Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. LandryVisitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, ManhattanFeast of St. Matthew, ApostleSeptember 21, 2021Eph 4:1-7.11-13, Ps 19, Mt 9:9-13

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The following points were attempted in this homily:

In the calling of St. Matthew and in every vocation except that of the Blessed Virgin, Jesus acts on his words, “I desire mercy” and “I have come to call … sinners.” Matthew’s vocation is a powerful manifestation of this desire for mercy. Christ indeed came to call not the healthy but the morally sick, not the righteous but sinners, to repentance. Matthew, the formerly despised tax collector and traitor to his fellow Jews, would forever be a walking advertisement of how great the Lord’s forgiveness really is. And he matured very fast in this school of mercy: St. Matthew immediately began to bring his friends to receive that same gift from Jesus. He is an example of good soil who received the gift of the Lord’s mercy and immediately started bearing fruit. He put into practice from the beginning the lesson he would eventually write down from Jesus’ Parable of the Two Debtors: he who had been forgiven 10,000 talents would bring everyone else to receive the same. The Pharisees, on the other hand, had hardened soil. As Jesus’ response to them in the Parables of the Lost Coin, Lost Sheep and Lost Sons shows (Lk 15:1-32), they were resistant to the need for mercy in their own lives and weren’t happy when that mercy reached even those they knew were sinners. Jesus was seeking to help them understand with his words today that they cannot respond to God’s call except through mercy.

I don’t think many of us ponder this truth enough. Many in the world think that God gives someone a vocation to the priesthood or to religious or consecrated life, he does so because we must be somehow canonizable, that we are more in the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary, for example, than we are in the mode of St. Matthew, or St. Peter (whose first words to the Lord were “Depart from me for I am a sinful man”) or St. Paul (who used to hunt down and execute Christians). One of the reasons that others occasionally beatify us is because we often don’t speak enough about how much and why we, too, desperately need God’s mercy. 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, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God” (1 Cor 1:27-29). God has called us to be Christians, not to mention priests or religious, because he comes to call sinners and the sick, the foolish, weak, lowly, despised, nothing-counters! But then at the same time he exalts the humble by associating us with his holiness as he calls us to be saints!

* When St. Paul in today’s first reading — as well as the Office of Readings — urges us to live in a manner worthy of the calling we have received and to come to full maturity in Christ, he did so within the context of our having been called as sinners to follow Jesus on the road to holiness and to bring others onto that same way. He describes several attributes that must come from our having been called as sinners. We need to be humble, because we remember our origins and never forget that we owe everything to God’s mercy; gentle, because we are sinners reaching out to other sinners, never preaching down; patient, because we know how hard it is sometimes to ch...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

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

Memorial of St. Andrew Kim Taegon and Companions, Martyrs

September 20, 2021

Ezra 1:1-6, Ps 126, Lk 8:16-18

 

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:

* Today we get the first of three days from the Book of Ezra, the only three days in the two-year daily lectionary. It begins three weeks of post-exilic writings in which we will have 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, before we enter into a four-week examination of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans.  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. In today’s passage from the prophet Ezra, we ponder the extraordinary decision by the non-Jewish King Cyrus not only to allow the Jews to return home from Babylon, but also to help them to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem. Cyrus encouraged everyone, Jews and non-Jews, to participate in the rebuilding of the house of God, by giving their “silver, gold, good, cattle, … [and] free-will offerings.” We know that this Temple rebuilding project is more than just about a building. It points phophetically to Jesus’ incarnation, to the destruction of the temple of his Body and its resurrection on the third day, and on the way he wishes to rebuild each of us to become, individually and together, the temple of God, where he, Risen, dwells within.

* The simple architectural plans for the rebuilding project are found in the Gospel. Jesus’ message can be summarized by his saying, “Take care how you hear.” He wishes that we build ourselves on the rock of his word, that we bear abundant fruit from the seed of his teaching sown within us, that we faithfully receive what he generous gives with love.

* He tells us, “No one who lights a lamp conceals it with a vessel or sets it under a bed; rather, he places it on a lamp stand so that those who enter may see the light.” In other words, if we’re listening correctly, we’re hearing what he seeks to implant as “words to be done.” It’s not supposed to remain hidden, private or secret, but is meant to illumine the world. If we’re not listening with this apostolic dimension, we’re not going to bear abundant fruit. We’re not going to be fully rebuilt on the rock.

* He adds, “There is nothing hidden that will not become visible, and nothing secret that will not be known and come to light.” Jesus tells us that if we’re fighting to give our full wits to his words, even if we’re struggling, that effort, too, will one day be known. He’s also saying that if we fake as if we’re paying close attention, our going through the exterior motions will eventually be exposed.

* He then concludes, “To anyone who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he seems to have will be taken away.” This is a law of physical exercise, musical growth, and intellectual progress: we use it or we lose it. To the one who gives the word both ears as well as the mind and the heart, he will become more and more fruitful; but to the one who is not really hanging on every word, he’ll lose eventually even that superficial adherence. This is what we see, unfortunately, when priests, religious or Christians “lose” their vocation by not living the truth God proclaims to them.

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Missionaries of Charity Convent, Bronx, NY

25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

September 19, 2021

Wis 2:12.17-20, Ps 54, James 3:16-4:3, Mk 9:30-37

 

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The following text guided the homily: 

* Today’s Gospel will hopefully never seek to shock us. Jesus is talking for the second time about his upcoming suffering. We had the first time last week, when Jesus described what type of Messiah he would be. It was clear not only how much it was on his mind but how much he wanted it on the apostles’ radar. He was about to be betrayed into the hands of those who would mock, scourge, crucify and kill him. He was about to become the fulfillment of the prophecy of the Book of Wisdom in the first reading, when they would beset, revile the Just One because he in his goodness was obnoxious to them, because his very being reproached them for their transgressions of the law. They were going to torture and condemn him to a shameful death, in fact, the most shameful death of all, crucifixion.

* We would have expected, when Jesus was talking about this to his twelve closest friends, who had spent the previous two years with him, that they would have been concerned about him. Rather than consoling him, however, they start arguing about which one of them is the greatest. Whenever, in fact, Jesus spoke about his upcoming crucifixion, it always seemed to bring out the worst in them.

* We saw last week that when Jesus told them about it for the first time, St. Peter, the newly named rock, took him aside and tried to rebuke him, earning for himself in return the worst rebuke in the Bible, the name Satan, for trying to lead rather than to follow Jesus, for thinking not as God thinks but as human beings do.

* Later, when Jesus would announce yet again that the chief priests and the scribes would condemn him to death, deliver him to the Gentiles to be mocked, spat upon scourged and crucified, James and John, two of the three closest of the disciples, came up to him and asked him to do whatever they asked, and what they wanted was to sit one on his right and the other on his left as he entered his kingdom — oblivious to the fact that those spots were already pre-ordained by the Father for a good and bad thief. Immediately after that chutzpah, the other apostles, recognizing what the sons of Zebedee had done, got indignant at James and John, not because of the way they were trying to use Jesus, but because they were not gutsy enough to ask for what they all openly desired but didn’t have the temerity to ask.

* And perhaps the worst example of all occurred during the Last Supper. After Jesus indicated to them, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me,” the apostles got into yet another dispute over which of them was the greatest. Rather than thinking about who would be the despicable traitor, they were thinking about who would be numero uno, not recognizing at the time that, because their flesh was weak, all of them would end up betraying him.

* To get a sense of the ugliness of the apostles’ egocentric jockeying for position, imagine that a father came to his children and told them that the doctor had just given him two weeks to live and, instead of consoling him, instead of even showing that he cared about him, they immediately shifted the attention to who would get the house and the car, or asked him to intervene before it would be too late to help them get promotions at work. That’s what was happening in these scenes. It’s sad and ridiculous. These were all examples of what St. James would describe in today’s second reading as “jealousy and selfish ambition,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Agnes Church, Manhattan

17th Sunday after Pentecost, Extraordinary Form

September 19, 2021

Eph 4:1-6, Mt 22:34-46

 

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: 

* Paul, in today’s passage from his Letter to the Ephesians written when he was chained to a wall in Rome, made an appeal to the Christians there and to Christians everywhere and at all times. “I, then, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received.” Our Christian vocation, he continues, is to live with humility, gentleness, patience, love for each other, and a burning desire to preserve unity and peace within the Church, because this is the desire and work of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

* Jesus, who is humble, meek, patient, loving, peaceful and gave his life to make us one with God and with each other, makes very clear in today’s Gospel what living according to the calling we have received means. When a lawyer asks him, “What is the greatest of all the commandments?,” Jesus replies by describing for him the human being’s vocation, the single most important thing we need to do in life. If we do everything else but don’t do this, we will not have lived life well. If we do this but don’t get to everything else, we will still have passed the test of life with flying colors. We’ve heard Jesus’ response so many times that we can think that the question was a no brainer, but it was a challenge on which scribes and rabbis would debate without consensus for life. There were 613 commands in the Old Testament. To choose which of them was the greatest was something with one right answer and 612 or more wrong answers; to make a case for one was to invite criticism from potentially hundreds of angles on a question that was not academic but essential for Jewish life.

* Jesus’ answer came from what God had inspired Moses to teach the Jewish people after God had rescued them from Pharaoh. From that point forward, faithful Jews have recited it every day: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” Then God through Moses gave them instructions to keep hammering this reality home every day: “Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (Deut 6:4-9). Yet, even though Jesus’ contemporaries recited this when they awoke and went to bed, even though they made a phylactery to hang it down from their hair so that it would be an emblem on their forehead, even though the put it on a scroll and installed it next to their front door, Jesus’ Jewish interrogators still hadn’t realized its supremacy, in other words, whyGod had them do all of these things. It was precisely because loving God with all we are and have is not just the most crucial thing we need to do in life but the way by which we most grow in his image by opening ourselves up to his love. The command makes clear that it’s not enough to love God only with some, half, most of, or even almost all of our mind, heart, soul and strength. God gives us himself, he gives us his grace, precisely so that we can love him with as close as possible to 100 percent of all we are and have. He gives us his own love to make it possible for us to love like him, to sacrifice for God with agape like he sacrificed for us.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

September 18, 2021

 

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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. It’s one of the saddest dialogues in the Gospel. Repeating what we heard in last week’s Gospel, Jesus tells the apostles, “The Son of Man is to be handed over to men and they will kill him, and three days after his death the Son of Man will rise.” Rather than consoling him, they start arguing about which one of them is the greatest. Whenever Jesus spoke about his upcoming crucifixion, it always seemed to bring out the worst in them. We saw last week that when Jesus told them about it for the first time, St. Peter took him aside and tried to rebuke him. On a third occasion, James’ and John’s mother approached and immediately asked Jesus to appoint her two sons to the chief positions in his Messianic reign. If there were ever any greater illustration of the evil of what Saint James called “selfish ambition,” this is it. To get a sense of the ugliness of the apostles’ egocentric jockeying for position, imagine that your father came to you and told you that the doctor had just given him two weeks to live and, instead of consoling him, instead of even caring about him, you immediately shifted your attention to who would get the house, or the car, or to ask him before it would be too late to help you get a promotion at work. That’s what was happening in these scenes. It’s sad and ridiculous.

* But Jesus never tried to eliminate his followers’ ambition, but to purify it and direct it toward true greatness. He told them the path, which would be his path, the path of cruciform love: “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.” To be great we must excel in loving service. And to illustrate exactly what he was describing, lest we interpret it according to our comforts, he took a child and said, “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.” An infant is someone who cannot will to reward us, with whom we cannot engage in a quid pro quo. A little child is not even able to thank us, for changing diapers, feeding, clothing and more. While it’s true that whenever we love we receive more than we give and that those who love children receive so many blessings in return, Jesus’ point is that we need to love those who cannot reward us. That’s the type of service we’re called to give. That’s the kind of ambition to which we’re supposed to aspire.

* Sometimes in the Church people are trained to regard all ambition and aspirations to greatness almost as sinful violations of humility, as if every ambition is what Saint James calls “selfish ambition.” But there’s a huge difference between a passion for self-aggrandizement, an ego-indulging hunger for riches, honor, power, a desire not just to be the best but to be acknowledged as the best, and a holy zeal for the things of God and his kingdom. Saint Paul told us in his first Letter to the Corinthians, “Strive eagerly for the greatest spiritual gifts,” and said that they were not things like prophetic gifts, faith to move mountains, heroic feats of enduring suffering, but faith, hope and especially a charity that is patient, kind, not arrogant or rude. We think about how ambition worked in the life of Saint...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Chapel of the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations, New York

Saturday of the 24th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of Saint Joseph of Cupertino

September 18, 2021

1 Tim 6:13-16, Ps 100, Lk 8:4-15

 

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: 

* As we begin our pilgrimage to the most beautiful Churches in Manhattan, the readings the Church gives us, and the saint we celebrate, orient us as to the spirituality we should have along our way today and throughout the pilgrimage of life. In the Psalm, the Holy Spirit through the psalmist bids us to “come with joy into the presence of the Lord” to “sing joyfully,” to “serve with gladness,” to “enter his gates with thanksgiving, his courts with praise,” and to rejoice that the “Lord is God,” that “he made us,” that “we are his,” that he “tends” or protects us, that he is “good,” that his his “kindness endures forever” and his “faithfulness to all generations.” Many come out of duty into the house of the Lord. Others wander in. Others come searching. Some come to complain. Some come just for show. We’re called to come with love, praise, gratitude, open to his mercy,  his grace, his nourishment. We’re called to come with the joy that always flows as a fruit of the awareness of God and of his love for us and how happy we make him when we place ourselves consciously in his presence and give him a chance to form us ever more to be his beloved children and sharers in his mission for the salvation of the world.

* In the Gospel, Jesus speaks about the receptivity we have to God. He seeks to sow his word, his love, his peace, his joy, indeed his very self within us, and by means of the metaphor of four different types of soil, helps us to analyze our openness to these gifts. He first mentions the tough soil by the path that signifies a shut mind and a hardened heart that refuses to allow the word to penetrate and change. He next turns to the superficial rocky soil with just a small amount of soil over a thick subterranean layer of limestone that initially receives the seed with joy but doesn’t nourish it to make sure it grows. Third he mentions the thorny soil full of the weeds of worldly cares, anxieties, riches and the fleeting pleasures of life that can suck up the energy that should be dedicated to the growth of the seed. Finally he mentions good soil that hears the word, embraces it with a generous and good heart and bears manifold fruit through perseverance. As we journey today, it is an opportunity to take again a soil sample of our heart to whether the word and gifts of God that Jesus seeks to sow in us daily changes our lives in 30, 60, 100 ways or more, or whether we’re resistant, superficial or existentially distracted from allowing our whole life to develop in accordance with what God proclaims and does. In the middle of the Gospel passage, when the disciples ask him about the meaning of the parable, he cites the Prophet Isaiah and explains, somewhat cryptically, why he teaches by means of parables: “Knowledge of the mysteries of the Kingdom of God has been granted to you; but to the rest, they are made known through parables so that they may look but not see, and hear but not understand.” In other words, he uses parables to test our vision, hearing and understanding. He uses analogies to see whether we’ll care enough to do the work necessary to understand the message. If we don’t care, we will just let his words pass through the other ear.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the 24th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

400th Anniversary of the death of St. Robert Bellarmine

September 17, 2021

1 Tim 6:2-12, Ps 49, Lk 8:1-3

 

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

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* In today’s Gospel, we see Jesus’ peripatetic preaching, journeying with the Twelve apostles from one town to another preaching and proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom. This was a snapshot of his ordinary life, what occupied most of his days. He was announcing the kingdom and inviting people to enter. In the midst of all of their sufferings, hardships and up-until-then unfilled hopes, he was proclaiming the good news. He was helping them to see that Sacred Scripture was being fulfilled in their hearing, inviting them to strive to enter through the narrow gate, encouraging them to buy the treasure buried in a field and selling everything they have for the precious pearl of the kingdom. But St. Luke adds another detail, a very important one. He said that some women were accompanying Jesus and the apostles, women who had received Jesus’ healing power — they “had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities” — and wanted to spend their life, with faith and constancy, assisting him to heal others and raise them up. Three get named — Mary Magdalene, Joanna, the wife of Herod Antipas’ epitropos or money-man Chuza, and Susanna — but he also says “and many others,” who “provided for them out of their resources.” They were the ones who, to some degree, made possible Jesus’ and the apostles’ preaching, so that Jesus everyday wouldn’t have to multiply loaves and fish, so that they wouldn’t have to appall the hypersensensitive Scribes and the Pharisees by plucking heads of grain while walking through the fields. Like the widow with her two lepta placed in the Temple treasury, these women were giving all they had not just to make possible but to assist the preaching of the Gospel. They were the ones who were providing drink to lubricate Jesus’ and the apostles’ vocal chords. They were the ones who were making sure that they would have the necessary bread within their bodies to be able to preach that man doesn’t live on bread alone but on every word that comes from God’s mouth. This was not a group of bored do-gooders who figured that these wandering 13 men would be lost without their feminine genius and maternal practicality. Having received much from the mercy of Jesus, as we heard yesterday, they loved much, and they wanted to give Jesus and his mission all the love, the time and the material goods they could. They’re a model for all of us in making the choice to serve God rather than mammon and to use whatever resources we have for the building up of the kingdom. They show us true poverty in spirit, treasuring God’s kingdom.

* This is in sharp contrast to what St. Paul warns St. Timothy about in the first reading: the false prophets, theological sophists, who use “religion to be a means of gain.” They were trying to fulfill their three-fold concupiscence off of religion, getting famous, becoming rich, and learning how to control people. The same temptation remains today of faking faith to profit in some material way. St. Paul says, in a shocking synthesis, that “the love of money is the root of all evil.” Acquisitiveness, the worship of the ancient golden calf, is a spiritual cancer that metastasizes into all parts of life and leads, St. Paul describes, to conceit, arguments, verbal disputes, envy, rivalry, insults, evil suspicions,and mutual friction. So much harm comes when we’re trying to gain money. We use and hurt others. We throw them away when they’re not of use to us.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the 24th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of SS. Cyprian and Cornelius, Martyrs

19th Anniversary of Cardinal François Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan

September 16, 2021

1 Tim 4:12-16, Ps 111, Lk 7:36-50

 

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: 

* Today in the Gospel we encounter one of most beautiful scenes in the life of Jesus, but it is also one of the most important for us to grasp if we wish to love Jesus and to spread love of him. Jesus enters the home of a leading Pharisee, Simon, who doesn’t welcome Jesus with the three typical gestures with which guests were always greeted, with an embrace on the shoulder, the washing of the guest’s feet with cold water, and a pinch of incense or smell of roses on the head. Simon, it seems, not only took typical hospitality for granted but took Jesus for granted.

* The sinful woman in the Gospel, however, did not take him for granted. As Jesus lay reclining with the others at the table, she anointed his feet with oil, then washed them with her tears — think about how copious she must have been weeping or how many years worth of tears into an ancient Jewish tear jar! — and then dried them with her long hair. Simon’s reaction was that Jesus couldn’t have been a prophet if he didn’t realize this woman was a sinner, but Jesus in fact recognized they both were and drew an important and obvious lesson we shouldn’t miss as he prepared to forgive her sins and send her away in peace: The one who has been forgiven more, loves more. “But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” For us to love Jesus much, we need to be forgiven much. On this day on which the Jews marks Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, we Christians grasp that Jesus became the atonement for our sins and every day with him is meant to be one of expiation and merciful love.

* Pope Francis stresses the point about those being forgiven more loving more in a book length interview before he became Pope. “For me, feeling oneself a sinner is one of the most beautiful things that can happen, if it leads to its ultimate consequences” the future Pope Francis said in El Jesuita. “When a person becomes conscious that he is a sinner and is saved by Jesus,” Cardinal Bergoglio said, “he proclaims this truth to himself and discovers the pearl of great price, the treasure buried in the field. He discovers the greatest thing in life: that there is someone who loves him profoundly, who gave his life for him.” Many Catholics have sadly not had this fundamental Christian experience. “There are people who believe the right things, who have received catechesis and accepted the Christian faith in some way, but who do not have the experience of having been saved, … who therefore lack the experience of who they are,” he lamented. “I believe that only we great sinners have this grace.”

* That’s why it’s essential for us to grow in the love of Jesus that we have this experience of our desperate need for Christ’s mercy and come, like the woman in the Gospel, to weep at Jesus’ feet, conscious that, as we prayed in the Psalm, “his mercy endures forever” and that he has done everything he did to forgive us our sins. If we remain aloof, like Simon the Pharisee, we’ll never really understand who Jesus is or who we are.

* To say that those love the Lord much are those who have been forgiven much doesn’t mean that those who have had the “biggest sins” forgiven but those who have the greatest gratitude for the Lord’s mercy. Some of the great saints, like for example St. Philip Neri, have always said,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows

September 15, 2021

Heb 5:7-9, Ps 31, Jn 19:25-27

 

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: 

* Yesterday we celebrated the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. We focused on the Lord’s victory. Unlike on Good Friday when we ponder his sufferings upon the Cross, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross not only celebrates the rediscovery of the Cross after it was stolen in the early Church but the rediscovery, in a sense, of the meaning of Jesus’ triumph on the Cross as something in which we should glory rather than be ashamed.

* Today, the day after celebrating Jesus’ victory on the Cross, however, we ponder his mother weeping and sorrowful. It’s a bit of a jarring juxtaposition, one that ought to get us to ask why we would contemplate her in this way. (Starting from 1423 in Germany, there was a commemoration of Mary’s sufferings and sorrows on the Friday after the third Sunday of Easter. In 1600, the feast became popular in France and was set to be celebrated the Friday of Passiontide before Palm Sunday. Pope Benedict XIII extended it to the universal Church in 1727. In 1668, however, a separate feast of the Seven Sorrows of Mary was established, at the request of the Servites for the Third Sunday of September. In 1814, Pope Pius VII extended it to the universal Church and in 1913, Pope St. Pius X fixed it on September 15, the day after the Exaltation of the Cross.) The fundamental reason why we ponder Mary’s sorrows the day after the Exaltation is because her tears are not over her Son’s victory but over so many of us who have not yet entered into his victory. It’s not over what her Divine offspring accomplished on Calvary, but how many of us allow his gifts to go in vain, how many of us fail to make up in our flesh what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of his body, the Church (Col 1:24).

* The Church has long pondered the suffering and joys of the Blessed Virgin Mary as she accompanied her Son and shared in his redeeming work. There has for centuries been devotion to her “Seven Sorrows”: The prophecy of Simeon, when he announced not only that Jesus would be a sign of contradiction pointing to the ruin and resurrection of many but that her own heart would be pierced with a sword; the flight into Egypt after Herod’s henchmen were trying to assassinate her and God’s little boy; the loss of Jesus for three days at the age of 12; meeting Jesus on the Way to Calvary; seeing Jesus suffer and die on the Cross; receiving Jesus’ body into her arms at the foot of the Cross; and placing Jesus’ body in the tomb.

* Today is a day on which we ponder what it must have felt like to have her heart and soul pierced in these ways. Just as the Letter to the Hebrews today has us focus on Jesus’ “prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears” that were heard because of “his reverence” and his perfection in obedience, so today we acknowledge Mary’s role as a co-redeemer through her prayers, supplications, loud cries, tears, reverence and obedient fiat. As we prayed in the Stabat Mater Sequence before the Gospel, “Is there one who would not weep, ‘whelmed in miseries so deep, Christ’s dear Mother to behold?” But our meditation is not supposed to stop there. By God’s grace it’s meant to lead us to compassion, to suffering with Mary. We pray in that Sequence words we should take seriously: “O sweet Mother! font of love, touch my spirit from above, make my heart with yours accord. Make me feel as you have felt; make my soul to glow and melt with ...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross

September 14, 2021

Num 21:4-9, Ps 78, Phil 2:6-11, Jn 3:13-17

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.14.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Two days ago at Sunday Mass, Jesus announced the type of Messiah he would be: one who would fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy of the suffering servant, who would be betrayed, mocked, tortured and crucified, and on the third day raised. He announced that he would triumph on the Cross. And then told us that if we wish to be with him as his followers, we, too, must deny ourselves, pick up our cross and follow him. Most of us hear this news as if it’s somehow “bad news.” We accept it begrudgingly and often try to evade it. But just as the Cross is for Jesus the sign not so much of literally excruciating suffering but of the love that makes that much suffering bearable, so, too, for us the Cross is not meant to be so much a sign of pain and death but of joy and life as we, through the Cross, learn from Jesus how to love to the end.

* Saint John Paul II used to call the Cross the symbol of Christianity. We mark ourselves with it upon entering the Church. We begin and end Mass with it. We start almost every time of prayer with it. Probably every one of our bedrooms and dining rooms has one in it. All types of people wear it around their necks, from the Pope and bishops, to teenage pop stars, to newly baptized babies. The priest holds his arms in the shape of it during the Eucharistic prayer. And it is the center and focal point of every Catholic Church. The Cross is the greatest summary of our faith. St. Francis of Assisi used to call it his “book,” where he learned all of his wisdom. The Cross is also the key that opens the doors of heaven. St. Rose of Lima, the first saint of the Americas, said, “Apart from the Cross, there is no other ladder by which we may get to heaven.” If we wish to get to eternal life with God, we must climb up with Jesus by means of the Cross.

* To non-believers, to celebrate the feast of the Cross makes no sense at all. It is sheer lunacy. Crucifixion was the worst and most cruel end imaginable in the ancient world. The modern day equivalent would be the electric chair. To celebrate or “exalt” the Cross would be akin to our “lifting up the electric chair” in jubilation. To center every Church with an image of Christ’s suffering on the Cross would be similar to constructing a place of worship in which one would put a gruesome image of someone convulsing and dying in an electric chair or placing a sculpture of someone being burned at the stake. We’ve become so used to seeing the Cross that we’ve become somewhat anaesthetized to the normal shock that should be any person’s first reaction to it and we need to recover a little of the initial human horror we should have before the Cross. This is one reason why St. Paul wrote that Christ on the Cross is “a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles.” The pagans used to mock the early Christians for worshipping someone who was killed on the Cross, who suffered such a horrible, ignoble end. Because that derision was still happening even centuries after his death, many of the first Christians were somewhat embarrassed by the Cross and didn’t use it as a popular Christian symbol until the 300s. Today, there are still some Christians who are embarrassed by the Cross. We see it in those Catholic schools and universities who have removed the Cross from classrooms lest anyone be “offended.” We’ve seen it in Catholic hospitals who have removed them from patients’ rooms even though in the hospital peo...