Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Saturday of the Third Week of Lent

March 13, 2021

Hos 6:1-6, Ps 51, Lk 18:9-14

 

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

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The following points were attempted in this homily: 

* Today we continue to enter more deeply into the second phase of Lent, which extends from the third Sunday through the end of the fourth week, with its focus on the meaning and consequences of baptism, to help those preparing to enter the saving waters at the Easter Vigil and to help all of us renew in depth our baptismal promises and covenantal commitments. Today the Church helps us to focus on the growth God wants from us in baptism. Normally, we can focus on that with the help of the Prophet Ezekiel’s image of the water flowing from the Eastern side of the Temple, first a trickle, then up to the ankles, knees, waist and above the head of the prophet, giving life in the Arabah and even raising the Dead Sea to life. This is an image of what happens through the blood and water flowing from the side of the true Temple Jesus as he hung upon the Cross, the source of baptism and the Sacramental Life of the Church. That was a gift of God’s merciful love at the beginning of our life as Christians, but we’re called to let that mercy inundate us and bring to life everything in us that is dead. “I desire mercy!,” God says to us today through the Prophet Hosea and that we repeat in the Responsorial Psalm. God desires mercy! He desires it in two ways. First he desires to share with us his mercy. God’s greatest joy is forgiving, Pope Francis continually repeats, following what Jesus teaches us in the three parables of the Lost Sheep, Coin and Son. He wants us to receive that gift of his compassionate love. But he also desires us, having received it, to be transformed so that we, too, may pass on that mercy together with ours to others. He says he desires mercy instead of sacrifice, with sacrifice understood as the slaughtering of animals as an external act of repentance. The type of sacrifice he wants, we pray in today’s Psalm, is a “contrite spirit,” for “a heart contrite and humbled” God will never spurn. We seek to come before the Lord with that type of spirit and heart, made so by his mercy that wipes out our offenses, thoroughly washes us from our guilt and cleanses us of our sins.

* God wants us to grow in our receiving his mercy and our sharing in it. That’s what’s pointed to in the image of Hosea in today’s first reading. God says that the piety of those in Ephraim and Judah is “like a morning cloud, like the dew that early passes away.” It’s a powerful image. In context, their faithfulness to receiving and sharing his merciful love is like dew on the grass that just doesn’t last. It evaporates as the day draws near. It passes away in the middle of the day and as life goes on. They started out faithfully early in life but that piety dissipated. God was saying through the prophet that he wanted to show mercy, but that they weren’t open to receiving it. They weren’t persevering in receiving it. Hosea instructed them that the Lord had been trying to bring them to conversion, but they were superficial like the dew. “Come, let us return to the Lord, it is he who has rent, but he will heal us; he has struck us, but he will bind our wounds. He will revive us after two days; on the third day he will raise us up, to live in his presence [a clear reference to how he will do it through Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection!] … He will come to us like the rain, like spring rain that waters the earth.” Sometimes our life, sometimes our day, can begin like the beautiful refreshing dew,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Day of Recollection for the Priests of the Archdiocese of Miami

March 12, 2021

 

To watch a video of the meditation, please click below: 

 

 

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Ite ad Joseph, Saint Joseph a Model for Priests in Lent and Always

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the Third Week of Lent

March 12, 2021

Hos 14:2-10, Ps 81, Mk 12:28-34

 

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

 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.12.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* On Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, God made a special appeal to each of us through the Prophet Joel: “Return to me with your whole heart.” He asked us to “rend our hearts,” to rip them open to receive his merciful love and to share his compassion with others, a summons that not only can influence the way we read today’s Gospel, but is also important in this second phase of Lent — from the 3rd Sunday through the end of the 4th week — when we ponder the meaning of baptism. We can read today’s reading in a baptismal key, for this is one of the most commonly chosen readings for the celebration of baptism, since it shows us what the purpose of a Christian life is and how we can keep our end of the baptismal Covenant with the Lord. When asked what the greatest commandment is, Jesus responds, “The first is this: ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.’” Today Jesus reminds us that the whole point of the Lenten season, the whole point of the Christian life to which Lent is meant to restore us, is to return with our whole heart in love to God, and not just our heart, but to return to him with our whole soul, mind and strength as well, to receive his mercy without any obstacles and then to learn how to let that mercy we’ve received become the way which we respond to others.

* It’s important that we truly confront what Jesus is asking of us. There are many Christians who believe they love the Lord simply because they have good thoughts about him, they admire him, they think that he’s kind, merciful and generous. But Jesus is calling for much more than this. Love is more than having good feelings or impressions about another; love is the unconquerable benevolence that leads to willing, to choosing consistently, the good of the other for the other’s sake. Love is opting as a habit to sacrifice oneself for another, putting someone else ahead of us, like Jesus would say during the Last Supper and put into action the following afternoon: laying down one’s life for one’s friends, in little ways or supremely. There are many Christians who love God to the point of sacrificing for him, but as today’s Gospel shows us, it’s not enough to sacrifice some of the time and gifts that he’s given us for him and his glory. It’s not enough to give God some of our mind, heart, soul and strength. Jesus is calling us to love God with all we’ve got. Today he says that that’s worth more than all sacrifices. To get to that type of love requires a deep conversion on our part. It means that our hope is not just to be good people but to be really holy people.

* We should make this practical.

* Jesus calls us to love him with all our mind. How much of our mind do we dedicate to God? Do we try to think as God thinks in our decisions? Do we truly fill our minds with his thoughts through prayer and reading the Bible and good spiritual books or do we fill them with the world’s thoughts through reading the paper more than the Bible and surfing the internet or watching television more than we pray?

Jesus likewise calls us to love him with all our heart. Do we really love God more than we love everything and everyone else in our life?

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the Third Week of Lent

March 11, 2021

Jer 7:23-28, Ps 95, Lk 11:14-23

 

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

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The following points were attempted in today’s homily: 

* Yesterday we pondered how great a gift of God’s mercy it is that God has spoken to us in his word and his commandments. Moses exclaimed, “For what great nation is there that has gods so close to it as the Lord, our God, is to us whenever we call upon him? Or what great nation has statutes and decrees that are as just as this whole law that I am setting before you today?” He added that the Israelites should rejoice in that gift of mercy and pass it on to their children and grandchildren as a means by which to grow closer to the God who through his word and commandments has drawn near to us. Jesus himself in the Gospel said he came to fulfill that law and that the greatest in his Kingdom would be those who put that word into practice and taught others to do the same. The fulfillment of the law leads to the fulfillment of human persons.

* What did the vast majority of the Israelites do in response to that gift of mercy God had given them? The Lord himself summarizes it through the Prophet Jeremiah at the beginning of today’s first reading: “This is what I commanded my people: Listen to my voice; then I will be your God and you shall be my people. Walk in all the ways that I command you, so that you may prosper. But they obeyed not, nor did they pay heed.” Then he uses four body parts to describe graphically their response. “They turned their backs, not their faces, to me.” This was a sign of betrayal and abandonment. “They have stiffened their necks and done worse than their fathers.” They wouldn’t heed the Lord when he sent the prophets toward them; they would resolutely keep doing what they wanted to do like horses running with blinders. “They walked in the hardness of their evil hearts.” Their hearts, which were meant to be sponges for God’s words, had become sclerotic, impenetrable even to God.

* We see an illustration of this type of resistance in the Gospel reading. Jesus had just exorcised a boy, one in a long line of deliverances from the devil, but those Scribes and Pharisees who had already hardened their hearts, stiffened their necks and turned their backs toward Jesus refused to accept that any of the incontestable exorcisms happened by the finger of God. They accused Jesus of working exorcisms by the power of the prince of devils. Their hardened hearts had led to a hardening of the brain. Jesus exposes their foolishness in two ways. First, since they admitted that some of their own number were exorcising, if he cast out by the devil, then they were suggesting that their own number might be exorcising by Beelzebul, too, something of course they would never believe or admit. Second, since the devil is trying to win, not forfeit, the possession our hearts, backs, necks and faces, it would make no sense for him to be defeating himself through exorcism. Their response to Jesus’ liberation of the boy from the devil, however, shows what God was describing about the Israelites and their treatment of the prophets sent in God’s name. They didn’t want to turn back to God. No matter how often they had prayed today’s Responsorial Psalm, “If today you hear the voice of the Lord, harden not your hearts,” that’s precisely what they did when they heard the voice of God through Jeremiah, and it’s precisely what the Scribes and Pharisees did when they heard Jesus’ voice.

* Now we turn to us. If we want to prevent what happened to them from happening to us,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the Third Week of Lent

March 10, 2021

Deut 4:1.5-9, Ps 147, Mt 5:17-19

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.10.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* In this second phase of Lent, from the third Sunday through the fourth Friday, we ponder the meaning of baptism, to help the “elect” prepare for this great Sacrament and to help all the baptized grow to full maturity in response to baptismal graces. And we remember what happened to us on the day of our baptism. The priest, bishop or deacon blessed our ears and said, “The Lord Jesus made the deaf hear and the dumb speak. May he soon touch your ears to receive his Word and your lips to proclaim his faith to the praise and glory of God the Father.” (The formula has changed slightly in the latest revision). God gave us ears fundamentally to hear his Truth and lips fundamentally to proclaim it to others to God’s praise and glory. This phase of Lent is meant to help to prepare the Elect, and help the baptized, to learn how to “live the truth in love” (Eph 4:15). We prayed in today’s Opening Collect, “Grant, we pray, O Lord, that, schooled through Lenten observance and nourished by your word, … we may be devoted to you with all our heart.” Lent is a school in which we learn anew how to be like God, to become holy as God is holy, perfect as he is perfect, and merciful as he is mercy. Lent is a season in which we recognize that God gives us in his mercy that formation. In the Gospel, we see that Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for the crowds, he was “sick to his stomach” (splanchnizomai), and in response to that he taught. St. Mark tells us, “When Jesus disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things” (Mk 6:34). In his mercy, God teaches us, and Jesus came to astonish and amaze us with his teaching, as he did with his sermons, his parables, his example. He came to to proclaim the Gospel, to give witness to the truth, and to enflesh that truth in such a way that he could say to us, “Follow me!” As we focus in Lent on our almsgiving, we remember that this involves not so much giving material goods but giving God and ourselves together with him. And among the most important ways we do that is through the spiritual works of mercy by which we pay forward the gift of truth we’ve received, “instructing the ignorant,” admonishing the sinner,” and “counseling the doubtful.”

* That introduction is a prelude to the importance of what God teaches us about the gift of his instruction in today’s readings. In the first reading from the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses exclaims about the care God has given us in his teaching: “For what great nation is there that has gods so close to it as the Lord, our God, is to us whenever we call upon him? Or what great nation has statutes and decrees that are as just as this whole law that I am setting before you today?” God has drawn close to us in his statutes and decrees, which train us in the nitty gritty of life how to love God and others and provide the means for us to remain in a communion of life and love with him and others. Rather than the god of deists who creates the world and then abandons it, the God of Israel showed himself to be concerned about bringing the Israelites into communion in every part of their daily life. And that’s what he did, providing guidance through his teaching. The Responsorial Psalm continues the joy at the privilege of knowing God’s law: “He has proclaimed his word to Jacob, his statutes and his ordinances to Israel.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life

Tuesday of the Third Week in Lent

Memorial of St. Frances of Rome

March 9, 2021

Dan 3:25.34-43, Ps 25, Mt 18:21-35

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.9.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* The point of Lent is to become holy like God is holy, perfect as he is perfect, merciful as he is merciful, loving as he himself as love us first. Today’s readings are placed in this “second phase” of Lent — from the Third Sunday through Friday of the Fourth Week — precisely to help the Elect preparing for baptism, and all of us who have already entered the Sacred Waters, to know the demands that flow from immersion into God’s mercy. In Baptism we received God’s incredible gift of mercy and to live in accordance with our baptism means to allow that living well of mercy spring up to overflowing from us. Jesus stressed when he taught us the Our Father that unless we forgive others their debts, neither will our heavenly Father forgive us ours. He won’t withhold forgiveness from us as a punishment, but rather we won’t be able to receive his gift, for unless we have a heart that’s ready to forgive others, our heart will be closed to absorb the gift of his mercy. And so Jesus wants through baptism to take away our stony hearts and replace them with a heart of flesh, a heart that can receive the in-pouring of the Father’s mercy systolically and pump it out diastolically. As we pray today with the Prophet Daniel, “Do not take away your mercy from us” and “deal with us in your kindness and great mercy,” God shows us how never to lose that mercy. As we beseech God in the words of the Psalm, “Remember your mercies, Lord,” and remark that the Lord is “good and upright,” who “shows sinners the way,” the Lord today instructs us in his way by helping us not only to remember his mercies but also never to forget the need to pass that mercy on.

* That’s what today’s Gospel is all about. St. Peter asks Jesus, “If my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him?” One of the most difficult aspects of living the Catholic faith is the teaching about loving even our enemies and forgiving those who repeatedly wrong us, hate us and persecute us. When people hurt us, we think it’s magnanimous and generous to give them a second chance. If we forgive them yet again, we think we’re ready for canonization. But Jesus’ standards for us are higher. He wants us to become as merciful as our heavenly Father is merciful — and each of our autobiographies shows clearly that God has given us way more than one or two spiritual chances.  The Rabbis taught, based on a misinterpretation of passages of the Prophet Amos, that we needed to forgive three times, to give someone a forth chance. Peter in his question to Jesus multiplied that by two and added one and said, “As many as 7 times?” This would be an astronomically high standard, giving someone an eighth chance, before writing someone off as incorrigible. Jesus replied, however, “No, Seventy Sevens.” Whether that means 70×7 (490) or 70+7 (77) times really doesn’t matter, because seven is a number already with a sense of infinity. It means to forgive without limit. He says Peter must forgive every time a brother or sister wrongs him. And what Jesus says to Peter, he also says to us. Just as God never tires, as Pope Francis says, of forgiving us, and we must never tire of asking for that forgiveness, so we, too, must never tire of extending that forgiveness when someone asks it of us, when someone has wronged us — even and especially those who have really wounded us deeply. We must forgive fathers and mothers who have hurt us when we were younger,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Monday of the Third Week of Lent

Memorial of St. John of God

March 8, 2021

2 Kings 5:1-15, Ps 42, Lk 4:24-30

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.8.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* The third week of Lent begins a new phase in our Lenten pilgrimage. The first two-and-a-half weeks of Lent, from Ash Wednesday through Saturday of the Second Week, are all about Jesus’ call to conversion, to repent, to respond to God’s gift of mercy, and through prayer, fasting and almsgiving, to become with God’s help holy as he is holy, teleios (fit for purpose, “perfect”) as he is teleios, merciful as he is merciful. Beginning on the Third Sunday — which in Cycle A features yesterday’s Gospel of the Samaritan Woman, Cycle B the cleansing of the Temple, and Cycle C the Fig Tree bearing fruit  —  we begin a specifically baptismal itinerary, helping the Elect preparing for baptism to crave ever more the Living Water, Jesus. It’s also a chance for those of us who have already entered the saving waters to ponder anew the crucial continuing relevance of our own baptism not as an event from many years ago but as the definitive reality of our life, leading us to want to keep our temple clean and to bear fruit from having been attached to the vine. During these upcoming two weeks, through the end of the Fourth Week at daily Mass (and Fifth Sunday in Cycle A), God wants to help the Elect and us to say, with the Samaritan Woman, “Give us that water always!,” the Living Water, Jesus, who begins to well up within us to eternal life on the day of our baptism. God wants each of us to say with the words of today’s Psalm, “Athirst is my soul for the living God!” He wants our souls to burn with zeal to keep our temple, his house, a house of prayer. He wants us to bear fruit from our faith overflowing in love. Today’s readings and feast help us to examine whether we have a faith that thirsts for God.

* Jesus returned to his hometown synagogue on the Sabbath, opened up the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah, read the section from Isaiah 61 that focuses on what the Messiah will do when at last he comes and then said “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” At first the people were amazed. But then they began to murmur, “Isn’t this the carpenter?” They began to take offense at him because he was one of them and how could one of them actually be the long awaited one? Their hearts began to harden. They weren’t responding with faith. That’s why Jesus today said to them, “No prophet is accepted in his native place.” Their admiration eventually turned to resentment and hatred. Their hardened hearts soon became homicidal as they tried to murder him by throwing him head first off a cliff. He came to his own, St. John would say, but his own didn’t accept him. They already had confined him to an unthreatening box and they weren’t going to let him escape.

* Jesus gave two examples in the Gospel of the type of open, faithful, thirsting hearts that God expects. The first is the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17:7-16). During a famine, God sent the Prophet Elijah to her home. Elijah asked her to prepare for him some water and some bread, but the woman replied that all she had was a little flour and a little olive oil left and she was preparing to make her last meal for her and her son before they would starve to death in the famine. Elijah told her not to be afraid because God would take care of all three of them, that the jar of flour would not be used up or the jug of oil run dry until the Lord sends rain. With trust, the woman did as Elijah said and the three of them survived for three and a hal...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Third Sunday of Lent (B), Vigil

March 6, 2021

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.6.21_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the brief homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege to join you again and ponder with you the consequential conversation Jesus wants to have with us in the Gospel this Sunday, when we will encounter a Jesus with whom many of us, especially today, are unfamiliar, a Jesus who speaks to us through a powerful, prophetic gesture. The same Jesus whom Isaiah prophesied would “not break a bruised reed nor quench a smoldering wick” (Is 42:3), the same Jesus whom the psalms would call “kind and merciful” (Ps 145:8) the same Jesus who called himself “meek and humble of heart” (Mt 11:29) started to overturn tables, tossed money on the floor, and made a whip of cords to drive the sheep and the cattle out of the temple. There is no contradiction between the image of Jesus as the kind, merciful friend of sinners and Jesus as consumed with zeal for his Father’s house, because out of love for sinners and his Father, he really the hated the sins that can kill sinners.

* The word St. John uses to describe how Jesus drove out the animals is the same verb used when Jesus did exorcisms and drove out the temple. Jesus was doing an exorcism of the temple in Jerusalem. The Temple had been built in order to be the dwelling place of God on earth, a place to encounter God in prayer, had become something very different. It wasn’t so much the fact that animals were being sold and money exchanged in the temple precincts that bothered Jesus. It was two things associated with this selling of animals and exchanging money

* The first was that the moneychangers and animal sellers were ripping off the people. The temple had become a “den of thieves.” When people came to the temple, they needed to sacrifice an animal to God, the size and value of the animal being determined by their personal means and the type of sacrifice being made. Rather than carry an animal with them for the many miles’ uphill walk to the temple — which was too much of a burden — most would buy one at the temple. But because there was such a demand, especially at the time of the Passover, the merchants had the market to drastically overcharge the people who needed the animals. Others who would try to save money by bringing an animal of their own often had to get the animals inspected by Temple officials who needed to verify that the animals they had brought were unblemished, as the Mosaic law stipulated. These inspectors often were on the take of the animal sellers to find blemishes that weren’t there and disqualify the affected animals. The poor who had saved their money over the course of the whole year for the trip to the temple, therefore, one way or the other, had to pay these enormous prices. While they were there, they also had to pay a temple tax, which needed to be given in one of two types of acceptable Temple currencies. That meant that most everyone had to exchange money and the moneychangers could take an exorbitant commission, which again penalized the poor most of all. Jesus was outraged that people were coming into the temple to rip off the poor. That was the first thing that incensed the Lord.

* The second was worse. The Jewish mentality had become so distorted over the centuries that they began to look at their relationship with God as something contractual or even magical. “As long as I sacrifice this animal to God,” they began to think to themselves, “everything will be all right.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Saturday of the Second Week of Lent

March 6, 2021

Mic 7:14-15.18-20, Ps 103, Lk 15:1-3.11-32

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.6.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today we reach the dramatic end of the first phase of the Lenten Season. From Ash Wednesday through Saturday of the Second Week of Lent, the readings from Sacred Scripture are all fundamentally geared to helping us understand and live the type of conversion to which God is calling us. Tomorrow, we begin a heavy emphasis on the meaning of baptism, to assist catechumens in their journey toward the saving waters and to reinvigorate all those who have already been baptized in the ever new life that is supposed to flow from baptism. At the end of the Fourth Week of Lent, we will make another transition to consider specifically all those prophecies and historical events that predicted and led to Jesus’ passion and death.

* Today, however, we come to the exclamation point of the phase in which God has been calling us, as Jesus told us on Ash Wednesday, to “repent and believe in the Gospel,” to pray, fast and give alms in such a way that we begin to think with the mind of God, hunger for what he hungers, and gratefully participate in his providential care of our brothers and sisters. It’s a time to become holy like God is holy, perfect as God is perfect, merciful like the Father is merciful. It is a time to focus on how his mercy endures forever and therefore on our recognizing our need for it, our coming to receive it, our rejoicing in it and our seeking to pass it on to others like we’ve first received it, are all meant to grow.

* In today’s readings we focus on that mercy, which is the driver of the whole season of Lent, especially this first part concerning conversion. The Prophet Micah exclaims with wonder and gratitude about God’s hesed, his merciful faithfulness to us despite our sins: “Who is there like you, the God who removes guilt and pardons sin for the remnant of his inheritance; Who does not persist in anger forever, but delights rather in clemency, and will again have compassion on us, treading underfoot our guilt? You will cast into the depths of the sea all our sins; You will show faithfulness to Jacob, and grace to Abraham, as you have sworn to our fathers from days of old.” In the Responsorial Psalm we ponder how “kind and merciful” he is who “pardons all your iniquities, … heals all your ills, … redeems your life from destruction, … crowns you with kindness and compassion, … will not always chide, … does not keep his wrath forever, … who does not deal with us according to our sins, nor requite us according to our crimes,” who has “put our transgressions” further from us as the east is from the west and the heavens are high above the earth.” And then in the Gospel, Jesus illustrates for us the love of God who delights in clemency, who shows his faithfulness to his wayward children, who does not deal with us according to our sins but who treats his with paternal kindness and compassion. It’s perhaps the most famous short-story of all time. It’s called the Parable of the Prodigal Son after the youngest of two boys, but it could easily have been called the Parable of the Merciful Father or the Parable of the Merciless Brother. We conclude this phase of Lent pondering what Jesus wants to teach us about mercy through all three characters in today’s Gospel.

* We begin with the younger son. His essential sin was not all that he did to blow his inheritance on a dissolute life. It was to treat his Father as if he were dead. To ask for the inheritance while the Father was still living wa...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the Second Week of Lent

March 5, 2021

Gen 37:3-4.12-13.17-18, Ps 105, Mt 21:33-43.45-46

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.5.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily:

* Today in the readings we focus on one of the most difficult experiences of human life, rejection. We ponder the rejection of Joseph by his family members and of Jesus by his creatures. It’s on occasion for us to ponder the many times in our lives we, too, have been rejected, especially those occasions that may sting the most. But in response to the terrible rejections of Joseph and Jesus, the Responsorial Psalm has us proclaim today, repeatedly, “Remember the marvels the Lord has done!” In the Gospel, Jesus, citing Psalm 118, says, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. By the Lord has this been done; it is wonderful in our eyes!” (Ps 118:22-23). The verse right after that is the essential verse of Easter, “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice in it and be glad.” To prepare ourselves in Lent for Easter, we must enter more deeply into the experience of the rejection we see through sin, of the envy that causes it, and how God not only seeks — marvelously! — to take away our sins and forgive them but to make them part of our salvation.

* In the first reading from the Book of Genesis, we see how Joseph the future Patriarch’s brothers were envious of him because he was their father Jacob’s favorite. The fact that he loved Joseph the most didn’t mean he didn’t love the other brothers, but their envy led them not only to close themselves to the love their father had for them but also to the love they should have for their father and their brother. Their envy led them, as Genesis tells us, to “hate [Joseph] so much that they would not even greet him” and that interior poison led them much further. When Joseph went out to help his brothers tend the flocks in Dothan, the brothers conspired to plan to murder him and toss his dead body into a cistern and then lie about it to their father by saying a wild beast had devoured him. They wanted to replicate Cain’s invidious murder of his brother Abel. To save Joseph’s life, one of the brothers, Reuben, persuaded the others just to abandon him into an empty cistern so that he might be able to rescue him later. And so they agreed and threw him down into an inescapable situation, with most of the brothers likely thinking that, while they themselves didn’t shed his blood, it would just be a longer dying process. But then they saw a group of Ishmaelites, basically their second cousins through their grandfather Isaac’s half-brother Ishmael, and sold him into slavery for 20 pieces of silver, not as an act of mercy but of simple profiteering from what they anticipated would be a situation tantamount to his death in Egypt. At every stage, their envy at Joseph’s good fortune led to evil. Their brotherly betrayal was a prophetic type of what would eventually happen to Jesus when he would be sold by one of his spiritual brothers, one of his closest friends, for silver, too.

* Jesus describes that betrayal, and the envy that led to it, in today’s Gospel. Jesus spoke to the chief priests and the scribes in a parable about the way they had treated all the messengers God had sent them and how they were going to treat him. In the prophets Israel had often been referred to as a vineyard planted by God. God had made the Israelites stewards of that vineyard but expected a harvest when vintage time grew near. The prophets were the ones sent to remind them of that yield of good deeds, but, as Jesus said,