Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the Third Week of Lent

March 10, 2021

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

 

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

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

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

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life

Tuesday of the Third Week in Lent

Memorial of St. Frances of Rome

March 9, 2021

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

 

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

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

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

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Monday of the Third Week of Lent

Memorial of St. John of God

March 8, 2021

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

 

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

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

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

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

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

March 6, 2021

 

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

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

 

The following text guided the brief homily: 

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

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

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

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Saturday of the Second Week of Lent

March 6, 2021

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

 

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

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

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

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

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

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the Second Week of Lent

March 5, 2021

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

 

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

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

 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily:

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

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

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

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,