Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Agnes Parish, Manhattan

All Saints Day 2020

November 1, 2020

Rev 7:2-12, Mt 5:1-12

 

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

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* This is a feast about the whole point of human life. We’re made for heaven. We’re created to spend eternity with God in His kingdom of love. Jesus came from heaven to earth to show us the way from earth to heaven. Today we celebrate those people who followed Jesus all the way there, the great and famous saints we know about, and the countless quiet saints, probably many of those who passed on to us the faith, who died in the love of the Lord and now live in His love. These are the “great multitude that no one could count, from every nation.” These are the ones who are singing today in that holy place the beautiful endless song glimpsed in the passage from Revelation, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

* “Salvation belongs to our God.” Yes, heaven is always and exclusively a gift of God beyond anything we can merit. But God out of love has made heaven the result of our choice. To get to heaven, as St. Thomas Aquinas said, we need to will it, we need to desire it, we need to choose it. All who get to heaven choose it and all our choices here are earth are forks leading toward or away from God, in which we set our feet on or away from the path to heaven, to God, to eternity. It is a choice between true, lasting happiness and momentary pleasure; a choice between light and darkness; a choice between good and evil; a choice ultimately between life and death. Jesus came down to show how to choose well, and to help us to choose well, but there are competing voices that tell us to choose against what God wants. The saints are those who have chosen well. They are the multitude of men and women, just like us, from every nation and language, who have responded to God’s grace and made it. Today we recall their example and call upon their intercession so that we might follow their good example.

* In today’s Gospel, Jesus gathers us around him and presents to us the way to heaven, the way to happiness, the way to holiness. The path he shows us stands in stark contrast to the one the world tell us will make us happy. Jesus’s words present us with the choice on which our lives hinge. Let’s listen to him with both ears

* The world tells us that to be happy, we have to be rich. Jesus says, rather, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they will inherit the kingdom of heaven.”

* The world tells us we’re happy when we don’t have a concern in the world. Jesus says, on the other hand, “Blessed are those” who are so concerned with others that “they mourn” over the others’ miseries, “for they will be comforted” by him eternally.

* Worldly know-it-alls say, “You have to be strong and powerful to be happy.” Jesus, in contrast, retorts, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”

* The world says increasingly more each day, “To be happy, you’ve got to have all your sexual fantasies fulfilled” and our culture promotes people like Hugh Hefner and promiscuous, sexy Hollywood vixens as those who have it made. Jesus, however, says “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.”

* The world preaches, “You’re happy when you accept yourself,” and espouses an “I’m okay, you’re okay,” brand of moral relativism. Jesus says, though, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for holiness, for his grace and justification, for they will be filled.”

* The world says, “You’re happy when you don’t start a fight, but finish it” and people from professional wrestlers, to MMA champs, to generals, to armchair or back-seat presidents shout “No mercy,” Jesus says “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy” and “Blessed are the peacemakers,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

All Saints Day 2020

November 1, 2020

Rev 7:2-4.9-14, Ps 24, 1 Jn 3:1-3, Mt 5:1-12

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.1.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following texts guided the homily: 

* This is a feast about the whole point of human life. We’re made for heaven, to spend eternity with God in His kingdom of love. Jesus came from heaven to earth to show us the way from earth to heaven. Today we celebrate those people who followed Jesus all the way there, the great and famous saints we know about, and the countless quiet saints, probably many of those who passed on to us the faith, who died in the love of the Lord and now live in His love. These are the multitude who have “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb,” as we heard in today’s first reading, and brought those white baptismal garments “unstained into the everlasting life of heaven,” like they were instructed to do on the day of their baptism. These are the “great multitude that no one could count, from every nation,” who have not just been called “children of God” through baptism, as St. John told us in today’s second reading, but have lived as children of God throughout their lives. These are the ones who as we prayed in the Psalm have longed to see God’s face, whose hands were sinless, whose heart was pure, whose desires were not for vain things but for the things of God. These are the ones who have ascended “the mountain of the Lord,” the eternal Jerusalem, and who “stand in his holy place.” These are the ones who are singing today in that holy place the beautiful endless song glimpsed in the passage from Revelation, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

* “Salvation belongs to our God.” Yes, heaven is always and exclusively a gift of God beyond anything we can merit. 29 years ago today, in a homily to the first Sisters of Life, Cardinal O’Connor stressed that we cannot make ourselves holy. He compared the process of our sanctification to what he had observed happen to the Sistine Chapel, when the centuries of corrosion, grime, candle soot and leaks that had deteriorated Michelangelo’s frescoes had finally been cleansd to reveal a tremendous colorful, dazzling, luminous freshness. A similar process has to happen in us, he proclaimed, and it happens through his mercy: “All the power of the Christ who was ripped to shreds on the Cross just pours into our souls, washes them, scrapes them, cleans them, purifies them and does what to us? Makes us saints. That’s what holiness is. That’s what being a saint is. Having the power of Christ just pervade our very beings, wash our very bones, scrub our souls clean to the point of dazzling whiteness.” He went on to add, “Holiness does not consist of never having sinned. Holiness consists in letting Christ redeem us. … We can’t make ourselves holy. All that we can do is to open ourselves up to Christ to let Him scrub us clean, to let Him make us bright, shining.” We prayed significantly in today’s opening Collect, “Almighty ever-living God, by whose gift we venerate in one celebration the merits of all the Saints, bestow on us, we pray, through the prayers of so many intercessors, an abundance of the reconciliation with you for which we earnestly long.” And the Lord longs for that total reconciliation with us more than all of us alive today do!

* But as much as Heaven and holiness are God’s gift that we cannot earn, God out of love has made heaven the result of our choice, the result of our acting on that longing. To get to heaven, as St. Thomas Aquinas said, we need to will it, we need to desire it, we need to choose it.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Solemnity of All Saints (A)

October 31, 2020

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.31.20_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

This was the text that 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 on All Saints Day. Jesus came into the world in order to restore us to the image and likeness of God, who is holy, holy, holy. He came to make it possible for us to respond to his command, “Be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” He came to strengthen us to become perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, merciful as he is merciful. Saint Paul tells us, “This is God’s will for you: your sanctification.” And so the Solemnity of All Saints is our annual reminder of the purpose God created us, redeemed us, sent the Holy Spirit to us, founded the Church and more.

* On All Saints Day, we celebrate those people who have followed Jesus all the way, the great and famous saints we know about, and the countless quiet saints, probably many of those who passed on to us the faith, who died in the love of the Lord and now live in His love. We also hope that one day, we will likewise be remembered on this feast, numbered among them. To get to heaven, as St. Thomas Aquinas taught, we need to will it, we need to desire it, we need to choose it. All our choices here are earth are forks leading toward or away from God, in which we set our feet on or away from the path to heaven, to God, to eternity. It is a choice between true, lasting happiness and momentary pleasure; between light and darkness; between good and evil; ultimately between life and death. Jesus came down to show us the way to choose well, and to help us to choose well, but there are competing voices that tell us to choose against what God wants. The saints are those who have chosen well. They are the multitude of men and women, just like us, from every nation and language, who have responded to God’s grace and made it. On All Saints Day we recall their example and invoke their intercession so that we might follow their good example.

* In the Gospel for the feast, Jesus gathers us around him and presents to us the way to heaven, the way to happiness, the way to holiness, precisely so that we choose to follow him on it. The path that he shows us stands in stark contrast to the path that the majority of people in the world believe will make us happy. Jesus’ words present us with the choice on which our lives hinge. Let’s listen to him as if we’re hearing him for the first time:

* The world tells us that to be happy, we have to be rich. Jesus says, rather, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they will inherit the kingdom of heaven.”

* The world tells us we’re happy when we don’t have a concern in the world. Jesus says, on the other hand, “Blessed are those” who are so concerned with others that “they mourn” over their own and others’ miseries, “for they will be comforted” by him eternally.

* Worldly know-it-alls say, “You have to be strong and powerful to be happy.” Jesus, in contrast, retorts, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”

* The spiritually worldly shout increasingly more each day, “To be happy, you’ve got to have all your sexual fantasies fulfilled” and our culture promotes people like Hugh Hefner and promiscuous, Hollywood vixens as those who have it made. Jesus, however, says “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.”

* The world preaches, “You’re happy when you accept yourself,” and espouses an “I’m okay, you’re okay,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Saturday of the 30th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Votive Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Handmaid of the Lord

October 31, 2020

Phil 1:18-26, Ps 42, Lk 14:1.7-11

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today, by means of a parable on seats at a dinner gathering, Jesus teaches us about the humility necessary for us to come to the eternal banquet. The parable goes flat against the way many in the world, including sometimes many of us Christians, behave. In this world so many want to be noticed, esteemed, and exalted. They want the places of honor at table, first class seats on airplanes and front row seats at concerts. They hunger for titles of status and worldly honor and positions of power and influence. They want waiters and butlers to serve them, chauffeurs to drive them, and the rich, famous and important to call them. At a human level, this is not only common but understandable. But Jesus calls us to a different standard, a higher standard that is at the same time paradoxically a lower one. He tell us, “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” He wants us to learn from him how to serve rather than to be served, to seek the lowest place rather than the highest, to treasure God’s esteem rather than others’ adulation so that God may say to us, in this world and the next, “My friend, come up higher!” The way to be exalted at Jesus’ right side forever is humbly to serve at Jesus’ side here on earth, and to follow him not just in seeking the lowest places at table but in getting up from the table like he did at the Last Supper, picking up the basin and towel to wash others’ feet, and serving them in such self-effacing ways.

* We see this lesson described for us in St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians from which we have our first reading today. When he was young, Saul of Tarsus was a meteoric superstar. He was brilliant, one of the brightest, most zealous students of the Great Rabbi Gamaliel, someone who had been trusted with a huge commission at a young age to try to destroy the Church, which he was convinced in his Pharisaical arrogance couldn’t have been from God. But the Lord converted him and led him along a path of humility, blinding him in order to show him his spiritual blind spots before the illumination of baptism. Rather than continuing on the path to fame and power over life-and-death, he became a hunted man, needing to escape by being lowered in walls through baskets. He disappeared into the desert for 14 years to pray and learn anew. Because others didn’t trust his conversion, he returned to serving God quietly through making tents. He had a humiliating “thorn” in his flesh (2 Cor 12:6-7), whatever that was, but it was through bearing it that he learned that God’s grace was sufficient for him. After many years, St. Barnabas came for him and the Holy Spirit set them both aside for the Mission he had planned for them. And cooperating with the Spirit, he proclaimed the Gospel to the furthest expanses of the world. He proclaimed that God called nobodies, the humble of the world, to shame those who thought they were somebodies (1 Cor 1:26-29) so that no one could boast before God. He grasped that it was truly when he was weak that he was strong (2 Cor 12:10), because then God’s power was able to work through him with no resistance. And from prison, as this humble but great man wrote this letter, he sought to decrease so that Christ would increase, saying, as we heard today, that for him “life is Christ and death is gain,” that because his soul was athirst for the living God, he longed “to depart and be with Christ,” and yet was “happy to remain in the flesh for the benefit of others,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

October 30, 2020

Phil 1:1-11, Ps 111, Lk 14:1-6

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today we begin in the first reading St. Paul’s most friendly, positive, warm and joyful letter, which he sent from a Roman jail to the Church in Philippi. We’ll continue with this Letter for seven days at daily Mass, through a week from tomorrow. Paul had planted the Gospel for the first time in Europe in Philippi, where he and Silas met Lydia and women down by the river, where he was unjustly imprisoned because he put someone manipulating a possessed girl out of business, but was freed by an earthquake leading to the baptism of the jailer and his whole family. Philippi was a Church that never gave Paul heartache. They received what he proclaimed with faith and always responded with generosity, as we’ll see in Chapter 4 of the letter. And so St. Paul’s purpose and tone in this letter were to strengthen them in the faith, presenting in depth the truths of the faith, without any need for fraternal correction. When Epaphroditus was leaving him in Rome to return to Philippi, Paul was able to send the letter with him.

* St. Paul’s love for the Christians in Philippi is palpable. “I hold you in my heart,” he writes, and “long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.” Think about that for a minute. He yearns for them with the splagchna of Jesus. The term splagchna refers to the bowels, everything from the liver and upper intestines to the heart and the lungs. It was considered the real center of a person. The synoptic evangelists use it in a very to signify Jesus’ merciful love, writing that Jesus’ “heart was moved with pity.” The New American Bible in the lectionary translates it “affection,” which is complementary. Just as Jesus loves them with mercy and affection so does Paul. And so we likewise are called to love with affection and mercy. I think sometimes it’s easier for some faithful people to love with mercy than affection. We don’t treat most others with affection. Those of us who have spent a lot of time in community life can sometimes have affection stripped out of us, but that would be a defect of chaste love. Chastity, among other things, involves the integration of our emotions with our reason and will and we would not be loving with affective maturity if that were not expressed with warmth, with joy, with the heart. Jesus loved with affection, Paul loved with affection and we’re similarly called to love others as Christ has loved us first.

* We see that merciful affection of Jesus in today’s Gospel. He went for dinner to the house of a Pharisee where everyone was watching him. Someone with an edema — or swelling caused by fluid retention — was there, probably as a plant, to test whether Jesus would cure him on the Sabbath. Jesus didn’t hesitate. After asking whether it was lawful to cure on the Sabbath or not — whether it was possible to do good deeds on the Lord’s day! — he healed the man. The principle Jesus gave was no one would ever allow one of their children or even animals who fell into a cistern to remain in there on the Sabbath but would work on the Sabbath to rescue him. Jesus, therefore, with merciful affection, wouldn’t all this man one more day to remain with dropsy. Jesus’ analogy highlights that we always do something with urgency for someone or something we really care about, who matters to us, whom we love, and we would see that such authentic love for that person would not be a violation of God’s will or law. The problem for the Pharisees was that they just d...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the 30th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

October 29, 2020

Eph 6:10-20, Ps 144, Lk 13:31-35

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in today’s homily: 

* Today in the Gospel, Jesus is confronted by the fact that Herod was trying to kill him. Jesus was unafraid, however. He sent him a message, calling him a “fox,” an indication that he was sly and ferocious, and then gave this paranoid man who thought Jesus might be the risen John the Baptist whom he beheaded a mysterious thing for him to dwell on, which summarizes his whole mission: “Behold, I cast out demons and I perform healings today and tomorrow, and on the third day I accomplish my purpose. Yet I must continue on my way today, tomorrow, and the following day, for it is impossible that a prophet should die outside of Jerusalem.” First, he synthesizes his work as exorcizing and healing — something that would come to its fulfillment in the two days of the Last Supper/Good Friday and the rest in the tomb — and then on the “third day,” accomplishing his purpose, a clear sign of the Resurrection. He also gave a clear indication that he knew he would die in Jerusalem, something that would have taken away any intimidation factor Herod might have thought he had but also open Herod up to the fact that this was part of Jesus’ plan.

* The sad thing, however, that got Jesus to weep over Jerusalem was that despite his work of healing and exorcizing, some would not receive it. Jesus says, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how many times I yearned to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were unwilling!” They were unwilling. They didn’t want to allow God to gather them, to heal them, to free them from the power of Satan. They didn’t respond to the appeals of God’s loving mercy through the prophets but instead killed them, much like many of them were preparing to call for the crucifixion of God’s own Son and image. It’s a reality that we need to face in every age, that sometimes we’re unwilling to let Jesus do his work and transform us the way he wants to do. But nevertheless, he goes ahead, accomplishing his work, healing, casting out the devil, and gathering us from the evil one who wounds and possesses. Jesus’ courage is compelling as is he love.

* Jesus wants to give us a similar courage so that, having gathered us, we might be his instruments to gather with him, to heal with him, to cast out with him. In the Responsorial Psalm today, we bless God because he is our “rock who trains my hands for battle, my fingers for war,” because he is our “fortress,” “stronghold,” “deliverer,” and “shield.” He strengthens us. We see how in today’s first reading, which is the end of our study of the Letter to the Ephesians, dedicated to how Jesus has come into the world to reconcile and sum up all things and help us, united to him, to become holy and immaculate in his sight, to become his Bride purified by water and the word. In uniting us to himself, Jesus wants us to become strong with him, as he is our fortress, stronghold, deliverer and shield. St. Paul urges us to “put on the armor of God,” which means to “put on God” who will make us courageous.

* St. Paul reminds us that our struggle isn’t fundamentally “with flesh and blood” — meaning other people, for whom we’re called to give our lives to help Jesus save — but “with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens.” We see in the Gospel how Jesus himself battled against these evil spirits. Herod’s opposition didn’t derive fundamentally from “flesh and blood,” but from his being under the sway of the “principalities,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Feast of SS. Simon and Jude, Apostles

October 28, 2020

Eph 2:19-22, Ps 19, Lk 6:12-16

 

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

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* St. Paul in today’s first reading tells the Ephesians and us that our Christian existence is “built upon the foundation of the Apostles.” Today’s feast of the apostles SS. Simon and Jude gives us a chance to ponder several aspects of our Christian life and how to strengthen them by grounding them more firmly on the foundation of what the Lord has done and continues to do through these two apostles.

* The first thing we can examine is the theme of our calling. The apostles’ vocation, we see, was born from Christ’s prayer. Jesus had pulled an all-nighter praying to his Father about whom he should choose and praying for those he would choose. His prayer was not just a single invocation, but a persevering intercession. During the ordination rite of the Last Supper we would see how fervently Jesus would pray to the Father. “I pray for them,” he said aloud, “I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me because they are yours. … Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are. … I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil one. … Consecrate them in the truth. …  I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth.” And then he prayed for the apostles’ work to be fruitful, for all “those who will believe in me through their word,” and prayed for their salvation, “I wish that where I am they also may be with me, that they may see my glory that you gave me, … that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them.” Jesus’ ongoing prayer would take on a very specific form, as we would see in Jesus’ Holy Thursday dialogue with St. Peter, “Simon, Simon, behold Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed that your [singular] own faith may not fail; and once you have turned back, you must strengthen your brothers.” It’s important regularly for us to take the time to recall with gratitude and wonder that our vocation, likewise, has its beginning in Jesus’ prayer. Just as much as Jesus prayed all night and then called Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James, Simon, Jude, and Judas Iscariot,” so he has prayed and called each of us. He has prayed for each of us, to keep us in the Father’s name, to unite us to God and to each other, to consecrate us in the truth of God’s word, in the truth of Jesus’ own consecration to the Father. Jesus has prayed for us that our faith may not fail and that we will strengthen the faith of each other and those we serve. Jesus continues to pray for us. He’s praying for us at this Mass. He’s praying for us when we have difficulties in our work. His persevering prayer for us is an example for us to persevere in prayer together with him during it as well.

* The second theme is our discipleship. When Jesus came down the mountain, St. Luke tells us, he chose the twelve from among the “disciples,” from among those who were already as the Greek word disciple means Jesus’ “students,” who were zealously following him, who were living by faith, who were hearing his words and seeking to put them into practice. Together with Jesus’ prayer, their faith was the crucial job qualification. Jesus didn’t raid the rabbinical schools for the greatest young Scriptural scholars of the day who could more easily preach and teach. He didn’t turn to the ascetical Pharisees whose whole life was dedicated to trying to live the Mosaic law to its perfection, to those who were already praying, tithing, fasting far more than was explicitly required. He turned to common, ordinary folk.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Tuesday of the 30th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Votive Mass for the Family

October 27, 2020

Eph 5:21-33, Ps 128, Lk 13:18-21

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* What is the kingdom of God like? Jesus asks because he wants us to be able to understand it. But it’s something that we can understand only by simile, only by analogy. Until it’s fully flourishing, we’re only going to be able to see certain of its reflections.

* Today Jesus wants to stress that the kingdom of God, first, begins really small. But then it grows. And it grows in such a way that so many, like the birds of the air flying from all over the planet, are able to find rest in its branches. It grows in such a way that it gives us rest, a home, we can make a nest there. We might not be able to see the nest and the birds with the seed we plant in the garden, but Jesus wants us to have that confidence and that hope, that even the littlest of beginning can result in that end.

* Likewise, he describes yeast, a tiny pinch of yeast from previously leavened bread, put it into a new loaf that elevates the whole dough. In a sense, we know not how: it’s from the inside, acting to lift the whole dough up. In a similar way the kingdom starts with just a little pinch: one Christian on a street, one sister in a convent or even in an order, one priest in a diocese, can have an enormous impact. We see that in the life of every saint. Even if they seem to be hidden, they’re not hidden at all. A young girl with tuberculosis in a convent in northwestern France can change the whole history of the church simply by her prayers and by her obediently writing down what God was doing in her soul. The prayers of a priest in a concentration camp long forgotten by the world is able to redeem that hellhole. A parish priest in New Haven, Connecticut, caring for his people, could found a legacy, the Knights of Columbus, that would stretch across the globe. One teenage girl in a place like Nazareth could change salvation history by a simple, faithful, yes. So we have to know this about the kingdom, that little things are extraordinarily consequential. All we do sometimes is plant that tiny little mustard seed or try to be that pinch of yeast. And then we trust that God will do the rest.

* Today in the first reading, we see one of the most important areas in which this kingdom is meant to grow, the soil in which the seed is planted, the dough in which the little pinch of yeast is given. It’s marriage and the family. We see how the kingdom can come just from that place. St. Paul’s words here in his Letter to the Ephesians have two contexts. The first context is the entirety of his letter. His the Ephesians, which we’ve been hearing for almost the two weeks, is about the kingdom and what Christ came to do. Christ came to reconcile all things in himself in the heavens and on earth. His entire mission was to bring us anew into harmony with the Father and in reconciled harmony with each other. This is the outgrowth of our being holy and immaculate in the Lord’s sight, as we heard two Thursdays ago. And it’s key for us to grasp that in the family, even just one little family, the kingdom can explode.

* Probably one of the best written documents of the Church of all, is Evangelii Nuntiandi, Saint Paul VI’s 1975 Apostolic Exhortation on evangelization. In one section of it, he was describing the evangelization of Africa. The way it happened was not just by White Fathers coming as missionaries from France. The most effective way it happened, he described, is when families would be “planted.” They’d take one family from one village and send the family to another.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Monday of the 30th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

October 26, 2020

Eph 4:32-5:8, Ps 1, Lk 13:10-17

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* St. Cyril of Alexandria, one of the early doctors of the church, said about Christians that they are the ones who behave like God. Christians are not those who merely believe in God, and in the Son whom God the Father, sent. Christians are the ones who seek to behave like God with God’s own help, with God’s own love.

* Today, in the first reading, that’s the message that St. Paul gives to the Christians in Ephesus. Be imitators of God, as his beloved children, and live in love. We don’t just seek to imitate God on the outside out of some type of duty. But having been loved in such a way by God, we seek to imitate that love and live in it. And the way that we live in that love is not just by being loved by God, but allowing God to love others through us, together with our entire personality.

* There’s a particular way in which we’re called to live that love of God. Having received God’s mercy — because God’s love for us is always merciful —  we seek to imitate that merciful love toward others. So St. Paul begins today, “Be kind to one another.” Be really benevolent. That word crestos in Greek means that we care about somebody else’s needs just as much as we care about our own. If we were hungry, we’d be looking for something to eat, and therefore if someone else is hungry, we feed them. Just as we like to be clothed, we clothe others. Just like we hate to suffer and are grateful for the care for others, so we care for them. “Be kind to one another, compassionate,” that we really take into consideration another person’s sufferings, even when we might not visibly see them, but to recognize that everyone is suffering. So often a person’s behavior is explainable by the sufferings that that person is presently enduring and not just has endured. “Forgiving one another is God has forgiven you in Christ.” And this forgiveness is not just an extrinsic action in which we basically say, “I don’t hold any grudges.” When St. Paul says “Forgive one another as God has forgiven you in Christ,” we know how God forgave us in Christ. It wasn’t just by words that corresponded to the heart. It was by dying, in order to take somebody else’s sins away. It was through real sacrifice, to reestablish somebody, to the right relationship with the Father. In all of these ways, we are being called to imitate God as his much loved children. St. Paul says, “Christ loved us and handed himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma.” He recognized that his love for others was sweet incense. It was an extraordinarily beautiful prayer that rose up to God. It was, in a sense, his greatest worship. The care that we have for others is a fragrant offering. It’s part of the holocaust we bring as praise before God. And St. Paul himself sought in particular detail to imitate Jesus in this way and so make his life sweet smelling incense, rising up to God as the supreme prayer of his life.

* St. Paul wants us to be that same type of prayer. He describes what is the foul smell that we could bring toward God. In contrast, he says that “immorality, any impurity or greed must not even be mentioned about among you. Because this is idolatry.” Do we recognize this? None of us wants to engage in idolatry. We believe in God. We love God. But when we are immoral, we’re worshipping an idol, whatever it be. When we’re acquisitive, we’re putting our treasure not so much in growing to be more and more like God through receiving his own grace,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Agnes Church, Manhattan

Christ the King

October 25, 2020

Col 1:12-20, Jn 18:33-37

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

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* Today’s feast of Christ the King is, by the standard of Church history, still very young. It’s only 95 years old. It was instituted by Pope Pius XI during the 1925 Jubilee at the request of many bishops and faithful from around the globe. There was a militant atheism spreading at the time that was trying to repress belief in Christ and suppress Christian presence in the world, something that continues sadly in 2020. Just eight years before Pius XI institute the feast, Bolshevik communism had begun to show its evil head and was seeking to “free” the people from the “opium” of faith in God, which they said was a only a means to keep people subjugated.In Mexico, there had been a similar revolution against the “old order” and one of the first results was anti-clerical persecution based on a militant atheism. Religious orders were banned. Churches, monasteries, convents and other religious buildings were confiscated by the State. The Church needed to go underground and many Catholic priests, religious and lay people were martyred. Since there really was no God, they stated, the churches and Christians were just seeking greater foundation for their pursuit of political power. To counteract these lies and proclaim both thefactof Christ’s kingship and the typeof kingdom he established, the Holy Father proclaimed this feast.

* The first thing Pope Pius XI stressed was that Christ had not come to inaugurate a political but a spiritual kingdom. The Jews anticipated that when the Messiah finally came, he would rule in the way that his ancestor David had ruled. He would defeat all foreign powers and triumph over all who opposed him. After Jesus worked some of his stupendous miracles and the people were ready to put him on their shoulders and proclaim him king, he took off to other towns, so that people were able to receive him, and his kingdom, on his terms, not those false ones. In today’s Gospel we see the brutal contrast between the Kingdom Christ came to inaugurate and the political kingdom people expected. The last thing Jesus looked like as he hung upon the Cross on Good Friday was a king. He was bathed in blood, not clothed with royal purple. He was hammered to a Cross, not seated on a bejeweled throne. He was crowned with thorns, not capped with gold and diadems. To ridicule him and Jews in general, Pilate had ordered that an inscription in three languages be placed above his head: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” Rather than pay him homage, most in the crowd mocked him. The chief priests mocked him. The Roman soldiers and passers-by mocked him. Even the thief on his left mocked him. And all of them mocked him in the same way: “If you’re truly the king of the Jews, the Messiah, the Christ, come down from that Cross and save yourself.” Such visible force was the only demonstration of kingly power that they could comprehend.

* For most Jews at the time, Jesus’ crucifixion was the proof that he was precisely notthe long awaited Messiah-king for whom they had been waiting for centuries. Rather than using power to subjugate all those who opposed him, Jesus took their abuse and endured a horrible death to save his abusers. Ancient rulers were used to sending soldiers to die for the king’s personal aggrandizement. They were totally unprepared for a king who would serve at all, not to mention die so that his subjects would live. The Romans were likewise unprepared for a king like Jesus. When Pontius Pilate interrogated Jesus, asking him, “Are you the King of the Jews?,” Jesus answered, “My kingship is not of this world; if my kingdom were of this world, my servants would be fighting that I not be handed over to the Jews; but my ...