Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

November 14, 2020

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.14.20_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The text that guided the homily was: 

* 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 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 on a minute’s notice. St. Paul says we need to prepare in the same way for the contractions of death that lead us from the womb to the next dimension of life on this earth. 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 know that won’t 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.” 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 begin?

* 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 ability: 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 and think that they’re more important than they are. Jesus gives to “each according to his ability” 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 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 coin that we might easily lose if we tried to invest it. We have to remember, however, that by the word “talent” Jesus was referring to a measurement of weight. One talent of silver was equal to 6,000 days wages or about 20 years of work for someone working six days...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Saturday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

November 14, 2020

3 Jn 5-8, Ps 112, Lk 18:1-8

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.14.20_Homily_715_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today Jesus asks us what I think is perhaps the most haunting question in Sacred Scripture: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” It’s not a rhetorical question. He was asking it because the answer wasn’t obvious. He had a serious concern as to whether when he comes for each of us or for all of us, whichever comes first, he would find us truly faithful. He’s been giving us over the past couple of weeks lots of encouragement to be found vigilant upon his arrival, like that faithful and prudent steward giving his goods to others at the proper time. Today we can ponder two ways that he hopes to find us faithful.

* The first is through persevering prayer. Jesus gives us a parable about the “necessity” — not just the invitation! — for us to “pray always without becoming weary.” Prayer is faith in action. Jesus describes a widow, someone who was helpless without a husband or a son to plead her case before a corrupt judge, who continued to seek a just decision against an adversary. It would appear that the judge may have been bought off by that adversary. The judge, who feared neither what God or what others thought of him, was unwilling but the woman didn’t stop. Eventually, however, he relented, saying, “Because this widow keeps bothering me I shall deliver a just decision for her lest she finally come and strike me.” Jesus tells us, “Pay attention to what the dishonest judge says,” before adding, “Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night? Will he be slow to answer them? I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily.” Jesus wasn’t comparing God to a corrupt magistrate but contrasting him. If even an unjust judge would eventually give in, how much more will a Father who loves his children respond to them when they “pray always without losing heart?”

* Pope Francis pondered the reality of this persevering prayer in a homily in 2013. The first thing he said is that we need to be willing to pray in such an enduring way as to “bother God.” He said, “Jesus himself, when he taught his disciples how to pray, told them to pray like … the widow with the corrupt judge. To do so — I would say — by being bothersome. … Praying is a little like bothering God so that he listens to us. …  This is how Jesus teaches us to pray. … Jesus tell us: …  ‘Knock at the door!’ and whoever knocks at the door makes noise, he disturbs, he bothers.” In another 2013 homily he took up the very important question as to why Jesus would want us to persevere in prayer, asking over and over again, if God already knows what we need. He said, “Why does God want this? Doesn’t he already know what we need?  … God invites us to pray insistently not because he is unaware of our needs or because he is not listening to us. On the contrary, he is always listening and he knows everything about us lovingly. On our daily journey, especially in times of difficulty, in the battle against the evil that is outside and within us, the Lord is not far away, he is by our side. We battle with him beside us, and our weapon is prayer, which makes us feel his presence beside us, his mercy and also his help. But the battle against evil is a long and hard one; it requires patience and endurance, like Moses who had to keep his arms outstretched for the people to prevail (cf Ex 17:8-13). This is how it is: there is a battle to be waged each day,

Fr. Roger J. LandrySacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, ManhattanFriday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year IIMemorial of St. Francis Xavier CabriniNovember 13, 20202 John 4-9, Ps 119, Lk 17:26-37

 

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

The following points were attempted in today’s homily: 

Yesterday the Church throughout the world pondered Jesus’ words that the kingdom of God is among us and why that is, because the King is here with us, he took on our flesh, he remains with us in the Sacraments, in grace, in the Church, in others; and we enter into that kingdom when we follow up our prayer “thy kingdom come!” with the complementary couplet “thy will be done!” We dwell within that kingdom when we’re with the King, when allow his will to be done within us, when he reigns. Today’s readings and memorials provide a fitting commentary on these truths.

In today’s Gospel, we see that even though Christ the King is present, some live in that kingdom and others don’t; others behave as if they are vincibly oblivious to it. Jesus contrasts Noah with those who perished in the flood, and Lot and those who perished in Sodom. Some were attentive and alert to God’s kingdom in their midst and some were not. Jesus encourages us to be similarly on guard. He says that when he comes we shouldn’t head down into the house to get our possessions or come in from the field; rather we should go straight to the King whose kingdom we should be seeking in action. He says that two will be sleeping, two will be cooking, but only one will be taken. This isn’t to be misinterpreted as if God’s going to do an arbitrary 50/50 split. Rather, it’s saying some in the very same circumstances will be ready because they’re connecting sleeping or cooking to God and his kingdom, and others won’t be ready, because all they think they’re doing is sleeping or cooking. When they ask where this will take place, Jesus uses an aphorism, “Where the body is, there also the vultures will gather,” to indicate that just as vultures find a corpse, so we should find the kingdom! He also gives the principle of living in the kingdom: “Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses it will save it.” Those who are living in the kingdom are giving their life for God and others, so that his kingdom will come and his will be done. Those who try to preserve their own kingdom, to hallow their own name, to do their own will, will be those who lose their lives.

In today’s first reading, the only passage we have in the two year liturgical cycle of daily Mass readings from St. John’s Second Letter, the Apostle — who was present when Jesus said the words in today’s Gospel — makes plain what living in the kingdom is all about. He phrases it as “walking in the truth just as we were commanded by the Father,” following in the footsteps of the Incarnate Truth. He describes that involves not a new commandment but the one to “love one another” that Christ gave us, reminding us that to love is to “walk according to the commandments” because the commandments train us to love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves. He notes that there are “progressives” who do not “remain in the teaching of the Christ.” They do not remain, he says, in the Father and the Son and in the kingdom of God. Parallel to the upshot of Jesus’ message in today’s Gospel, he encourages them to lose their lives so as to save them: “Look to yourselves that you do not lose what we worked for but may receive a full recompense.”

Someone who showed us how to live fully in the kingdom, to walk in the truth, and to love others, is the spiritual giant the Church celebrates today, St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, who lived and worked for part of her life here in New York and is buried here in New York. She was born in 1850 near the Italian city of Lodi.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Josaphat, Martyr

November 12, 2020

Plhm 7-20, Ps 146, Lk 17:20-25

 

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

[coming…]

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* The Pharisees in today’s Gospel asked Jesus when the Kingdom of God would come. They were doubtless asking this within messianic expectations, that the kingdom of God would erupt soon and fulfill Jewish hopes to evict the Romans from Israel and reestablish the Davidic throne. The kingdom, for them, was fundamentally a political reality, a Davidic theocracy. In the question, the Pharisees were probably egging Jesus on to see whether he thought he was the Messiah and what his future plans might be. But Jesus, as he is wont to do, transcended the question. He said that the inauguration of the Kingdom wouldn’t be a spectacle to be observed. There wouldn’t be trumpets intoning “Hail to the King!” There wouldn’t be heralds indicating that the kingdom is “here” or “there.” Rather, Jesus says, “Behold, the Kingdom of God is among you.” This means two things. First, that the Kingdom had already come because the King was present; the Kingdom is where the King is and Jesus was already present. Second, the Kingdom had already come because people had already embraced it, entered it and were living in it because they were living with the King. The “among” here in Greek can also mean “within,” and some people interiorly were already very much in the Kingdom. There’s a couplet in the Our Father in which we pray first “Thy kingdom come!” and then repeat it in other words, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The Kingdom of God is wherever God’s will is done, whenever one begins to live in relationship with God and his kingdom.

* By both of these applications Jesus was indicating that no one needed to wait to observe the kingdom because the kingdom had already arrived. Rather, they needed to know how to look for it. Throughout the Gospel Jesus was giving us indications about how to recognize the kingdom as well as the conditions for entering it and living in it. He says that the kingdom of heaven belongs to those who are “poor in spirit,” to those who treasure God more than all the treasures of the world. It belongs to those who convert and become like little children, who trust in God and accept it as a gift. It is like a wedding banquet full of joy and those who live in the kingdom are those who are profoundly and serenely joyful. It grows like a mustard seed or yeast, imperceptible to people on the outside but the growth is real. It’s like a buried treasure or a pearl of great price, a net cast into the sea or a field with wheat and weeds. By each of these realities Jesus was indicating qualities of the Kingdom so that we would be able to perceive it. Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, said very powerfully back in 2000 in a talk to catechists from around the world, “The kingdom of God … is ‘not a thing.’ The Kingdom of God is God. The Kingdom of God means: God exists. God is alive. God is present and acts in the world, in our – in my life. God is not a faraway ‘ultimate cause,’ God is not the ‘great architect’ of deism, who created the machine of the world and is no longer part of it – on the contrary: God is the most present and decisive reality in each and every act of my life, in each and every moment of history.” The kingdom has come to a person when God is truly God of each and every act of one’s life. The Kingdom of God is living within the matrix of the incarnate King of Kings.

* When we enter into that kingdom, everything changes and all other kingdoms are rel...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

November 11, 2020

Ti 3:1-7, Ps 23, Lk 17:11-19

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.11.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* “In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess 5:18), we sang as we prepared for today’s Gospel. Our Christian vocation is one of continuous thanksgiving in all circumstances. We have a beautiful dialogue in the heart of every Mass when the priest says, “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God,” the people reply, “It is right and just” and the priest adds, “It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Lord, holy Father.” We pray those words on Easter Sunday but also throughout Lent, we pray them and nuptial Masses as well as funerals, we pray them in the midst of prosperity and persecution. It is right and just always and everywhere, in all circumstances, to praise and thank God. To do so is first a religious duty, out of gratitude to God for all that he has given us and done for us. But it’s also the path to our salvation. We see the salvific importance of thanksgiving in today’s Gospel.

* Jesus today heals ten lepers. To have leprosy in the ancient world was about the worst thing that could befall you. Not only would Hansen’s disease eat away your flesh and bones, not only would it lead to about the most sickening smell imaginable, but it would lead to your total banishment from society. You had to live apart from civilization. You were cut off from your family. You were cut off from simple things like being able to go to the market for groceries or to the well for water. In some sense you were cut off from God because you couldn’t go to the synagogue on Saturdays or the Temple for major feasts. People couldn’t approach closer than 50 feet from you and when you were near anyone you needed to ring a bell and cry out “Unclean! Unclean!” One of the toughest things of being a leper was that the only people with whom you could relate were other lepers, with all the psychological, physical and spiritual problems that lepers bore.

* When Jesus approached, the lepers with diaphragms trained from yelling out “Unclean! Unclean!,” stood at a distance from Jesus, raised their voice, and begged, “Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!” Very few people had genuine mercy on them. They just tried to stay as far away from them as possible, as if the leprosy were somehow the lepers’ fault. Jesus did have mercy. He responded, “Go, show yourselves to the priests,” because priests were the only ones under the Mosaic law who were able, intelligently, to pronounce a leper healed and to return him or her to society. Even to say this was to imply that he had cured them, but he actually didn’t pronounce them cured. It took an act of faith on their part to start journeying to find a priest simply on Jesus’ word. But that’s what they did. As they were journeying, however, St. Luke tells us one of them, a Samaritan, realizing he had been healed, turned around. Before he would show himself to the priests, he wanted to thank the one who had given him a miracle. Glorifying God, he came to Jesus, fell at his feet, and poured out his heart in gratitude. Jesus’ words are very powerful: “Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine?” He knew he had cured all ten of leprosy, but only one was showing gratitude. Jesus then drew attention to the fact that the man who returned was a Samaritan, someone for whom the Jews had centuries of animosity as those who did not worship God aright.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Tuesday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Leo the Great

November 10, 2020

Ti 2:1-8.11-14, Ps 37, Lk 17:7-10

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today, Jesus teaches us about a fundamental Christian attitude. Yesterday, if we didn’t have proper readings for the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran, we would have pondered Jesus’ words about setting good example rather than scandal and of forgiving continuously when someone repents, which led his apostles, because of the difficulty they foresaw, to say, “Lord, increase our faith!” Jesus described for them the power of faith the size of a mustard seed, that that amount of faith is enough to translocate mountain ranges, and so, even with a little faith, persevering in good example and forgiveness ought to be easy in comparison! That leads Jesus today to talk about the perseverance, humility and gratitude that flow from faith, describing the situation of a servant who has just come in from the fields. Such a servant would never expect his boss to have him sit down at table and serve him as some type of reward for doing what he was supposed to do; rather he would expect him to continue serving. “So should it be with you,” Jesus draws the lesson. “When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.’” Jesus wants us to go on continuing to work in his vineyard, to set good Christian example, to be merciful like he is merciful, to live by faith. There’s no point at which we should say, “I’ve forgiven enough, now I can stop.” There’s no time when we should think, “I set a good example earlier. Now I can do my own thing.” Jesus wants us to persevere with gratitude for the gift of faith and like him continue serving others with love as he loved and served us to the end.

* In today’s first reading, St. Paul describes various traits that we should have in order to set that good Christian example. He talks about various classes of people — senior men, senior women, young people, even Titus himself. While at certain times of life various virtues may be more important, we should aspire to all of these virtues “so that the word of God may not be discredited” and so that critics “will be put to shame without anything bad to say about us.”

* Say what is consistent with sound doctrine — We all have a duty to speak in a way that’s consistent with the truth that God has revealed. If we teach contrary to the truth — whether we consciously or unconsciously know that it contradicts what God has taught through revelation and through the Church — we can draw people to follow us down a wrong path. We need to know sound doctrine and have the love for God and for others to pass it on.

* Temperate — This means “sober” in terms of food and drink. With the passing of time, we should learn what our limits are, what are true pleasures, and how not to over-indulge. Drunks and gluttons are a sad scandal.

* Dignified — This means that one is “serious” about one’s origin and destiny in God, about one’s divine filiation, and lives accordingly.

* Self-controlled — The word means “prudent,” someone that has things under control, who doesn’t give in to flights of anger or passion.

* Sound in faith, love and endurance — We must be “healthy” in our total self-entrustment to God and what he teaches, in sacrificing ourselves for God and others, and for perseverance until the end.

* Reverent — We must learn how to revere God and the things of God, especially others. To be reverent means to be conscious that one is dealing with sacred things.

* Not slanderers — Gossip is a truly ugly scandal.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Feast of the Dedication of the Archbasilica of St. John in the Lateran

November 9, 2020

Ezek 47:1-2.8-9.12, Ps 46, 1 Cor 3:9-11.16-17, Jn 2:13-22

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.9.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* “The most holy Church of the Lateran, the mother and head of all the churches of the city and the world!” These words, in Latin, greet every pilgrim entering through the front door of the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran in Rome and clearly proclaim the Lateran’s significance in Christianity.  We call the Lateran the mother of every church edifice because it was the first Christian legalized Christian Church in history. It is the head, because Rome is the principal Church of the principal local Church in the world, the Diocese of Rome, the see of St. Peter, the vicar on earth of the Head of the Mystical Body.  The Lateran, not St. Peter’s, is the Pope’s Cathedral, where his cathedra, the chair symbolic of his teaching authority, rests. The Lateran, not the Vatican, is where the Popes resided for the first millennium of legalized Christianity (324-1308). This is the reason why on November 9 every year not just the Diocese of Rome but the whole Roman Catholic Church celebrate the feast of the dedication of their Head and Mother. “With this feast,” Pope Francis said a few years ago in an Angelus meditation, “we profess, in the unity of the faith, the bond of communion that all the local Churches, spread throughout the earth, has with the Church of Rome and with its Bishop, the successor to Peter.” St. John Lateran is, we can loosely say, the Cathedral of the world.

* The history of the Lateran symbolizes, in many ways, the history of the Church for which she is its liturgical mother and head. The Lateran Archbasilica is a fitting symbol for the Church that as theologians say is semper reformanda or always in need of reform. Over the centuries, the Lateran has been multiply pillaged by vandals, three times decimated by fire, toppled by an earthquake, and neglected by the Popes and faithful sometimes for decades. After every deformation, however, the Lateran rose again, continuing to proclaim to the city and the world the Church’s faith, through the words of the popes and five ecumenical councils held there, and through the language of its art and architecture. It’s therefore a sign of hope for the Church in every age and place.

* That perpetual reform is also depicted in its name. The true and original name of the Basilica is “Christ the Savior,” which is emblazoned on the front of the Basilica’s façade. Every reshaping in Church history happens when Christians return to Christ and to the salvation he came to bring into the world. When Pope Sergius III rebuilt the Basilica after a 9th century earthquake, he rededicated it to the Savior through the intercession of St. John the Baptist, because, symbolically, we needed to hear once more St. John the Baptist’s summons to conversion, to make straight the paths for Christ, to level the mountains of our pride, and fill up the valleys of a shallow spiritual life, so that we could encounter Christ. Pope Lucius II (1144-1145) added the intercession of St. John the Evangelist to the dedication as a means to remind of what St. John wrote in his Gospel, that “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” The rebuilding of the Church always involves living more fully with the Lord who came to live with us. (The name Lateran comes from the Roman Senatorial family of Plautus Lateranus who at the time SS. Peter and Paul lived in Rome owned the vast area in which the Lateran now stands.)

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

November 7, 2020

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.7.20_Landry_ConCon.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* 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 this Sunday. We are preparing for the feast of Christ the King in two weeks and Jesus today is teaching us about his kingdom.

* He does so using an image that might seem a little strange to us but the details would have been very well understood by his contemporaries in Palestine. There were two main stages in a marriage. The first would be the exchange of vows. When this took place, they were married, but they would continue to live apart for a while, even up to a year, while the husband prepared everything to welcome his new wife into his home. The second stage was when the husband would come to the bride’s house to pick her up and take her to their new home. He would send out some of his groomsmen with word that the Bridegroom is coming, meaning that he could arrive within hours, days, or up to a week. He would be accompanied by all the guests from his side and meet his wife with all the guests from her side, her bridesmaids and others. Both groups would process back together to his home and when they arrived, they would celebrate the nuptials for eight days with all their friends and family — something they would consider far more enjoyable than leaving everyone behind for a honeymoon.

* In order to decrease on the amount of guests one would need to feed for eight days, the bridegroom sometimes would come in the middle of the night. Those who weren’t ready lost their spots. As soon as the Bridegroom took his Bride into his house, the doors would be shut, to prevent latecomers crashing their party. This wedding tradition, which was universal at Jesus’ time, is still found today in certain parts of the Holy Land and Middle East.

* Jesus used that image as the background to communicate to us how we should be living in his kingdom, preparing for his return as Bridegroom at the end of our life or at the end of the world, whichever comes first. Jesus contrasts five wise bridesmaids versus five foolish ones, wanting us to imitate the lessons we see in the five wise ones. November is the month in which the whole Church reflects on the four last things — death, judgment, heaven and hell — and Jesus by this image tries to help us prepare well for the first two, so that we may experience the third and avoid the fourth. But for this to happen, we need to learn three crucial lessons from the wise virgins.

* The first lesson is vigilancefor the Bridegroom’s coming. The heralds have already gone out to announce that Jesus is coming. We need to be ready to go with him whenever he arrives. Death, for a Christian, is not meant to be a scary thing. It’s the time when Jesus the Bridegroom comes for us to take us to His home when we will celebrate with him forever. We’re called to await him with eager longing, with great expectation. He wants the lamps of our hearts burning for him, full of the oil of love. The best way for us to stay alert for the return of the Bridegroom is for us to be ready, with hearts burning with love, for the presence of the Bridegroom now. The more we long for Jesus in the Eucharist, the more we attentively listen to his Word in Sacred Scripture, the more we seek to recognize him in the persons and events of each day, and love and embrace them as we would love and embrace Christ, the more ready we will be ready to embrace Christ when he...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the 31st Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Charles Borromeo

November 7, 2018

Phil 2:12-18, Ps 27, Lk 14:25-33

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.4.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today the readings help us to focus on something far more important than the US Presidential election. Throughout the month of November, the Church has us ponder with special attention the last things. Today in the readings, the Church has us think about salvation to stoke up our desire for it and move us to make the choices that will secure it.

* In the first reading, St. Paul tells the Philippians and us to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” The word for “work” in Greek used here means to “complete the work” or to “finish the job” of your salvation; the word for “fear” is the Greek word for “reverential awe.” We’re not supposed to be afraid of God but with a holy awe to grasp the gift of God and make sure we allow him to bring to completion the work of salvation he has begun in us. The “trembling” buttresses the holy awe. If someone had a winning lotto ticket worth hundreds of millions of dollars, we can imagine how the person would take care of the ticket, making sure it wouldn’t be accidentally dropped or lost, while bringing the ticket to lottery officials to obtain the treasure. We’re supposed to treat our salvation as something far more valuable as we seek to reap God’s eternal gift.

* St. Paul tells us that in this “completing the work,” God gives us his help. “For God is the one who, for his good purpose, works in you both to desire and to work.” God both fills us with the desire for salvation and then gives us his grace to act on that desire. We see the desire described in the Responsorial Psalm when the inspired author says, “One thing I ask of the Lord, this I seek: to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, that I may gave on the loveliness of the Lord and contemplate his temple.” God has implanted within us this desire for salvation, for him, for his house, for his kingdom, for his glory, for his love. He always implants within us a desire to seek and ask for what he desires to give us. But we have to act on that desire and God helps us with that as well,  to “complete the work” that the fulfillment of that desire requires. Jesus describes that work in today’s Gospel.

* To complete the work of salvation, he says, we need to count the cost and joyfully pay it. We need to grasp that the offer of salvation God gives us through sharing his own eternal life is the pearl of great price, the treasure buried in a field, worth sacrificing everything else to obtain. With a holy awe and trembling, we need to respond to his call to follow him, and he gives us the grace both to desire and to act on that call. He tells us that to follow him as his disciple to salvation, we have to do three things. First, we need to “hate” father and mother, spouse and children, brothers and  sisters. The Hebrew word for “hate” doesn’t mean “detest,” but rather means the opposite of “prefer.” It basically conveys not putting the person or thing we “hate” in first place.” Jesus, after all, calls us to honor our father and mother, not despise them. But we have to make sure that they don’t become gods in our life, that if there is ever a choice between what God is asking of us and what our parents, or husband or wife, or children are asking of us, that we say “God’s will be done” instead of “My loved one’s will be done.” And we need to remember that if we do “hate” them i...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

The Commemoration of All The Faithful Departed, All Souls’ Day

November 2, 2020

2 Macc 12:38-46, Ps 25, 1 Thess 4:13-18, Lk 23:33.39-43

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today we come together to fulfill the sweetest of all the spiritual works of mercy, which is to pray for the dead. With Catholics throughout the world, we commemorate all the faithful departed — those who died yesterday and today, the beloved deceased members of our families, those who have died of natural causes as well the victims of war, violence and genocide, those who have died of hunger, disease and neglect, the infants who have died in miscarriages or who have been killed through exposure or abortion, the seniors who have been tragically killed through euthanasia, the Christians who have died for the faith in persecution, the anonymous who rest in common graves, and those forgotten by the world and whose names are known only by God. The Church remembers the faithful departed not just on this day but throughout the entire month of November in a special way. We begin the month, as we did yesterday, by celebrating the saints — those who are definitively in heaven, the canonized and un-canonized saints — and by invoking their intercession as we continue on our pilgrimage of faith in this world. But then we immediately turn in suffrage for all those who have died who long to share in the communion of the saints but who are not yet experiencing their joy. To pray for the dead is the main purpose of this All Souls Day. We pray for the dead because we know in faith three truths: first, contrary to the popular heresy that presumes that everyone who dies goes to a “better place,” the Catholic faith does not believe everyone who dies goes to heaven, especially immediately; second, the dead may need our help; and third our prayers and sacrifices can in fact help them. Let’s examine more deeply these three truths of faith.

* First, the Church teaches that to enter heaven, one must be completely attached to God and radically detached from all sin and everything that is not of God. “Nothing unclean shall enter heaven,” the Book of Revelation tells us (Rev. 21:27). There are many who do not live and die with that type of purity of life and hence they need to be purified to enter into the kingdom in which God is all in all. This state in which the dead are decontaminated from all sin and worldliness has been traditionally called by the Church “Purgatory” from the Latin term purgare, which means “to cleanse.” In 2007, Pope Benedict wrote an encyclical letter on Christian hope in which he talked about what happens after we die and who goes to Hell, Heaven and Purgatory. Today is a good day to review his words. He described Hell as that state where those people go “who have totally destroyed their desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within themselves.” He commented, “This is a terrifying thought, but alarming profiles of this type can be seen in certain figures of our own history.” He doesn’t mention anyone by name, but we can think that some genocidal leaders, sadistic serial killers, abortionists, if their deeds correspond to what was really in their hearts and they failed to repent, would end up here. “In such people,” Pope Benedict added, “all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable. This is what we mean by the word Hell.” Hell, the Catechism tells us, is the place of “definitive self-exclusion” from God. All who go to Hell choose it, because they would consider Heaven — where everyone adores God — a hell for them who want a life without God. I’ve seen glimpses of those who would be in Hel...