Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

July 10, 2021

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/7.10.21_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday as he sends out the apostles for the first time to proclaim his Gospel, instructions that are meant to guide the way that we share in that same continuous mission of the salvation of the world.

* Jesus’ love for us was so great that not only did he want to save us, but he wanted to involve us in our own salvation and in the salvation of our family and friends, even those we don’t know. From the beginning of time, he wanted us to be co-redeemers with him. It didn’t have to be this way. He could have stayed in our world until the end of time, physically, traversing every country himself. He did not have to ascend. But he wanted to ascend so that we could fulfill the mission he would give us, to bring the good news of salvation to the whole world. So from the beginning of his public ministry, not only did Jesus preach in word and deed, but he prepared us his disciples to do the same. He trained us to preach; he gave us his own authority to cure the sick and cast out unclean spirits. He formed us to be more and more like him, who himself was God the Father’s missionary. He did not merely state, “Do what I say,” but said “follow me.” And so Jesus told us to deny ourselves and pick up their Crosses, just as he did. He told us to pick up towels and serve others just as he girded himself and served us. And he told us to follow him in the mission he had received from the Father, the baton of which he would pass off to the tandem of them and the Holy Spirit. That baton was passed to the apostles and first disciples. They passed it on to others, who in turn handed it to others. That baton, that saving and salvific baton, he hands to us anew this Sunday.

* We can break down Jesus’ words to us this week into four simple parts:

* To whom the Lord gives this mission;

* What the message is we’re called to proclaim;

* How he wants us to deliver that message; and

* To whom he wants us to bring this message.

* The first part is whom Jesus commissions. I would hope that by this point, almost 60 years after the second Vatican Council, everyone already knows the answer. It’s not just to Bishops, priests, religious brothers or sisters, or missionaries. It’s to all of his disciples; it’s each one of us. By our baptism, we’re called to share in Christ’s own prophetic mission. This universal mission grew in stages. Jesus first trained the 12 and then sent them out (Mk 6:7-13). Then he trained 70 and sent them with the same instructions (Lk 10:1-12). Before he ascended into heaven, he instructed 500 on the mountainside and told them “Go out to the whole world and proclaim the Gospel, baptizing … and teaching them to carry out everything I have commanded you” (1 Cor 15:6; Mt 28:18-20). That mission continues down to this day and Jesus wants us — and in some sense needs us — to carry it on.

* The second question is: What are we called to preach? We’re not sent out with our own message. We’re not commissioned with the instruction to wing it. We’re sent out as ambassadors of Christ with Christ’s message, the same message he himself preached. St. Mark writes that as soon as Jesus returned from his forty day fast in the wilderness,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Saturday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

July 10, 2021

Gen 49:29-32.50:15-26, Ps 105, Mt 10:24-33

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/7.10.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* “It is enough,” Jesus tells us today, “for the disciple that he become like his teacher.” On Tuesday we began a five-day crash course on becoming like Jesus in sharing the gift of the faith. Today Jesus concludes his instructions to the Twelve about the mission he was giving them to complete his own. It’s all meant to help them to go out in the person of Christ, with his words, with his authority, and even with his sufferings. Jesus lets them know that if they’ve insulted him and tried to ascribe his work to the devil, they will do the same to the Apostles and us. But he reiterates to us not to be afraid, but to speak in the light what Jesus says in the darkness, to proclaim on the housetops what he whispers. He reminds us that we have nothing to fear from those who will seek to kill our bodies but can’t harm our souls. We should care far more about what God thinks than about what people think. We should have a greater awe for what God is doing than a fear of what others might be doing. But we don’t need to fear him the way that some might fear the body-killers of this world, because God is a loving father, who loves us, who counts every strand of hair, and who cares for us more than he cares for sparrows and lilies who never go without. Jesus has come to help and strengthen us to acknowledge him before others, literally to lead others to the knowledge of Christ, so that he in turn will acknowledge us for our union with him before the Father.

* These lessons are very relevant to the proclamation of the Gospel of Life. St. John Paul II wrote in Evangelium Vitae, “To proclaim Jesus is itself to proclaim life” (80), something which “involves making clear all the consequences of this Gospel. These can be summed up as follows: human life, as a gift of God, is sacred and inviolable” (82). He says “to be truly a people at the service of life we must propose these truths constantly and courageously from the very first proclamation of the Gospel, and thereafter in catechesis, in the various forms of preaching, in personal dialogue and in all educational activity” (82). Doing so, however, will solicit opposition, he says, since we are “Faced with so many opposing points of view, and a widespread rejection of sound doctrine concerning human life” (82). Knowing this, he encourages, “in the proclamation of this Gospel, we must not fear hostility or unpopularity, and we must refuse any compromise or ambiguity which might conform us to the world’s way of thinking (cf. Rom 12:2). We must be in the world but not of the world (cf. Jn 15:19; 17:16), drawing our strength from Christ, who by his Death and Resurrection has overcome the world (cf. Jn 16:33)” (82).

* Today we have two examples of those who with courage became like Jesus through acknowledging him before others.

* In the first reading, Joseph the Patriarch does it in prophecy. Perhaps the most important way we need to give witness to God is to his mercy, because he came into the world to save us. And we see an image of the mercy Jesus would speak about in his famous Parable of the Prodigal Son in the way Joseph treats his brothers. They were all worried that after Jacob their father’s death, Joseph will seek his revenge on them. They said, “Suppose Joseph has been nursing a grudge against us and now plans to pay us back in full for all the wrong we did him!...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of SS. Augustine Zhao Rong and Companions

July 9, 2021

Gen 46:1-7.28-30, Ps 37, Mt 10:16-23

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/7.9.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

Today we continue focusing on Jesus’ preparation of the Apostles to be sent out on their training run to prepare them for their post-Pentecost continuation of his salvific mission, Jesus says something truly shocking and absolutely astonishing. The Good Shepherd, the one who would lay down his life to protect and save his sheep, says that he’s about to send the apostles out “as sheep in the midst of wolves.” That would be like sending a bunch of unarmed Christians out into a gang of armed ISIS or Boko Haram members or African-Americans to a Ku Klux Klan rally. He told them that they would be handed over to courts, scourged in houses of worship, led before governors and kings, betrayed by siblings, parents and children, persecuted in one town to the next and hated by all because of him. Why would he possibly send out his sheep into a coven of wolves? Why would he send his loved ones out to be slaughtered? How is this consistent with his loving us?

Jesus loves us so much that not only does he want to save us but he wants us to be his assistants in saving others and the way both will occur is when we become truly united to him. Basically everything Jesus described that the wolves would do to his sheep and lambs as he sent them out, he himself endured: he was handed over to the Sanhedrin, brought before governors and kings, scourged in civic and religious contexts, betrayed by those he had made his brothers and sisters, his spiritual sons and daughters, hated by so many because he didn’t fit into their categories, and ultimately brutally massacred. But the Lamb led to the slaughter rose from the dead on the third day. And he beckons us to follow him, to love like him, to redeem with him. It’s through this contest with the wolves that Jesus will accomplish the hard work of conforming us with him that few of us would ever choose voluntarily. No matter how many times Jesus tells us to deny ourselves, pick up our Cross and follow him along the narrow road that leads to life, few of us will take him literally and follow up along that bloody path: that’s why he allows the wolves to help us.

Jesus is clear that as we’re being persecuted in the way he describes we will be able to accomplish the mission he has sent us out to accomplish, the mission of proclaiming that the Kingdom of God has arrived, to heal, to raise from the dead, to exorcise through our incarnating the Gospel. He says we will suffer so that we can be a “witness before them and the pagans,” as the “Spirit of your Father [is] speaking through you.” Jesus doesn’t say merely that “God” or the “Holy Spirit” will speak through us, but the “Spirit of your Father,” because this experience of suffering will convince us more than anything of our Divine Filiation, that the Father cares for us more than he cares for the sparrows and the lilies, that every strand of hair is numbered. At the end of the passage, as he encourages us to persevere in union with him, he reminds us that we will not even traverse Israel before his kingdom comes, before some, moved by our witness, accept the testimony and follow us to meet the Son of Man. This is a powerful message, one that many of us are tempted to duck rather than believe and embrace. We have a prejudice that if we love God, if we’re moral, if we do everything that God asks, that then we will be blessed in this world with friends,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

July 8, 2021

Gen 44:18-21.23-39.45:1-5, Ps 105, Mt 10:7-15

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/7.8.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today we continue to focus on the Lord’s instructions to the first apostles — and to the Church built on them — about the proclamation of the Gospel for which he was sending them out and preparing us to continue their Mission. Jesus gives them instructions not just about what they are to say, but about what they are to do and how they are to behave in order to confirm those words. The message he placed on their lips — but wanted to penetrate into their actions and bearing — was “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” They were to proclaim the King had arrived and all the gifts he gives from heaven were now available in the present tense. As a confirmation of those incredible words, Jesus gave them his authority, his power, to do the very same things he was doing, in order to confirm that the long awaited Messiah had come, and that he wasn’t just the Messiah, but the very Son and presence of God. He told them, “Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, drive out demons.” They were to manifest God’s power over every disease and illness, God’s power over life, God’s ability to cleanse us of our outer and inner leprosy and all of the ostracism associated with it, and God’s power over the devil.

* Then he turned to the first thing I want to ponder today: he gave them a particular “packaging” for the message and deeds he was sending them out to do. He wanted them to show by their behavior that the Kingdom had come. By their peace, by their mutual love and mercy, by their trust in God’s providence, by their joy, he wanted them to be a living display of life in that kingdom. And that’s why he told them:

* “Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give” — They were not to be preaching in order to gain but to help others be enriched. Their not doing it for profit would not only contrast them with many of the preachers of the age but would also help them to enter into the “gratuitousness” that characterizes God and those who live in his kingdom.

* “Do not take gold or silver or copper for your belts; no sack for the journey, or a second tunic, or sandals, or walking stick.” — They were to show that they took seriously what they were announcing, the presence of a God who tells us not to worry about what we are to eat, drink, wear or where we are to sleep, because God knows what we need before we ask for it and cares for us more than he cares for the lilies of the field and the birds of the sky. They were to show that they know that God is providential and will care for their listeners just like he was caring for them.

* “Whatever town or village you enter, look for a worthy person in it, and stay there until you leave.” — Jesus wanted them to be grateful for the hospitality given, rather than looking for a better deal. If they were welcomed in one home, but then someone with a much nicer home offered them, he wanted them to stay where they were. These words need to be taken more seriously today by all in the Church, but in a particular way by the clergy. It’s become so common that it’s seldom spoken of that priests and bishops often think of a better deal as a reward. They become pastor of a poor place in the city or the country but are looking for a bigger, richer, more prestigious parish. Bishops can start off in a small sea but often be hankering for a cardinalatial one. Pope Francis once addressed this with bishops in terms that I thoug...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Fourteenth Wednesday of Ordinary Time, Year I

July 7, 2021

Gen 41:55-57.42:5-7.17-24, Ps 33, Mt 10:1-7

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/7.7.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Yesterday, Jesus had the apostles pray to the Harvest Master, his Father, to send laborers for his harvest. He wanted them to share his gut-exploding compassion for all those who were mangled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd. Today, after they prayed and after Jesus prayed all night, God the Father responded by calling the very ones Jesus asked to pray, and he sent them out to collect the harvest that is ever white and ripe. It points to the central truth that the Lord wants all of us to pray for laborers and to recognize that the Father is calling us, in different ways, to be those very laborers strengthened by that prayer, by the Lord’s divine calling, and by his divine commissioning.

* So in response to those who are mangled, abandoned and without a shepherd, Jesus sends out the twelve and the Church for the harvest with a particular first aid kit.

* He sends them out with a message: that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. This means, first, that God is present because the Kingdom of God is, in short, God. To proclaim the Kingdom at hand is to say, “God is here.” The kingdom of God also means that God reigns and the response to the message must be, “We need to let him reign in our lives.” Jesus sent out the 12 and he sends out us to proclaim, not merely with our words but with the way we live, that we’re not alone, that God is alive, that is he is with us, and that letting him reign in our lives has made all the difference in saving us and joyfully transforming us.

* As part of the proclamation that God is among us, Jesus sends the 12 and us out with his authority to expel demons and heal every disease and illness. We need to be signs of that exorcism, no longer letting the prince of this world, the father of lies, have any dominion over us and bring people to Jesus to experience that same liberation. Likewise we need to be the nurses of the Divine Physician and, as Pope Francis never ceases of saying, healing the wounds of those today. The Church, he says, needs to be like a field hospital in battle, a trauma unit, for those who are wounded physically, emotionally, relationally, spiritually. We’re sent out as Good Samaritans to try to care for people in their illnesses and bring them to the inn of the Church, where we can help them let Jesus and his healing into their lives. Jesus sends the apostles out, initially, not to the furthest ends of the world, not to strangers, but to the “lost sheep” of the “house of Israel.” The “house of Israel” were those that the apostles might have taken for granted, because they should have known about the kingdom but they were lost even when it was among them at hand. Similarly, we’re sent out first to those who are lost among us — to those we know are lost and even to those who we would presume would not be lost but maybe are going through a crisis of faith, even if priests, religious, or lifelong fervent Catholics. Everyone needs a reminder of the Lord’s presence, of his dominion over the evil one, of his healing power.

* “A most serious wound inflicted on society and its culture,” St. John Paul II wrote about in Evangelium Vitae, is abortion (EV 59). Therefore the proclamation of the Gospel of Life and the Kingdom of Heaven involves trying to heal the wounds brought about by the culture of death: wounds to the mother, to the father, to the family, to the wider circle of family and friends,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Tuesday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Maria Goretti

July 6, 2021

Gen 32:23-33, Ps 17, Mt 9:32-38

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/7.6.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today’s readings are about the connection between our prayer, the discovery of our vocation and our perseverance in it, as we learn how God gives us the help we need to fight the good fight and triumph with him.

* In the first reading from Genesis, we encounter the mysterious scene of the nocturnal wrestling match between Jacob and an angel of God that throughout the history of the Church has been treated as an illustration of the “battle of prayer.” Describing this scene in the midst of its tremendous section on prayer, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “Before confronting his elder brother Esau, Jacob wrestles all night with a mysterious figure who refuses to reveal his name, but he blesses him before leaving him at dawn. From this account, the spiritual tradition of the Church has retained the symbol of prayer as a battle of faith and as the triumph of perseverance” (2573).

* Pope Benedict XVI gave an entire catechesis on this scene on May 25, 2011 at the beginning of his beautiful 18-month series on prayer. He said that our prayer requires tenacity not to give up when prayer is hard, but to continue struggling to see God and embrace his will. Prayer is he emphasized, “the good fight of the faith.” “For the believer the episode of the struggle at the Jabbok thus becomes a paradigm. …  a reference point for understanding the relationship with God that finds in prayer its greatest expression,” Pope Benedict said.. “Prayer requires trust, nearness, almost a hand-to-hand contact that is symbolic not of a God who is an enemy, an adversary, but a Lord of blessing who always remains mysterious, who seems beyond reach. Therefore the author of the Sacred text uses the symbol of the struggle, which implies a strength of spirit, perseverance, tenacity in obtaining what is desired. And if the object of one’s desire is a relationship with God, his blessing and love, then the struggle cannot fail, but ends in that self-giving to God, in recognition of one’s own weakness, which is overcome only by giving oneself over into God’s merciful hands.” He finishes by saying that such a struggle summarizes not just the prayer of a Christian but also the entire life of faith. “Our entire lives are like this long night of struggle and prayer, spent in desiring and asking for God’s blessing, which cannot be grabbed or won through our own strength but must be received with humility from him as a gratuitous gift that ultimately allows us to recognize the Lord’s face. And when this happens, our entire reality changes; we receive a new name and God’s blessing. … Whoever allows himself to be blessed by God, who abandons himself to God, who permits himself to be transformed by God, renders a blessing to the world.”

* We see the connection between the battle of prayer and faithful perseverance in life in how the angel strikes Jacob’s hip socket, which caused a life-long limp. One of the foremost Biblical expressions of living by faith is “to walk,” to walk with God, to walk in God’s ways, to walk as children of the light, to follow him. Jacob’s whole life would be influenced by the prayer he made that night, as the “battle,” we could say, continued, as he confronted a little of the pain but recognized it was the means by which he would receive God’s blessing and become a blessing.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

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

Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

July 4, 2021

Ez 2:2-5, Ps 123, 2 Cor 12:7-10, Mk 6:1-6

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/7.4.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This Sunday’s Gospel isa scene that should bring those who truly love Jesus almost to the point of tears. Jesus came to his hometown. He already had a famous reputation for the teachings and the miracles he had worked throughout Galilee. He had cast out demons, cured the paralyzed and the sick, and taught with authority unlike any had ever heard. He visited his neighborhood synagogue — the equivalent of his parish Church — on the Sabbath, just like he did every Saturday as a boy and young carpenter. The head of the Synagogue allowed him to come up to teach. St. Luke’s Gospel tells us what he did (see Lk 4:16-30). Jesus unrolled the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and read the passage, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Is 61:1-2). This was a passage referring to the Messiah for whom the Jews had long waited. Jesus’ homily, his commentary on that passage, was one sentence long: “Today,” he declared, “this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

* Mark and St. Luke both tell us that his listeners’ first reaction to Jesus’ teaching was astonishment. They were amazed at the “gracious words that came from his mouth” and “the wisdom that had been given to him.” But that quickly changed once they began to reflect on what he said. Through fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy, Jesus was basically announcing that he was the Messiah, that all the words that the prophet wrote about the coming Anointed One were taking place right then, right there. The future apostle Nathaniel (also known as Bartholomew) once wondered aloud whether anything good could come from Nazareth. Those in the Synagogue likely shared that sentiment, because they refused to accept that one from among their own could be the fulfillment of their messianic hopes. They thought they knew Jesus.They likely had pieces of furniture he made. Perhaps he had played with them, or their kids or grandkids when he was younger. So, to knock him down to size, they began to murmur to themselves, “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?” Their doubts soon multiplied and, as St. Mark tells us, they began to “take offense at Jesus.” Not only would they not believe what Jesus said, but they began to be offended by him, because if he were the Messiah, it would necessarily change their relationship with him and, in fact, revolutionize their whole life. Jesus knew their thoughts and said, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown, among his own kin and in his own house.” That, St. Luke tells us, “filled them with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff, but he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.” In the matter of a few minutes, they went from praising Jesus with amazement, to doubts, to taking offense at him, to trying to murder him. Not only would they not accept Jesus as a prophet by heeding his words and welcoming him as they would the God who sent him, but they — like preceding generations whom Jesus would say elsewhere “kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to it” (Mt 23:37) — would seek to execute him.

* Jesus’ reaction to all of this, St. Mark informs us,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

July 3, 2021

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/7.3.21_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily:

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday as we head with him to his hometown Synagogue in Nazareth.

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

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

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

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

Votive Mass of the Sacred Heart

July 2, 2021

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

 

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

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

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

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs, Auriesville, New York

Thursday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Junipero Serra

July 1, 2021

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

 

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

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

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

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

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

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