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,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

UN Catholic Club

Virtual Meeting

“Catholicism, A Great Adventure and Love Affair”

March 4, 2021

 

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

 

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.4.21_UN_Catholic_Club_II_1.mp3

 

The outline for the talk was: 

* Introduction

* I was asked to speak about Catholicism as a Great Adventure and Love Affair.

* It’s a provocative title, because most non-Catholics would not look at Catholicism that way. If they did, they would be busting down the doors to get in.

* Many Catholics don’t look at it that way either. Rather than a great adventure, many regard it as boring. Rather than a love affair, many look at it as a thing of obligation and duty.

* And yet, why is the title appropriate? Why is it essential for our spiritual growth to relate to the faith as a great adventure and love affair? How can we better convey that sense of adventure and love to others, both fellow Catholics who may be fallen away, or lukewarm, or lifelessly obedient, as well as to non-Catholics who don’t perceive the excitement and passion?

* Let’s first look at the faith as an adventure

* Most people are stimulated by a sense of adventure. There’s something thrilling about the discovery of things that are new, challenging, daring, whether it’s hiking up a mountain, traveling cross country, exploring woods.

* Adventure comes from the same Latin word for Advent, which means future coming, or expected arrival. Sometimes, of course, we can look to the future with dread. We can think whatever surprises will come will be the thing of nightmares, not dreams. But that’s not the way we look at adventures. Adventures still contain the element of surprise, of things we don’t know, but we’re filled with enthusiasm not anxiety, because we have a sense of expectation and hope.

* We can call the faith an adventure because ultimately when God is leading us, we trust that all things, whether seemingly propitious or adverse, will work out for the good.

* In the Bible we see the sense of adventure a lot:

* Abraham leaving Ur of the Chaldees to set off for a far away land, trusting in God.

* Moses and the Israelites leaving Egypt behind

* The lengthy journey of the Magi following the star of Bethlehem

* Christ calling the apostles to follow him, not telling them where, but trusting in him.

* Why do some Christians not sense that adventure today? Why don’t they treat it as dynamic?

* Often because they’re not surrounded by people who do.

* An adventure can only happen when we’re ready to move.

* Our faith is missionary. Jesus is constantly using action verbs: come, go, follow me. When we meet missionaries, we clearly capture that sense of adventure that got them to leave home, travel thousands of miles away, to places often without running water, without electricity, with mosquito nets. Their faith comes alive because they are living an adventure.

* But many don’t journey. They’re static. They’ve often stopped searching. They’re satiated by the fulfillment of lesser hopes that they’re no longer drawn toward the horizon. When we’re surrounded by these, we can often take on their inertia.

* God is always calling us to adventure. But are we ready to leave things behind to follow him?

* Faith as a love affair.

* It’s a love affair because it begins with God’s love. He’s passionately in love with us. A sign of that love is creation. An even greater one is redemption. What a journey it is to enter the world and die for the beloved,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the Second Week of Lent

March 4, 2021

Jer 17:5-10, Ps 1, Lk 16:19-31

 

To listen to today’s homily, please click below:

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.4.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily:

* We’ve been talking since the beginning of Lent about how this holy season is supposed to make us more like God: that prayer is meant to help us begin to think as God thinks and to treasure and become more like him whom we adore; that fasting is meant to help us to hunger for what God hungers; that almsgiving is supposed to help us participate in God’s providential care for others. The mercy we show for others is really the fruit of all three practices: the fruit of prayer is charity; what God hungers for is, as we heard on in Isaiah on the third day of Lent, for us to share our bread with the hungry, to shelter the oppressed and the homeless, to clothe the naked when we see them, not to turn our back on our own family members and kin in need, to release those bound unjustly and break the yoke that keeps people oppressed; and almsgiving doesn’t concern simply good deeds done for the poor and needy, but the tree that produces that fruit: The word almsgiving comes from the old English aelmesse, which is derived from the Greek eleemosyna, which is the word for mercy, as in Kyrie eleison, “Lord, have mercy.” The Latin is misericors, literally a “heart for the poor.” Almsgiving flows from a merciful heart, a heart like God’s.

* It’s not enough for us as Christians simply not to do evil to others. We also are called positively to do good, to sacrifice ourselves for others, to go out in search for those in need, to give not only things but ourselves to those in greater need. Jesus wants us — and wants to help us — to love one another as he has loved us first, to become Good Samaritans to others just like he crossed the road all the way from heaven to care for us, not just not harming us but positively helping us. Lent is a time for us to examine whether we are in fact bearing fruit from a heart full of compassion. It’s the time for us to beg God for what we asked at the beginning of today’s Mass, to “direct the hearts of your servants to yourself, that, caught up in the fire of your Spirit, we may be found steadfast in faith and effective in works.”

* In the Gospel today, Jesus gives us one of his most powerful parables in which he illustrates to us that it’s not enough just not to harm our neighbor. He wants us to love our neighbor, to give of ourselves for our neighbors in need. The Rich Man in the Parable goes to hell not because he did any evil to the poor man, Lazarus, wounded and starving to death at his gate. He didn’t insult him. He didn’t beat him. He didn’t send his dogs to attack him. The Rich Man was sent to hell because when he saw Lazarus at his gate he simply did nothing. He continued to eat his three sumptuous meals a day while Lazarus was dying of starvation and lack of care. Even the pets recognized his suffering such that the dogs were licking his wounds to try to heal them, but the Rich Man had no such compassion.

* The parable illustrates very clearly the Rich Man’s sins of omission and it gets us to ask courageously and sincerely whether we’re committing similar sins. Jesus says that at the end of time, those who with great pain and regret he will wave to his eternal left, will be those who did nothing when they saw people hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, ill or in prison (Mt 25:31-46). They’ll all be shocked, similar to the way the Rich Man was shocked in the parable today, and will ask, “When did we see you, Lord, hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the Second Week of Lent

Memorial of Saint Katharine Drexel

March 3, 2021

Jer 18:18-20, Ps 31, Mt 20:17-28

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.3.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following points were attempted in today’s homily: 

* The entire season of Lent is a commentary on what Jesus announced to us on Ash Wednesday. It’s an occasion to turn away from sin and turn to Him who is the Gospel in such a way that we seek and begin to turn with him constantly, which is what it means to “con-vert.” That conversion to which we’re summoned does not stop at external behaviors, rending our garments, but at our desires, what the Prophet Joel calls rending our hearts. In today’s readings we see how are deepest desires, our most profound ambitions, are meant to be transformed. In the Gospel yesterday, Jesus told us, “The greatest among you must be your servant,” and Jesus today reiterates that point saying, “Whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave,” and says that this is at its deepest level a reiteration of his common command, “follow me,” because “the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

* Lent is the period for the transformation of our ambitions, so that we will turn more and more with Jesus’ ambition. The three Lenten practices are all meant to help us: prayer helps us to look at things from God’s perspective, fasting to help us hunger for God and for what he hungers, almsgiving to help us to put others’ needs ahead of our own personal desires. Jesus wants to help us transform our ambitions by uniting us to his own prayer, fasting and almsgiving. It’s important for us to note that he doesn’t seek to eliminate all ambition. For him, ambition, desire, hunger itself is not a sin. But he wants us to be desirous of the right things, to revolutionize what great things we seek. There’s a pacific ocean between ambition for self-aggrandizement, which is the typical ambition in the world, and ambition for souls, between seeking to glorify one’s name and establish one’s Kingdom versus trying to hallow God’s name and enter and establish his kingdom. Today in the Gospel Jesus seeks to transform make holy the ambition not just of James and John and their mother, not just of the apostles, but all of us. And in the process, he teaches us an important lesson about the way he purifies us of false ambition so that we may be more like him.

* We see just how much the apostles’ and their family members’ ambitions need to be transformed in St. Matthew’s account. As soon as Jesus gives the third prediction of his upcoming betrayal, condemnation, mockery, scourging and crucifixion, rather than consoling him, the apostles and John’s and James’ mom show their spiritually worldly ambitions. In fact, every time Jesus predicted his passion it seemed to bring out the worst, rather than the best, in his followers. We remember the first time he announced it, Peter, thinking not as God does but as human beings do and playing the part of Satan, “rebuked” him, saying “no such thing should ever happen to you.” The second time Jesus gave the same prediction and everyone just remained silent, thinking about their own situation, and then speaking along the way about the one who would be the greatest. It would be as if you told your best friends that you had just been informed by your doctor that you had two weeks to live and your friends, instead of consoling you and showing concern, began in your presence to ignore that diagnosis and just to think about how that would affect them.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Tuesday of the Second Week of Lent

March 2, 2021

Is 1:10.16-20, Ps 50, Mt 23:1-12

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.2.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* On Ash Wednesday each year, Jesus gives us the program for Lent and life when he announces “Repent and Believe,” or “Turn away from sin and believe in the Gospel.” There are two moments that he describes: the first stage of conversion is averting from everything unfit from God — from a bad life, from sin, from evil. The second stage is adverting, turning toward God, and then converting, turning with God, through putting our faith into practice. In today’s opening prayer we asked for this, as we asked the Lord in his “unceasing mercy” and “constant help” to keep us “from all harm”—  and no harm is greater than separating ourselves from God’s love and fraternal love through sin — and be “directed to all that brings salvation,” which is what real practical faith in the Gospel brings us. In today’s readings we also see both moments portrayed very clearly.

* At the beginning of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, God through his emissary calls the Jews “Sodom” and “Gomorrah” to highlight the severity of their sins, because those are the most notoriously iniquitous cities of all time. Throughout Isaiah we see what those sins were. God speaks of their “misdeeds,” their “doing evil,” their “scarlet” and “crimson red” sins. “Wash yourselves clean!,” Isaiah cries out. In the Responsorial Psalm, God points out the hypocrisy of his people, saying, “Why do you recite my statutes and profess my covenant with your mouth” as “you hate discipline and cast my words behind you?” In the Gospel, Jesus begins a searing 35-verse call to repentance not only for the Scribes and Pharisees but for all of us who, like them — and in contrast to the sinners of Sodom and Gomorrah who previously gloried in their debaucheries — can be tempted to appear white on the outside while our souls remain scarlet on the inside. That hypocrisy, that acting, was the principal vice of the Scribes and the Pharisees and often can remain the downfall for those who behave in a religious way but whose hearts are far from the Lord. Jesus says of them that they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy religious burdens on others without lifting a finger to help them, whereas the truth, although often challenging, is meant always to set us free. The reason why they didn’t lift a finger in charity and seek to help people who were struggling to align their lives to God’s will was because they were doing everything not for God or others but to be seen: they widened the phylacteries that would contain verses of sacred scripture in their locks of hair, lengthened the tassels that were to remind them of revelation, and preferred to be acknowledged by everyone for their religious devotion in banquets, synagogues and marketplaces. They were the types who, Jesus told us on Ash Wednesday, pray, fast and give alms not out of love for God and others but to be rewarded by others’ praise and esteem, the exact opposite of the type of motivation God wants: their motivation was not true love of God but rather self-love under the mask of devotion. They sat on Moses’ seat but didn’t share Moses’ own humility before God (Ex 4:10,13). Their knowledge of the law, rather than moving them to conform their lives ever more to God’s revelation, became in essence an obstacle, because it made them proud not humble; they manipulated their knowledge of the law to seek to grow in others’ eyes. They sought the titles of “rabbi” — which literally means “great one,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Agnes Church, Manhattan

Second Sunday of Lent, Extraordinary Form

February 28, 2021

1 Thess 4:1-7, Matt 17: 1-9

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.28.21_EF_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

“This is the will of God, your holiness,” St. Paul tells us today in his First Letter to the Thessalonians. The whole season of Lent is meant to focus us anew on this call to be holy as God is holy. As Lent began, we were marked with ashes, reminded that we are dust and unto dust we shall return, and instructed to waste no time in pursuing holiness through repenting and believing in the Gospel. The three Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are meant to help us to unite ourselves to Jesus in his holiness, through entering into his prayer, his 40 day fast in the desert, and his giving of himself down to the last drop of his blood for us and others. Prayer, almsgiving and fasting, respectively, help us to confront the temptations of the devil to disorder our relationship with God, with others and with ourselves, to overcome the three-fold concupiscence toward individualism, materialism, and hedonism, so that we might freely live for God. God’s will for us is our sanctification and Lent is the health club for the soul that is meant to get us to shed spiritual obesity and lethargy and get us into true Christian shape.

That’s why on the Second Sunday of Lent each year we ponder the scene of the Transfiguration of Jesus, which teaches us three essential lessons about Lent and about the perennial call to holiness.

The first is the exertion, the effort, that a holy Lent and life entails. In today’s Gospel, Jesus leads Peter, James and John on a hike up an “exceedingly high mountain.” Christian tradition normally associates the mountain where Jesus was Transfigured as Mount Tabor, which towers over Galilee and the Plains of Megiddo, and takes over ten minutes to climb in vans vertiginously racing up narrow, zig-zagging paths. It would take vigorous climbers at least a few hours to ascend on foot. Many Scriptural scholars, however, believe the more likely place where this glorification happened was Mount Hermon, now in southern Syria and close to Caesarea Philippi where the preceding scene in St. Matthew’s Gospel took place. Mount Hermon is 9,232 feet tall, approximately five times the height of Mt. Tabor (1886 feet). That would take a whole day’s work to ascend. They would have needed to leave civilization behind, leave their comfort zones behind, and climb with Jesus, sweating, probably gasping for air, to pray with him and see him revealed. The lesson for us in Lent and in life is that the Lord is likewise asking of us to make an exertion. Lent is fundamentally dynamic. We’re called to be on the move. Jesus never says to us, “Stay where you are,” but always “Come!,” and “Go!” and “Follow me!” And the pilgrimage he seeks to have us make with him isn’t a stroll on the beach. He’s asking us to climb, to sweat, to work, and to leave our comfort zones and push ourselves like alpine climbers.

The second lesson is the foretaste of the finish line God seeks to give us to help us to persevere. Saints Peter, James and John saw something extraordinary at the end of their spiritual and physical climb: Jesus was transfigured. He and his clothes were radiant. He was speaking with Moses and Elijah, the greatest figures in Jewish history, about — St. Luke tells us — the “exodus” he was to accomplish in Jerusalem, when he would lead us, like Moses led the Israelites from slavery through water and the desert to the promised land. The difference about the exodus on which Jesus leads us is that the slavery is not to Pharaoh but to sin...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

February 27, 2021

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.27.21_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to join you again and ponder with you the consequential conversation Jesus wants to have with us in the Gospel this Sunday, as we, with the apostles Peter, James and John, behold Jesus transfigured among us.

* The scene of the Transfiguration has three lessons that are meant to influence the way we live Lent and life.

* The first is the exertion, the effort that a holy Lent entails. Jesus leads Peter, James and John on a hike up an “exceedingly high mountain.” Christian tradition normally associates the mountain where Jesus was transfigured as Mount Tabor, which towers over Galilee and the Plains of Megiddo, and takes over ten minutes to climb in vans up narrow zig-zagging paths. It would take vigorous climbers at least a couple of hours to ascend on foot. But Scriptural scholars believe the more likely place where this glorification happened was Mount Hermon, now in southern Syria and close to Caesarea Philippi where the preceding scene in St. Matthew’s Gospel took place. Mount Hermon is 9,232 feet tall, approximately five times the height of Mt. Tabor (1886 feet). That would have been a whole day’s work to ascend. They needed to leave civilization behind, they needed to leave their comfort zones behind, and climb with Jesus, sweating, probably gasping for air, to pray with Jesus and see him revealed. The lesson for us this Lent is that the Lord is likewise asking of us to make an exertion. Lent is fundamentally dynamic. We’re called to be on the move. Jesus never says to us, “Stay where you are,” but always “Come!,” and “Go!” and “Follow me!” And the pilgrimage he seeks to have us make with him isn’t in a comfy golf cart. He’s asking us to climb, to sweat, to work, and to leave our comfort zones behind. What is the Lord asking you to leave behind in order to advance on the journey of faith?

* The second Lenten lesson is the help God gives us to make this exertion. In the Transfiguration, Saints Peter, James and John saw something extraordinary at the end of their spiritual and physical climb. Jesus was transfigured. He and his clothes were radiant. He was speaking with Moses and Elijah, the greatest figures in Jewish history, about the “exodus” he was to accomplish in Jerusalem, when he would lead us, like Moses led the Israelites from slavery through water and the desert to the promised land, only this time the slavery is sin not Pharaoh, the water is baptismal not the Red Sea, the desert is not in the Middle East but in Lent, and the Promised Land is not flowing with milk and honey but the Living Water that wells up to eternal life. The experience of the various theophanies at the top of the mountain was so powerful they didn’t know what to say, but they wanted to keep the experience going for as long as possible, building booths for Jesus, Moses and Elijah. Why did this scene of the Transfiguration happen? The reason was ultimately to strengthen them to remain strong in faith even when they would descend the Mount of Transfiguration to ascend Mount Calvary. When they would see Jesus transfigured in blood, they would be able to remember Jesus in glory. The Church helps us to capture the reason for Jesus’ transfiguration in the Eucharistic Preface for Mass, in which the priest prays, “For after [Jesus] had told the disciples of his coming Death, on the holy mountain he manifested to them his glory,...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the First Week of Lent

February 26, 2021

Ez 18:21-18, Ps 130, Mt 5:20-26

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.26.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* In today’s Gospel, Jesus says that our righteousness, our justice, must surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, in order to enter into eternal life, in order not to go to Hell. The “justice” of the Pharisees was quite rigorous in terms of prayer, weekly fasting, tithing. But there were two things it lacked. First, it was external, focusing on acts rather than the heart; second, it lacked mercy. The Pharisees were the “separated ones,” those who in order to cut themselves off from sin sought to cut themselves totally off from sinners, as if they weren’t sinners themselves. That’s why they complained when Jesus was eating with Matthew and the other tax collectors, because they had no communion at all with sinners, whom they thought would just be straw for the fires of hell. Likewise, Jesus gave the three parables of the Lost Sheep, Lost Coin and Lost Son in Lk 15 because they were all like the older brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, preferring their brothers to remain dead in sin rather than rejoicing in their resurrection through reconciliation with God. Our righteousness must surpass theirs because theirs wasn’t truly “right” with God, they served him with their lips and even externally with some of their deeds, but their hearts were far from him, because they didn’t realize their need for God’s mercy and God’s desire to transform them by that mercy. The whole practice of Lent is meant to help us become like God: in fasting, we learn to hunger for what he hungers, as we saw last Friday with Isaiah; in almsgiving, we share in his providential care, passing on to others who need it more than we do what God has first given to us; and in prayer, allowing his thoughts to become our thoughts and his ways our ways. Today in the readings we enter into these truths.

* God responds to a complaint he knows has welled up in the hearts of the people of Israel in Ezekiel’s day and one that arises in every age. It certainly arose for the Scribes and Pharisees whose righteousness ours needs to surpass. “The Lord’s way is not fair!,” we can complain. Ezekiel had described clearly what the Lord’s way is. On the one hand, “If the wicked man turns away from all the sins he committed, if he keeps all my statutes and does what is right and just, he shall surely live, he shall not die. None of the crimes he committed shall be remembered against him; he shall live because of the virtue he has practiced.” On the other hand, “If the virtuous man turns from the path of virtue to do evil, the same kind of abominable things that the wicked man does, can he do this and still live? None of his virtuous deeds shall be remembered, because he has broken faith and committed sin; because of this, he shall die.”

* The first way we and others complain that the Lord’s way is not just is that it is a way of mercy for sinners. Someone who has lived a sinful live for decades all of a sudden converts and God says he shall live. God won’t remember the crimes he has committed. True justice, we can say, is to hold people accountable forever. Like the older brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, we can get into the state that we don’t rejoice when our lost brother is found and our dead brother comes to life again. Our self-identity is caught up, somehow, in a sense of spiritual superiority, and when he’s restored to the relationship with the Father he should have had all along,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the First Week in Lent

February 25, 2021

Esther 14:12.14-16.23-25, Ps 138, Mt 7:7-12

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.25.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today in the Gospel Jesus continues his lessons for us our prayer that he began on Ash Wednesday and built on two days ago. On Ash Wednesday he told us to pray differently from those who pray for show. He told us to go to our inner room, the place symbolized by the locked location in the house where where we hold our treasures, and pray to our Father in secret, because prayer is supposed to bring us into a loving, filial Communion with the Father. Two days ago, Jesus built on that lesson when he taught us how to pray, giving us the words of the Our Father, and forming us to seek the hallowing of the Father’s name, the coming of his kingdom, the doing of his will, and the daily natural and supernatural nourishment, the mercy, the strengthening in temptation and the deliverance from evil we need to do so.

* Today he speaks to us about the filial confidence we should have in prayer as he urges us to bring our needs and desires to God. Jesus wants us to seek God in our prayer, to knock on his door, to ask for what we need and desire. And he gives us a promise that no infomercial or used car salesman would ever be so bold as to make: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” That’s an almost incredible guarantee, that our prayers will always be heard.

Notice that he doesn’t tell us, “Ask and you’ll get whatever you ask for.” He instructs us to seek but he doesn’t tell us exactly what we’ll find. He tells us to knock but he doesn’t say what will be waiting for us on the other side of the opened door. But he promises us that our prayers will be heard and God will respond. The reason why God will respond is precisely because, as we’ve been pondering throughout Lent, God is a loving Father. Jesus says, “Which one of you would hand his son a stone when he asked for a loaf of bread, or a snake when he asked for a fish? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him.” He will always give us what is good for us. In St. Luke’s version of an almost identical discourse, Jesus promises that the Father will always respond to our prayers by giving us the Holy Spirit. God responds to our petitions first and foremost by giving himself, because the greatest gift is the Giver. Jesus says all of this so that we will have no fear at all in praying but a great boldness, a boldness that translates into asking with filial confidence. And he wants us to ask!

We see this prayer of fearless petition exemplified for us in the first reading. Queen Esther, a Jew living in Babylon, risks her life to try to save the Jewish people from one of King Ahasuerus’ assistants, Haman, who was seeking to have all the Jews executed by decree of a misled King. But before she would risk her life going into the King’s presence unbidden, she and all the Jews prayed and fasted for three days. Today we have the bold prayer she makes in the presence of God the Father as she lay prostrate with all her attendants from morning to evening: “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, blessed are you. Help me, who am alone and have no help but you, for I am taking my life in my hand. As a child I used to hear from the books of my forefathers that you, O Lord,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the First Week of Lent

February 24, 2021

Jonah 3:1-10, Ps 51, Lk 11:29-32

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.24.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

We’re now one week into Lent and the Church today gives us a powerful reminder of the individual and communal conversion that Lent is supposed to bring about in us. Pope Benedict used to remind us that Lent is not about a minor course correction in our life but about a big change of heart and ways. Today is a good opportunity for us to see if we’re on the trajectory of tinkering a little with our life or profoundly altering it.

* In the first reading, we encounter the Prophet Jonah, who was sent by God to the pagan city of Nineveh (modern day Mosul in northern Iraq and former capital of the neo-Assyrian empire) to preach massive conversion. “Forty more days and Nineveh will be destroyed!,” he exclaimed. The city was huge, taking three days to traverse in one direction, and yet Jonah didn’t have to get to “39 more days and Nineveh will be destroyed.” This pagan city heard the message immediately, believed God and converted, proclaiming a fast, vesting in sackcloth and sitting in ashes. The King himself divested of his royal armaments and sat in sackcloth and ashes as well, proclaiming a total fast — “neither man nor beast, neither cattle nor sheep, shall taste anything; they shall not eat nor shall they drink water — and commanding that both persons and animals shall be “covered with sackcloth and call loudly to God.” Most importantly, he decreed that “every man shall turn from his evil way and from the violence he has in hand.” All of this was in the hope that God may forgive them and that they may not perish. It was an unprecedented and total conversion — and God responded, because as we prayed in the Psalm, he never spurns a contrite and humbled heart.

If that’s what the pagan Ninevites did at the beginning of the 40-day proto-Lent that Jonah had announced, how much more seriously should we Christians take this 40-day season of penance and conversion? If they responded so thoroughly to the message of Jonah, how much more shall we respond to the “greater than Jonah,” Jesus, we have announcing that same message to us? One week ago, he put ashes on our forehead and told us to “Repent and believe in the Gospel.” He proclaimed a fast that he called us to do it differently than all the rest. He summoned us to prayer, to almsgiving, to remedying our evil actions and replacing them with good actions. Have we responded as seriously as the Ninevites to this summons? Or have we thought that we have 33 days left…

We may be tempted to respond to this summons, “I’m not that bad!” “I don’t have to repent from a life of crime or debauchery, or from harboring a cesspool of unchristian thoughts or desires.” But our individual conversion is only one part of Lent. There’s another aspect of it, which is communal reparation and conversion. Not everyone in Nineveh was as guilty as the others, but as a whole, Nineveh was a sinful city, and everyone, the good, the bad and the worse, even the innocent pets, repented. Likewise, not just for ourselves but for others we need to repent. Jesus said in the Gospel, “This generation is an evil generation,” and he can say that about every generation. There’s good in every generation, but there’s also evil in every generation. There are lots of great things in our culture, but much evil over which we need to repent. Over the course of this homily, another 18 babies on average will be legally executed in our country through abortion.