Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs, Auriesville, NY

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

Memorial of the First Martyrs of the Church of Rome

June 30, 2021

Gen 21:5.8-10, Ps 34, Mt 8:28-34

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.30.21_Homily.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* In today’s readings and memorial, we find the strong and sad theme of rejection, but also also see how Jesus seeks to bring good out of those dismissals.

* We find it first in the banishment of Hagar and Ishmael. Sarah, despite having been blessed miraculously by God with her first son in her nineties, rather than being filled with gratitude was consumed by envy. Seeing her servant Hagar, whom she had given to Abraham as a concubine when she had lost hope that God would fulfill his promise to make Abraham a dad and the father of many nations, and who had become with Abraham the parents of Ishmael, she demanded of Abraham: “Drive out that slave and her son!” Abraham was deeply distressed and we hope would have refused. But God said to him, “Do not be distressed about the boy or about your slave woman. Heed the demands of Sarah, no matter what she is asking of you; for it is through Isaac that descendants shall bear your name. As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a great nation of him also, since he too is your offspring.” God reiterated that promise to the exiled Hagar a little later, when she was afraid for their survival in the desert. God told her, “Don’t be afraid; God has heard the boy’s cry in this plight of his. Arise, lift up the boy and hold him by the hand; for I will make of him a great nation.” Much like God provided a well in the middle of the desert for them both, so God, Genesis tells us, “was with the boy as he grew up.” Envy exiled the two of them, but God is the Lord of all the earth, and he brought good out of the evil they suffered.

* We see something similar in the Gospel. Jesus entered into the pagan region of the Decapolis on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee and he is met in the territory of the Gadarenes by two savage demoniacs. They had been banished by their fellows to live among the tombs. The demons within them called Jesus “the Son of God” and asked, “What have you to do with us?” His very presence was tormenting them. Jesus was going to cure them to restore them not only to their self-possession but to the community. The demons, about to be exorcised, begged Jesus at least to allow them to inhabit the swine that was present, which Jesus then commanded. As soon as they invaded the swine, however, all of them were rushed into the Sea of Galilee and drowned, a sign of two things: first how many and how powerful the demons were that were dwelling within the men; and second how they were seeking, as they always do, to destroy the men. After the men were liberated, the whole town came out to meet Jesus, not rejoicing but upset at the loss of their pigs. Rather that ask the Holy One of God to free them from other manifestations of infernal power, rather than thank him for restoring two of their own, rather than inviting him in to get to know him and how he was able to do such a deed, they “begged him to leave their district.” They didn’t want the holiness of God around. They actually preferred their pigs. They preferred their life as it was. They were indeed under the sway of the evil one, though in less savage form than the two demoniacs. The devil is always the divider. He seeks to lead us apart from others, especially those who are good, most especially those who will bring us to God. But Jesus came as the great restorer,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs, Auriesville, New York

Solemnity of SS. Peter and Paul

June 29, 2021

Acts 12:1-11, Ps 34, 2 Tim 4:6-8.17-18, Mt 16:13-19

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.29.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today’s great Solemnity of SS. Peter and Paul gives us an opportunity to focus on their callings and missions in the Church and how each of us is called, in our own way, to relate to, and imitate in our own circumstances, those missions.

* St. Peter was called by Jesus himself to be the rock on whom he would build his Church. Jesus did this despite all of Peter’s obvious weaknesses. Peter was one whose spirit was willing but flesh was weak. He put out into the deep at the Lord’s word, but then begged him to depart for he was a sinful man. He generously gave up everything to follow him, but then asked what he would get out of it. He would name Jesus the Messiah and Son of God but then object to Jesus’ fulfilling of his Mission, thinking not as God does but as men. He would swear that even though he should have to die for Jesus he would never betray him and then deny three times that he even knew him. After prayer, Jesus, as we see in today’s Gospel, chose Peter not because he was perfect or made of granite. He did so because Peter would constantly get up after his falls and humbly depend on God. He would be capable of saying, with courage, in response to Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?,” “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.”

* St. Paul was called by Jesus despite the fact that he had presided over the execution of St. Stephen, ripped many Christians out of their homes, and zealously gotten the commitment to walk 135 miles north from Jerusalem to Damascus to terrorize the Christians there just as he had through Judah, Samaria and Galilee. Yet when Jesus made himself known to him outside the gates of the Syrian capital, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?,” once Saul recognized that he was persecuting Jesus through persecuting his Church, he immediately changed and used all the gifts God had given him to make, rather than murder, Christians. Jesus said of him that he was a “chosen instrument” to carry his name before Gentiles, Israelites and kings and to suffer much for his name (Acts 9:15-16). And that’s what he did, spending much of the rest of his life crisscrossing the ancient globe to bring Jesus and his gift of salvation to the people for whom Jesus had died and building up that Church which is Jesus’ body at a time of ferocious anti-Christian persecution.

* Saints Peter and Paul were not just Christian heroes who both happened to die in Rome under the emperor Nero. Jesus Christ gave them both a Mission as the Rock on whom he would build his Church, and the Doctor of the Gentiles. Those key functions continue, first in the papacy, where the 266th Peter, Pope Francis, has been called to proclaim Christ as the Messiah and Son of the Living God, to preside in charity over all of the Churches, to be a sign and agent of unity in the Church’s prophetic, priestly and shepherdly mission, and to continue to be the foremost proclaimer and teacher of the faith. Today is a day, therefore, on which the whole Church remembers its roots and prays for Pope Francis as the Living Rock and Living Teacher of the Nations. It’s also a day in which we commit ourselves to the structure of the Church Jesus has established. He himself chose Peter and Paul and the work that God was accomplishing through them didn’t stop on the day of the martyrdom,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

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

Monday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Ireneus, Doctor and Martyr

June 28, 2021

Gen 18:16-33, Ps 103, Mt 8:18-22

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.28.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today there’s a dramatic scene in the Gospel, and once we ponder what’s really happening we see it’s a drama that also involves us. The eighth chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel is fundamentally a chapter about miracles. Jesus heals a leper, a servant of a centurion, Peter’s mother-in-law, many of those who were possessed, calms a storm, work more exorcisms and even does one in which a whole herd of swine cast itself into the sea. And in the middle of this chapter St. Matthew places something else that he evidently treats as miraculous: a scribe comes up to Jesus and promises to follow him wherever he goes. The scribes were among the most arrogant class of Jews. They normally were criticizing Jesus with condescension. They were the scholars of the Mosaic Law, had studied Sacred Scripture inside out and were the definitive commentators on what God had revealed. Among those who comprised the Sanhedrin, they generally were Jesus’ biggest and most powerful opposition because Jesus did not fit into their rigid categories as he sought to go beyond the law of Moses and the various fences they had drawn around the Mosaic law to prevent its violation. This scholar came to Jesus and said that he was willing to go with Jesus wherever he went. The Gospel scene begins with Jesus’ giving orders to his closest followers to cross over to the other shore. The actual Greek expression is he told them to put out “into the beyond,” to go past their own limited horizons and expectations. This scribe seemed to be willing to do this, to give Jesus basically a blank check with his life.

* But Jesus wanted to make sure he knew what the cost would be. “Foxes,” he said, “have dens and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.” There’s a lot in that sentence. First, Jesus uses the expression “Son of Man,” which was a Messianic phrase, something that the scribe would readily have grasped. While the man professed a willingness to follow Jesus wherever he went because he had surmised based on his knowledge of Sacred Scripture that Jesus was already doing all of the works of the Messiah and was about to bring about the long-awaited Messianic kingdom, Jesus wanted him to grasp that his kingdom would not involve palaces and earthly power, material spoils or prestige. As Messiah, Jesus was saying, he wouldn’t even have a pillow to call his own, he wouldn’t even have what birds and foxes take for granted. Was the scribe willing to sign up for that? We don’t know what the Scribe’s answer was, whether he continued to follow Jesus into the “beyond.” Jesus was leading him not so much to a place but to a union with him and we don’t know whether the scribe would unite himself to Jesus’ personification of the Messianic kingdom. We hope that he did, but the lesson for us is the same. Jesus asks us to go with him into the beyond, to follow him wherever he goes even if it means giving up in this world fame, fortune, and family. But we need to be willing to center our entire existence on him.

* We see that illustrated very powerfully in the second dialogue from the Gospel scene, when one of the disciples, hearing Jesus order everyone with him to the beyond, said, “Lord, let me go first and bury my father.” Jesus’ response at first seems a little brutal: “Follow me and let the dead bury the dead.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Shrine of Our Lady of Mercy, Auriesville, NY

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

June 27, 2021

Wis 1:13-15.2:23-24, Ps 30, 2 Cor 8:7.9.13-15, Mk 5:21-43

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.27.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* The dramatic healing of the woman with the hemorrhage in today’s Gospel is one of the literally most touching of all Jesus’ miracles. Jesus was on his way with Jairus, the synagogue leader, to care for his daughter who at the time was on the point of death. St. Mark tells us that a large crowd was following Jesus and pressing in on him. As happens in almost any big crowd, people were no doubt bumping into him left and right. Yet in the midst of all of that commotion on the move, Jesus is touched in a different way by this anonymous woman — and Jesus immediately knew he was touched differently. The woman believed that if she could just touch the tassel of his garments, she would be cured. And she was not to be disappointed.

* Jesus, upon feeling his healing power go out in response to her faith, stopped and asked, somewhat remarkably, “Who touched my clothes?” It would be like if an ambulance driver speeding to attend to a 911 call all of a sudden heard a faint, friendly tap of the horn and then slammed on the brakes trying to find out who was trying to say hello. Jesus stopped, and doubtless to the confusion and concern of Jairus, began to ask who had come into contact with the hem of his tunic. It shows how big the crowd must have been banging into him that he didn’t even see the woman approach him to touch the edge of his garments. “Who touched my clothes?,” he kept asking. Jesus was never interested in merely working miracles of bodily healing. Those were always a prelude to the greater miracle of healing souls, and that healing happened and happens through a personal relationship with him. That’s why he never worked “mass miracles of healing,” but always cured people one-by-one, because he wanted to have that personal bond. So Jesus wanted to meet and enter into a relationship with the person he had just physically cured.

* After Jesus’ question, the woman approached with fear and trembling, fell down before him and told him everything, including how she had sought to pick-pocket a healing miracle from him without his knowledge. She was afraid not just because the stop she had caused Jesus to make was going to prove fatal for the daughter of the understandably impatient, powerful synagogue leader, but because by her touching Jesus with her effusion of blood, she was making him ritually impure according to the Jewish law and incapable without ablutions of entering the synagogue. That ritual impurity meant that she had been suffering not only physically for twelve years, but also socially and religiously: because of her bleeding, she couldn’t touch anyone and was basically cut off from human contact; she was even, in a sense, cut off from God by not being able to enter the synagogue. She probably thought that Jesus and everyone else with whom she would have come into contact trying to get to Jesus would have been furious with her. But Jesus would address all those problems. He spoke to her tenderly, called her “Daughter,” and said, “Your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease.” He made the miracle public so that she could be restored totally to the community, to the worship of God, and to a relationship with God-in-the-flesh.

* The miracle of the healing of Jairus’ daughter likewise began with a touch. Jairus, the leader of the Capernaum synagogue where Jesus was already becoming controversial,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Agnes Church, New York, NY

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Extraordinary Form

June 27, 2021

1 Pet 3:8-15, Mt 5:20-24

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.27.21_EF_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* Today from the Sermon on the Mount, right after Jesus teaches us the beatitudes and gives us our vocation as Salt of the Earth and Light of the World, he makes explicit for us that his standards for our behavior are very high, something he would later develop in calling us to be holy as the Lord our God is holy, merciful as our heavenly Father is merciful, loving as he has loved us, and ultimately perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. He tells us that unless our righteousness — the justice of our relationship with God — surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, we will not enter the kingdom of God. The scribes gave their lives to studying the word of God down to the smallest letter. The Pharisees were those who tried to live by what the Scribes taught, seeking to base their whole life on God’s word. Whereas the typical Jew prayed once a day, the Pharisees prayed three times daily. Whereas the typical Jew fasted once a year on the Day of Atonement, Pharisees fasted twice a week. Whereas the average Jew tithed just the things that they were supposed to tithe in the Mosaic law, the Pharisees gave ten percent of all they owned to God. The Scribes’ and the Pharisees’ standard of righteousness was very high, and Jesus was calling us to live by a higher standard.

* Before we get into what that higher standard is, it’s important for us to note that we are living at an age in which a call to high moral standards is not part of ordinary discourse. The standards of the world are basically that we’re supposed to be “nice” and “kind,” the human equivalent of bland mushrooms in a strong cultural sauce, tolerant of everything that the world wants us to accept and intolerant of everything the world wants us to reject. Within the Church, standards in many places have been forgotten or watered down. Many reduce being Catholic to the mere fact of being baptized or received into the Church: whether we pray or play, keep or break promises, steal or sacrifice, come to Mass or sleep in, confess our sins or brag about them, are faithful to our spouse or cheat, provide for or neglect our family, forgive or settle scores, love or abuse the poor, teach the truth or tickle people’s ears, welcome or abort the littlest of Jesus’ brethren, it doesn’t matter, as long as we think we’re good people, as long as we love someone, as long as we do some good to somebody sometime somewhere, and aren’t judgmental toward anyone else — then no one will judge us either. Archbishop Charles Chaput, emeritus of Philadelphia, said earlier this week that one of the obvious problems facing the Church is that many who come to Mass and approach holy communion are, in mentality, non-Catholics. They look at the world, the Creed, the sacraments, the moral life, and prayer basically the same way that everyone else does, rather than with Catholic faith.

* Surveying today’s scene based on Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount, St. John Paul II said in 2001, “The time has come to re-propose wholeheartedly to everyone this high standard of ordinary Christian living: the whole life of the Christian community and of Christian families must lead in this direction.” That high standard of ordinary Christian living, he said, is holiness. And he spoke about various of the means Christ gives us to make us holy — grace, prayer, Mass, confession, the Word of God, and putting that word into practice through charity — all means by which we allow him into our life so t...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

June 26, 2021

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.26.21_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 encounter him work two dramatic miracles.

* The healing of the woman with the hemorrhage is one of the literally most touching of all Jesus’ cures. Jesus was on his way with Jairus, the synagogue leader, to care for his daughter who at the time was on the point of death. St. Mark tells us that a large crowd was following Jesus and pressing in on him. As happens in almost any big crowd, people were bumping into him left and right. Yet in the midst of all of that commotion on the move, Jesus is touched in a different way by this anonymous woman — and Jesus immediately knew he was touched differently. The suffering woman believed that if she could just touch the tassel of Jesus’ garments, she would be cured. And she was not to be disappointed.

* Jesus, upon feeling his healing power go out in response to her faith, stopped and asked, somewhat remarkably, “Who touched my clothes?” It would be like if an ambulance driver speeding to attend to a 911 call all of a sudden heard a faint, friendly tap of the horn and then slammed on the brakes trying to find out who was trying to say hello. Jesus stopped, and doubtless to the confusion and concern of Jairus, began to ask who had come into contact with the hem of his tunic. It shows how big the crowd must have been banging into him that he didn’t even see the woman approach him to touch the edge of his garments. “Who touched my clothes?,” he kept asking. Jesus was never interested in merely working miracles of bodily healing. Those were always a prelude to the greater miracle of healing souls, and that healing happened and happens through a personal relationship with him. That’s why he never worked “mass miracles of healing,” but always cured people one-by-one, because he wanted to have that personal bond. So Jesus wanted to meet and enter into a relationship with the person he had just physically cured.

* After Jesus’ question, the woman approached with fear and trembling, fell down before him and told him everything, including how she had sought to pick-pocket a healing miracle from him without his knowledge. She was afraid not just because the stop she had caused Jesus to make was going to prove fatal for the daughter of the understandably impatient, powerful synagogue leader, but because by her touching Jesus with her effusion of blood, she was making him ritually impure according to the Jewish law and incapable without ablutions of entering the synagogue. That ritual impurity meant that she had been suffering not only physically for twelve years, but also socially and religiously: because of her bleeding, she couldn’t touch anyone and was basically cut off from human contact; she was even, in a sense, cut off from God by not being able to enter the synagogue. She probably thought that Jesus and everyone else with whom she would have come into contact trying to get to Jesus would have been furious with her. But Jesus would address all those problems. He spoke to her tenderly, called her “Daughter,” and said, “Your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease.” He made the miracle public so that she could be restored totally to the community, to the worship of God,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

June 25, 2021

Gen 17:1.9-10,15-22, Ps 128, Mt 8:1-4

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.25.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Over the past two-and-a-half weeks at daily Mass, we have been pondering Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount, in which he sets forth his standards — and the standards by which he wishes us to live — that surpass that of the Scribes, Pharisees and virtuous pagans. He calls us to be “perfect” (teleios) as his Father in heaven is perfect, to be great by keeping his commandments and teaching others to do the same, to seek first the kingdom of heaven and God’s holiness. He calls us to seek to be, in contrast to the standards and behavior of so many in the world, poor in spirit, compassionate to the point of mourning, meek, merciful, peacemaking, hungry and thirst for holiness, pure of heart, and willing to suffer for the sake of holiness. He calls us to love our enemies, pray for our persecutors, do good to those who are evil, to turn the other cheek, to walk the second mile, to give our cloak when all that’s asked for is our tunic, to not hate and not only not kill, to be chaste in heart and not just continent in the body, to have our yes mean yes and our no mean no, to pray, fast and give alms only for God the Father and not for show, not to worry about what we are to eat, drink or wear but to trust in the Father’s providence, to take out the beams from our own eyes and stop judging, to enter through the narrow gate of life, to do to others what we ourselves wish to be done to us, to become a good tree bearing good fruit and to build our whole life on his word. After hearing all of this, it is understandable that we might feel overwhelmed, as if the standards Jesus is proposing are unreachable. We may recognize just how often, every day, we fall short.

* That’s why in God’s providence, and in the Holy Spirit’s inspiration of St. Matthew, right after the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus makes clear the standards by which Christians are called to live, we have Chapter 8, which features seven different miracles of healing. The first we have today, in which a leper approaches Jesus, kneels down in homage, and humbly asks, “Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.” We can say the same, with similar adoration and trust: “Lord, if you will, you can cleanse me of all of the ways I’ve lived by the standards of the world rather than by yours. If you will, you can give me the help you know I need to become teleios, to become great by keeping and teaching your commandments, to seek first your kingdom, and to base my whole life on the rock of your holy word!” And we have every confidence Jesus will respond like he did to the leper, to all the others who approached him through Chapter 8 and in other scenes in the Gospel, and say, “I do will it! Be made clean!” After hearing God’s wisdom at length, now we encounter God’s healing power to strengthen us to live up to the high standards of ordinary Christian living to which Jesus calls us.

* God’s desire to cleanse us, to make us pure, to fill us with his mercy to overflowing, explains the motivation behind Jesus’ incarnation, his hidden life, his passion, death and resurrection. Jesus’ whole life screams the ardor of God’s hunger to make us clean, to heal us of our words and the leprosy of sin that alienates us from God, others and our truest selves. In the ancient world, leprosy was the worst disease one could have. Not only would it eat away one’s flesh and bones and make one stink in a most disgusting fashion,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist

June 24, 2021

Is 49:1-6, Ps 139, Acts 13:22-26, Lk 1:57-66.80

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.24.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

Why’s John’s Birthday so important? 

Today we celebrate the solemnity of the Birth of St. John the Baptist. Only three times in the Church’s year do we celebrate birthdays. December 25th is the most obvious birthday we commemorate. Daily Mass goers know that on September 8 we mark the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but we mark it rather quietly in comparison to the solemnity with which we celebrate her Immaculate Conception nine months earlier. Today, June 24th, we celebrate the birth of the famous son of Zechariah and Elizabeth. The Archangel Gabriel had said to Zechariah about the son his elderly and presumably barren wife would conceive, “Many will rejoice at his birth!” (Lk 1:14) and today we join that in that jubilation. Jesus would later say, “Among those born of women no one is greater than John” (Luke 7:28), and the Church’s liturgical calendar puts that truth into prayer: after Jesus, no one born of woman, not even the Blessed Virgin, has a more solemn celebration associated with his worldly-visible debut than John the Baptist.

It’s important to ask why the Church has always considered this feast so important. I think the fundamental answer is because the Church considers the life of John the Baptist so important and considers the events of his conception, gestation and birth highly significant aspects of his life. John’s vocation to give witness to the Lord, to go before him to prepare his way, began not when he appeared at the Jordan in camel’s hair, but in the womb. The Archangel Gabriel told his father, “Even before his birth, he will be filled with the Holy Spirit” (Lk 1:15). We saw an effect of this at the Visitation, when John leaped in the womb of his mother pointing out the presence of the prenatal Lamb of God within Mary (Lk 1:44). What God said to Jeremiah in the first reading of the Vigil of this Solemnity, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations” and to Isaiah in today’s, “The Lord, who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him,” could just as easily be said about John. He was formed in the womb and consecrated to be a prophet to the nations in order to bring God’s people back to Him, and he was already carrying out that consecrated mission from his earliest days.

John’s Mission and Ours

These truths about a consecrated mission from the womb, however, apply not just to Jeremiah, Isaiah and John the Baptist. The truth is that the Lord knows every one of us that intimately before he forms us in the womb. This is a truth to which you give witness in your daily proclamation by words and deeds of the Gospel of Life. We can all exclaim with the words of today’s Psalm, “Truly you have formed by inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb!” None of us is a number, a census statistic, just a random biological happening to God. Just like John the Baptist had a vocation and a mission from before he was born, each of us is formed by God with a divine destiny and given a vocation and mission in this world to achieve that destiny and help others achieve their own. While there will be specific differences between your and my mission and John’s, there are several characteristics in common.

* Like John’s, our mission is given by God as part of God’s plan for us from the beginning.

* Like John,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Tuesday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of SS. Thomas More and John Fisher

June 22, 2021

Gen 13:2.5-18, Ps 15, Mt 7:6.12-14

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.22.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

he following points were attempted in the homily: 

* As we begin to approach the end of our annual 16-day reexamination of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus, the Master, begins to summarize for us what he has been revealing to us over the previous two weeks. The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’ Magna Carta of Christian morality, the way he wants to form us to live like him with a holiness surpassing that of the Scribes and Pharisees and virtuous pagans, to fulfill the law, to seek first the Kingdom, to love God, to love neighbor and to love even those who make themselves our enemy. Today he gives us three images.

* The first is to recognize the treasure he is giving us. He says, “Do not give what is holy to dogs, or throw your pearls before swine.” His teaching is an extraordinary gift. It is the path to life. Just like we would never put diamonds in a toilet or priceless masterpieces in a doghouse, so we need to treasure his words and protect them within. We should never take them for granted. While we are obviously called to spread the faith and share Jesus and his teachings with others, we should at the same time do so with reverence for what we are transmitting. In the early Church, this passage was often used to refer to the Holy Eucharist, something we can ponder two days after Corpus Christi. The Didache said, “Let no one eat or drink of your Eucharist except those baptized into the name of the Lord; for, as regards this, the Lord has said, ‘Give not that which is holy unto dogs.’” We need to treat every word that comes from God’s mouth in a similar way, treasuring it and not just throwing it away or giving it to others the way we could give food we cannot finish or don’t want to eat to salivating dogs at our lap. Jesus wants us to grasp that in sharing this gift with us, he is not throwing pearls before swine, but accentuating our dignity. He wants us to treasure both the gift and the recipient. That’s what he’s asking of us here in terms of the way we will live and transmit his words.

* The second image is what we call the Golden Rule. Jesus summarizes everything he has been teaching us in the update, the interiorization, the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets, as “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the Law and the Prophets.” Often it is said that the Golden Rule exists in many religions but that is false. God has given the seeds of the word to many over the course of the centuries, but it was always in some version of the “Silver Rule”: “Don’t do to others what you would not want them to do to you.” Jesus was far exceeding that here. He wants us to treat others as we would want to be treated. If we want to be loved, we love first. If we want to be forgiven, we forgive first. If we want to be thanked, we thank first. If we want to be helped when we’re in need, we help first. It translates everything from a principle of justice to one of love. “I must not harm,” is much different from “I must love.” Not to hurt others is quite possible for everyone; but to love others by the standard of the golden rule is something that requires God’s help, it requires the love of God within. To obey this command in short is to become a new person, to look at the world in a new way. It means to look at things the way Christ does, when he loves us first in the way he would have us love others.

* The third image helps us both to choose the path w...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Monday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Aloysius Gonzaga

June 21, 2021

Gen 12:1-9, Ps 33, Mt 7:1-5

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.21.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today the Church enters into a two week meditation in the first reading on Abraham, which inaugurates six-weeks of first readings from the Pentateuch. The Church has us begin this study with Abraham, whom we call in the Roman Canon our “father in faith.” He shows us what real faith looks like, in order that we might imitate that total trust in the Lord and desire and obedience to what he asks. Today we get the first powerful glimpse at his faith. God says to him, a 75-year-old man, “Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.” As a senior citizen, as someone very well-settled, as an “old dog” to whom many say you “can’t teach new tricks,” he sets off, uprooting his wife, his nephew lot, and taking all of their servants and properties. Abraham didn’t know where the Lord was leading him. He just followed. When he eventually arrived in the land of Canaan, God didn’t even give it to him, but required another act of faith, promising him that he would give it to Abraham’s descendants, the descendants through whom God would make of this as-yet childless man a great nation. Little did he know that he would have to fight for this land. But Abraham just kept his eyes on the Lord and followed with trusting faith.

* In the Gospel, Jesus shows us how to keep our eyes faithfully fixed on God. Throughout the Sermon on the Mount — today is the 13th of our 16-part focus on Jesus’ magna charta of Christian life — Jesus has been teaching us how to fulfill the Law by loving the Lord with trust as our Father and loving our neighbor as our brothers and sisters of that Father, loving them even when they make themselves our enemies, persecute us, do evil to us, slap us on the cheek, ask for our tunic, force us to go the second mile. Today Jesus shows us what can poison our vision: when we choose to judge rather than love our neighbor. “Stop judging that you may not be judged,” he says, promising us that “as you judge, so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.” Our receptivity, our openness, to his grace and love, he states, is dependent on the way we treat and love others. For us to receive the love of God, in other words, we must be opened through loving our neighbor. For us to receive God’s mercy, we must be merciful. That’s why Jesus tells us not to judge others, because we cannot truly be merciful unless we stop judging our brothers and sisters. Jesus isn’t indicating that we shouldn’t judge between right and wrong and leave all of that judging exclusively to God. God has given us the moral law precisely so that we can make moral judgments about actions. When we see people worshipping other gods, when we witness people taking advantage of the vulnerable and innocent, when we encounter people telling baldfaced lies, when we encounter terrorists trying to kill the innocent, when we see mobs vandalizing and looting stores or tearing down statues of founding fathers, when we see police officers kneeling on innocent people’s necks, he wants us absolutely to pronounce, as he does, that such actions themselves are evil. But while he wants us to share his judgment on the moral quality of actions, Jesus forbids us to judge people. We must leave that to God, because while we can see externally whether their action co...