Fr. Roger J. LandryVisitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, ManhattanSaturday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time, Year IFebruary 6, 2021Heb 13:15-17.20-21, Ps 23, Mk 6:30-34

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

We have been pondering the letter to the Hebrews for the past four weeks. The climax of it happened earlier this week — we didn’t read it this year because Tuesday was the Feast of the Presentation with its proper readings — when the sacred author tells us, “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith.” The point of the Letter, the point of the Christian life, is to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, to learn from him, to follow him, to see where his eyes and heart turn. It’s to keep our eyes fixed on him who was tempted in every way we are but never sinned. It’s to keep our eyes fixed on him who is our high priest piercing the veil so that he can lead us all of the way home.

Today as we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, we zero in on his heart. The Gospel tells us that Jesus’ “heart was moved with pity for the crowds for they were like sheep without a shepherd.” Jesus’ viscera explode with compassion on the crowds. And today as we look at him, we see how he addresses our most fundamental needs as Good Shepherd. Receiving and responding to that help is what will make us good sheep. Imitating Jesus in caring for others as he does will be the way that we can in him come Good Shepherds. Today in the readings are highlighted five ways he seeks to shepherd us.

We see, first, that he takes us apart to be with him. “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while,” he says to the apostles after they had returned from a journey. The Good Shepherd knows that we need time of prayer. Jesus wants us to have rest, but a particular type of rest. In the Psalm we pray, “In verdant pastures he gives me repose. Beside restful waters he leads me; he refreshes my soul.” Jesus does this in prayer and he’s always, every day, seeking to lead us apart from the crowds for a while to refresh us in this way. He says elsewhere, “Take my yoke up you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for yourselves.” Prayer is a time to yoke ourselves and all we do to him, because it’s by taking upon his yoke that we will find that rest.

Second, he teaches us, just like he “began to teach them many things.” We pray in the Psalm, “He guides me in right paths for his name’s sake.” Jesus has come to teach us about God, about ourselves and about how to become like God. That work of teaching never ends. Teaching is a great act of mercy.

Third, yoking us to himself on the inside, he wants to teach and help us to do the Father’s will within us as a result of this communion. He wants to instruct and assist us to turn our work and all our actions into prayer. In today’s first reading from the conclusion of the Letter to the Hebrews, we read that God the Father “who brought up from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep” seeks to “furnish [us] with all that is good, that you may do his will.” And he does this by “carry[ing] out in you what is pleasing to him through Jesus Christ.” This is why the Letter says to us about prayer, “Through Jesus, let us continually offer God a sacrifice of praise, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name.” The praise we offer is through lips confessing his name, not silently, not merely in prayer, but among others,

Fr. Roger J. LandrySacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, ManhattanFriday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time, Year IMemorial of St. AgathaFebruary 5, 2021Heb 13:1-8, Ps 27, Mk 6:14-29

 

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

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

Today, as we come to the penultimate lesson of the Letter to the Hebrews that we’ve been pondering for the last four weeks, the author helps us to consider the characteristics of a Christian who keeps his or her eyes firmly fixed on Jesus and of a Christian leader who guides people to Jesus. These are lessons we see very much on display in the life and death of St. John the Baptist from today’s Gospel and in St. Agatha, one of the great cloud of witnesses whom the Church remembers today.

The first reading highlights five qualities that the sacred author appeals to Christians to excel in even in the midst of the persecution they were enduring.

The first is brotherly love. Christians are always to be distinguished by the love that we have together, which is likewise a sign that God sent Jesus and loves us just as much as he loves Jesus (Jn 17). Jesus calls us to love one another as he has loved us (Jn 15) and to care and feed each other out of love for him (Jn 21). When we keep our eyes firmly fixed on Jesus the guide and perfecter of our faith, we see him in others and love him in others.

The second is hospitality. Not only do we sometimes “entertain angels,” but we welcome Christ himself, who identifies with every stranger we take in.

Third is a particular care for those in prison, just as Jesus himself was imprisoned and called us to visit him in the disguise of anyone imprisoned (Mt 25). The early Christians were steadfast in caring for those who had been imprisoned on account of the faith, on account of their poverty, or other reasons. They sought to “redeem” or buy back the freedom of those in slavery or in debt. They risked their lives for those in prison, identifying themselves as Christians during times of persecution. Our care for those in these circumstances is always supposed to be excellent.

Fourth, Christians are distinguished by their purity, for the pure of heart that allows them to see God in others. That’s why the author tells them to honor marriage and never let the marriage bed be defiled but adultery or immorality. Christ the Bridegroom teaches us how to love faithfully and we should never commit adultery in the covenant of love with him by adulterous or sinful sexual thoughts or deeds.

Lastly, we’re called to be grateful and content with God in our life, rather than love money or to seek to place our faith, hope and love in mammon. As we’ve focused on earlier in this Letter, we Christians permit even the plundering of our property because we have a better possession, namely God. When we’re firmly fixed on Christ as our pearl of great price, we’re not overly attached to the stuff of this world. These are the qualities that the author wants us to focus on.

* With regard to Christian leaders, they do all of this and three things more.

* The first is that they speak the word of God.

* The second is that the teach us how to live and die well. We consider the outcome of their way of life.

* The third is that they instruct us by their example of faith in all circumstances, and hence we should imitate it, knowing Christ is always the same regardless of changing times and worldly values, and so our fidelity must similarly be the “same yesterday, today and forever.”

* When we look at the life of St. John the Baptist, we see someone who was the greatest of all the prophets speaking t...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

February 4, 2021

Heb 12:18-19.21-24, Ps 48, Mk 6:7-13

 

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today Jesus gives instructions to the Twelve as he was preparing to send them out to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom. Normally, when we go on a trip, especially if we’re not accustomed to traveling, we prepare a list of the things we need to pack in our suitcase so that we don’t forget anything. Jesus likewise prepares a list for the apostles, but it’s precisely a list of things not to take. He tells them to take nothing except a walking stick (something that would give them greater stamina for the mission), no food, no sack of clothes and toiletries, no money. Why? He knew they needed to preach the Gospel not principally by their words but by their witness, by who they were. If they were going to be preaching that God cares for us more than he cares for the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, then they needed to manifest that trust in his divine Providence. If they were going to be preaching his kingdom — St. Matthew’s version of the same sending out reminds us that Jesus instructed them, “As you go, make this proclamation, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’” — they needed to be living in that kingdom themselves.

* When Jesus himself preached the kingdom, as we see at the beginning of his public ministry, he proclaimed: “The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the Gospel.” The kingdom of God is ultimately God and to enter the kingdom we need to turn away from what keeps us from the kingdom and believe in the fact that God is truly with us. That’s why St. Mark tells us today that the twelve “went off and preaching repentance,” at the same time attacking the devil and his lies and works head on, “driving out many demons.” In today’s Responsorial Psalm, we speak about God’s temple, his dwelling place, the heart of his kingdom, as a place of conversion and mercy. “O God, we ponder your mercy within your temple!” It’s through God’s mercy that we come to dwell in his kingdom!

* But as Jesus himself often prayed, the Kingdom of God is both now and not yet, it’s a present reality because the King is with us, but it’s also not fully revealed and we haven’t entered into it yet definitively. That’s why Jesus gives us various parables about the Kingdom of Heaven, including under the image of a spousal banquet for which we need to be prepared. He did so to stoke our hunger for it so that like the wise virgins we may be ready for it. He wanted to get us properly dressed for it, cleansed for it by his blood in the Sacrament of Baptism and keeping that garment unstained so that we may arrive properly dressed.

* To proclaim the Gospel adequately, we need to proclaim its eschatological significance. Pope Benedict in his beautiful encyclical on Christian hope, Spe Salvi, said that we don’t preach enough about the “great hope” we Christians have for the fulfillment of God’s kingdom. For that reason, we fill our lives with so many lesser hopes and goals, themselves often fine, but always relative. Pope Benedict wrote, “Anyone who does not know God, even though he may entertain all kinds of hopes, is ultimately without hope, without the great hope that sustains the whole of life (cf. Eph 2:12). Man’s great, true hope that holds firm in spite of all disappointments can only be God—God who has loved us and who continues to love us ‘to the end,’ until all ‘is accomplished’ (cf. Jn 13:1 and 19:30).

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Blase, Bishop and Martyr

February 3, 2021

Heb 12:4-7.11-15, Ps 103, Mk 6:1-6

 

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* As we’ve been noting for the past three-and-a-half weeks in our daily meditation on the Letter to the Hebrews at Mass, this letter was written to the early Christians at a time in which many had undergone fierce persecution and when much more persecution was anticipated. We’ve seen that Christ, the definitive Word of the Father, took on our flesh and entered into our world to lead us to eternal glory, to perfection as sons and daughters, but that he would do so precisely through uniting our suffering and death to his salvific suffering and death. He pierced the veil of the heavenly holy of holies precisely to give us confidence that follow him along this path. In the past few days, we’ve been talking about the holy hypomone — the sacred stamina or endurance — that we need to live the faith in the midst of hardships and difficulties. The Letter to the Hebrews has inspired us by focusing on the persevering faith of so many in a great cloud of witnesses.  Yesterday, if we didn’t have the proper readings for the Feast of the Presentation, it would have reminded us to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, to consider how he despised the shame of the Cross and endured opposition, so that we may not grow weary and lose heart. Today it gives us a third motivation: to endure our trials “as discipline,” as the training that will make us holy disciples.

* Quoting Proverbs 3:11-12, the Letter exhorts us: “My son, do not disdain the discipline of the Lord or lose heart when reproved by him; for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines; he scourges every son he acknowledges.” Therefore, he says, “Endure your trials as ‘discipline’; God treats you as his sons. For what ‘son’ is there whom his father does not discipline?” He tells us that discipline isn’t fun, but it’s important if we’re ever going to mature: “At the time, all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it.” Then he gets to the punch line, to get over any potential self-pity party, or diabolical temptation that because we’re suffering God mustn’t love us, by appealing: “So strengthen your drooping hands and your weak knees. Make straight paths for your feet, that what is lame may not be dislocated but healed.” And he makes an appeal for the means by which we are to use our restored hands, feet and knees, not just through folding them as we kneel down in prayer, but precisely through genuine love of neighbor: “Strive for peace with everyone, and for that holiness without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one be deprived of the grace of God, that no bitter root spring up and cause trouble, through which many may become defiled.”

* We don’t like discipline because many of us aren’t deeply docile. We don’t think we need to learn or sometimes want to learn, at least in ways we don’t want to learn. We may not think we’re opposed to discipline, just the discipline that we don’t want… We’re resistant to being surprised by the Lord. We see that in the Gospel. In Nazareth, they were not willing to become disciples of one of their own, one with whom they grew up, one whose furniture and perhaps even houses he had made. From initial amazement at his words, they turned to taking offense at him and as we’ll see in St. Luke’s account, they’d even reach homicidal rage.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Monday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

February 1, 2021

Heb 11:32-40, Ps 31, Mk 5:1-20

 

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Yesterday we witnessed in the Capernaum synagogue the astonishing and amazing authority of Jesus not only as he taught unlike the scribes but also as he exorcised a man as the screaming demons identified Jesus as the Holy One of God and obeyed him in departing from the man. Today we see that amazing and astonishing authority on display again in another exorcism, but today’s Gospel is about more than one more dramatic expulsion of evil. It points to something that needs to be exorcised from all of us in every age. After Jesus frees this man from a legion of demons — and a legion in the Roman army was 600 troops — by casting them into a herd of 2,000 pigs who, now possessed, ran off a cliff and drowned in the Sea of Galilee, the people of that pagan region of the Gerasenes didn’t rejoice at the liberation of the man who used to gouge himself with stones, break chains that attempted to bind him, and terrorize the people of the region; they didn’t come to Jesus to ask him likewise to free the other possessed people in the region, or to cure their sick or to teach them; instead, they asked him to leave their region. Jesus was bad for business. They worried that if he stayed he might next endanger their sheep, too, or their grain, or other aspects of their livelihood. They essentially cared more for the swine they had lost than the brother they had gained.

* This is not a problem just for ancients. Still today, people can give possessions primacy over people, allowing people to be disturbed, even possessed, even killed as long as their possessions are left undisturbed. Pope Francis wrote about this in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium: “How can it be that it is not a news item,” he asks, “when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?” For many people, the stock market is more important than people dying through neglect. We know that in the terrible choice of abortion, many other things are prioritized — career, personal autonomy, the money and sacrifices necessary to raise a child — over human life and how Planned Parenthood resists any initiatives that do anything to affect their profits. Materialism, or what St. John calls the concupiscence of the eyes, remains one of the greatest ways the devil seeks to possess multitudes. We remember the way he tempted Jesus in the desert to set his sights on material bread in order to thwart him from his mission and focus on bodily wants and needs more than on his mission. But Jesus refused, saying we live on more than bread, but by every word that comes from God’s mouth. In his first beatitude, we see that the kingdom of God belongs to those who are “poor in spirit,” those who treasure God’s kingdom more than they do things. Poverty in spirit is essential not only for us to love God but also to love our neighbor. In order to love our neighbor, we have to be willing to sacrifice our things, even our life, for their good. It would have been possible for Jesus, of course, to exorcise the legion of demons and not assent to their request to be sent into the swine and lead the swine to run into the Sea of Galilee and drown. Jesus permitted it not just as an illustration of the destruction the demons were already doing within the man but also what they were hoping to do to him and to every human being: to lead us off various cliffs — jumping from the parapet of the temple!

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Missionaries of Charity Convent, Harlem, NY

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

January 31, 2021

Deut 18:15-20, Ps 95, 1 Cor 7:32-35, Mk 1:21-28

 

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The following text guided today’s homily: 

* In today’s Gospel, we see that on the Sabbath day, Jesus entered the synagogue and taught. All those who listened to him, St. Mark tells us, were “astounded at his teaching, for he taught with authority and not like the scribes.” He then showed the tremendous power of his authoritative words by silencing and casting out a demon from a man. That amazed the crowd even further. They asked, “What is this? A new teaching — with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.”

* The same Jesus who entered the Capernaum synagogue on the Jewish Sabbath enters this chapel of the Missionaries of Charity on the Christian Sabbath. And here he teaches with the same authority he wielded two thousand years ago. He has just spoken to us in the word of God and later he who created the heavens and the earth with his word, who called fishermen and tax collectors to follow him so powerfully that at his word they immediately got up and did so, will do something far more amazing than cast out a devil or silence a stormy sea. He will change bread and wine into himself, into his body and blood, and cast himself into us. If we recognize what is really going on, if we awaken to the power of his words, we ought to be even more amazed than Jesus’ contemporaries two millennia ago.

* Jesus teaches unlike any other teacher who has ever come, before or after. His contemporaries said he “taught with authority, unlike the scribes.” The scribes, the ancient scholars of the Mosaic law, always used to cite Sacred Scripture or Jewish tradition, to base their teachings on the authority of the word of God. That was a totally appropriate way for them to teach, sharing their interpretations of God’s word rather than merely their own opinions. But Jesus didn’t need to cite the word of God, because he is the word of God. In the Sermon on the Mount, for example, he routinely contrasted himself to what Moses, their greatest teacher about the ways of God up until then, had said to them on behalf of God in the desert: “You have heard that it was said — in other words, Moses said to you — ‘you shall not kill…’ ‘you shall not commit adultery… ,’ ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth…,’ but I say to you,  you shall not even be angry with a brother, or look on a woman with lust in your heart, or if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn and offer him the other as well” (Mt 5:20-45). Jesus was capable of saying, “But I say to you,” in contrast to what the greatest Biblical figure until then had said, because he himself was the auctor of all creation. Jesus spoke with authority because he is the author, the creator, of man, woman and the world. To capture just a little of what it must have been like to listen to Jesus talk about God, about the world, about man, and about faith and about morality, it would be greater than listening to the Wright Brothers talk about airplanes, Henry Ford talk about cars, Thomas Edison describe electricity, Steve Jobs talk about Mac computers, iPads, iPods and iPhones. They could all speak with stunning authority because they were the “authors,” the inventors, of what we now take for granted. But listening to them would be just a small glimpse of what it would have been like to be in that Capernaum Synagogue listening to Jesus, the author of the world, the one through whom we and all things were made. Jesus could command even the seas and the wind (Mk 4:41) and the demons and t...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Agnes Church, Manhattan

Septuagesima Sunday, Extraordinary Form

January 31, 2021

1 Cor 9:24-27.10:1-5, Mt 20:1-16

 

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The following text guided today’s homily: 

* Today the Church marks Septuagesima Sunday, the beginning of the period of pre-Lenten preparation in the Extraordinary Form that tells us that Ash Wednesday is only 17 days away. There are two main ways to which people across the centuries have responded. The first is to say that Septuagesima begins the period of Carnival and the generalized sense of licensed indulgence for which it’s infamous, in New Orleans, Rio de Janeiro and other places. Thankfully in 2021, because of the pandemic, this hedonist form of preparation is being downplayed. The second response is that it is the time in which faithful Catholics seek to prepare for the intense spiritual discipline of Lent. The priest, like in Lent, wears purple vestments. There is no Gloria or Alleluia. And the readings the Church gives us each year are meant to help us warm up for the spiritual battle that takes place during the quadragesimaor 40 days when we join Jesus in the desert. Because the ongoing reductions caused by the COVID, it is possible for the Judean desert to extend even to our own homes. But each of us has to decide which form these next 17 days are going to take. And the readings today prepare us to focus on that choice and choose well.

* In today’s epistle, St. Paul speaks to us of the most important goal in life and the zeal and focus we should have to seize it. He had been explaining to the Corinthians that he had made himself “a slave to all so as to win over as many as possible,” that “to the weak I became weak, to win over the weak. I have become all things to all, to save at least some. All this I do,” he explained, “for the sake of the Gospel, so that I too may have a share in it.” He then gives us various sports metaphors, indicating that if athletes can do so much to win individual or team championships, we ought to be willing to pay the price to capture the far more important and lasting goal of redemption and to help Christ’s team the Church win the salvation of the world. He asks, “Do you not know that the runners in the stadium all run in the race, but only one wins the prize? Run so as to win. Every athlete exercises discipline in every way. They do it to win a perishable crown, but we an imperishable one. Thus I do not run aimlessly; I do not fight as if I were shadowboxing. No, I drive my body and train it, for fear that, after having preached to others, I myself should be disqualified.” That’s extraordinary commitment. No athlete coasts to championships. They earn them. Those who take success for granted often don’t taste it. St. Paul reminds the Corinthians that so many Israelites had walked through the Red Sea with Moses, ate the manna from heaven, and drank the water from the rock, but God, he says, was not pleased with most of them. Most of them, he implies, were just along for the ride and hadn’t been changed, hadn’t been transformed by faith and gratitude by what God had done, hadn’t put worship of God and love of others first, and had eventually suffered the consequences. St. Paul, on the other hand, was someone who ran to win, who disciplined himself to be a disciple, and who sought to train the first Christians not to be benchwarmers but Hall of Famers through seeking, likewise, to become all things to all people to save as many as possible. As we mark Septuagesima Sunday, St. Paul is giving us his annual summons for us to be ambitious in the right way for the right things —to be great, not mediocre,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Brief Course on Prayer for the Leonine Forum

Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the UN

January 30, 2021

 

To listen to the final talk on the breadth, depth and challenges of prayer in daily life, please click below: 

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Fr. Roger J. Landry

Brief Course on Prayer for the Leonine Forum

Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the UN

January 30, 2021

 

To listen to the second talk on how Jesus teaches us to pray, please click below: 

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Fr. Roger J. Landry

Brief Course on Prayer for the Leonine Forum

Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the UN

January 30, 2021

 

To listen to the first talk on the necessity of prayer, please click below: 

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