to be exorcised, begged Jesus at least to allow them to inhabit the swine that was present, which Jesus then commanded. As soon as they invaded the swine, however, all of them were rushed into the Sea of Galilee and drowned, a sign of two things: first how many and how powerful the demons were that were dwelling within the men; and second how they were seeking, as they always do, to destroy the men. After the men were liberated, the whole town came out to meet Jesus, not rejoicing but upset at the loss of their pigs. Rather that ask the Holy One of God to free them from other manifestations of infernal power, rather than thank him for restoring two of their own, rather than inviting him in to get to know him and how he was able to do such a deed, they “begged him to leave their district.” They didn’t want the holiness of God around. They actually preferred their pigs. They preferred their life as it was. They were indeed under the sway of the evil one, though in less savage form than the two demoniacs. The devil is always the divider. He seeks to lead us apart from others, especially those who are good, most especially those who will bring us to God. But Jesus came as the great restorer,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs, Auriesville, New York

Solemnity of SS. Peter and Paul

June 29, 2021

Acts 12:1-11, Ps 34, 2 Tim 4:6-8.17-18, Mt 16:13-19

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.29.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today’s great Solemnity of SS. Peter and Paul gives us an opportunity to focus on their callings and missions in the Church and how each of us is called, in our own way, to relate to, and imitate in our own circumstances, those missions.

* St. Peter was called by Jesus himself to be the rock on whom he would build his Church. Jesus did this despite all of Peter’s obvious weaknesses. Peter was one whose spirit was willing but flesh was weak. He put out into the deep at the Lord’s word, but then begged him to depart for he was a sinful man. He generously gave up everything to follow him, but then asked what he would get out of it. He would name Jesus the Messiah and Son of God but then object to Jesus’ fulfilling of his Mission, thinking not as God does but as men. He would swear that even though he should have to die for Jesus he would never betray him and then deny three times that he even knew him. After prayer, Jesus, as we see in today’s Gospel, chose Peter not because he was perfect or made of granite. He did so because Peter would constantly get up after his falls and humbly depend on God. He would be capable of saying, with courage, in response to Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?,” “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.”

* St. Paul was called by Jesus despite the fact that he had presided over the execution of St. Stephen, ripped many Christians out of their homes, and zealously gotten the commitment to walk 135 miles north from Jerusalem to Damascus to terrorize the Christians there just as he had through Judah, Samaria and Galilee. Yet when Jesus made himself known to him outside the gates of the Syrian capital, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?,” once Saul recognized that he was persecuting Jesus through persecuting his Church, he immediately changed and used all the gifts God had given him to make, rather than murder, Christians. Jesus said of him that he was a “chosen instrument” to carry his name before Gentiles, Israelites and kings and to suffer much for his name (Acts 9:15-16). And that’s what he did, spending much of the rest of his life crisscrossing the ancient globe to bring Jesus and his gift of salvation to the people for whom Jesus had died and building up that Church which is Jesus’ body at a time of ferocious anti-Christian persecution.

* Saints Peter and Paul were not just Christian heroes who both happened to die in Rome under the emperor Nero. Jesus Christ gave them both a Mission as the Rock on whom he would build his Church, and the Doctor of the Gentiles. Those key functions continue, first in the papacy, where the 266th Peter, Pope Francis, has been called to proclaim Christ as the Messiah and Son of the Living God, to preside in charity over all of the Churches, to be a sign and agent of unity in the Church’s prophetic, priestly and shepherdly mission, and to continue to be the foremost proclaimer and teacher of the faith. Today is a day, therefore, on which the whole Church remembers its roots and prays for Pope Francis as the Living Rock and Living Teacher of the Nations. It’s also a day in which we commit ourselves to the structure of the Church Jesus has established. He himself chose Peter and Paul and the work that God was accomplishing through them didn’t stop on the day of the martyrdom,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Shrine of Our Lady of the Martyrs, Auriesville, New York

Monday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Ireneus, Doctor and Martyr

June 28, 2021

Gen 18:16-33, Ps 103, Mt 8:18-22

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.28.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today there’s a dramatic scene in the Gospel, and once we ponder what’s really happening we see it’s a drama that also involves us. The eighth chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel is fundamentally a chapter about miracles. Jesus heals a leper, a servant of a centurion, Peter’s mother-in-law, many of those who were possessed, calms a storm, work more exorcisms and even does one in which a whole herd of swine cast itself into the sea. And in the middle of this chapter St. Matthew places something else that he evidently treats as miraculous: a scribe comes up to Jesus and promises to follow him wherever he goes. The scribes were among the most arrogant class of Jews. They normally were criticizing Jesus with condescension. They were the scholars of the Mosaic Law, had studied Sacred Scripture inside out and were the definitive commentators on what God had revealed. Among those who comprised the Sanhedrin, they generally were Jesus’ biggest and most powerful opposition because Jesus did not fit into their rigid categories as he sought to go beyond the law of Moses and the various fences they had drawn around the Mosaic law to prevent its violation. This scholar came to Jesus and said that he was willing to go with Jesus wherever he went. The Gospel scene begins with Jesus’ giving orders to his closest followers to cross over to the other shore. The actual Greek expression is he told them to put out “into the beyond,” to go past their own limited horizons and expectations. This scribe seemed to be willing to do this, to give Jesus basically a blank check with his life.

* But Jesus wanted to make sure he knew what the cost would be. “Foxes,” he said, “have dens and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.” There’s a lot in that sentence. First, Jesus uses the expression “Son of Man,” which was a Messianic phrase, something that the scribe would readily have grasped. While the man professed a willingness to follow Jesus wherever he went because he had surmised based on his knowledge of Sacred Scripture that Jesus was already doing all of the works of the Messiah and was about to bring about the long-awaited Messianic kingdom, Jesus wanted him to grasp that his kingdom would not involve palaces and earthly power, material spoils or prestige. As Messiah, Jesus was saying, he wouldn’t even have a pillow to call his own, he wouldn’t even have what birds and foxes take for granted. Was the scribe willing to sign up for that? We don’t know what the Scribe’s answer was, whether he continued to follow Jesus into the “beyond.” Jesus was leading him not so much to a place but to a union with him and we don’t know whether the scribe would unite himself to Jesus’ personification of the Messianic kingdom. We hope that he did, but the lesson for us is the same. Jesus asks us to go with him into the beyond, to follow him wherever he goes even if it means giving up in this world fame, fortune, and family. But we need to be willing to center our entire existence on him.

* We see that illustrated very powerfully in the second dialogue from the Gospel scene, when one of the disciples, hearing Jesus order everyone with him to the beyond, said, “Lord, let me go first and bury my father.” Jesus’ response at first seems a little brutal: “Follow me and let the dead bury the dead.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Shrine of Our Lady of Mercy, Auriesville, NY

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

June 27, 2021

Wis 1:13-15.2:23-24, Ps 30, 2 Cor 8:7.9.13-15, Mk 5:21-43

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.27.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* The dramatic healing of the woman with the hemorrhage in today’s Gospel is one of the literally most touching of all Jesus’ miracles. Jesus was on his way with Jairus, the synagogue leader, to care for his daughter who at the time was on the point of death. St. Mark tells us that a large crowd was following Jesus and pressing in on him. As happens in almost any big crowd, people were no doubt bumping into him left and right. Yet in the midst of all of that commotion on the move, Jesus is touched in a different way by this anonymous woman — and Jesus immediately knew he was touched differently. The woman believed that if she could just touch the tassel of his garments, she would be cured. And she was not to be disappointed.

* Jesus, upon feeling his healing power go out in response to her faith, stopped and asked, somewhat remarkably, “Who touched my clothes?” It would be like if an ambulance driver speeding to attend to a 911 call all of a sudden heard a faint, friendly tap of the horn and then slammed on the brakes trying to find out who was trying to say hello. Jesus stopped, and doubtless to the confusion and concern of Jairus, began to ask who had come into contact with the hem of his tunic. It shows how big the crowd must have been banging into him that he didn’t even see the woman approach him to touch the edge of his garments. “Who touched my clothes?,” he kept asking. Jesus was never interested in merely working miracles of bodily healing. Those were always a prelude to the greater miracle of healing souls, and that healing happened and happens through a personal relationship with him. That’s why he never worked “mass miracles of healing,” but always cured people one-by-one, because he wanted to have that personal bond. So Jesus wanted to meet and enter into a relationship with the person he had just physically cured.

* After Jesus’ question, the woman approached with fear and trembling, fell down before him and told him everything, including how she had sought to pick-pocket a healing miracle from him without his knowledge. She was afraid not just because the stop she had caused Jesus to make was going to prove fatal for the daughter of the understandably impatient, powerful synagogue leader, but because by her touching Jesus with her effusion of blood, she was making him ritually impure according to the Jewish law and incapable without ablutions of entering the synagogue. That ritual impurity meant that she had been suffering not only physically for twelve years, but also socially and religiously: because of her bleeding, she couldn’t touch anyone and was basically cut off from human contact; she was even, in a sense, cut off from God by not being able to enter the synagogue. She probably thought that Jesus and everyone else with whom she would have come into contact trying to get to Jesus would have been furious with her. But Jesus would address all those problems. He spoke to her tenderly, called her “Daughter,” and said, “Your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease.” He made the miracle public so that she could be restored totally to the community, to the worship of God, and to a relationship with God-in-the-flesh.

* The miracle of the healing of Jairus’ daughter likewise began with a touch. Jairus, the leader of the Capernaum synagogue where Jesus was already becoming controversial,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Agnes Church, New York, NY

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Extraordinary Form

June 27, 2021

1 Pet 3:8-15, Mt 5:20-24

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.27.21_EF_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* Today from the Sermon on the Mount, right after Jesus teaches us the beatitudes and gives us our vocation as Salt of the Earth and Light of the World, he makes explicit for us that his standards for our behavior are very high, something he would later develop in calling us to be holy as the Lord our God is holy, merciful as our heavenly Father is merciful, loving as he has loved us, and ultimately perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. He tells us that unless our righteousness — the justice of our relationship with God — surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, we will not enter the kingdom of God. The scribes gave their lives to studying the word of God down to the smallest letter. The Pharisees were those who tried to live by what the Scribes taught, seeking to base their whole life on God’s word. Whereas the typical Jew prayed once a day, the Pharisees prayed three times daily. Whereas the typical Jew fasted once a year on the Day of Atonement, Pharisees fasted twice a week. Whereas the average Jew tithed just the things that they were supposed to tithe in the Mosaic law, the Pharisees gave ten percent of all they owned to God. The Scribes’ and the Pharisees’ standard of righteousness was very high, and Jesus was calling us to live by a higher standard.

* Before we get into what that higher standard is, it’s important for us to note that we are living at an age in which a call to high moral standards is not part of ordinary discourse. The standards of the world are basically that we’re supposed to be “nice” and “kind,” the human equivalent of bland mushrooms in a strong cultural sauce, tolerant of everything that the world wants us to accept and intolerant of everything the world wants us to reject. Within the Church, standards in many places have been forgotten or watered down. Many reduce being Catholic to the mere fact of being baptized or received into the Church: whether we pray or play, keep or break promises, steal or sacrifice, come to Mass or sleep in, confess our sins or brag about them, are faithful to our spouse or cheat, provide for or neglect our family, forgive or settle scores, love or abuse the poor, teach the truth or tickle people’s ears, welcome or abort the littlest of Jesus’ brethren, it doesn’t matter, as long as we think we’re good people, as long as we love someone, as long as we do some good to somebody sometime somewhere, and aren’t judgmental toward anyone else — then no one will judge us either. Archbishop Charles Chaput, emeritus of Philadelphia, said earlier this week that one of the obvious problems facing the Church is that many who come to Mass and approach holy communion are, in mentality, non-Catholics. They look at the world, the Creed, the sacraments, the moral life, and prayer basically the same way that everyone else does, rather than with Catholic faith.

* Surveying today’s scene based on Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount, St. John Paul II said in 2001, “The time has come to re-propose wholeheartedly to everyone this high standard of ordinary Christian living: the whole life of the Christian community and of Christian families must lead in this direction.” That high standard of ordinary Christian living, he said, is holiness. And he spoke about various of the means Christ gives us to make us holy — grace, prayer, Mass, confession, the Word of God, and putting that word into practice through charity — all means by which we allow him into our life so t...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

June 26, 2021

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.26.21_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 as we encounter him work two dramatic miracles.

* The healing of the woman with the hemorrhage is one of the literally most touching of all Jesus’ cures. Jesus was on his way with Jairus, the synagogue leader, to care for his daughter who at the time was on the point of death. St. Mark tells us that a large crowd was following Jesus and pressing in on him. As happens in almost any big crowd, people were bumping into him left and right. Yet in the midst of all of that commotion on the move, Jesus is touched in a different way by this anonymous woman — and Jesus immediately knew he was touched differently. The suffering woman believed that if she could just touch the tassel of Jesus’ garments, she would be cured. And she was not to be disappointed.

* Jesus, upon feeling his healing power go out in response to her faith, stopped and asked, somewhat remarkably, “Who touched my clothes?” It would be like if an ambulance driver speeding to attend to a 911 call all of a sudden heard a faint, friendly tap of the horn and then slammed on the brakes trying to find out who was trying to say hello. Jesus stopped, and doubtless to the confusion and concern of Jairus, began to ask who had come into contact with the hem of his tunic. It shows how big the crowd must have been banging into him that he didn’t even see the woman approach him to touch the edge of his garments. “Who touched my clothes?,” he kept asking. Jesus was never interested in merely working miracles of bodily healing. Those were always a prelude to the greater miracle of healing souls, and that healing happened and happens through a personal relationship with him. That’s why he never worked “mass miracles of healing,” but always cured people one-by-one, because he wanted to have that personal bond. So Jesus wanted to meet and enter into a relationship with the person he had just physically cured.

* After Jesus’ question, the woman approached with fear and trembling, fell down before him and told him everything, including how she had sought to pick-pocket a healing miracle from him without his knowledge. She was afraid not just because the stop she had caused Jesus to make was going to prove fatal for the daughter of the understandably impatient, powerful synagogue leader, but because by her touching Jesus with her effusion of blood, she was making him ritually impure according to the Jewish law and incapable without ablutions of entering the synagogue. That ritual impurity meant that she had been suffering not only physically for twelve years, but also socially and religiously: because of her bleeding, she couldn’t touch anyone and was basically cut off from human contact; she was even, in a sense, cut off from God by not being able to enter the synagogue. She probably thought that Jesus and everyone else with whom she would have come into contact trying to get to Jesus would have been furious with her. But Jesus would address all those problems. He spoke to her tenderly, called her “Daughter,” and said, “Your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease.” He made the miracle public so that she could be restored totally to the community, to the worship of God,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

June 25, 2021

Gen 17:1.9-10,15-22, Ps 128, Mt 8:1-4

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.25.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Over the past two-and-a-half weeks at daily Mass, we have been pondering Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount, in which he sets forth his standards — and the standards by which he wishes us to live — that surpass that of the Scribes, Pharisees and virtuous pagans. He calls us to be “perfect” (teleios) as his Father in heaven is perfect, to be great by keeping his commandments and teaching others to do the same, to seek first the kingdom of heaven and God’s holiness. He calls us to seek to be, in contrast to the standards and behavior of so many in the world, poor in spirit, compassionate to the point of mourning, meek, merciful, peacemaking, hungry and thirst for holiness, pure of heart, and willing to suffer for the sake of holiness. He calls us to love our enemies, pray for our persecutors, do good to those who are evil, to turn the other cheek, to walk the second mile, to give our cloak when all that’s asked for is our tunic, to not hate and not only not kill, to be chaste in heart and not just continent in the body, to have our yes mean yes and our no mean no, to pray, fast and give alms only for God the Father and not for show, not to worry about what we are to eat, drink or wear but to trust in the Father’s providence, to take out the beams from our own eyes and stop judging, to enter through the narrow gate of life, to do to others what we ourselves wish to be done to us, to become a good tree bearing good fruit and to build our whole life on his word. After hearing all of this, it is understandable that we might feel overwhelmed, as if the standards Jesus is proposing are unreachable. We may recognize just how often, every day, we fall short.

* That’s why in God’s providence, and in the Holy Spirit’s inspiration of St. Matthew, right after the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus makes clear the standards by which Christians are called to live, we have Chapter 8, which features seven different miracles of healing. The first we have today, in which a leper approaches Jesus, kneels down in homage, and humbly asks, “Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.” We can say the same, with similar adoration and trust: “Lord, if you will, you can cleanse me of all of the ways I’ve lived by the standards of the world rather than by yours. If you will, you can give me the help you know I need to become teleios, to become great by keeping and teaching your commandments, to seek first your kingdom, and to base my whole life on the rock of your holy word!” And we have every confidence Jesus will respond like he did to the leper, to all the others who approached him through Chapter 8 and in other scenes in the Gospel, and say, “I do will it! Be made clean!” After hearing God’s wisdom at length, now we encounter God’s healing power to strengthen us to live up to the high standards of ordinary Christian living to which Jesus calls us.

* God’s desire to cleanse us, to make us pure, to fill us with his mercy to overflowing, explains the motivation behind Jesus’ incarnation, his hidden life, his passion, death and resurrection. Jesus’ whole life screams the ardor of God’s hunger to make us clean, to heal us of our words and the leprosy of sin that alienates us from God, others and our truest selves. In the ancient world, leprosy was the worst disease one could have. Not only would it eat away one’s flesh and bones and make one stink in a most disgusting fashion,