Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

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

Memorial of Blessed Carlo Acutis

October 12, 2021

Rom 1:16-25, Ps 19, Lk 11:37-41

 

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

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The following points were attempted during the homily:

* “I am not ashamed of the Gospel,” St. Paul emphatically tells the Romans at the beginning of today’s epistle. Those are very strong words for someone who, at a human level, might have had many reasons to be shamefaced and silent about the Gospel. After all, he was scourged, beaten with rods stoned, shipwrecked, ambushed, hunted down and imprisoned on account of the Gospel. He was crisscrossing the globe to preach preposterously that a publicly executed carpenter from an obscure village not only had risen the dead and was alive but was also the Lord and Son of God. Jesus’ crucifixion, he knew, was a laughing stock for Greeks and an embarrassing scandal for Jews. But despite it all he stressed that he was not ashamed of the Gospel, in all its paradoxical details, because he knew that, however improbable it might seem to human wisdom, it was in fact the power and wisdom of God.

* It’s important that we confront and with God’s grace overcome any embarrassment we have over our faith. There are many in the Church who are ashamed of the Gospel. In the context of an aggressive secularism that is pushing hedonism, materialism, individualism, and rationalistic empiricism, and often mocks Church teaching as the morality of unenlightened, antediluvian cavemen, many feel somewhat humiliated to give witness to their Catholic faith. Many Catholics have been made to feel that the Gospel is not only “bad news,” but on occasion even ridiculous. Catholics after all believe that we adore and eat God himself in Holy Communion, even though to the world all we’re doing is consuming cheap bread and wine. We believe, according to Jesus’ own words, that the path of happiness is spiritual poverty instead of riches, purity instead of sexual profligacy, spiritual hunger instead of satiety, meekness instead of strength, and persecution instead of popularity. We believe in praying for persecutors, forgiving those who hate us seventy times seven times, and turning the other cheek. We believe that we shouldn’t commit even the slightest sin even if we were able to win the whole world. And then we get to the really controversial issues for people today! We believe that the Pope is infallible — he cannot make a mistake, ever — on something that he teaches to be definitively held by all the faithful on something we need to believe (faith) or do (morals) to please God and enter into his life. We believe that even though men and women are equal in dignity before God, only men are capable of being ordained priests.We believe that no one should morally be able to take the life of the unwanted child growing within her through abortion. We believe that everyone should remain chaste and sexually abstinent until marriage, and that all sex outside of marriage is sinful. We believe that even though almost everyone, including Catholic married couples, use some form of contraception at some point in their marriages, it is still wrong. We profess to love those with same-sex attractions while at the same time saying that they should never, ever act on those attractions by engaging in same-sex sexual activity. Contrary to gender ideology, we believe that God made us male and female in his image and that is part of his plan. These are among the issues that make many members of Christ’s flock sheepish with regard to living and sharing the faith. It’s often some priests,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Chapel of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY

28th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B

October 10, 2021

Wis 7:7-11, Ps 90, Heb 4:12-13, Mk 10:17-30

 

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

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The following text guided the homily: 

* As a young king of the Lord’s people, Solomon pleased the Lord very much. One night God appeared to Solomon and told him to ask for whatever he wanted from the Lord. Solomon could have requested and likely received anything he wanted. Solomon asked not for power, or money, or health, or a long life, or even a beautiful queen, but for wisdom. In today’s first reading, Solomon shows us that, to some degree, he was already wise in asking for what he did. “I preferred [wisdom] to scepters and thrones, and I accounted wealth as nothing in comparison with her. … I loved her more than health and beauty, and I chose to have her rather than light, because her radiance never ceases.” He valued her more than political power, than all the money in the world, than physical vigor and looks, even than light. He wanted help from God to make right judgments, to choose well, to order his decisions on earth in accordance with the way things really are, the way God made them.

* This is the prayer we all asked for in the responsorial psalm today. We begged God, “Teach us to number our days aright that we may gain wisdom of heart.” We asked him for the grace to help us see how, even on our hardest days, God was there, forming us, helping us, passing on to us a wisdom not of this world. “Make us glad,” we asked, “for the days when you afflicted us, for the years when we saw evil.” This type of wisdom would reach its culmination, St. Paul would tell us, in “Christ Crucified,” who is a “ stumbling block for Jews and foolishness for Gentiles, but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Christ Crucified would become the wisdom of God and he would call us to follow him along that cruciform path of wisdom. He would tell us, “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself, take up his Cross daily, and follow me” (Lk 9:23). Jesus wants us, like Solomon, to prefer this wisdom to scepters and thrones, to wealth and the things of the world, to health and beauty, even to light. God wants to give us this wisdom. But this wisdom doesn’t come on the cheap. We have to treat it like the pearl of great price, the treasure buried in a field, worth sacrificing all we have to get it — because this relationship with God and the way it changes us is worth far more than everything else in the world.

* This helps us to understand the great drama that takes place in today’s Gospel in Jesus’ encounter with the Rich Young Man. He was a virtuous youth. He had kept the commandments of the Lord from a young age. He was concerned about the deepest and most important questions, like the one he asked Jesus, “What good must I do to inherit eternal life?” He already had some faith in Jesus, coming to him not just as a rabbi who knew a lot but as a “Good Teacher,” whose whole bearing intrigued him and inspired him to approach and ask about the way he should live in order to live for ever. He also recognized that, despite all his material wealth and moral uprightness, there was something missing in his life. His heart yearned for more and greater. He grasped that the life God intended for us had to consist in so much more than merely not breaking the Decalogue. And so he asked in St. Matthew’s account of the same scene, “What do I lack?” Jesus looked at him with love and gave him the challenging, brutally honest, direct answer to his question, “You lack one thing. Go, sell what you have,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Agnes Church, Manhattan

20th  Sunday after Pentecost, Extraordinary Form

October 10, 2021

Eph 5:15-21, Jn 4:46-53

 

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

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The following text guided today’s homily: 

* Today St. Paul exhorts the Ephesians and each of us not to waste the gift of life God has given us but to take full advantage of the time God has given us, the means of salvation with which he has blessed us, the opportunities he has placed before us to do something great, holy, life-giving and life-saving. Most people, including most Christians, do not live with sufficient intentionality. We sleepwalk through human existence, being changed by our environment more than we change it, adapting ourselves to what everyone else is doing, wasting time doing things that in the final analysis matter little. St. Paul is trying to wake us up, to help us to mature spiritually, and to make full use of the time we have. “Watch carefully then how you live,” he tells us today, “not as foolish persons but as wise, making the most of the opportunity, because the days are evil.” We can live in one of two ways, he says: as fools or by God’s wisdom. We can cozy up to the fallen things of the age, or we can be the seeds of sanctification. And St. Paul is calling us to live like Christ did in the midst of what Jesus called a “wicked and perverse generation,” as Paul did in the midst of the sins of his own epoch, as the Popes have incessantly urged us to do in the modern world, and as Christians as salt of the earth and light of the world are called to do in every age.

* And so St. Paul gets practical: “Therefore,” he says, “do not continue in ignorance, but try to understand what is the will of the Lord.” Real wisdom is doing God’s will, seeking his kingdom, and hallowing his name. To live ignorantly is to do just as one pleases, without reference to the holy will of God, as if God doesn’t really exist or doesn’t care how we spend our day or dedicate our life. To live wisely is constantly to discern what God is asking in the concrete situations and places in which he has placed us, to be alert to his presence, accompanying us, guiding us, strengthening us, to understand and do his will and help him save and sanctify the world.

* Paul therefore continues, “Do not get drunk on wine, in which lies debauchery.” That’s both a concrete counsel against getting hammered as well as a metaphor to depict what it means to live foolishly. When we get drunk, we are impaired not just from driving well but from living as God wants. Why do people get drunk? Some get drunk because they like the stuff, but lack self-control, and one drink soon becomes four, or eight or ten. Others do so because they don’t like something else, and rather than turning to God and others for help to face situations of stress and anxiety, they try to escape with a bottle. And we know that once we’re drunk, our guard is down to say no to things to which we would never consent otherwise. That’s why St. Peter would say to the first Christians, “Stay sober and alert. Your opponent the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for [someone] to devour. Resist him, solid in your faith” (1 Pet 5:8-9). Drunkenness is the opposite of spiritual vigilance and many of us get inebriated by imbibing too much worldliness, getting addicted to entertainment and distractions, setting our hearts on Friday and Saturday night rather than on Sunday, eating, drinking and being merry as if human life is a cocktail party with nothing really important going on outside the club. Others get intoxicated and cockeyed over politics,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

October 9, 2021

 

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

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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 eavesdrop on his famous dialogue with the young adult Christian tradition has dubbed the Rich Young Man.

* The Rich Young Man was a good man. He had kept the commandments of the Lord from a young age. He was concerned about the deepest and most important questions, like the one he asked Jesus, “What good must I do to inherit eternal life?” He already had some faith in Jesus, coming to him not just as a rabbi who knew a lot but as a “Good Teacher,” whose whole bearing intrigued him to approach and ask about the way he should live in order to live for ever. He also recognized that, despite all his material wealth, despite even his moral goodness, there was something missing in his life. His heart yearned for more. He knew he was called to something greater. The life God intends for us consists, he realized, in so much more than merely not breaking the Decalogue. And so he asked in St. Matthew’s account of the same scene, “What do I lack?” Jesus looked at him with love and gave him the challenging, brutally honest, direct answer to his question, “You lack one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me!” It was a highly paradoxical answer. What he lacked was precisely thathe had too much. He lacked total detachment from substitutes so that he could attach himself to the Absolute. He had previously lived a good life, but Jesus was now calling him to greatness. He already had some faith in Jesus as a “good Teacher” who was reflecting the goodness of God alone, but Jesus was now calling him to an upgrade in faith, a total commitment. He had previously kept the “second tablet” of the Ten Commandments, all about love of neighbor, but now Jesus was calling him to a much more radical following of both tablets of Decalogue: to love his neighbor to the point of using all his possessions to care for them and to loving God to the point of accounting him more valuable that all his stuff and following him on the path of total-self-giving love.

* St. Therese of Lisieux taught that we grow in the spiritual life by subtraction, not by addition. Once a novice sighed in her presence, “When I think of everything I still have to acquire!” The Little Flower replied, “You mean, tolose! … You are wanting to climb a great mountain and the good God is trying to make you descend it; he is waiting for you at the bottom in the fertile valley of humility.” The Rich Young Man needed to learn this lesson. Unfortunately he wasn’t ready for the challenge that spiritual perfection requires because he had so many possessions that owned him. He looked at the path of holiness as something he could add on to what he already had, whereas it was an emptying precisely so that Christ could fill him. The Lord is always asking us to let go of many of his gifts in order to help us to recognize that the greatest gift of all is the Giver.

* The Rich Young Man got the answer to the question that was erupting from the depths of his being, buthe didn’t like it. In fact, St. Mark tells us, “He was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.” When given a choice between Jesus and his money, the young man chose the money,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Votive Mass of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

October 8, 2021

Joel 1:13-15.2:1-2, Ps 9, Lk 11:15-26

 

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

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Twenty-three years ago today I was ordained a transitional deacon at St. Peter’s in the Vatican and the day after, which was Friday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time, I had the privilege for the first time to proclaim the Gospel and to preach, at a Mass at the Chapel of Our Lady of Fatima in the Dorothean Sisters’ Casa Fatima across from the North American College in Rome. The Gospel was today’s and for that reason I’ve always had a special affection for it and a particular gratitude to God, because it’s not easy to preach on. So right from the beginning I had a chance to put into practice what I was instructed to do at my diaconal ordination, to “believe what you read, teach what you believe, and practice what you teach,” I had to do so explicitly with far greater dependence on God, far greater cooperation with the Holy Spirit. Whenever I have had the chance to preach, therefore, on Jesus and Beelzebul, it always reminds me of the summons God gives to turn to him for the light of faith, not just on this anniversary but every time I preach.

* Let’s get into the scene. Over the last two days we have been listening to Jesus teach us about prayer and how to relate to God the Father. He instructed us to ask the Father with confidence not to let us fall when tempted and to prevent us from the evil one. He then taught us about the importance of persevering in prayer with the Parable of the Neighbor asking for Three Loaves at Midnight so that we may learn how to persevere in the Christian life until the end. Today’s readings focus on that necessary perseverance in life because of the way that devil persistently tries to tempt us to choose to divide ourselves from the love of God and the love of neighbor.

* We see in the Gospel the opposition Jesus faced by those who refused to believe in him or his works. By this point, Jesus had already worked all of the miracles foretold by Isaiah (61) that would mark the advent of the Messiah: he had proclaimed the Gospel to the poor, healed the sick, made the blind see, the deaf hear, the mute speak, the lame walk. He had liberated the captives from the snatches of the devil by countless exorcisms. He had fed multitudes. He had walked on water. He had done so much. The people who didn’t believe in him couldn’t deny the facts, but they could give another interpretation: he wasn’t working them by God’s power but by the devil’s, an attempt to justify their lack of faith in him and their opposition. Jesus, in his words to them, spoke about the work of the devil and the main thrust of his own saving work. The work of the devil is to divide and the main focus of Jesus’ work is to save us and sanctify us by bringing us into communion with God and in Him with others. Christ during the Last Supper prayed for a unity among us resembling the Trinity. He did that through his incarnation, his life, his passion, death and resurrection. We prayed in the Gospel verse about what he how he had said that when he would be lifted up on the Cross, he would draw all men to himself — and out of the clutches of the evil one. We remember from St. Mark’s Gospel the two essential aspects involved in life with Jesus: he calls us to be with him and to send us out. The devil wants to divide us from Jesus and prevent our going out as effective, ardent apostles.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary

October 7, 2021

Mal 3:13-20, Ps 1, Lk 11:5-13

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.7.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today Jesus continues to respond to the question of yesterday, to teach us how to pray. Yesterday, when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, he began by teaching them that the secret of prayer is to approach God as a loving Father. Once we do, almost everything flows. We begin to seek the glory and sanctification of his name and the building of his kingdom not only because we love Him but also because we know that, as his sons and daughters, we share that name and are heirs of that kingdom. Once we relate to him as a Loving Father then we trust in his providence to give us each day what we need and in his mercy to forgive us when we err because he loves us more than he detests the sins that hurt us and wound our relationship with him. When we relate to him as a Loving Father, we trust him not to put us in a position in which we’ll fail the ultimate test but rather to challenge us and help us to meet those challenges that are beyond what we think are possible.

* Today Jesus continues his responding to our request to teach us how to pray by illustrating for us how to persevere in prayer. He gives us a parable based on middle eastern customs of hospitality. Especially during the summer months when the sun is particularly brutal, many Jews would travel at night and so it was not unheard of that a guest would arrive at your home — in the days before phones, texts and emails and also before affordable and efficient postal systems — unannounced at night, famished after a long journey. Because bread was baked normally in the morning, it’s possible that all the bread had already been eaten. That’s why you’d go to your neighbors to ask if they had anything to share. The second thing to understand about middle eastern culture is that their doors were open all day long but when they were shut and locked, that meant that the entire family and all their animals had gone to bed. They’d sleep together in an interior part of the house to stay warm during the typical nocturnal middle eastern radiational cooling. To get up to answer the door when a neighbor was knocking at midnight meant that one would likely be stepping on one’s children and animals and waking everyone up. It’s understandable that one would want to wait to share bread until the morning. But Jesus says that because of the perseverance of the neighbor, “I tell you, if he does not get up to give him the loaves because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence.” Jesus mentions this as a lesson in prayer precisely in order to contrast that motivation with one of God. He was saying, “If a neighbor would eventually give in because of harassment, think about how God will respond out of love?”

* That led Jesus to say, “I tell you, ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you, for everyone who asks receives, everyone who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks the door will be opened.” It’s an incredible promise that we should receive with faith. Everyone who asks receives. Notice that he doesn’t say that one will receive, find or have the door opened immediately. He also doesn’t say that one will receive and find exactly what one expected to find. But he does promise God will respond, precisely because God is a loving Father who always responds first and foremost by giving himself.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Church of the Holy Family, New York

Memorial Mass for Jesse Reno

October 6, 2021

Job 19:1.23-28, Ps 25, Rev 21:1-7, Mt 25:31-46

 

To view a video of the Mass, please click below:

 

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

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The following text guided the homily: 

* The first time I met Jesse Reno was April 4, 2015. Rusty had asked if I knew where there might be a quieter Easter Vigil in the City and I invited him to come to Sacred Heart Convent over on 51st and 10th, where I would be celebrating for the Sisters of Life. He asked if Jesse could come and I said of course. I had just arrived in the city a month before. I knew Rusty from various professional circles but didn’t know Juliana, Rachel or Jesse at all. As I was preparing for the beginning of the Vigil, where there’s a need to bless the Easter Fire and the Paschal candle, it became clear to me I’d need an altar server. The Sisters of Life have a general policy, lest anyone mistakenly think they’re angling for priestly ordination, not to serve, even when a priest needs six hands to do what the Mass requires. When I saw Jesse, I asked him, “Would you mind giving me a hand at the Mass?” I didn’t realize at the time that he was Jewish and had never served Mass before. He replied without hesitation, “Sure, if you show me what I need to do.” And so I taught him how to hold the missal and later to help me with the lighting of the incense from the Easter fire. For a first timer, he served like one of the seraphim. Later during the readings at Mass, as we retraced salvation history from the creation of the human person, to the sacrifice of Isaac, to the exodus and the passage through the Red Sea, to the prophecies of Isaiah, Baruch and Ezekiel, to many psalms and eventually St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans and St. Matthew’s account of Jesus’ resurrection, he paid better attention than his father and even the Sisters. I found out only after the Mass, when I thanked him, that he was Jewish. I marveled. I asked him, “But you served anyway?” He replied with a smile, “You just asked if I could give you a hand. You didn’t ask if I was Catholic.” For him it was simple: He knew that there was a need and he was happy to help.

* In today’s Gospel, Jesus presents the Christian teaching on how to live in view of death and judgment. He says that ultimately we will be judged by love. Jesus says he will take personally and never forget the way we care for others: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me. … Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.” Rusty told me, “Matthew 25 captures my son’s life, which was to care for others, especially the wounded people who were his friends. It makes me want to cry in a good way, thinking of him.”

* If you’ve had the chance to look at the various remembrances posted on Jesse’s obituary on dignitymemorial.com, it’s easy to see how all those who were in need of food and clothing, who were new to Jesse’s environs, who were sick or otherwise in need were met by Jesse with great compassion and generosity. Karl said, “He was loyal and generous to a fault. He would literally give you the shirt off his back.” Eleanor stated, “He was an ultimate listener. When I felt like there was no one to talk to or any one that could relate, he would be there with no expectations just openly giving of his time and energy.” Logan added,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Bruno and of Bl. Marie Rose Durocher

October 6, 2021

Jon 4:1-11, Ps 86, Lk 11:1-4

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.6.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Yesterday we pondered the example of Mary of Bethany sitting at Jesus’ feet, allowing him to feed her. She had chosen the better part and the one thing necessary, the activity more important than all others. Today we see Jesus sitting at the feet of his Father in prayer. His example of prayer brought the disciples to ask him, “Lord, teach us to pray just as John [the Baptist] taught his disciples.” Jesus had already taught them much about prayer by his parables describing the need to pray with perseverance, patience, humility, purity of intention, faith, without show and in his name. He had taught them much by his example of prayer, constantly going out at night or early in the morning to pray. But they were asking for some direct instruction, to have Jesus open up to them the mystery of intimacy with God.

* It’s noteworthy that Jesus didn’t reply to their request by teaching them a posture of prayer, telling them to kneel, close their eyes and fold their hands. He didn’t instruct them to go through breathing exercises or other techniques to empty themselves of distractions. He didn’t indicate how to listen to God, like Eli taught Samuel to say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” He didn’t give them a meditation method. He didn’t even given them a formula of vocal prayer, something seen by the fact that Luke’s rendition of the Lord’s Prayer is different from Matthew’s, a sign that Jesus wasn’t passing out “magic words” as much as trying to pass on an attitude, a whole approach to prayer; he wasn’t imparting a quid ores (a what you are to say when you pray) but a qualis ores (a who you are as you pray), as St. Augustine was wont to say. And what was that approach?

* Everything can be summarized by the first word he taught them: Abba! He taught them to turn not to some cosmic life-force way out in the heavens, or to some slavemaster or judge or apathetic Creator, but to a “Father.” This is the open secret of what Jesus teaches us about prayer. We see his own prayers: “I give you praise, Father, … for having revealed these things to the merest of children.” “I thank you, Father, for having heard me. I know that you always hear me.” “Father, glorify your name!” “Father, take this chalice away from me!” “Father, forgive them!” “Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit.” Jesus’ prayers were all to the Father, to whom he turned with great trust and love. In teaching us how to pray, Jesus was trying to form us to enter into his own divine filiation and to pray with loving confidence. He told us in the Sermon on the Plain that if earthly parents aren’t sadists but know how to give good things to their children, so God the Father won’t give us a stone when we ask for bread, or a poisonous eel when we ask for fish, but will give himself — the Holy Spirit — no matter what we ask for. To pray as Jesus taught is to enter into that relationship of love with the Father. Everything else Jesus taught us about prayer flows from that.

* He instructs us to pray, “Hallowed by thy name,” and “Your Kingdom come,” which means that we are seeking God’s glory not our own, his kingdom not ours. St. Matthew’s inclusion of Jesus’ words “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” is just a magnification of seeking God’s kingdom and the glory of his name. Jesus is helping us to remember that prayer should first be about God,

Fr. Roger J. LandryVisitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, ManhattanTuesday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Faustina Kowalska, Bl. Francis Xavier Seelos, Bl. Bartolo LongoOctober 5, 2021Jon 3:1-10, Ps 130, Lk 10:38-42

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.5.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

In today’s first reading, we have the famous scene of the preaching of Jonah in Nineveh, a frightening thing for him that, as we saw yesterday, got him to try to flee to the most western part of the known planet. The image was a powerful reminder to the post-exilic Jews about the rebuilding not merely of the Temple but of the faith of the Jews after the return from Babylon, which is one of the reasons why Jesus used the story of Jonah to refer to his own death and resurrection. When Jonah began to preach, there was extraordinary response. People converted on day one of hearing him say, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be destroyed.” It spread immediately through a city it would take three days to traverse, and every creature, from the King to the animals, repented in sackcloth and ashes. We should remember, when we’re intimidated to proclaim the Gospel to others, that while some may refuse and reject it, others may respond in ways far greater than we could have ever imagined. As we contemplate this scene, we should also remember how Jesus used it in the Gospel with regard to the cities of Chorazin, Capernaum and Bethsaida, reminding them that “There is a greater than Jonah here,” and summoning them to a conversion even more profound.

That leads us to today’s Gospel, as the Lord gently brings Martha to conversion. On July 29 each year — now finally together with her siblings Mary and Lazarus! — we celebrate Saint Martha’s feast day, but she still needed conversion. While she was seeking to love the Lord, working hard to prepare a meal for him, she was “anxious and worried about many things.” Jesus reminded her, “Only one thing is necessary,” and then told her to choose that “better part” as her sister Mary had done. It’s an illustration of what Jesus affirmed in yesterday’s Gospel to the Scribe, when the Scribe said that the most important thing we have to do is to love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength. Often we are worried and anxious about many good things, but we have to choose the one thing necessary and better, namely, to do everything for, with, through, and in Jesus, beginning by letting him do what he wants to do in us. What Mary grasped that Martha didn’t is that Jesus had come to their home primarily to feed and not to be fed, to serve rather than to be served, and it was Mary who grasped that and sat at his feet as he not only fed her with the nourishment of his word and presence. Similarly as we look at our day and all the good things we need to do, Jesus, the-greater-than-Jonah, is calling us to remember the “one thing” and choose it. He’s calling us to unity of life. He’s summoning us to keep our attention on him, rather than on all of the other good things we we think we have to do, if we really have to do them. For all of us in our Christian lives, we are interiorly drawn and quartered by so many different aims, projects, tasks, hopes, etc. Jesus is calling us to convert to simplicity, to know that he cares for us, to know that his Father provides, to know that whatever we do, in word or in deed, we’re called to do in his name.

* Today the Church marks the feast of three people who are signs and divine instruments to us of that call to conversion and about how the Greater-than-Jonah comes to feed us with his mercy and grace so that we may be able to choose the better part.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Monday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Francis of Assisi

October 4, 2021

Jon 1:1-2:1-2.11, Jon 2:3-5.8, Lk 10:25-37

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.4.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today in the readings we see two great dynamisms, two fundamental polarities in Christian and human life. The first we see in Jonah in the first reading. When God reveals his will to him, he seeks to flee from the presence of the Lord. He boards a boat heading to Tarshish, which was basically in western Spain, as far west as Jonah and his contemporaries would have known of world geography of the time. But such fleeing from the Lord is never a private action. It always impacts those around us, as Jonah’s sinful polarity soon began to involve the life of the fellow mariners.

* We see that same polarity in the first two figures in the Parable of the Good Samaritan in the Gospel. The priest and the levite were fleeing from the love of God and love of neighbor, were running away from the type of charity to which God was calling them at the moment. Only the Samaritan, from the people whom Jews thought were perpetually in flight from God through pride and willfulness by worshipping God on Mount Gerizim instead of in Jerusalem, heard God’s call and responded. If Jesus gave the parable today, it would be as if a man had been mugged, abused, and dropped in a sewer waiting to die and the Pope and Missionaries of Charity, hearing the groaning, crossed the road so that they wouldn’t get involved, but then a drug dealer and pimp or someone else many of the people in the world think a despicable loser drew near to care for him, nurse him back to health and sacrifice money for future care.

* What leads to the transition from fleeing from the Lord to that of drawing near? The answer is found in the responsory to the first reading, which is in fact part of the second chapter of Jonah that was excised from the first reading so that we could make Jonah’s prayer our own. Prayer, real contact with God, transforms us from those who flee the Lord to those who serve and love and the Lord, especially in others. When we call out to the Lord, he hears our voice, answers, and rescues us from dead ones. God himself transforms us to set us on his path.

* Today in the Gospel, Jesus describes that path for us. A scholar of the law approaches to test Jesus about what he needs to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus flips the question around and asks the scribe what he thinks the answer is from his study of the law. The scribe gives the same synthetic answer that Jesus gave elsewhere (Mt 22:34-40): to love God with all we have and to love our neighbor like we love ourselves. Jesus told him that he had answered correctly, but he added something else: “Do this and you will live.” It was clear that the scholar knew what needed to be done, but Jesus, seeing his heart, recognized that the struggle for this scribe would be to practice what he knew. Salvation isn’t dependent so much on our intelligence, on what we know, but who we are, and our character is forged by our action. We see how right Jesus was in the scribe’s follow-up question. Wishing to justify himself, he asked, “And who is my neighbor?” At first glance, the question might seem one of sincere inquisitiveness, but behind it is the premise that there are some people who are his neighbors and some who are not. The typical Jews of the time thought that they were to love their neighbor and hate their enemy (Mt 5:43), that they were supposed to care for those Jews who followed the law and who cut themselves off from...