Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Espirito Santo Church, Fall River, MA

Nuptial Mass of Cody Knight and Kimberly Abgrab

May 22, 2021

Sir 26:1-4.13-16, Ps 34, Phil 4:4-9, Mt 5:1-12

 

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

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The following text guided the homily: 

“Rejoice in the Lord always,” St. Paul tells us in his Letter to the Philippians, which Cody and Kimberly chose for today’s wedding Mass. “I shall say it again: rejoice!” We are filled with joy and abundant gratitude to God for getting you to this day — despite a pandemic, despite some serious health challenges — and for making it possible for us to be here with you as he prepares to join you in one flesh for the rest of your lives. Jesus came into the world so that his joy might be in us and our joy might be complete. And since God-with-us is with us until the end of time, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, in poverty and prosperity, it is indeed possible, in fact our duty and salvation, to rejoice in him at all times and always and everywhere give him thanks and praise.

Joy is a fruit of the action of the Holy Spirit in us (Gal 5:22). To rejoice always, we must cooperate with the work of the Holy Spirit. And it is impossible to miss the imprint of the Holy Spirit, Kimberly and Cody, on your marriage day. You are getting married in this beautiful Church dedicated to the Holy Spirit. You are being wed on the Vigil of Pentecost, celebrating that day on which the Holy Spirit came down upon Mary and the Apostles in the Upper Room, as depicted in the beautiful stained glass window in the choir loft. This sanctuary is full of the bandeiras (flags) and coronas (crowns) reflective of Portuguese piety toward the Divino Espirito Santo, the third Person of the Blessed Trinity. And the priest celebrating your wedding was here on April 12, 2010, as Kimberly’s Confirmation sponsor, Kimberly, as she was sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit, as the Holy Spirit came down upon her as her helper and guide and as she were filled with his gifts of wisdom, understanding, knowledge, reverence, prudence, courage and fear of the Lord. This is the same Holy Spirit who likewise strengthened you in faith, Cody, on March 8, 2010 at St. Dominic Parish in Swansea.

We know what happened on Pentecost. The Holy Spirit worked a moral miracle in the lives of the apostles in the Upper Room. On Holy Thursday, despite their promises that they would never betray the Lord, the apostles left the Last Supper and all of them let the Lord down. 53 days later, after the Holy Spirit descended upon them as tongues of fire, they left that same Upper Room and courageously bore witness to Christ even to the point of death. That’s the difference that the Holy Spirit makes. He does the same thing in marriage. He takes the natural love of a man and woman for each other and strengthens it, raising marriage up to the dignity of a sacrament, a sign and means of intimate loving communion with God. Here the Holy Spirit who came down upon each of you in Confirmation wants to come down upon your marriage to fortify you to love each other not just with human love, but with the very love of God.

In the first reading from the Book of Sirach, we hear sung the praises of a good, worthy and virtuous wife, who brings joy to her husband and radiance to her home. That’s the type of wife and generous gift you want to be, Kimberly, for Cody. The Holy Spirit wants to help you become that type of wife and mother.

In the second reading, St. Paul instructs you, “Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for Pentecost Sunday (B)

May 22, 2021

 

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

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The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us on Pentecost Sunday.

* In the Gospel we have, Jesus tells the first apostles in the Upper Room on Easter Sunday evening, and all of us, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” What does it mean to receive the Holy Spirit?

* Many have not received the Holy Spirit. There’s a famous scene in the Acts of the Apostles when St. Paul came to Ephesus and met some disciples. He asked, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?” They responded, “We have never even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” Pope-emeritus Benedict, at World Youth Day in Australia in 2008, said, “The Holy Spirit has been in some ways the neglected person of the Blessed Trinity,” and confessed that it was only as a young priest teaching theology that he began not only to recognize the importance that the Holy Spirit should play in his life as a priest and professor but that he came to know him intimately. He added, “It is not enough to know the Spirit; we must welcome Him as the guide of our souls, as the ‘Teacher of the interior life’ who introduces us to the Mystery of the Trinity, because He alone can open us up to faith and allow us to live it each day to the full.” And we don’t have to be a member of the Charismatic Renewal to allow the Holy Spirit to become that teacher and guide. If we wish to understand the faith, if we wish to live it, if we wish to pass it on, we must allow ourselves to be led by the Holy Spirit, even if we, like Joseph Ratzinger, are beginning as adults. For us, the “great unknown” must become the “great known,” the teacher, the leader, the consoler, the advocate.

* During the Last Supper, Jesus said something truly shocking about the Holy Spirit. He said, ““I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.” Jesus is basically declaring that if we have a choice between Him and the Holy Spirit, we should choose the latter. That’s how important he says the Holy Spirit is.The great joy is that we don’t have to have to choose between the two. It is crucial, however, for us to ponder the role of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life and to examine whether we’ve received the Holy Spirit within us at the depth at which he wants to go.

* We can learn a lot about how to receive the Holy Spirit through remembering what happened on the first Pentecost. Before his Ascension Jesus had enjoined the apostles not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the “promise of the Father” about which they had heard him speak, for “in a few days,” he said, “you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” The apostles and the other followers of Jesus very wisely huddled around Mary and “devoted themselves with one accord to prayer.” They prayed together with Mary in order to learn from her how to get ready to receive the Holy Spirit, for it was she who was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit at Jesus’ virginal conception and who continually lived as a Spouse of the Holy Spirit, receiving and responding to his inspirations in an exemplary way. United with her they prayed and they waited. Jesus hadn’t told them how long they were to wait in prayerful expectation. So their first holy hour stretched into a day of recollection.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, New York, NY

Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter

Memorial of St. Christopher Magallanes and Companions

May 21, 2021

Acts 25:13-21, Ps 103, Jn 21:15-19

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.21.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* In today’s Gospel, we have one of the most powerful and poignant scenes in the Gospel, which the Church gives us to help us to summarize the graces of the Easter Season and to send us forward into Pentecost and beyond. It’s a continuation, in a sense, of the Easter Octave, since it’s the second half of the Gospel we had on Easter Friday, April 9. Jesus meets Peter and six other disciples on the seashore of Galilee where he cooks them breakfast. At the end of the meal, he takes Simon Peter aside in order to restore his confidence after having totally denied Jesus three times on Holy Thursday just a couple of hours after saying that even if he should have to die for Jesus, he would never betray him. Peter was not yet able to experience the joy of Jesus’ resurrection fully because of the trauma of his sins. But Jesus needed him. Jesus wanted to solidify the rock on whom he was building his Church. So in response to Peter’s three-fold denial, Jesus gave him a chance to make a three-fold affirmation of love.

* Buried within their dialogue is a real drama, but to see it, we have to know a little Greek. The first time Jesus asks Peter if he loves him, the word he uses for love is agape, which means a total self-sacrificial type of love, the type of love Jesus himself showed when he said, “No one has any greater love than to lay down his life for his friends.” “Simon, son of John,” he was asking, “do you love me with agape?” Peter’s response, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you,” doesn’t use the word “agape,” but rather “philia.” He replies, in other words, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you as a friend.” Peter, after having broken his promise to die for Jesus before he ever would deny him, wasn’t going to make the same promise again. He was still carrying around the weight of his betrayal. Jesus had called him a friend during the Last Supper because he had revealed to him and the other apostles all that the Father had told him, but he had been stripped of the confidence that had made him commit to love Jesus by Jesus’ life-giving standard, that the greatest love is to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. So Jesus asked him a second time, “Peter, do you love me with agape, with total self-sacrificial love?” Peter replied again, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you with philia, as a friend.” So Jesus in the third question lowered himself to where Peter was comfortable and asked, “Simon, Son of John, do you love me with philia?” That’s when Peter was distressed. He knew the Lord was calling him to more but the Lord was acknowledging that Peter didn’t think he was capable of heroic love. He replied, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you as a friend.” Jesus, however, wasn’t going to leave Peter there. He said to him that when he was younger, he used to dress himself and go about as he pleased. But when Peter would grow old, another would “stretch out his hands” — a Greek euphemism for crucifixion — and lead him to a place he didn’t want to go, something, St. John said, was indicating the type of death by which Peter would glorify God. Jesus was telling him, “Even if you don’t want to say again publicly that you love me enough to die for me, you will love me that way, even being crucified for me.” And Jesus to emphasize the point said to him, “Follow me,” because Peter would follow him all the way.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, New York, NY

Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter

May 20, 2021

Acts 22:30.23:6-11, Ps 16, Jn 17:20-26

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.20.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today as we continue our preparations for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, we are provoked by today’s readings to examine the Holy Spirit’s work of unity. He is the personified loving union between the Father and the Son and he has been sent by the Father and the Son so that we might enter into that communion with God and with others, so that we might become one Body, one Spirit, in Christ. The ultimate, eschatological battle in which all of creation is engaged is one of communion versus disunity. Jesus came to reconcile all things in himself, to draw all things to himself on the Cross, to make us one flock with one Shepherd. This will culminate in heaven, when we hope to enter into the communion of saints within the communion of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But it is opposed by the work of the devil, who is always seeking to isolate us, divide us, and permanently alienate us from God and from others. The most accurate image of Hell is not one full of flames; it’s one in which everyone is as far as possible away from others… The choices we make here on earth are ultimately able to be understood as choices for or against communion with God and others.

* Jesus prays in the Gospel that we might be as united with each other as Father and Son are united, something that’s impossible for us but not impossible for God. This communion of saints among the communion who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit is the Spirit’s principal work. Everything else is an explicitation of that mission. Jesus prays for the success of that Mission in today’s Gospel with insistence, begging him that we might be one so that the world might know that he was sent by the Father and that the Father loves us just as he loves him. That’s an extraordinary prayer that points to the Holy Spirit’s mission. The world will be convinced of Jesus’ presence and mission by the way we’re united with each other. The world will be convinced of God’s personal love for each of us by the way love each other. Our union, our Christian communion brought about by the Holy Spirit, is the most important element of the new evangelization. That’s why we pray for that unity at every Mass as well, uniting ourselves as Bride to Bridegroom, as Body to Head, praying for that gift.

We might be tempted to dismiss Jesus’ prayer as something that sounds beautiful, but which is obviously utopian and beyond our grasp. But Jesus would never have prayed for something impossible. He, through whom we and the whole world were created, never engaged in “wishful thinking.” He not only knew the Truth about us and God, but enfleshed that Truth, fully aware of what was possible and what was not. It is also true that the Father would never refuse the prayer of his Son. As Jesus prayed before the raising of Lazarus, “I thank you, Father, for having heard me. I know that you always hear me” (Jn 11:42). The Father always hears his prayer. Therefore, if Jesus were praying that we be one, that we be as united among ourselves as are the Persons in the Blessed Trinity and that we abide in them as they abide in each other, then that must mean it is possible and is what should be the reality among us. This dual communion is, in fact, what will happen in heaven. If by God’s mercy we follow Christ all the way to heaven, we will be in full communion with the Communion-of-Persons-in-Love who is the Holy Trinity and in that communion, we will be in full communion with everyone else ...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, New York, NY

Wednesday of the Seventh Week of Easter

May 19, 2021

Acts 20:28-38, Ps 68, Jn 17:11-19

 

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

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The following points were considered in today’s homily: 

* Today we continue to ponder the valedictory words of Jesus in the Upper Room and of St. Paul in Melitus. Jesus’ words were to the Father, but he said them aloud so that the apostles could hear them — and through them, we could hear them — and that we might “share [Jesus’] joy completely.” They were also given to us so that we might become Jesus’ glory through coming fully alive in him and so that the Father might be glorified in the Son through our having life and joy to the full in the Son. St. Paul’s words were to the presbyters of Ephesus, so that they could continue the work that St. Paul had laborered for “three years, night and day … with tears.” As we’ll see, St. Paul’s words were an echo of what Jesus prayed to the Father.

* Today Jesus stresses his relationship to the Father and to the world and the relationship he wishes us to have to the Father and the world.

* He says that he’s one with the Father and he wants us to be as united to each other as the Father and the Son are united. We will focus on this more tomorrow. What joy we have from being in loving communion with God and each other!

* He stresses twice that he doesn’t belong to the world and we shouldn’t belong to the world, emphasizing that we do not belong to the world “any more” than he does. Those are extraordinary words. He says that we’re supposed to have the same relationship to the world that he does and that we shouldn’t belong to the world any more than he. What joy we have when we are not enslaved to the world!

* He asks the Father to consecrate us so that we might belong — not to the world — but to the Father just like he belongs to the Father, just as Jesus does. To be consecrated means to be cut off from the profane (sacer) to be with (con) God to such a degree that we share the mission the Father gave the Son. Jesus wants to cut us off from the world to be united to him so that united to him we might come out of love for the world to continue his work, so that the world might be saved. What joy we have to belong to the Father like Jesus does!

* The way we will be consecrated to the Father is “in the truth” of his word. He is the Truth. He is the Word made flesh. To be consecrated in the truth means that we remain in him. It also means that we earnestly seek to remain in him through his Word, that we listen to his words as words to be done, words that help us to enter more deeply into the communion of God. That means we are “living the truth” and not attached to the world and the prince of this world, who is the father of lies. What joy we have because of the gift of God’s word, to know it, to live by it, to trust in it!

* To be consecrated means to belong to him, the Word made Flesh, to such a degree that we share his mission. His sending us into the world just as the Father sent him can only happen when we’re consecrated as a part of his Mystical Body, when we bring into the world the truth of his word. Pope Francis says famously in his exhortation The Joy of the Gospel that we evangelize precisely because of the joy we have in our relationship with God, something we cannot keep to ourselves. We know the different Jesus makes and we want others to experience that same joy.

* He asks the Father to protect us, just as Jesus himself sought to protect us in the Father’s name. He says that the world will hate us because, like him, we do not belong to the world,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Easter

May 18, 2021

Acts 20:17-27, Ps 68, Jn 17:1-11

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.18.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were considered in the homily: 

* One of the most important things in life is to have a clear sense of our goal, our direction, our purpose. As the old aphorism goes, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will do.” Many people are lost, even in the midst of hurried journeying, because they don’t really have a clear sense of the ultimate direction of their life. St. Ignatius of Loyola called us to make decisions as if we were doing them before the Lord our Judge looking back over our whole life, because thinking in light of eternity can help us to discern what is truly important. The Imitation of Christ likewise urges us to live each day as if it is our last, because, one again, if we knew that our time was limited, we’d prioritize the important and let the unimportant pass.

* In today’s readings, we see two great examples of living with a clear purpose that comes from God.

* In the Gospel, taken from Jesus’ priestly prayer on Holy Thursday on which we will focus mystagogically through Thursday, we see why Jesus was living. He was living to glorify the Father. He asked God the Father to glorify him so that he could in turn glorify the Father. He glorified the Father by accomplishing the work the Father had given him to do, the work of revealing the Father’s love to the extreme in saving his sons and daughters. He also glorified the Father by leaving the disciples in the world so that they in turn could continue that saving work. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus, the Light of the World, said that his disciples would reflect his light and that others, in seeing their good deeds of love, would glorify God the Father in heaven. The greatest glorification of God the Father would take place when Jesus was exalted on the Cross. And the most luminescent, greatest, most glorifying act on our part l is when we are lifted up on the Cross with Jesus, when we are willing to lay down our lives out of love for others, in simple deeds all the way to martyrdom. So Jesus’ glorifying of the Father was to accomplish his work of salvation, to reveal the Father’s name. God had revealed himself as “I am who am” to Moses, but when Jesus came, He-who-is revealed him to be God-with-us (Emmanuel) as God-who-saves-us (Jesus). To reveal the Father’s name meant to allow people to enter into an I-thou relationship with God’s person, to know him personally as the God who is with them to save them out of love. His whole mission was to introduce us into eternal life which is to know God in this way, a personal, loving knowledge that will last forever. That is the great glory of the Father when we, through that knowledge, become men and women fully alive (St. Ireneus).

* Someone who glorified God in this way and led many others to do so is St. Paul. Today and tomorrow we have his valedictory address to the Church in Ephesus, meeting with them at the port of Miletus. He describes his sufferings, tears and trials, the imprisonments and hardships that he endured and those that still awaited him, but through all of it, he says, he “did not shrink from telling you what was for your benefit,” “from proclaiming to you the entire plan of God,” from “bear[ing] witness to the Gospel of God’s grace,” doing so in the square and in private, “in public or in your homes.” That “Gospel of God’s grace” was that God was with them personally to save them, calling them to intimacy with him. As he said to the Romans elsewhere, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Monday of the Seventh Week of Easter

May 17, 2021

Acts 19:1-8, Ps 68, Jn 16:29-33

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.17.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today in the Gospel there’s a dramatic exchange, taken from the Last Supper, between Jesus and the apostles. Immediately before this scene, in what we heard on Saturday, Jesus had said that the hour was coming when he would no longer speak in figures of speech — parables — but would tell us clearly about the Father. He told them straight out that the Father loves them, that he had come from the Father into the world, and was about to leave the world to go back to the Father. That leads them to exclaim, in today’s continuation, “Now you are talking plainly, and not in any figure of speech. Now we realize that you know everything and that you do not need to have anyone question you. Because of this we believe that you came from God.” They imply that they had been waiting for Jesus’ clear and direct speech to believe and now that he was addressing them in this way they were convinced believers. Jesus, however, reminds them that faith has consequences with regard to the courage to live by faith. “Do you believe now?,” he retorts. “Behold, the hour is coming and has arrived when each of you will be scattered to his own home and you will leave me alone.” Jesus’ words would be fulfilled within hours as everyone scattered from Gethsemane and only one of them was with Jesus on Calvary. Faith isn’t merely an acceptance of certain declarations as true; it’s a total trust given to a person on the basis of which one believes in what the person says and does. They didn’t yet have the courage in Jesus, in his coming from the Father and returning to the Father, in his carrying out the Father’s plan of love, to remain faithful under trial. And Jesus told them both what would happen as well as how they would have their faith challenged, that they would fail “so that you might have peace in me.” He wanted them to maintain their peace in the crucible, the way the Blessed Virgin Mary did at the foot of the Cross despite her tears. Jesus summed up his words saying, “In the world you will have trouble,” just like he was about to experience imminently, namely of all the trouble caused by sin, “but take courage, I have conquered the world.” These words were said before Jesus’ resurrection, because he had already conquered the world in his incarnation, in the plan he was carrying out. The resurrection was the dramatic public sign of that victory that Jesus had already been achieving. The source of our courage is Jesus’ triumph, and that triumph was already being accomplished even as it seemed all was being lost. We need to believe in that triumph especially when we have trouble. Just like the apostles needed to hear Jesus’ words, “Take courage, I have overcome the world!,” when they saw him on Calvary, so we need to take courage when we see the places where the Church is being persecuted, when we see people wandering away from prayer and the Sacraments, when we see things that in the eyes of the world are simply disheartening. Jesus wants us to take courage because he in fact is triumphing, seeking to bring good out of evil, victory out of defeat.

* We know that the apostles left the Upper Room that night and weren’t courageous. Rather than remaining in his peace, they scattered. They weren’t focused on Jesus’ conquering the world but on how the world seemed to be conquering him. But as we know, 53 days later they would leave that same Upper Room and fearlessly proclaim Jesus eternal victory. The change happened through the gift that Jesus promised the F...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Edward Catholic Church, Palm Beach, Florida

Nuptial Mass of Kevin Corkery and Paulina Padilla

May 15, 2021

Rev 19:1.5-9, Ps 112, Rom 8:31-35.37-39, Mk 10:6-9

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.15.21_Kevin_Corkery_and_Paulina_Padilla_1.mp3

 

The following text guided todays’ homily: 

There is great significance, in both sacred and secular contexts, to the fact that your wedding, Kevin and Paulina, is taking place on May 15.

In the sacred context, May 15 is the liturgical feast of Saint Isidore the Farmer, whose marriage to Santa Maria de la Cabeza has been a model for more than 900 years of how spouses are meant to help each other grow in holiness and how the family is meant to be an image of God through becoming truly a loving communion of persons, patterning their very marriage after the love of God. The purpose of every sacramental marriage is for husband and wife to help each other to enter more deeply into the love and life of God that is eternal. The ultimate aim is heaven. From this day forward, each year when you celebrate the anniversary of your marriage on May 15, I hope that, beyond giving flowers or gifts or sharing a great meal, you will come to daily Mass to thank God for the gift of your marriage and there celebrate with the whole Church the feast of Saint Isidore, using it as an opportunity to recommit yourself to imitate wholeheartedly and perseveringly in your marriage the virtues that helped make Saint Isidore, Santa Maria and their marriage holy.

In the secular context, May 15 is International Family Day, an observance proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations to be marked for the first time in 1994 during the International Year of the Family. It is meant to be a day on which we focus on how, as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms, “the family is the natural and fundamental group unity of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State” (16.3), and do so in the context of changing economic and social structures that are affecting the stability and structure of the family in different parts of the world.

Five years ago, in his exhortation on the family, “The Joy of Love” (Amoris Laetitia), Pope Francis said that the “welfare of the family is decisive for the future of the world and that of the Church” (31). Yet he noted that there are many shadows threatening the family that we can’t ignore.

He mentioned the “growing danger represented by an extreme individualism,” the “fast pace of life” that hinders “permanent decisions,” a limited or even false notion of freedom that “degenerates into an inability to give oneself generously to others,” a mindset that treats the ideal of a exclusive and stable marriage as “inconvenient” “tiresome” and an “entrapment … that could hamper the achievement of one’s personal goals” (33-34).

These dangers are multiplied, he continued, by what he calls a “legal deconstruction” of the family due to a gender ideology that “denies the difference and reciprocity in nature of a man and a woman and envisages a society without sexual differences thereby eliminating the anthropological basis of the family” and making human identity “the choice of the individual [that] can also change over time” (53, 56).

He concluded by saying that no sane person can think that the “weakening of the family as that natural society founded on marriage will prove beneficial to society as a whole” but rather that the undermining of marriage and the family “poses a threat to the mature growth of individuals, the cultivation of community values and the moral progress of cities and countries” (52).

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Ascension and the Seventh Sunday of Easter (B), Vigil

May 15, 2021

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.15.21_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with us this Sunday. I should probably say “conversations” in the plural, since, depending upon where you live in the United States, you will have one of two Gospels. Those in New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Nebraska will the Gospel of the Seventh Sunday of Easter. Those everywhere else will have the Gospel of the Ascension of the Lord Jesus, since the bishops in those ecclesiastical provinces decided in 1998 and 1999 to transfer the Ascension from the 40th day after Easter to the Seventh Sunday. They did so because they recognized that if they didn’t, Catholics who do not attend on Holy Days of Obligation would always miss this celebrating liturgically this very important event in the Lord’s life. Ironically, however, in making that decision to move the Ascension to the 43rd day after Easter, the bishops in those provinces were eliminating that Catholics would hear Jesus’ words on the importance of Christian unity from the 17thChapter of St. John’s Gospel, a third of which is proclaimed on the Seventh Sunday each year. That Catholics in the US do not have unity with regard to the celebration of the Solemnity of the Ascension is unfortunate and I would urge that just as the Church is praying for unity to be restored to the celebration of Easter between Catholics and Orthodox, so we might pray and speak to our bishops about restoring unity on the celebration of the Ascension on the 40th.

* But since there is not unity, please permit me to say something about both Gospels, conscious of the fact that since Jesus is our interlocutor in every prayerful and consequential liturgical conversation, everything is intrinsically coherent.

* We’ll take the Gospel for the Seventh Sunday of Easter first, since it happened first in time. In it we have the awesome privilege not only to eavesdrop on the extraordinarily rich interpersonal dialogue Jesus had with God the Father the night he was betrayed but to enter into that conversation.

* In the section we have this year, Jesus mentions five things:

* Jesus prays first that God the Father would protect us that we may be one in communion just as Father, Son and Holy Spirit is one. A little later he asks the Father specifically to keep us from the evil one. The point is that the devil constantly seeks to divide us, whereas God wants to bring us into true communion with Him and each other. Any of us who really believe in Jesus, who love him, must pray and work for unity. The fact that Christians as a whole have been divided by so many schisms across the centuries, the fact that even Catholics are often divided into ideological camps, is a great scandal, one that Jesus wants us to help remedy.

* The second thing Jesus prays for is that we may share his joy completely. He came so that his joy might be in us and our joy be made complete. The Easter Season is meant to help us to focus precisely on that joy, the joy that flows from God’s love, from his continuous presence, and from his triumph over sin and death. If we don’t live the Christian faith with joy, we risk making the Good News seem like a lie.

* The third thing Jesus mentions is that the world will hate us, just like it hated Jesus,

Fr. Roger J. LandrySacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, ManhattanFeast of St. MatthiasMay 14, 2021Acts 1:15-17.20-26, Ps 113, Jn 15:9-17

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.14.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

Today on this feast of St. Matthias we talk about one of the most important realities of our faith: the transmission of the Gospel and our role in it. St. Matthias was the one chosen by God to take the place of Judas after Judas’ betrayal of Jesus and suicide. There was a need to have someone step into his shoes to spread the Gospel to others. They nominated two people and allowed God to choose by lot. This was a familiar practice for the Jews because it was the way priests were chosen for service in the temple. The 800-1000 priests who were assembled at a given time for a week’s service in the Temple all wrote their name on rocks and the rocks were put into a big container and shaken until one came out. The name on the rock would be the one chosen to preside over the morning or evening sacrifice or to serve at the altar of incense. In this case, they put the names Matthias and Joseph also called Barsabbas (Son of the Sabbath) or Justus (the Just One) on rocks and shook them out. the lot fell to Matthias and he was constituted among the apostles. We see here something important for us to grasp. God doesn’t always choose the people who would seem most likely. Just as no one would have predicted that among the apostles there would be — instead of rabbis and scribes and Pharisees — fishermen, tax collectors and relative nobodies, so here if it were a decision solely of men rather than of God, it would make little sense that Matthias would have been chosen above someone who had already earned two nicknames because of the way he lived the faith. But God’s ways are not our ways.

This truth is doubly important since, as we discerned in the Collect (Opening Prayer) of this Mass, we’ve all been chosen by God similarly to St. Matthias. “O God who assigned Saint Matthias a place in the college of Apostles,” we prayed, “grant us, through his intercession, that, rejoicing at how your love has been allotted to us, we may merit to be numbered among the elect.” Out of all the people on earth, we are two of seven to have been mysteriously allotted to be aware of God’s love incarnate in Christ and one of seven to have been chosen to receive the plenitude of love through the Sacraments and fullness of revelation in the Catholic Church. It’s not that we’re better than others, or loved more by God than others, just like God didn’t love Matthias more than Joseph-Justus-Barsabbas. But we were allotted to become more aware of that love of God — “Just as the Father loves me,” Jesus says today, “so I love you” — and to have the chance to live in it through Christ’s Mystical Body. But with that gift comes a task: it’s to pass the knowledge of that treasure on. Just like God chose the Jews as the people to receive his revelation so that one day that light could be brought to all nations, so God has allotted each of us to receive the gift of himself, his words, his presence, his love, so that we may bring those gifts to others and others to God. Our names have been written on him who is the “stone rejected by the builders who has become the cornerstone.” Our names have been written on the rock on whom Jesus built his Church and are united in communion with Peter and his successors.

The reality, however, is that many Catholics treat Joseph-Justus-Barsabbas as if he were their patron saint! They say, “Whew! Thanks be to God that he chose someone else to spread the faith so that I can just sit shyly on the sidelines!” They don’t believe that they’ve been chosen to spr...