Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Feast of St. Lawrence, Deacon and Martyr

August 10, 2021

2 Cor 9:6-10, Ps 112, Jn 12:24-26

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.10.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily:

* When I was ordained a priest, the Feast of St. Lawrence the Deacon was somewhat unique on the Church’s calendar. Other than the Blessed Mother, St. John the Baptist, the Apostles, and the Evangelists — those who had a particular connection to the life of Jesus while he walked on earth as a flesh — he was the only saint or martyr whose annual celebration in the universal calendar of the Church was a feast. Everyone other great hero of the faith was celebrated either as a obligatory or optional memorial. That was changed five years ago when St. Mary Magdalene’s memorial was made a feast by Pope Francis on July 22, but we can almost put her in the first category of saints, of those who knew the Lord in his earthly life and were among his first missionaries, as she was dubbed apostolorum apostola. Nevertheless, we can and should ask why St. Lawrence is so distinguished among all the saints in the history of the Church after the apostolic age. The fundamental reason is because he is the third patron of the Church of Rome, together with Saints Peter and Paul, and insofar as we’re all Roman Catholics, his annual celebration takes on the character of the Church of Rome. We could also say its fitting because it clearly allows us to celebrate the diaconate, which is so important in the history and present of the Church, and with St. Stephen the Protomartyr and St. Francis of Assisi later, he is among the three most famous deacons in Church history.

* It’s certainly fitting to celebrate St. Lawrence for those reasons, for what he “stands for,” but I think it’s far more important to celebrate who he is and how we might imitate him. Jesus tells us in the Gospel that whoever serves him must follow him and that the Father will honor whoever serves him. To follow Jesus means to go the path of the grain of wheat, to die to oneself so as to bear fruit, something that Pope Benedict once described as the “essence of Christianity.” St. Lawrence is someone who lived this essence of Christianity. He did so first by sowing himself bountifully, to use St. Paul’s image from today’s first reading, in charitable service as a deacon. He did so as well by the well he sowed himself so generously and cheerfully, falling to the ground as a grain of wheat in martyrdom. He received abundant seed from God the sower and he scattered it abroad, multiplying it and increasing an extraordinary harvest of righteousness without sadness or compulsion but with Christ-like self-giving love. Let’s look at each in turn.

* First, he sowed himself in charity as a “cheerful giver,” as St. Paul calls us all to do in the first reading. Deacons by office were selected as men of the Holy Spirit whose lives were directed toward serving Christ by following him as the servant of all. In the early Church in Jerusalem, as we see in the Acts of the Apostles, the Apostles were no longer able to do the charitable service of tables and all the charity that was implied in that activity. So they ordained seven men to the service of charity. They did this not because such charity was less important than the prayer and the ministry of the Word the apostles were doing but precisely because it was, and the apostles wanted to ensure that it get done. Over the course of time in various ancient dioceses, the service of deacons expanded into diakoniai, the charitable centers of the Church (like Catholic Charities today). In Rome,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Monday of the 19th Week of Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Teresia Benedicta of the Cross, Martyr

Dt 10:12-22, Ps 147, Mt 17:22-27

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.9.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today in the Gospel, Peter is approached by those collecting the annual Temple tax that all Jewish males over 20 were expected to pay each year not only to support the liturgical needs of the temple but to remind them that God ransomed them (literally redeemed them or “bought them back” from slavery). When they asked Peter if Jesus paid the Temple Tax, Peter was too much of a slave to human respect and replied that he did and sent the collectors away. When Peter returned to the house, Jesus, aware of the conversation, asked him whether it was foreigners or subjects, citizens or members of the royal family that paid taxes. Peter replied, in accordance with his knowledge of the customs of the times, that members of the royal family or citizens of an occupying power were free of the taxes. Peter got the initial point that Jesus knew he was exempt from the Temple Tax. Jesus had mentioned to his mother and foster father when they rediscovered him in the Temple after three days that he was in his “Father’s house” and for that reason would be exempt, because he was a Son of the King. But he was exempt for a more important reason: He identified himself as the Temple that would be destroyed and in three days rebuilt. The temple was a sign that was pointing to Him and it would be absurd for the Signified to pay taxes to the sign. By the same logic, because we have been made sons in the Son and have been made Temples of God’s presence, we are free of the requirement, too.

* But Jesus then pointed to a higher understanding of freedom than a freedom from responsibility. The purpose of our freedom is so that we can choose to love God and others. And so Jesus said that lest they scandalize anyone out of their duties to God, they should pay the temple tax and Jesus instructed Peter on how to do so, through catching a fish that Jesus somehow either knew or arranged was carrying a coin worth twice the tax, to pay for Christ and Peter both. Jesus was teaching Peter and all of us that we should focus more on our freedom for than our freedom from. Jesus was free from sin, yet he took on all our sins. He was free from the consequences of sin, death, but he freely underwent death so that we might live, allowing himself as he foretold at the beginning of today’s Gospel to be betrayed into the hands of men who would kill him. He didn’t stand on his dignity and his privileges, but with his dignity privileged others. We’re supposed to use our freedom in the same way. To be a son in the Son, to be templed with him (contemplative), means to be someone who passed onto others the gift we have received in God. Jesus has united himself to us in paying everything we owe.

* The entire arc of salvation history, all that we have in the Old Testament, was to prepare the Jewish people to use their freedom properly to follow God. Moses, as he gives his farewell discourse to the Israelites in the desert, focuses on their using their freedom to “love and serve the Lord, your God, with all your heart and soul,” to “follow his ways exactly,” “to keep the commandments and statues of the Lord,” to “befriend the alien,” and to be just to “the orphan and the widow.” God had freed them from slavery precisely so that they could use their freedom for this form of love of God and neighbor.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Church of the Holy Family, Manhattan

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

August 8, 2021

1 Kings 19:4-8, Ps 34, Eph 4:30-5:2, Jn 6:41-51

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.8.21_Homily.mp3

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* In today’s first reading, we have a dramatic scene of Elijah praying for death. The evil queen Jezebel had made a vow, sending a messenger to Elijah and saying, “May the gods do thus to me and more if by this time tomorrow I have not done with your life what was done to” the prophets of Ba’al whom Elijah and humiliated and had slain. So Elijah fled for his life and after a day’s journey into the desert and prayed despairingly, “This is enough, Lord! Take my life for I am not better than my fathers.” Out of exhaustion, he fell asleep under a tree but was awakened by an angel who woke him up and got him to eat drink twice, who told him, “Get up and eat, else the journey will be too long your you!” Elijah did as the angel had commanded and strengthened by the food, was able to journey through the desert for 40 days and nights to Mount Horeb on the Sinai Peninsula.

* “Get up and eat, else the journey will be too long for you!” Those words that the angel said to Elijah Jesus himself effectively says to all of us. We are now in the third week of Jesus’ five-week course on the mysterious reality of his body and blood in the Eucharist, which Jesus taught for the first time in the Synagogue of Capernaum and renews for us live every third summer. Two weeks ago we had the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fish, which was a foreshadowing of the multiplication of the meal of the Last Supper throughout every land and time in order to feed the spiritually famished human race. Last Sunday Jesus urged us not to work for food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life that he will give us, lest the journey of life be too much for us.

* Last week, in response to the crowds’ asking him to one-up Moses in the desert who gave them manna from heaven every day for 40 years, he told them that it wasn’t Moses who gave them Manna but God the Father who gives them the true manna. In today’s continuation of that scene, Jesus emphasizes more deeply how he is the true manna, the nourishment God the Father provides for us in the desert of life until we reach the eternal Promised Land. “I am the bread that came down from heaven,” he tells us, and then adds, “I am the bread of life.” It’s a basic truth that we become what we eat and Jesus is foretelling that when we consume him, we become one with his life; since he is eternal, to consume him is to receive everlasting life. He tells us, “Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert but they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die.” Then he specified even more: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever, and the bread I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

* These are extraordinary words, which we shouldn’t water down and or pass over. First, they sound cannibalistic, as if Jesus is saying that we need to eat him the way we consume animals or animals consume carcasses. And once we let those works sink in, we get to Jesus’ mind-blowing promise: that when we eat him, we will not die but live forever. He goes on to connect this eating and this promise in the following verses, which we would have considered next Sunday if we didn’t have the Solemnity of the Assumption, but nevertheless they indicate the path for us one day ourselves to be assumed. Jesus swears an oath and says, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Philip’s Church, Greenville, RI

Men of St. Joseph International Annual Catholic Men’s Conference

August 7, 2021

 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.7.21_St._Joseph_Adjusting_to_Neighbor_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Philip’s Church, Greenville, RI

Men of St. Joseph International Annual Catholic Men’s Conference

August 7, 2021

 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.7.21_St._Joseph_Adjusting_to_God_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

August 7, 2021

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.7.21_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 enter into the third week of Jesus’ five-week course on the mystery of his body and blood in the Eucharist, which Jesus taught for the first time in the Synagogue of Capernaum and renews for us live every third Summer.

* Two weeks ago we had the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fish, which was a foreshadowing of the multiplication of the meal of the Last Supper throughout every land and time in order to feed the spiritually famished human race. Last Sunday Jesus told us not to work for food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life that he will give us and, in response to the crowds’ asking him to one-up Moses in the desert who gave them manna from heaven every day for 40 years, he told them that it wasn’t Moses who gave them Manna but God the Father who gives them the true manna.

* This Sunday Jesus continues the consequential conversation, which gets into the heart of his teaching on the Eucharist, the faith we need to believe in his Eucharistic presence, and the opposition his teaching on the Eucharist has received from the beginning. Let’s take each part in turn.

* First, Jesus emphasizes more deeply how he is the true manna, the nourishment God the Father provides for us in the desert of life until we reach the eternal Promised Land. “I am the bread that came down from heaven,” he tells us, and then adds, “I am the bread of life.” It’s a basic truth that we become what we eat and Jesus is foretelling that when we consume him, we become one with his life; since he is eternal, to consume him is to receive everlasting life. He tells us, “Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert but they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die.” Then he specified even more: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever, and the bread I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

* These are extraordinary words, which we shouldn’t water down and or pass over. First, they sound cannibalistic, as if Jesus is saying that we need to eat him the way we consume animals or animals consume carcasses. And once we let those works sink in, we get to Jesus’ mind-blowing promise: that when we eat him, we will not die but live forever. He goes on to connect this eating and this promise in the following verses, which we would have considered next Sunday if we didn’t have the Solemnity of the Assumption, but nevertheless they indicate the path for us one day ourselves to be assumed. Jesus swears and oath and says, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day” and tells us why: because “whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” He tries to explain this mystery by analogy to his own relationship to God the Father: “Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.” The upshot of this mystery is that by receiving Holy Communion, by eating Jesus’ body and drinking his blood, his life becomes the principle of our life, and since his life is eternal,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the 18th Week of Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of the Dedication of St. Mary Major

Numbers 20:1-13, Ps 95, Mt 16:13-23

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.5.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were made in the homily:

* There’s a beautiful part of Mass, right before the proclamation of the Gospel, when we make a sign of the Cross over our foreheads, mouths and heart with a prayer for the Lord to be in our minds, on our lips and in our hearts. One would figure that we’d make a sign of the Cross over our ears to help our hearing, as was done at our baptism. We bless our hearts, rather, because we’re supposed to be hearing with our hearts, hearing with love and gratitude in a way that changes us at our core, symbolized Biblically by the heart. Once the heart is willing to believe, then the mind can more deeply grasp it, and once mind and heart together believe, then it is so much easier to proclaim what we have come to know and love.

* We see the opposite of this type of opening in today’s first reading, commented upon by the Psalm. The hearts of the Israelites in the desert were not open to the meaning of all God’s miracles to free them from Pharaoh in Egypt and then to care for them in the desert. That led to their constant murmuring, as if God was leading them through all of these theophanies to their graves rather than the Promised Land. Today they complain, “Why have you brought the LORD’s assembly into this desert where we and our livestock are dying? Why did you lead us out of Egypt, only to bring us to this wretched place which has neither grain nor figs nor vines nor pomegranates? Here there is not even water to drink!” As a result, God gave Moses the command to strike the rock twice and have it bring forth water. Even though the Israelites and their animals were able to lubricate their throats and hydrate themselves, their hearts did not much benefit through increased faith. And this scene we remember practically every morning in the invitatory Psalm before the Office of Readings in which we pray: “Oh, that today you would hear his voice: ‘Harden not your hearts as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the desert, Where your fathers tested me; they tested me though they had seen my works.” Every morning as we cry out with joy to the Lord, acclaim him as the Rock of Salvation, thank him and joyfully sing psalms to him, God appeals to us not to harden our hearts anew and test him and his patience by a lack of faith. As we prepare to drink from the living water he gives us, he wants us to remember Meribah and open ourselves to faith.

* We see the need for this continuous openness in the Gospel scene. After Peter had heard God the Father tell him in his mind that Jesus was not only the Messiah but the Father’s Son, after Peter had confessed him with his lips, we see that his heart was still closed to the type of Messiah Jesus would be and the way by which the Son of God would redeem us. When Jesus announced that he would “go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised,” Peter thoroughly closed the hearing of his heart and said, ““God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.” His heart was closed to God’s will, his love, his center was opposed, just like Satan’s was, which is why Jesus changed Simon’s name anew to the great tempter. Our hearts remain closed when we don’t love what Jesus did for us and when we don’t will what he will say tomorrow, in the continuation of this Gospel,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Diocese of Lafayette, LA, Seminarian Summer Seminar

Our Lady of the Oaks Retreat House

Grand Coteau, Louisiana

August 2-4, 2021

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.4.21_SJV_and_Charity_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Diocese of Lafayette, LA, Seminarian Summer Seminar

Our Lady of the Oaks Retreat House

Grand Coteau, Louisiana

August 2-4, 2021

 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.3.21_SJV_and_Confession_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Diocese of Lafayette, LA, Seminarian Summer Seminar

Our Lady of the Oaks Retreat House

Grand Coteau, Louisiana

August 2-4, 2021

 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.3.21_SJV_and_the_Eucharist_1.mp3