Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life

Monday of the 34th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of Blessed Miguel Pro, as well as St. Clement and St. Columban

November 23, 2020

Rev 14:1-5, Ps 24, Lk 21:1-4

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.23.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today we have the privilege to be able to continue reflecting on the reality of Christ’s kingdom we celebrated yesterday and on the reality of how to enter it, remain in it, and draw others to seize it.

* In the Gospel, we see how to seize the Kingdom as the pearl of great price. Jesus had said at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the poor in spirit: theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” To enter into the kingdom we must treasure God and his kingdom above all other things. In the Gospel, we see someone who did. After Jesus had finished his “formal” teaching in the courtyard of the Temple of Jerusalem, he began to “people watch,” in order to continue to instruct his apostles about how to put what he taught into action. They saw the stream of people putting money in the temple treasury, which was a tuba-shaped receptacle leading to a secure money box. People would put their coins in the horn at the top, which was like a funnel, and then the sound of the coin would resonate as it rolled down the metal tubing into the box. Many rich people, St. Luke tells us, were putting in large sums and “making a lot of noise” on the treasury trumpet. But then a poor widow came and put in two lepta, two small coins which together were worth less than a penny and likely barely made a sound. Then Jesus gave a surprising lesson that obviously the disciples never forgot. Jesus praised the poor widow rather than all the rest, saying that she had contributed more than all them, for they “gave out of their surplus, but she gave everything she had, all she had to live on.” This widow, because of her poverty, could easily have been excused for giving nothing. She could have easily chosen to drop into the trumpet only one of the coins and kept the other for herself. But she didn’t. She gave it all. And her generosity was praised by Jesus and will remain until the end of time. Jesus had said elsewhere that we could not be his disciple, we could not really enter his kingdom, unless we valued him and his kingdom more than family members, possessions and even our very life. That’s what characterized this poor wisdom. She believed so much in God and was so convinced of the importance of what was going on in God’s house that she wanted to dedicate her life and all her goods to continuing and expanding that work of salvation. She accounted the continuance and expansion of that work even more than her own life.  That’s living for the kingdom. This woman sacrificed her entire livelihood, spending herself and what she had in the service of the Lord. We should always seek to give in such a way that Christ the King would be tempted to pull the saints aside in heaven and point out the way we are spending ourselves in his service, seeking to build up his Kingdom.

* In the first reading from the Book of Revelation and in the Psalm, we see other characteristics of the Kingdom and other examples of those who, like the widow, give all to the God who has given all to us. The 144,000 dressed in white, whose garments were washed in the blood of the Lamb, are a snapshot of the redeemed. The number 144,000 is a symbolic, not a literal one (as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and some fundamentalist Protestants claim). 12 is one of the magic numbers in Hebrew, flowing from the 12 tribes. 144 is a sign of the multiplication of the descendants of the ...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Solemnity of Christ the King (A)

November 21, 2020

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.21.20_Landry_ConCon.mp3

 

The text that guided the homily is: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us as we celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King this Sunday.

* Christ the King is, by the standard of Church history, still a very young feast. It’s only 95 years old. It was instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1925 Jubilee in response to the rise of communism, fascism and aggressive secularism, all of which were trying to eliminate Christian influence in society to be supplanted by communist, fascist or secularist pseudo-religious ideologies. Pope Pius XI stressed both the importance of Christian believers influencing society for the good as salt of the earth, light of the world and leaven, but also cautioning them to recall that Christ had not come into the world to inaugurate a political but a spiritual kingdom. That’s a lesson Pontius Pilate didn’t get when he asked Jesus whether he was a king. That’s a point that most Jews didn’t get when they anticipated the long-awaited Messiah would rule in the way that his ancestor David had ruled, defeating all foreign powers and triumphing over all who opposed him. That’s a truth that not even the apostles grasped as they jockeyed for the choicest cabinet secretariats in what they presumed would be earthly administration.

* The King we celebrate does not fit into any of those earthly categories. As St. Paul wrote in his letter to the Philippians, Christ the King “even though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave and being born in human likeness. He humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross” (Phil 2:6-8). Christ’s whole kingship is caught up in his saving service until death. Whereas most terrestrial kings have slews of servants caring for their every need, Jesus came “not to be served but to serve” those who by creation ought to be his servants. Whereas earthly leaders regularly have sacrificed their subjects as soldiers for their personal royal aggrandizement, Christ the King came to die for his subjects, “to give his life as a ransom for the many.” That’s the king we fête. That’s the kingdom he has established. That’s the way we’re called to reign with him.

* In the Gospel for the feast, Christ the king identifies as someone who hungers and thirsts, as a stranger, as someone naked, imprisoned or sick, as someone suffering or in need, and says that whatever we do to anyone in these circumstances he will take personally. These are not just words for Jesus. When Jesus was on the Cross, for example, he himself was needy in all of the ways he described. He was hungry and cried out, “I thirst!” He was stripped naked. He was a stranger even in the world he created, kicked out of his own city of Jerusalem to die as a malefactor at the place of the skull. He was sick and wounded, having had his flesh ripped open by a brutal Roman scourging, having been beaten and crowned with thorns. He was imprisoned not only in the high priest’s dungeon but pinned to the cross not by chains but by nails. The more we look to him on his throne of the Cross, the easier it is supposed to be for us to see his sufferings in the suffering members of his Mystical Body.

* Just as it shocked the people 2,000 years ago that Jesus crucified was really the King of Jews,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Saturday of the 33rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

November 21, 2020

Rev 11:4-12, Ps 144, Lk 20:27-40

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.21.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today’s readings focus us — as the Church normally throughout the month of November — on eternity and specifically on heaven and how we’re supposed to prepare for it in our conceptions and in our actions. So often our conceptions of heaven are erroneous projections of the little things of earthly life. Jesus, in today’s Gospel, helps us to grasp that heaven is something far greater. St. Paul has told us, “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it entered the human heart [to conceive] what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor 2:9) and St. John has added, “What we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). Today Jesus helps us to see that heaven is even greater than one of the greatest gifts on earth and that that earthly gift is meant to prepare us for a much greater realization. And then he, the Book of Revelation, Our Lady and those praying for us in monasteries across the world show us how to live with that reality in mind.

* The Sadducees came to Jesus with a question designed to test him and prove their point that there is no resurrection of the dead. The Sadducees were the priestly aristocracy and they only accepted the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, which they claimed gave no evidence whatsoever of the resurrection. They were often in dispute with the Scribes and the Pharisees, who accepted the entire Hebrew Bible, which gives ample prophecy of the resurrection. We see evidence of this dispute in the detail that after Jesus’ response it was the Scribes who said, “Teacher, you have answered well,” since the Scribes were regularly arguing with the Sadducees about this very point. The Sadducees pose to Jesus a question based on the truth of marriage and one aspect of the Mosaic law. We know that in the beginning, God said that when a man leaves his mother and father and clings to his wife, they become one flesh, and no man can render their bond asunder (Gen 2:24). The Jews also practiced what is called the levirate law of marriage. Moses taught, “When brothers live together and one of them dies without a son, the widow of the deceased shall not marry anyone outside the family; but her husband’s brother shall go to her and perform the duty of a brother-in-law by marrying her. The first-born son she bears shall continue the line of the deceased brother, that his name may not be blotted out from Israel” (Deut 25:5-6). The first son born from the woman would technically become the heir of the deceased brother in order to carry on his name through successive generations of progeny. The Sadducees’ question about the seven brothers who married the same seemingly sterile woman was essentially this: if this woman became one flesh with seven different men, to whom will she be united in one flesh forever? The implication was that since she couldn’t be one flesh with all seven, there could be no eternal life, because it would make the one flesh bond of marriage absurd. People must really be dead — and dead for real — for a new bond to be formed.

* How does Jesus respond? He responds first about the connection between marriage and the afterlife, describing how marriage is an institution God founded for this world meant to help people enter into a far greater marriage bond,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the 33rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Mass of the Dead for JoEllen Wieseler, mother of Sr. Desirae Purissima, SV

November 20, 2020

Rev 10:8-11, Ps 119, Lk 19:45-48

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.20.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted during the homily: 

* Today, as we prepare for the Solemnity of Christ the King, we see in the Gospel how the King wants to get us ready. First he wants to purify us, something we see in his cleansing of the Temple. Second, he wants to fill us with everything we need so that we can become a temple, a “house of prayer,” a dwelling place for God, by helping us to hang on his word, to devour it, so that we can become living commentaries of it. In the couplet of the Our Father Jesus taught us, we pray successively “Thy kingdom come!” and “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” To enter into the Kingdom of Christ the King, we must do God’s will, we must live his word, and that’s what the liturgy of the Word emphasizes for us today.

* The Jesus in today’s Gospel is one with whom many, especially today, are unfamiliar. 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, tossing money on the floor, and making a whip of cords to drive the sheep and the cattle out of the temple. And 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 hated sin that can kill sinners and self-alienate them from God. Jesus’ mercy does not baptize our sin and indulgence, but rather seeks to eradicate it. The word St. Luke uses to describe how Jesus “drove out” the animals is ekballein, the same verb used when he did exorcisms. Jesus wants to exorcise whatever in us is not fit for  God. The Temple in Jerusalem, built in order to be the dwelling place of God on earth, constructed to be a place of encountering God in prayer, had become something very different by Jesus’ time. 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 drastically overcharging 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 charge the people who needed the animals whatever they wanted. 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 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.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the 33rd Week of Ordinary Time, Year II

Mass for the Repose of the Soul of JoEllen Wieseler, Mother of Sr. Desirae Purissima, SV

November 19, 2020

Rev 5:1-10, Ps 149, Lk 19:41-44

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.19.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today, as we draw closer to the Solemnity of Christ the King on Sunday, we have a scene in the Gospel that seems incongruous to the proclamation of Jesus King of the Universe: Jesus, the King of King and Lord of Lords, is weeping. Understanding his tears and responding with what alone will help turn his tears into joy is the point of the Christian life and the best means by which we will not only celebrate appropriately this upcoming feast but learn to live in his kingdom so that we may celebrate the reality of his kingdom eternally.

* We begin with Jesus’ tears. As he drew near Jerusalem, Jesus saw the city and wept over it. There’s a Church on the Mount of Olives overlooking the city called Dominus Flevit, “The Lord wept,” built on the spot traditionally where we believe this scene happened and where Christians are able to ponder the Lord’s tears. When I was there a few of years ago with a big pilgrimage group it was pouring outside, a meteorological event that movingly allowed us to ponder the immensity of the Lord’s weeping. St. Luke tells us why Jesus was weeping. “If this day you only knew what makes for peace,” Jesus lamented, “but now it is hidden from your eyes. For the days are coming upon you when your enemies will raise a palisade against you; they will encircle you and hem you in on all sides. They will smash you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another within you, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.” Jesus was weeping because the inhabitants of Jerusalem, which in Hebrew means “City of Peace,” didn’t know what makes for peace. He was weeping because the city and its inhabitants would be destroyed. He was weeping because all of this would happen because they didn’t recognize the time of their “visitation.” As religious sisters know well, there’s a difference between a visit and a visitation. Anybody can pay a visit, but a visitation is something much longer. It’s a time when you receive a visitator, when you submit to an evaluation, where you are commended for what you are doing well and corrected for what you need to change. It’s a time, in short, when the Visitator helps the whole community to take a good look at itself and where it’s going. In the incarnation God had not just “visited” his people but come for a “visitation.” The Prince of Peace had come to establish the definitive peace treaty between God and man, to help people see where they were in terms of peace with God and with each other. The inhabitants of Jerusalem, however, representing the vast majority of Jews, hadn’t embraced Jesus and the path to divine peace he had come to leave us and give us, as he said during the Last Supper. Had they embraced the life he was announcing, had they grasped the type of kingdom he was inaugurating, the political tensions that had led to Rome’s destroying Jerusalem in 70 AD, Jesus was prophesying by implication, likely wouldn’t have come about. And Jesus was weeping over all of these realities.

* It’s important for us to grasp that Jesus was not weeping over ancient Rome. He wasn’t weeping over modern day Amsterdam, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Kenosha. He wasn’t weeping over the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the 33rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Rose Philippine Duchesne

November 18, 2020

Rev 4:1-11, Ps 150, Lk 19:11-28

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.18.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today in the Gospel we have the Parable of the Coins (on Minas), which is similar to that of the Talents we heard on Sunday, but the main difference is in this Parable, everyone gets the same investment on the part of the Lord. One servant multiplies the gold coin by 10, another by 5, seven we don’t know about, and the tenth buries it. Whereas with the Parable of the Talents, we can often focus on how many talents we have relative to others “each according to his ability,” today’s Parable has us focus on the fact that the greatest gifts we’ve received, we have to a large degree received equally with others: the gift of our life, the gift of time, the gift of redemption, the gift of God’s word, the gift of the Sacraments, the gift of so many opportunities for charity. How are we investing those? Are we bearing great dividends from them? How are we planning to invest the gift of this day for loving God and others? We all know that there are some people who really profit from these common gifts and others who place them in handkerchiefs. Most of us would give the Lord somewhere between numbers 1 and 10. But the Lord wants to teach us how to bear great dividends.

* Before we move on, let’s first handle a couple of things for the setting of the Parable. The first is about life in general. Jesus told the people the Parable “because he was near Jerusalem and they thought that the Kingdom of God would appear there immediately.” The Parable of the Coins was given to help people know why the Kingdom of God wasn’t going to appear immediately, or, rather, how the Kingdom among them, as it awaits fulfillment, is a place in which people are advancing or growing the kingdom by investing the King’s gifts. How important this point is for us to grasp: that time is a time of investing for the kingdom. The second introductory point involves the setting of the story, which involves history known very well to Jesus’ listeners but not to people today. Jesus was taking advantage of the well-known story of how after King Herod’s death, his kingdom was divided into three parts, but each needed to go to Rome to be confirmed by the emperor in the kingship. The king of Judah, Herod Archelaus, went to Rome but the people sent a delegation saying that they didn’t want him as king. The emperor confirmed him without the title king — he named him tetrarch — and upon the return, Archelaus executed those who didn’t want him to be king. In this month of November, in which we meditate on death and judgment, there’s a spiritual equivalent for those who don’t want to accept God as King. He doesn’t punish or slay them because in a sense he doesn’t have to: they’re already spiritually dead. Hell is not merciless but merciful, for as CS Lewis once said, there are only two types of people, those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “Thy will be done.” Hell is for those who want definitive self-separation, and choose it continually through their choices; those are the ones who won’t be in the kingdom.

* Let’s get into the heart of the Parable and what Jesus is teaching. Jesus gives each of the ten servants a treasure of a gold coin. The coin is actually a mina, which is one-sixtieth of a Talent. Since a talent was 6,000 days wages, a Mina is 100 days wages or a third of a year’s salary. For someone making $30,000 a year about $10,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Tuesday of the 33rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

November 17, 2020

Rev 3:1-6.14-22; Ps 15, Lk 19:1-10

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.17.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today in the readings, we are able to focus on the heart of Jesus’ interactions with us, the meaning of the incarnation, of his public ministry, of his passion, death, resurrection and beyond.  It can be summed up by two phrases at the end of the Gospel and first reading respectively: “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost” and “I stand at the door and knock.” Those words of Jesus at the end of his interaction with Zacchaeus and the crowds and after his address to the Seven Churches of the Asian diaspora help us to grasp God’s great desire to save us in his mercy. He knocks, he invites, wants to sit us on his throne and share with us the victory of his triumph over sin and death. Let’s enter into these readings and learn the lessons God wants us to capture.

* The Lord’s merciful desire to save was on full display in the Gospel with Zacchaeus. His love for sinners was so profound that he literally went to the deepest place on earth in search of perhaps the greatest public sinner of that city, to reconcile him to the Father. Jesus went to Jericho, the lowest city on the planet — 853 feet below sea level — to find Zacchaeus, who was not just one of a bunch of tax-collectors loathsome to the Jewish authorities, but the chief tax collector of the region, which was the equivalent of the don of the mafia. He conspired with the Romans to rip off his own fellow Jews through the crooked Roman tax system. Jesus had promised that he, the Good Shepherd, would leave the ninety-nine sheep in his fold to search out and save one lost sheep, and this is what he did, leaving the crowds behind and entering alone with Zacchaeus into his home and into his life. He called Zacchaeus, his lost sheep, by name and heaven rejoiced on that day more for him than for all the others. So, too, today and everyday, Jesus takes the initiative of knocking at the door of our souls, asking for entry, coming to us wherever we are, no matter the depths to which we’ve sunk, no matter the fact that perhaps everyone else around us might despise us. Jesus never abandons us. To the extent that we repent of whatever sins we’ve committed and accept Jesus’ gracious invitation by “welcoming him with delight,” we, too, like Zacchaeus, can have salvation come to us.

* The diminutive Zacchaeus’ climbing of the tree, moreover, is more than merely an interesting detail. The text tells us that he was trying to see Jesus, but couldn’t because of the crowd, so he ran ahead and climbed a tree along Jesus’ route in order to be able to see him. We, too, often cannot see the Lord because other people get in the way. They block our sight in various ways. We’re often too small of stature to see over such obstacles, and, unfortunately, too often others are too selfish, distracted, sinful, judgmental or out-of-it, to do anything to help us and bring us into the presence of the Lord. Like a little child, however, Zacchaeus climbs a tree to see the Lord. Such an act could have led to great mockery for a middle-aged public figure. But Zacchaeus didn’t care. He wanted to see the Lord and no obstacle was going to stop him. His example challenges each of us to consider the extent to which we go, the trees or obstacles we’ll climb, in order to see Jesus more clearly. In our prayer, we regularly “leave the ground,” separating ourselves from the crowds, to go to Jesus, to behold him,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Monday of the 33rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Votive Mass for the Faithful Departed

November 16, 2020

Rev 1:1-4.2:1-5, Ps 1, Lk 18:35-43

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.16.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in today’s homily: 

* On Saturday Jesus gave us the parable of the importune woman bothering the unjust judge in order to convey to us the necessity of “praying always without losing heart.” Immediately thereafter is the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican — which the Church doesn’t give us to ponder today because we meditate upon it at other times during the year — which shows us of the importance of humbly begging the Lord for mercy. Today we encounter the living illustration of what Jesus was teaching about persevering, faithful, humble prayer for mercy in the blind man by the side of the road whom St. Mark in his version of the same scene identifies as Bartimaeus.

* As rabbis were accustomed to do on the three-times-per-year pilgrimages to Jerusalem for the major feasts, Jesus was teaching the crowds along the journey. Bartimaeus was sitting by the roadside begging. He heard the commotion of the crowd and asked what was happening. Upon hearing that “Jesus of Nazareth was passing by,” he immediately began to cry out, “Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me!” He had doubtless heard of Jesus’ reputation for working miracles in Galilee to the north and was responding in faith. The fact that he called him “Son of David” was a sign he believed Jesus was the Messiah. But his cries for Jesus were annoying those who were trying to hear Jesus’ teaching. So the first people in the group rebuked him and told him to shut his trap. But that only led him to cry out all the more, “Son of David, have pity on me!” The word St. Luke uses means basically an animal cry, something coming deep from his woundedness.

* Jesus stopped and ordered that Bartimaeus be brought to him. For Jesus, caring for this man was more important than whatever else he was teaching at that moment. Likely, it was also a “coincidental” opportunity for him put flesh on his parables by showing how God responds to persistent, faithful, humble prayer for compassion. Jesus asked Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?,” and Bartimaeus said, “Lord, please let me see!” To some degree, Bartimaeus was already seeing by faith but he wanted to see Jesus with physical eyes so that he would be able to do exactly what he did once cured, to “follow him, giving glory to God.” He saw something with inner eyes, but was asking to see more. Jesus replied, “Have sight; your faith has saved you.”

* This cry of Bartimaeus is one of the most beautiful and frequent Christian aspirations: Domine, ut videam!, “Lord, I want to see.” It’s a beautiful response to Jesus’ perennial question to us in prayer, “What do you want me to do for you?” If Jesus were to ask many of us that question, many might waste his attention on lesser things, asking for him to return us to the shape we were in at 21, or to resolve a particular issue, or other relatively small stuff. Every day, however, we should ask the Lord for the gift to see, for the grace to see what we don’t see, to see things as they really are, the way he sees them. We should beseech the grace to see him and to see ourselves aright. We should ask for the grace to recognize him in the Holy Eucharist, in Confession, in prayer, in others, in the various events of the day, and especially in the beatific vision. He won’t allow us to see everything, because then we wouldn’t have the grace to live by faith, believing in things unseen,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Agnes Church, Manhattan

Resumed Sixth Sunday after Epiphany

November 15, 2020

1 Thess 1:2-10, Mt 13:31-35

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.15.20_EF_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

Today many Catholics are anxious and fearful about the present and the future. The uncertainty about the recent election and about what changes might happen after January 20th, particularly with regard to the practice of our faith, the direction of the culture have filled many with worry. We see the global situation in which madmen invade a Catholic Church and kill three at daily Mass in Nice, Christian children are beheaded by the dozens in Mozambique by those identifying with ISIS, Catholic schools and parishes are attacked in northern Nigeria, the difficult circumstances in which Christians are living in Cuba or China or various other countries, the flight of Christians from the Holy Land, Iraq and Syria and more, and wonder what the future holds. The publication of the McCarrick report by the Vatican this week showed us in detail the former Cardinal’s decades of evil and corruption and how it wasn’t stopped by those in positions who could have and should have done so much more to protect young people, seminarians and the whole Church; it also raises questions about whether there’s been sufficient repentance to prevent recurrences to root the priesthood and episcopacy from people who would gave the system the way McCarrick did and of sufficient reforms to make sure men like him are never ordained. Many also note with concern the skyrocketing numbers of Covid-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths, concerned about the condition of our loved ones, neighbors, fellow parishioners, the first responders, even ourselves. We are anxious about whether State or local decisions about the pandemic will make it difficult or impossible for us to receive the Sacraments like we had to endure in the Spring. And we are troubled by what that will mean for the Church, conscious that only a third of people have returned to the sacraments after the Churches were reopened.

In the midst of all of these situations, Jesus speaks about the Kingdom of God in today’s Gospel in a way that should fill us with hope. Jesus’ listeners felt themselves a very small minority surrounded by hostile forces. The Scribes, Pharisees and Herodians were already conspiring to kill Jesus. They saw the power of the Roman army, the hostility of the religious leaders, the rejection of those in the cities to whom they had gone to preach who met them with hardened soil by the wayside. They knew their human limitations and were likely tempted on many occasions to question whether what they were doing was a hopeless enterprise. Jesus in today’s Gospel was reminding them that even though the kingdom may seem powerless and tiny, it’s not.

In the Parable of the Mustard Seed, we see that the kingdom begins very small, in the heart of one faithful person, but then over time, it can grow huge. This is, of course, what we see in how the Kingdom began in the Annunciation, when out of Mary’s yes, the Seed conceived within her by the power of the Holy Spirit, began to grow and eventually all nations would be embraced in the branches of his arms on the Cross. We saw that this is what happened on Pentecost, when out of this small band of apostles, the Church started and experienced great growth. We’ve seen this happen in the founding of parishes out of a few committed families, of religious movements and orders that only began with the founder or foundress, and in families when one person’s conversion led to the conversion of so many other generations.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

November 15, 2020

Prov 31:10-13.19-20.30-31, Ps 128, 1 Thess 5:1-6, Mt 25:14-30

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.15.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

Every November, the Church has us focus our attention on the four last things — death, judgment, heaven and hell — so that we might be always prepared for the first two, enter into the third and avoid the fourth. This Sunday is no exception. In the second reading, St. Paul tells us, as he told the Christians in Thessalonika, that “the day of the Lord” — the day of our death or of the end of the world, whichever comes first  — “will come like a thief in the night … as labor pains upon a pregnant woman.” An expectant mother never knows for sure when contractions will start. Many women —like the worthy wives praised by the Book of Proverbs in today’s first reading — prepare a bag of necessary items for the hospital in mid-pregnancy in case the contractions come prematurely so that they’re ready to go to the hospital at a moment’s notice. St. Paul says we need to prepare in the same way for the contractions of death that lead us from the womb of this world to the next dimension of life. Death can come when we least expect it. It could come for some or all of us as fast as today. This reality scares some people, because they doubt they’ll be ready, much like students who don’t study regularly fear flunking a pop quiz. But St. Paul calls the Thessalonians and us not to be afraid by telling us what we need to do. “You, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness for that day to overtake you like a thief,” he tells us. We know it’s coming. Therefore he reminds and exhorts us, “You are all children of light and children of the day… So let us not sleep as the rest do, but let us stay alert and sober.” He tells us always to have what we need ready, so that we might go with joy to the Father’s house. The question for us is: What do we need to do to be ready, what do we have to have in our “go bag” so as not to be caught off-guard when the labor pains for eternal life commence?

In the Gospel, Jesus answers that question and tells us what we need to have in that travel sack. He gives us a parable about how we are to be judged and how we are to prepare for it. But in doing so, as he often does, Jesus tells us as well so much about who we are in God’s eyes, where we fit into His plans, and how we should live. The entire history of the world and the vocation of each of us is found in this short story.

It’s called the Parable of the Talents. A rich man going on a journey called in his servants and entrusted his possessions to them, each according to his capacity: to one he gave five talents, another two, and the third one. On the Master’s return, the one who had received five gave him ten back; the one who received two likewise doubled it and gave him four back; but the one who had received one buried the talent and just gave him back the one at the end.

In our egalitarian culture, we can get lost in the numbers five, two, and one, and think that they’re more important than they are. The main point is that gives to “each according to his ability,” he knows what we can handle, and he’ll judge us not according to quantity but according to what we’ve done with that ability in relation to what’s been given. Some of us can likewise get a lost by the number “one” as if someone would not have been able to do much with so little, or as if the “one” were just one valuable coin that we might easily lose if we tried to invest it. We have to remember, however,