Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

October 2, 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, when we will enter into the dialogue Jesus had with the Pharisees when they approached him in the area across the Jordan from the Holy Land and asked him a question about marriage. It wasn’t a question of curiosity or even to learn. St. Mark tells us, “They were testing him.” Jesus was in the area where John the Baptist had been preaching and baptizing and to ask him about the lawfulness of marriage and of divorce was to ask him a political question for which John the Baptist had already been killed by Herod Antipas. John had told Herod that it was not lawful for him to be married to the wife of his brother Philip, not just because this incest by affinity was contrary to God’s plan but because marrying another person’s wife certainly was. Herod thought that Jesus was John risen from the dead. To ask Jesus about marriage and divorce was to invite him to criticize the same king and suffer the same consequence.

* Jesus responded not only by citing the Book of Genesis, but invoking, in a sense, his own memory of how things were in the beginning. “In the beginning,” Genesis teaches, “God created man in his image and likeness; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them,” because man is most fully in God’s image and likeness when he is united to the woman in a communion of persons in love. Just as in God, the mutual love of the Father and the Son eternally generated the Holy Spirit, so the mutual love of husband and wife can generate a third person, who is both a living fruit of their love and a means for that love to grow. In God’s plan, marriage is a singular sign and participation in God’s image and likeness. “Therefore what God has joined together,” Jesus adds, “no human being must separate.” Marriage is part of God’s wisdom from the beginning to bring us into the loving union of the Trinity.

* In recent years, however, we know that the wisdom of God’s plan with regard to marriage and divorce been getting challenged from both inside and outside the Church. Many have begun to question openly whether God’s plan for marriage, taught courageously and consistently by the Church since Christ founded her, is true and relevant. These doubts or confusions about marriage are fraught with enormous consequences: for since God designed marriage to help us to discover who we are in his image and likeness and to reflect by analogy God’s own relationship with his people, if we misunderstand what marriage is, we will misunderstand who we are, who God is, and how we’re called to live our life in God’s image and likeness.

* I think there are three main categories of challenges about marriage that our contemporaries need to take to Jesus:The first comes from those who try to say God’s plan for marriage shown in the Bible is irrelevant, that marriage is not necessary. The second comes from those who say that God’s plan for marriage is too demanding and, as the divorce rate of over 40 percent attests, to be married to one person until death is an unrealistic expectation. The third comes from those who say that marriage is bigoted because it excludes two people from the same sex from marrying; to make marriage require a husband and a wife is to base i...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the 26th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Jerome, Doctor

September 30, 2021

Neh 8:1-12, Ps 19, Lk 10:1-12

 

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

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Throughout the last ten days at daily Mass, we have been focusing in the first reading on the rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem, the rebuilding of the City of Jerusalem, and the rebuilding on God’s people after the exile. That rebuilding is a prophetic ot (an action that is itself a prophecy) of the rebuilding of Christ, the True Temple, in the resurrection, the building and rebuilding of our lives on Christ, and the building and rebuilding of the Church as a whole called to be a Temple of God. Today we focus on how the Lord seeks to rebuild us and use us to help rebuild others. The first reading from the Book of Nehemiah focuses on what we could call receiving and rejoicing in the Word of God with faith. The Gospel ponders how all of us are called to enflesh and to share that word of God with others. And today’s feast of St. Jerome shows us someone who received that gift and gave his life to share it with others in a self-giving that continues to nourish the Church to this day.

* Today in the Book of Nehemiah we see Scripture’s ideal presentation of what Lectio Divina, the prayerful reading of Sacred Scripture, is supposed to be. Many of us are familiar with the particularly Benedictine approach to Lectio Divina, which Pope Benedict described in his 2010 Apostolic Exhortation on the Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church (Verbum Domini). It involves lectio (reading to determine the meaning of the passage), meditatio (asking what it’s saying to me), oratio (what we say back to God in prayer crying out for his help to live the word, contemplatio (imaging ourselves living together with this word, becoming “one-temple” with it), and actio (putting the word into practice). In the first reading today, however, we see Scripture’s presentation of Lectio Divina, and it involves — as Cardinal Giancarlo Ravasi preached at the conclusion of his meditations in the Lenten Retreat to Pope Benedict and the members of the Vatican Curia right before Pope Benedict resigned in February 2013 — seven “stars,” or practices that we should all try to emulate as we respond to God’s word. Ezra the Priest led the post-exilic Israelites in a day of recollection from dawn to midday on the then recently rediscovered scrolls of the Torah.

* The first aspect was reading. Ezra and the scribes read plainly from God’s word in distinct passages, like points of meditation. The word “read” in Hebrew means to “proclaim,” since reading Sacred Scripture was always done aloud. It also means “translate,” because many of the post-exilic Jews were rusty in Hebrew. It points to the connection between reading and proclaiming, and reading and making it intelligible to the minds and lives of those hearing.

* The second aspect was interpreting, or explaining the word of God. As the scribes read, they helped the people to grasp some of the applications. There are often many meanings to God’s word. The Catechism describes three different types of spiritual meanings, one linked to Jesus, another to ourselves and our moral response in faith, and a third to heaven and to our vocation to be saints. When we ponder and proclaim the word of God, this aspect of explaining it is very important if we’re ever going to reach the third stage.

* The third stage was understanding the Word of God. This is far more than an intellectual grasp of the material,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Feast of the Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael

September 29, 2021

Rev 12:7-12, Ps 138, Jn 1:47-51

 

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: 

* In the Gospel today, Jesus describes for us the two-fold activity of angels: “ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” They “ascend” in order to serve the Lord and “descend” in order to serve us on behalf of God. This double service was also alluded to in the Opening Prayer as we turned to God and asked that he “graciously grant that our life on earth may be defended by those who watch over us [descending] as they minister perpetually to you in heaven [ascending].” As we ponder today their double work, we are also called to let them help us to learn how to ascend and descend with them in praise of God and service of others. In this Year of St. Joseph, who was so docile to the work of angels in his dreams, we ask his help so that we may cooperate with their two-fold work.

* The Archangel’s first and most important activity is to praise God. “Praise him, all you angels,” the Psalms say (Ps 148:2). They want to help us to learn how to praise God with them. We prayed together in today’s Responsorial Psalm, “In the sight of the angels, I will sing your praises, Lord!” With a watchful gaze, they want to help us to be able to say, both in this world and forever, “I will give thanks to you, O Lord, with all my heart, for you have heard the words of my mouth; in the presence of the angels I will sing your praise; I will worship at your holy temple and give thanks to your name.” They help us to do that obviously in the Mass, which features two great angelic hymns, the one that that derives from what the angels chanted on Christmas morning, the “Glory to God in the Highest,” and the one that comes from what the Prophet Isaiah saw in an angelic vision, the “Holy, Holy, Holy.” Today is a day in which we recognize that we’re not praying alone, but that the angels are helping us to praise and thank God with all our being.

* Their second activity is to descend upon us to bring us God’s assistance. The Archangel Gabriel brought both Zechariah in the temple and Mary in Nazareth God’s word, Raphael brought Tobias God’s accompaniment, Michael brings the Church protection. Their names say a lot about how they seek to serve us. Gabriel means God’s strength and he seeks to strengthen us, like he strengthened the sinless Virgin Mary, not to be afraid to respond to God’s call. Raphael means “God’s medicine” and he strives to heal us not of physical cataracts like he did Tobit/Raguel but rather everything that hinders our seeing God and growing in his image. Michael means “He is who like God” and he strives to defends us from all evil that renders us dissimilar to God who is holy, holy, holy. By our baptism we are united to Christ in his three-fold identity as prophet, priest and king, and the Archangels help us in this triple munera: Gabriel helps us to become prophets like Christ, Raphael helps us to bring God’s medicine especially through the Sacraments, and Michael helps us to reign by serving, protecting us from the way the evil one seeks to help us to serve him rather than God and others.

* Their presence accompanies us in a particular way throughout every daily Mass. We invoke Gabriel before every Mass as we pray the Angelus at 6 am and ponder the Good News of the Incarnation that never becomes old news. We invoke St. Michael at the end of Mass asking us to defend us together with Jesus whom we now bear inside. And St. Raphael seeks to help us to live the Mass, the medicine of God,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Tuesday of the 26th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Lorenzo Ruiz and Companions

September 28, 2021

Zec 8:20-23, Ps 87, Lk 9:51-56

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.28.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily:

* Today we come to the fulcrum of the Gospel of St. Luke, when he tells us that Jesus “resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem.” Literally in the Greek it means that he “fixed his face on Jerusalem” and began the journey of ascent to the place where he would offer his life on the Cross for us all and complete his salvific mission. It would be there that Jesus would ultimately fulfill the prophecies announced by Zechariah after the exile. It would be to Jesus, the true temple destroyed and rebuilt in three days, to Jesus on the Cross, that people from different cities would say, “Come, let us go to implore the favor of the Lord,” “I, too, will go to seek the Lord, and “Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.” It would there, on Calvary, that the refrain for the Responsorial Psalm today, “God is with us,” would take on new, salvific meaning.

* But before he would do that, he was going to try to include the Samaritans in that saving mission. He had already been to Samaria before, where he met the woman at the well. The end of that scene had the Samaritans all exclaiming in Sychar around the well of Jacob, “We have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world.” Because, however, Jesus was planning to head on to Jerusalem, with whom the Samaritans had been in a theological war for centuries, “they would not welcome him.” They put their disagreement with the Jews above receiving their Savior! And when the Boangerges brothers — the Sons of Thunder, John and James — sought to call down fire from heaven on the Samaritans as God had once destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, we see that they, too, had taken their eyes off of Jerusalem and Jesus’ salvific will. So Jesus, rather than rebuking the Samaritans (which he easily could have), rebuked James and John.

* The failure of both the Samaritans and the Boangerges teaches us a valuable lessons: many times we can put our own grievances, our own petty scores to settle, above God and the work of salvation he wants to accomplish. We can take our eyes off of Jesus and off of where Jesus has set his eyes. We can put conditions on God’s saving work, like the Samaritans tried: “We’ll allow you, the Savior of the World, to enter our village provided that you promise that you won’t go to Jerusalem!” Even though all of us recognize how silly it is when the Samaritans of yesteryear do it, we need to become more conscious of the way we likewise refuse welcoming Jesus. He tells us, for example, in St. Matthew’s Gospel that whenever we refuse to give food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, care to the sick, welcome to the stranger, clothing to the naked and visits to the imprisoned, we fail to welcome him in need (Mt 25:31-46). We also see it when we refuse the Cross, like St. Peter and the apostles initially did when they reprimanded Jesus after he said that he would be betrayed in Jerusalem, suffer at the hands of the religious and civil leaders, be beaten, scourged and murdered. Still today many do not want to embrace Jesus’ determined vision about the way he wishes to be with us, united with us on the path of sacrificial love we call the way of the Cross. They seek Christ without the Cross, a Christianity without suffering, The Cross remains a scandal and a folly for many today, just as it was for many at the time of the apostles.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Monday of the 26th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Vincent de Paul

September 27, 2021

Zec 8:1-8, Ps 102, Lk 9:46-50

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.27.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* On Saturday, Jesus told us to pay attention because he was about to be betrayed to men. Today, immediately afterward, we see the disciples arguing about who among them was the greatest. At this point they were being motivated by worldly ambition, not by love for Jesus, for each other, and for all those Jesus had come into the world to save. But Jesus’ intention was to transform their worldly ambition into zeal for true greatness, so that they might become great in faith, great in hope, great in love, great in humility, great in becoming a servant of the rest, great in keeping the word of God and teaching others to do the same, as he emphasized throughout his three years of formation for them. In today’s Gospel, Jesus helps them and us to see that the path to greatness is first and foremost not a path so much of a achievement but of receiving and responding to the gifts God gives us by which he wants to help us to unite ourselves to him and, in him, to others. Jesus says the path to greatness is receive little children in his name, as we would receive him. Infants are not a symbol here of innocence but of the inability even to remember what you’ve done or to thank you. You cannot get into a quid pro quo relationship with an infant; their little hands cannot scratch your back, they cannot pick up the next dinner, they cannot inflate your ego with praise. By receiving them, we become smaller, humbler. To be great in God’s kingdom, we need to receive all people selflessly, most especially those who cannot repay. And once we get good at receiving children in this way, we can receive everyone better, including those who are exorcising in the Lord’s name who are not a visible part of the apostolic band. If one is seeking to advance himself rather than receive and serve others, that’s when he’ll be insecure at others’ doing Christ’s work. When people receive others in this way, that’s when the image of the Zion God wants after the purification of the exile can come about, when it can truly become a “faithful city,” where “old men and old women” and “boys and girls playing” can be present in its streets, because both are welcomed and embraced despite their lack of worldly usefulness. The Kingdom of God is not utilitarian, but loving.

* This conversion from worldly ambition and human vanity to Christian zeal and true greatness is seen very clearly in the life of the saint the Church celebrates today, one of the greatest saints of all time, St. Vincent de Paul (1580-1660). He was the son of poor farmers in southwestern France, the third of six children. His parents struggled simply to make ends meet, but when Vincent’s father recognized how precociously intelligent his son was, he and the family sacrificed many of their animals to provide him an education through the Franciscan Recollects and later the University of Toulouse. Vincent wasn’t particularly grateful, though. One day when his father made a long journey on foot to visit him in his tattered peasant clothing, Vincent didn’t even go out to greet him because he was so embarrassed by his father’s poverty. Vincent’s ambition at the time was to become a priest not fundamentally because he thought it was his vocation, but because he thought vainly that it might bring him fame and notoriety. He knew that if he played his cards right,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Missionaries of Charity Convent, Bronx

26th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B

September 26, 2021

Numbers 11:25-29, Ps 19, James 5:1-6, Mk 9:38-43.45.47-48

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.26.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* The Word of God today is so rich in thematic content. It would be easy to preach a whole retreat on what they tell us today about envy. We see it in Joshua’s plea to Moses to stop Eldad and Medad from prophesying in the name of the Lord. Even though they had not shown up when the Spirit descended on those Moses had appointed to be judges among the people, the Spirit descended upon them anyway and they were applying God’s wisdom to present circumstances just like the rest. Rather than rejoicing that they were serving the Lord in this way, Joshua complained, as if their work was somehow a bad thing rather than a great thing. Similarly in the Gospel we see Saint John the Beloved Disciple’s intervention with Jesus, complaining and asking Jesus to stop a man who didn’t travel with them who was doing exorcisms in Jesus’ name. Jesus had come to liberate us from the power of the evil one, he had sent out the apostles and disciples with the command to cast out demons, but Saint John was treating it as a negative rather than a positive that possessed people were being freed because that liberation was happening from someone he considered an outsider. Envy — a sadness or anger at others’ gifts — is always an issue in Christian life and in religious and priestly life. When God blesses others, it’s always an opportunity for us, however, to see whether we really want God’s name to be hallowed, his kingdom to come and his will to be done, or whether we’re seeking to have our exalted over those of others.

* It would likewise be easy to talk today about the sin of scandal about which Jesus speaks so clearly in the Gospel and how we need to be brutal in cutting off from our lives whatever — whether it be our hands, feet, or eyes — that lead us and others to sin. The scandalous worldliness of the mammon-loving man in the second reading, living in luxury and pleasure while deaf to the cries of the workers on his farm, is a strong warning to everyone about the need to excise the soul-numbing materialism that anesthetizes us to others’ pain.

* Similarly I always love to talk about the contrast between Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel — “Whoever is not against us is for us” — and what he said after the Pharisees had accused him of casting out demons by the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons: “Whoever is not with me is against me; whoever does not gather with me scatters,” which can teach us so much about the interpretation of Sacred Scripture and the harmonization of seemingly contradictory passages. But insofar as that’s what we focused on exactly three years ago when I was here for the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B, and insofar as I’m sure you’ve remembered every word, I’ll limit myself just to recalling that Saint Augustine and Saint John Chrysostom both taught that the seemingly conflicting passages show that that there are parts of us that are with the Lord and parts of us that are not with Him. God wants us to seek to bring all parts of us into alignment with Him and to help him bring others into that integral communion.

* What I hope to do today is to focus on Moses’ words from the end of today’s first reading that have always fascinated me: “Would that all the people of the Lord were prophets!” By our baptism, by our confirmation, by our consecration as Missionaries of Charity or ordination in the person of Christ, we have been given a prophetic character and God wants us to be...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

September 25, 2021

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.25.21_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday, in which we will enter into a dramatic dialogue in which Saint John tells Jesus that the apostles saw someone driving out demons in his name and they tried to stop him, because he was not one of their number. Jesus replied that they shouldn’t stop him, because no one who performs a mighty deed in his name can at the same time speak ill of him. Then he gives a principle: “Whoever is not against us is for us.”

* We live in a society polarized by politics and a Church rent with various sad divisions. Jesus himself admits that some are “for” him and others are “against” him. We know that eleven of the twelve apostles were for him, that Mary and Joseph were for him, that Mary Magdalene, Susanna and Joanna, the Centurion, the Syro-Phoenician women, so many of those Jesus had healed who couldn’t stop talking about him even when he asked them not to were clearly on his side. But we also witness that there are those who are actively “against” Jesus, likeSatan in the desert; some of the Scribes and Pharisees during Jesus’ public ministry, Herod the Great at Jesus’ birth, Pontius Pilate and Herod Antipas at Jesus’ death, even, for a very short time, St. Peter, whom Christ called Satan and told to get behind him when he rejected the possibility that the Lord would suffer.

* Yet, despite the reality of division, Jesus gives a principle with which he wants his followers to live: “Whoever is not against us is for us.” There’s a temptation among many serious believers to focus so much on what distinguishes us from others that we lose what unites us, and as we and others focus on those differences, we pull ourselves and push others away. We can begin with what we criticize rather than what we admire. We can fault others for what they don’t get right rather than commence with what they do. We see this tendency in the Gospel with many of the Pharisees, literally the “separated ones.” They were constantly distinguishing themselves from others that they really grew no longer to focus on uniting them. They began to pray like the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable, giving thanks that they’re not like others who are guilty of various types of notorious sins. Jesus wants us to recognize in others those parts that are united with him and not to stop them, like St. John the Beloved was trying to stop people from casting out devils, as if Jesus’ will would have been that they should suffer diabolical possession or obsession another day.

* Against this tendency to distinguish and exclude, Jesus wants us to have a different attitude, his own, who came to seek and save what was lost, to reunite the lost sheep of the house of Israel, to go out after the one and bring that person back to the 99, ultimately to reconcile all things in himself. He had come to set prisoners free, to defeat Satan once and for all, but the still-immature disciples wanted to stop someone from casting out devils, from doing the Lord’s work because, essentially, they were more concerned with what they wanted to be their exclusive prerogatives in God’s kingdom than in accomplishing his work. None of us should ever think we have a monopoly on the name, mission, message and power of Jesus.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the 25th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of Our Lady of Mercy/Our Lady of Sheshan

September 24, 2021

Hg 2:1-9, Ps 43, Lk 9:18-22

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.24.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily:

* We are five days into the three weeks in which the Church has us ponder, through eight post-exilic prophets, the rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem after the exile and what that means for Christ’s resurrection, the rebuilding of the Church, and our own redemption, since we individually and collectively are called to be a Temple of God’s presence. Today we see the second main message of the Prophet Haggai. Yesterday it was to “consider your ways,” a collective examination of conscience, about their priorities, since they were living in “paneled houses” while the house of God still needed to be built, not just in homage to the Lord after having freed them from Babylon but also to strengthen them to give God what he is due lest history ever recur. Today we have the second message: “Take Courage!” This message was given through Haggai to Zerubbabel, the governor of Judah and grandson of Jeconiah, the penultimate king of Judah. Then it was to Joshua, the high priest. Then it was to the remnant of the people present and “all you people in the land.” The third part of the message is to get down to it. “Take courage … and work!” The source of their courage is the presence of the Lord, the same Lord who had freed them from slavery in Egypt, had made a covenant with them and whose spirit, he affirms, continues in their midst. He promises to help them with the materials they will need to build it, that he will “shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land, … the nations … and fill this house with glory.” He also promises that he will give them peace in the house they will build.

* Considering their ways, taking courage, and working together with the Lord in building up his temple, his kingdom, his name, kingdom and will is also our vocation and mission. In today’s Gospel we see one of the crucial moments, and two of the essential elements, in the building plan of the Church. We had a chance to ponder St. Mark’s version of the scene 11 days ago. Jesus asks who the people say he is and then who each the apostles say he is. The Church is comprised of all those who confess Christ as the long-awaited-anointed one of the Lord and God-with-us. This confession not only says something about Jesus but about ourselves as well. Just like Peter, we need to have this confession of Jesus be revealed to us by the Father, we need the grace of faith. We need to consider our ways and ask whether we’re confessing Jesus more in little ways and big ways in our life. The second aspect of the rebuilding process revealed in the Gospel is through suffering. Jesus says that he would have to suffer greatly, be rejected and killed. That was the way for the rebuilding of the true Temple he is and that’s the path for each of us to be rebuilt on him the cornerstone. That takes courage and constant work, but the same Lord who shook the heavens, the earth, the land, the sea and the nations, never ceases to shower the graces necessary.

* One way he does so is through Our Lady. Today the Church celebrates the Memorial of Our Lady of Mercy, in which we see the beauty of a life lived in total cooperation with God, someone who was filled with grace and the Lord’s merciful love, someone who became a channel of those graces to all of us.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the 25th Week of Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of Saint Pio of Pietrelcina

September 23, 2021

Hg 1:1-8, Ps 149, Lk 9:7-9

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.23.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily:

* We are now in the midst of three weeks of focus in the first reading on the post-exilic writings in which the Church has us focus, if there are no proper feasts, on three days of Ezra, two days of Haggai, three days of Zechariah, two days of Nehemiah, two days of Baruch, three days of Jonah, one day of Malachi and two days of Joel.  These post-exilic writings focus essentially on two things: first, the rebuilding of the temple and, second, the way of holiness so that there is never again an exile from God. Today as we begin the first of two days listening to Haggai, we focus explicitly on the rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem, which is meant to help us, of course, ponder Jesus’ resurrection (the True Temple), the temple that is the Church, and the temple that is meant to be each of us together with Jesus.

* The Lord sent Haggai to wake up the people of God whom he had freed from exile. It was during the time of King Darius, the son of Cyrus, who had allowed the Jews to return and helped them to start rebuilding the Temple. The Jews built something quick and temporary on the Temple Mount, but then started to prioritize their own affairs. They were saying, “The time has not yet come to rebuild the House of the Lord.” They were delaying the things of God for their own affairs, and building their own luxurious interiorly decorated houses instead of the Temple. Haggai, speaking for the Lord said, “Is it time for you to dwell in your own paneled houses, while this house [of God] lies in ruins?” He then went on to say that they would never find fulfillment in sowing, eating, drinking, clothing, or money making. The forceful appeal of the Lord was “Consider your ways!” He told them to go get timber and begin to build the house of the Lord “that I may take pleasure in it and receive my glory.” That might seem like an egocentric statement, but it’s not. The Lord takes pleasure in loving us — we prayed in the Psalm, “The Lord takes delight in his people” — and his glory is, as St. Ireneus would say at the end of the second century, “man fully alive” through the vision of God. God wanted a house so that we would fittingly worship him because it is through that worship that he builds us into a holy temple. It starts, however, with zeal for him. We remember King David before the building of the first Temple. He was eaten alive by the fact that he was living in a palace while the ark of the Covenant, the sign of God’s presence, was in a tent. He wanted to build a fitting temple, but God, through the prophet Nathan, replied that He instead would build a temple for David. That temple was obviously David’s own descendent according to the flesh and God’s own Son, Jesus. We’re all called, however, to have the same zeal to build a house of the Lord because that’s the way the Lord in fact makes us his temple. In the Gospel, Herod was curious to meet Jesus, but Jesus hadn’t come into the world to be an interesting accessory to our life. He had come to save us. He had come to dwell with us. And he will never be able to build a temple for him to dwell within us by curiosity. There needs to be a true relationship, a union, with the Lord, a hunger for mutual indwelling, something that Herod never had.

* Today the Church celebrates someone who truly became Jesus’ temple and instrument to build others on him who is the Cornerstone.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the 25th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

September 22, 2021

Ezra 9:5-9, Tob 13:2-4.7-8, Lk 9:1-6

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.22.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily:

* As we examine the third of three days of Ezra’s pondering the rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem after the exile and apply it to the rebuilding (resurrection) of Jesus the True Temple, to the constant reconstruction of the Temple of the family of the Church, and each of us as a temple of the Holy Spirit, today we see that that rebuilding project is first and foremost the work of God. Ezra tells us in the first reading that after all of Israel’s sins led to their being delivered up, the mercy of the Lord came to them, leaving a remnant, giving them a stake in his holy place, relieving them of their servitude, turning even the will of the pagan kings of Persia toward them, and giving them new life by raising again the house of God and restoring its ruins. If we did not have the Feast of St. Matthew yesterday with its proper first reading, we would have seen that the Israelites of course needed to collaborate in this work by sacrificing their possessions and a lot of their elbow grease for this building project. The work, however, was principally God’s, and their chief contribution was their openness to and recognition of their need for him, for his mercy, for his word, for his help.

* We see the same primacy of God’s action in the Gospel today as Jesus sends out the apostles to rebuild the People of God. It’s always been interesting to me that St. Luke quickly summarizes, with indirect discourse, “Jesus summoned the Twelve and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick.” What would that conversation have gone like, when Jesus bestowed on them divine power? Would they have had any questions? Would they have asked what words or gestures they would have needed to use, if any? Yet, he records nothing of Jesus’ and their conversation. Yet he documents very carefully Jesus’ instruction about what not to take and not to do, almost as if these instructions were more important. “Take nothing for the journey, neither walking stick, nor sack, nor food, nor money, and let no one take a second tunic. Whatever house you enter, stay there and leave from there. And as for those who do not welcome you, when you leave that town, shake the dust from your feet in testimony against them.” Jesus sent them out with nothing for the journey precisely so that they would be able to preach by their witness, and not just by their words, the God is provident, that he cares for all our needs, that if he cares for the birds of the sky and the grass of the field he will care so much more for us. After a few days of Jesus’ speaking to them and us about how to receive the seed of his word and bear fruit, to hear and act on that word, now he shows us that he plants it within us so that it can be fruit with seeds that we in turn can share with others. After Jesus has healed us, he sends us out with the same medicine, to “proclaim the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick.” Preaching and healing went together because just as much as God wanted to heal the wounds of the Israelites after the exile he wanted to address the sufferings of the people, transfiguring their wounds such that they could enter the Kingdom. For people to be open to the proclamation of the Gospel, they have to have their wounds addressed. The Church is meant to be a family of Good Samaritans,