Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Agnes Church, Manhattan

Second Sunday of Lent, Extraordinary Form

February 28, 2021

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

 

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The following text guided the homily: 

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

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

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

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

February 27, 2021

 

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

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The following text guided the homily: 

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

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

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

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the First Week of Lent

February 26, 2021

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

 

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

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

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

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

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the First Week in Lent

February 25, 2021

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

 

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

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

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

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

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

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the First Week of Lent

February 24, 2021

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

 

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

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

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

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

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

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of LIfe, Manhattan

Tuesday of the First Week of Lent

Memorial of St. Polycarp, Bishop and Martyr

February 23, 2021

Is 55:10-11, Ps 34, Mt 6:7-15

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.23.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* The whole purpose of Lent is for us to become fully Christian in identity and behavior and that involves rediscovering or deepening our relationship with God in the Father through Christ in the Holy Spirit. On Ash Wednesday, we saw how Jesus calls us to give alms, fast and pray differently from everyone else, doing each of these things in communion with our Father who sees in secret. We’re supposed to give alms recognizing that all that we are able to give to others we have first received from God the Father, and so our giving is an extension of his own loving Providence (as we would have pondered yesterday with the Gospel on the Last Judgment and the corporal works of mercy had we not had the proper Gospel for the Chair of St. Peter). We’re supposed to fast in order to hunger for God and for what he hungers, as he made very clear in our readings on Friday and Saturday last week. And we’re supposed to pray by meeting God the Father in our “inner room,” the locked “store room” in a Jewish house where all valuables were kept, indicating to us not only are we supposed to treasure God most but also to treasure his love in coming to meet us in the tiny “closet” of our interior life, whether we’re praying at home or in the middle of a multitude.

* Today in the Gospel Jesus continues somewhat literally his Ash Wednesday instructions on prayer. Today’s passage is an excision of the Ash Wednesday Gospel passage. After Jesus said the words about the “inner room,” he elaborated about prayer in the words of today’s Gospel. He reiterates that as Christians we’re supposed to pray differently than everyone else, not looking for show like certain Pharisees, but also not “babbling on” like the pagans who think that their prayer will be heard because of the multiplication of words. Because of pagan polytheism, in which gods were warring against each other, pagan prayer would often involve trying to lobby your gods against the gods that others were supposedly lobbying, recognizing that for these gods, people were no more than pawns in their games. Jesus said that not only should we not babble, but that we have to have a totally different conception and way of prayer altogether.

* For us as Christians, prayer is to be an intimate conversation with a Father who loves us and already knows what we need. The first word Jesus teaches us is “Abba!” We’re to pray to a loving “daddy.” Then we’re supposed to seek what that loving Father who already knows what we need seeks. The first petition is that his name be hallowed rather than ours, and the way is name is hallowed is not just in our prayer but particularly through the Christian life of Christ-like love when others “seeing [our] good deeds glorify [our] Father in heaven” (Mt 5:16). We beg that his kingdom come and his will be done, rather than our own. We begin by asking for everything related to God’s glory, kingdom and will.  A loving son or daughter wants what’s best for a parent — just like a parent wants what’s best for a child — and we begin praying not for ourselves and our needs but for God and his desires, knowing that God’s desires are for us to be holy by hallowing his name (the path to our own happiness!), for us to enter his kingdom fully as heirs, and for us to do his will on earth so that we may do it forever in heaven.

* From there we turn to our own needs. The first thing we ask the Father is each day ...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Feast of the Chair of St. Peter

February 22, 2021

1 Pet 5:1-4, Ps 23, Mt 16:13-19

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.22.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* In today’s Gospel, we have a double confession. Inspired by God the Father, Simon confesses Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God. Jesus in return gives another, almost equally striking confession: You are kepha (the Aramaic means both the name “Peter” and the thing “Rock”), you are Rock and on this Rock, on you, I will build my Church and the gates of Hell won’t prevail against it. Christ the Cornerstone built his Church with an architectural plan and the foundation of the Church would be Peter. That means that if we’re going to be truly Christian, fully Christian, we need to build our faith in Christ not just on Christ but on his building it on Peter. At the beginning of Mass today, we prayed to God the Father, “Grant that no tempests may disturb us for you have set us fast on the rock of the Apostle Peter’s confession of faith.” God has made our faith steadfast on the Rock’s profession of faith, and therefore our growth in faith, our deepening in the Christian life, is directly linked to Peter, to the office of the Papacy, and to the responsibilities Christ gave him he passed on to his successors.

* Today the Church celebrates the Feast of the “Chair” of St. Peter. Liturgically, it recalls the day Peter took up his episcopal ministry in Antioch, where he served before coming to Rome. He was Pope from Jesus’ ascension (May 19, 30 AD), but he didn’t immediately go to Rome. The early Christians not only celebrated Peter’s heroic martyrdom as a feast but also celebrated the anniversary of the day on which he started to guide the first Christians in the place Jesus’ believers were first called Christians.

* To celebrate the feast of St. Peter’s Chair, however, is something more specific than fêting Peter’s ministry as a whole. The chair was the ancient symbol of teaching authority. Teachers would sit and all their students would stand, the exact opposite of what happens today. In the Gospel, the evangelists tell us on several occasions that Jesus “sat down and began to teach” the crowds. The chair became a symbol of teaching authority and in some ways that remains today, when we refer to the person who has the “chair of philosophy” or “chair of theology” or even the “chair” of a particular meeting. To celebrate the feast of the Chair of St. Peter is to rejoice in the teaching authority Christ has given him for the sake of his body the Church. Jesus gave Peter the “keys of the kingdom of heaven,” to bind and loose on earth, and that even greater authority over the sacraments points to the authority he has to teach authoritatively in Jesus’ name. We retain the expression of the Pope’s teaching ex cathedra (literally “from the chair”) to highlight his most solemn teachings to us, applying Christ’s words and wisdom to the present age.

* The teaching authority of the Pope has been so important throughout Church history. We see even in the Acts of the Apostles how there were disputes about whether Gentile converts needed to follow the whole Mosaic law and how Peter intervened in the Council of Jerusalem. Much later there were huge issues with whether Christ was fully God and fully man, whether he was two persons or one person and two natures, whether he had the full complement of a human body, soul and spirit, whether he had one will or two wills, whether the Holy Spirit was divine, what the sacraments were and whether they were necessary for salvation, which sacred writings were truly inspired and bindi...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Leonine Forum Lenten Day of Recollection

Church of the Holy Family, Manhattan

Saturday after Ash Wednesday

February 20, 2021

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.20.21_Fasting_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Leonine Forum Lenten Day of Recollection

Church of the Holy Family, Manhattan

Saturday after Ash Wednesday

February 20, 2021

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.20.21_Almsgiving_1.mp3

Louis Cona

Leonine Forum Lenten Day of Recollection

Church of the Holy Family, Manhattan

Saturday after Ash Wednesday

February 20, 2021

 

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