Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

October 24, 2020

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.24.20_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, when Jesus will speak to us about the single most important thing we need to do in life. If we do everything else but don’t do this, we will not have lived life well. If we do this but don’t get to everything else, we will still have passed the test of life with flying colors.

* The consequential conversation happens after a lawyer asks Jesus, “What is the greatest of all the commandments?.” We’ve heard Jesus’ response so many times that we can think that the question was a soft ball, but it was really a 100 mph slider. There were 613 commands in the Old Testament. To choose which of them was the greatest was something that the scholars of the law had found difficult for centuries. Jesus’ answer came from what God had inspired Moses to teach the Jewish people after God had rescued them from Pharaoh. From that point forward, faithful Jews have recited it every day: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” Loving God with all we are and have is not just the most crucial thing we need to do in life but the way by which we most grow in the image of God who is love by opening ourselves up to his love. The command makes clear that it’s not enough to love God only with some, half, most of, or even almost all of our mind, heart, soul and strength. God gives us himself, he gives us his grace, precisely so that we can love him with as close as possible to 100 percent of all we are and have. He gives us his own love to make it possible for us to love like him, to sacrifice for God with agape like he sacrificed for us.

* But then Jesus added something else, unsolicited. He knew that if he stopped merely with the love of God, many people would think that they were doing just fine, because so many of us think we love God by the simple fact that we acknowledge him, revere him and have feelings of affection and gratitude toward him. Jesus wanted to give a clear means by which we could evaluate whether we are truly loving God, because to love him means to love what and whom he loves. Jesus said that there is a second commandment, taken from the Book of Leviticus, that is similar to the greatest: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev 19:18 ). The clear index of how we love God is how we love our neighbor loved by God and made in his image. Jesus during the Last Supper would set his love up as a model for our love. No longer would our love for ourselves be the standard for the love of our neighbor, but his love for us would be the standard: “Love one another as I have loved you!” (Jn 13:34; Jn 15:12). When he asked Simon Peter three times after the resurrection whether he loved him and three times Simon said he did, Jesus told him “feed my sheep,” “feed my lambs,” and “tend my sheep.” Peter’s love for the Lord would be shown in the way that he loved all those whom God has entrusted to care. In St. Luke’s version of Jesus’ response to a similar question by a scribe, when the lawyer followed up by asking Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?,” the neighbor we’re supposed to love as ourselves, Jesus gave the Parable of the Good Samaritan, stressing that everyone is in our neighborhood, that we’re called to cross the street to care for others in their need,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Saturday of the 29th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Anthony Maria Claret

October 24, 2020

Eph 4:7-16, Ps 122, Lk 13:1-9

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Yesterday we shifted emphasis in our biennial two-week liturgical lectio divina on St. Paul’s words to the members of the early Church in Ephesus, from the theological truths he makes in the first half of his letter about how Jesus has come into the world in order to reconcile all things in himself to how he calls us morally to live in a manner worthy of the vocation we have received to be holy and immaculate in God’s sight. Today he continues to build on that connection, stressing that Jesus’ work makes possible that vocation. He tells us that grace is given to each of us “according to the measure of Christ’s gift,” who is total self-giving. Christ ascended to heaven to give us every spiritual blessing in the heavens. He’s given us charisms — St. Paul describes some: apostles (traveling witnesses of the Lord who knew him and witnessed his resurrection and whom he made pillars), prophets (who travel to actualize the word of God and call to conversion), evangelists (who repeat what Jesus said in the Gospel so that people, in an age before many could read or had books or scroll to read, could learn the word of God), shepherds (who guide, nourish and protect the flock from wolves), and teachers (catechists, who help apply the word of God to particular circumstances) — with a clear purpose: “to “equip the holy ones for the work of ministry, for building up the Body of Christ.” Every gift is to help us to form others for their Christian mission, which is service and loving others and building up Christ’s body the Church “until we all attain to the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God.” The goal of the Church is unity. We pondered this yesterday in St. Paul’s appeal for us to dwell in the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, conscious of the fact that there’s one baptism, one faith, our Lord and Father of all. To know Christ Jesus is to act on his will that we be one. This is what St. Paul describes as “mature manhood to the extent of the full stature of Christ” and “grow[ing] in every way into him who is the head, Christ, … who brings about the Body’s growth and builds itself up in love.” This process of maturation happens through “living the truth in love.” When we live the moral truth, when we live the doctrinal and sacramental truth, we begin to love others to the full stature of Christ, we grasp that he wants us to love them just as much as he loves us, to remember that that whatever we do to them, we do to him — and the more we do so, the more communion comes about. To live the truth in love means to grasp that we are called to live together as one body, one spirit in Christ.

* In the Gospel today, Jesus calls us to repentance with urgency. Using current events at the time — Pilate’s massacre of Galileans and the falling tower of Siloam — Jesus tells us, “If you do not repent, you will all perish as they did.” He then gives a parable about how we’re called to bear fruit rather than be barren fig trees. He’s cultivated the ground around us and fertilized it with his blood, he’s equipped us for building up the Body of Christ, but he wants us to act, to bear fruit, and that fruit is living the truth in love. Today we celebrate the feast of someone who did, and who was God’s instrument to help so many others grow to mature manhood to the extent of the full stature of Christ. St. Anthony Mary Claret was born in Catalunia in 1807. I once happened upon his birthplace walking in the Pyrenees back in 1993.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the 29th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. John of Capistrano

October 23, 2020

Eph 4:1-6, Ps 24, Lk 12:54-59

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today we shift gears in our biennial two-week liturgical meditation on St. Paul’s deepest and most eloquent Epistle. Since a week ago Thursday, St. Paul has been sketching out in the first three chapters of the Letter the theology of Christ’s whole mission, which can be summarized as his work to “sum up,” to reconcile “all things in himself, in the heavens and on earth.” In the last three chapters of his missive, he begins to draw moral consequences for how we’re supposed to participate in that reconciliation between us and God and in God with each other. God’s ultimate plan in Christ is to form us as a family, as a true communion of saints. In today’s passage, St. Paul pushes on that accelerator.

* He urges us to “live in a manner worthy of the call [we] have received,” the call to be — as he said last week — “holy and immaculate in [God’s] sight” and describes the virtues we need to respond to his call for reconciliation: first, humility, because pride always separates us from God and from others; second, meekness, so that we will have the self-discipline to control our anger and choose the good; and third, patience (makrothumia) so that we can “bear with one another through love.” These are the means by which we can “preserve the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” Then St. Paul sketches what I might call the theological grounds of our unity: that in Christ we have been made “one Body.” We have become temples of the “one Spirit.” We all have the “one hope of our call” to eternal communion with God and others. We are all disciples of the “one Lord.” We each have the “one faith” or trust in God and his promises. We have the “one baptism” that has made us spiritual siblings. We all recognize our divine filiation of the “one God and Father of all,” who is over all (omnipotent), through all (provident) and in all (omnipresent). God who calls us to live in a manner worthy of our calling to be in a loving communion with him and others will give us all of the means we need — and these are the means! And these means are not merely individual; as we prayed in the Psalm, we are a “people that longs to see [God’s] face.”

* In today’s Gospel, Jesus talks about the signs of the times. Just as we are able to interpret meteorological indicators and adapt our clothing and associated behavior, so Jesus wants us to perceive the signs of his kingdom and make similar adjustments to live in accordance with his calling to that kingdom, a kingdom of unity, holiness, charity and peace. He gives the analogy of making peace with adversaries before the judge sentences us to prison, communicating that as we’re walking through life toward our judgment, we should reconcile now, we should love now in deeds. This is a mystery hidden to the wise and the clever of the world, as we prayed in the Alleluia versicle but revealed to the childlike, who forgive easily. God who wants to reconcile all things in Christ wants us to reconcile whenever we see to settle something with a brother or sister who shares with us the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace and the one Body, Spirit, hope, Lord, faith, baptism and God and Father of all. The pilgrimage of life is meant to be a kairos of mercy received and shared and we need to reconcile with God and others along the way.

* Today we have a great example of someone who read the signs of the times and after his conversion lived in a manner worthy of his Christian calling. St. John of Capistrano (1386-1456) was a brilliant young man who became mayor of his town at 26.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the 29th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of Pope St. John Paul II

October 22, 2020

Eph 3:14-21, Ps 33, Lk 12:49-53

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today in the first reading, St. Paul prostrates himself before God the Father in prayer begging him to grant the Christians in Ephesus and us to send the Holy Spirit to strengthen us in our inner self — strengthen us in mind, will and conscience — to help us allow Christ his Son to dwell in our hearts, and, rooted in love, to have the courage to understand “the breadth and length and height and depth [of] the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” and “be filled with all the fullness of God.” Several early saints interpreted the breath, length, height and depth as the dimensions of the Cross, which is fundamentally not a sign of pain but of the unbelievable love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge that bore that pain for love of us. St. Paul was praying to the Father to raise us as his children by the Holy Spirit to be strengthened by the Cross, to allow Christ his Son to abide in us and to help us to understand that cruciform dimensions of the Christian life so as to open ourselves to the fullness of the God of love. It’s an extraordinary prayer, begging for a fullness St. Paul himself had already experienced when he himself admitted he had been crucified with Christ and the life he was living in the flesh he was living by faith in the Son of God who loved him and died for him, a fullness he called “God’s power and wisdom.”

* That prayer for us to be filled with the fullness of the love of Christ is an echo of the prayer Jesus makes in the Gospel, when he speaks about the fire he had come to earth to ignite, and links that to “the baptism with which [he] must be baptized,” which is the baptism of blood on the Cross. He said he was in “anguish” until that baptism be accomplished and that fire begin blazing. His love on the Cross is meant to be a fire of love that is meant to light the world ablaze, the type of love that will transform and strengthen us within. It’s a living flame that will eventually unite — as a flame does all that it consumes— all people in the love of the Father who sent his Son to form a loving family. That union will happen only when people allow themselves to be “burned” and “transformed” by Christ’s love. Many are afraid of the fire, afraid of zeal. That’s why Jesus says that he has come not to “bring peace but division,” because he and the fire of his love would be a sign of contradiction dividing even family members. This is not because Christ is a divider. He is the Prince of Peace who told us during the first Mass that he was leaving and giving us his peace. But when someone in a family opts for Christ, others who don’t want to give God his due or want to be in God’s place get jealous and angry, and that’s what divides. Sin divides. The fire of Christ’s love is opposed by the coldness of a heart that doesn’t love God and others. Dante depicts Hell not as fire — based on the “fire of Gehenna,” the valley where trash was burned — but as ice-cold. The division that flows from opposition to Christ and the fire of his love was true in the early Church. Often when Jews converted to Christianity, they were disowned by their family. Still today when a Muslim converts to Christianity in Pakistan and various other fundamentalist Muslim countries, or a Hindu converts in certain fundamentalist areas in India, a contract is put out on them, and most often by the members of his or her own family. There are those who find the all-consuming fire of Christ’s love a threat and the sinful reaction to other’s coming alive in love does divide.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Agnes Church, Manhattan

20th Sunday after Pentecost, Extraordinary Form

October 18, 2020

Eph 5:15-21, Jn 4:46-53

 

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

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* Today St. Paul exhorts the Ephesians and each of us not to waste the gift of life God has given us but to take full advantage of the time God has given us, the means of salvation with which he has blessed us, the opportunities he has placed before us to do something great, holy, life-giving and life-saving. Most people, including most Christians, do not live with sufficient intentionality. We sleepwalk through human existence, osmotically taking in our environment, adapting ourselves to what everyone else is doing, wasting so much time doing things that in the final analysis matter little. St. Paul is trying to wake us up, to help us to mature spiritually, and to make full use of the time we have. “Watch carefully then how you live,” he tells us today, “not as foolish persons but as wise, making the most of the opportunity, because the days are evil.” We can live in one of two ways, he says: as fools or by God’s wisdom. We can cozy up to the fallen things of the age, or we can be the seeds of sanctification. And St. Paul is calling us to live like Christ did in the midst of what Jesus called a “wicked and perverse generation,” as Paul did in the midst of the sins of his own epoch, as the Popes have incessantly urged us to do in the modern world, and as Christians as salt of the earth and light of the world are called to do in every age.

* And so St. Paul gets practical: “Therefore,” he says, “do not continue in ignorance, but try to understand what is the will of the Lord.” Real wisdom is doing God’s will, seeking his kingdom, hallowing his name. To live ignorantly is to do just as one pleases, without reference to the holy will of God, as if God doesn’t really exist or doesn’t care how we spend our day or dedicate our life. To live wisely is constantly to discern what God is asking in the concrete situations and places in which he has placed us, to be alert to his presence, accompanying us, guiding us, strengthening us, precisely — as we note on this World Mission Sunday and on the feast of the Evangelist St. Luke — to understand and do his will and help him save and sanctify the world.

* Paul therefore continues, “Do not get drunk on wine, in which lies debauchery.” That’s both a concrete counsel against getting hammered as well as a metaphor to depict what it means to live foolishly. When we get drunk, we are impaired not just from driving well but from living as God wants. Why do people get drunk? Some get drunk because they like the stuff, but lack self-control, and one drink soon becomes four, or eight or ten. Others do so because they don’t like something else, and rather than turning to God and others for help to face situations of stress and anxiety, they try to escape with a bottle. And we know that once we’re drunk, our guard is down to say no to things to which we would never consent otherwise. That’s why St. Peter would say to the first Christians, “Stay sober and alert. Your opponent the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for [someone] to devour. Resist him, solid in your faith” (1 Pet 5:8-9). Drunkenness is the opposite of spiritual vigilance and many of us get drunk by imbibing too much worldliness, getting addicted to entertainment and distractions, setting our hearts on Friday and Saturday night rather than on Sunday, eating, drinking and being merry as if human life is a cocktail party with nothing really important going on outside the club. Others get intoxicated and cockeyed over politics, binge-watching cable news more than a faithful nun adores the Lord. Others get soused on social media, or sports, or celebrity gossip.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

October 17, 2020

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.17.20_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The text that guided the homily was: 

* 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, something that has great relevance to us as we observe some of the questions being posed to Amy Coney Barrett during her confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court, something that has just as much relevance as we prepare for the elections in just over two weeks, something that has to do with how we as disciples of Jesus order our whole life as citizens not only of our country but of the heavenly Jerusalem.

* In today’s Gospel, two groups that were archenemies conspired to try to trap Jesus. Both the Herodians and the Pharisees were trying to get Jesus out of the way, because both felt threatened by him. They decided to ask him a question about which they themselves were constantly in disagreement — whether it was lawful to pay taxes to or support in any way the Roman empire. The Herodians were laxist sycophants, and, regardless of how they personally felt about a foreign power’s ruling over them, decided that if you couldn’t beat the Romans, you should join them. They cooperated with the Romans in almost everything, including taxes. The Pharisees, like most of the Jewish people, deeply resented being dominated by a foreign power, and found utterly repulsive the thought of giving a tribute to a foreign ruler who fancied himself a god. Both groups thought their long-standing disagreement was a perfect catch-22 by which to nail the carpenter from Nazareth.

* So they approached Jesus and manifested their mendacity and hypocrisy by a barrage of empty flattery: “Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man, teach the way of God with accordance to the truth, show deference to no one, and don’t play favorites.” Then came the question: “Is it lawful to the census tax to Caesar or not?” It was the perfect query, they thought, because no matter how Jesus answered it, they had him. If he failed to respond, he would lose authority by ducking one of the most relevant political questions of the day. If he said “yes,” he would risk losing the affection of the masses, who hated the Romans, hated the emperor, and particularly hated being forced to give him any recognition at all. If he said “no,” then they could turn him over to Pontius Pilate for inciting lawlessness among the people.

* But Jesus would not be trapped, and he showed yet again here how he always brings good out of evil. In answer to their hypocrisy, Jesus pointed the path to true human integrity. In response to their deceitfulness, Jesus gave us a truth to live by, one that is as relevant today as it ever was.

* After he had asked to see the coin used for the tax and they brought him one (showing that all of them used the money when it served their purposes!), he queried, “Whose image is this and whose inscription?” When they responded, “Caesar’s,” he gave them and us the principle that extends far beyond than the days of Rome. “Then give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.” Most of Jesus’ original listeners thought that you couldn’t serve two leaders, God and Caesar; either you gave to God, they thought, or gave to Caesar. Jesus said it was not necessarily “either… or” but could be and should be “both… and.” We have responsibilities in the social order (what we might call the horizontal plane); we also have responsibilities toward God (the vertical plane).

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Saturday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Ignatius of Antioch

October 17, 2020

Eph 1:15-23, Ps 8, Lk 12:8-12

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today in the Gospel Jesus continues his words to his disciples about bewaring of the “leaven” or “hypocrisy” of the Pharisees and about how not to fear them, not to fear the devil or anyone else who can only harm the body, but to fear God alone who has the power to throw into Gehenna. But that fear must be a holy, reverential, loving awe, because the One Jesus is telling us to fear has numbered every one of the 130,000 follicles on our head, who is attentive to every sparrow that falls to the ground and accounts us worth more than many sparrows. Jesus gives us those words to fill us with courage in the face of the challenges that will come from living and proclaiming the Gospel. We see that courage in him, as he faced the Pharisees, the Scribes, the Herodians, even the Romans, as they conspired to harass, arrest, mock, torture and crucify him. In today’s passage he calls his first disciples and us to go on proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom of God fearlessly. “I tell you,” he says,” “everyone who acknowledges me before others the Son of Man will acknowledge before the angels of God.” He cautions us to be faithful, in contrast to the duplicity of the Pharisees: “But whoever denies me before others will be denied before the angels of God.” But even with that stern warning that might frighten us, he yet again shows us how to trust, by turning us toward divine mercy should we stumble under pressure. “Everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven.” When he tells us that the “one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven,” we need to know that that blasphemy is not counting on the power of the Holy Spirit, for the forgiveness of sins, for strength under pressure, for all of the help we need. He tells us, “When they take you before synagogues and before rulers and authorities, do not worry about how or what your defense will be or about what you are to say. For the Holy Spirit will teach you at that moment what you should say.” The Holy Spirit wants to infuse us with himself — with his wisdom, knowledge, prudence, understanding, reverence, awe and courage — precisely to help us to do this, even and especially when it’s hard. Jesus promises that God will strengthen us by his own power so that we might bear witness under trial, so that we might acknowledge Christ before all, so that we might witness to faith in God before those threatening our life because we know every hair has been counted.

* St. Paul was one who lived with this apostolic courage despite all of the sufferings before synagogues, rulers and authorities he endured. He was one who acknowledged Christ before the whole world and who wrote about living according to the spirit so that, even under trial, one might experience the “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-mastery” that is the fruit of the Holy Spirit. In the section from his Letter to the Ephesians we have today, he seeks to strengthen the Ephesians to do the same. He mentions the divine help we have in order to witness to Christ audaciously and always. He describes the “spirit of wisdom and revelation resulting in knowledge of Christ” so that we can better give acknowledge him. He mentions the enlightenment of the eyes of our hearts so that we “may know what is the hope that belongs to [God’s] call, what are the riches of glory in his inheritance among the holy ones,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

October 16, 2020

Eph 1:11-14, Ps 33, Lk 12:1-7

 

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

 

The outline for today’s homily was:

* “Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.” God has indeed, as we heard yesterday from the beginning of St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, chosen us from before the foundation of the world and has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens. In today’s passage, we see how both Jews — those “who first hoped in Christ” — and Gentiles alike are blessed by God so that we might exist “for the praise of his glory.” We exist, the purpose of our life, both in an objective and subjective sense, is for the praise of God’s glory. Both Jews and Gentiles have heard the word of truth, received the Gospel of salvation, believed in God, and received the seal of the Holy Spirit. These gifts, received and lived as they’re intended, objectively give praise to God, just like the beautiful snow-capped mountain ranges, the pure streams and lakes, the wonderful ocean vistas, and many other natural phenomena all sing praise to our Creator. But this objective glorification of God is meant to be complemented by our subjective cooperation. We are called to want to praise God’s glory. To praise him in our prayer. To praise him in our good deeds, so that others in seeing them, as Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount, may give glory to our Father in heaven. To praise and glorify him by our whole life, as we seek to live by the word of truth that sets us free, as we announce the Gospel of salvation, as we walk by faith, as we are guided by the Spirit. All of these gifts that we invest and with God’s help try to grow, St. Paul concludes the passage today, are just the down payment, the “first installment” of our inheritance. We exist for the praise of God’s glory here looking ahead, we pray by God’s mercy, to the enhanced existence for the praise of God’s glory we call heaven. We have been chosen and destined according to the purpose and intention of God’s will precisely for this, “for redemption as God’s possession,” belonging to God as redeemed men and women, those who give witness at all times to the merciful love of the Redeemer and try to bring others to experience these same blessings, because they, too, were created and redeemed for the praise of God’s glory.

* This identity should strengthen us at all times and influence all our actions. In today’s Gospel, Jesus warns us of the “leaven” or hypocrisy of the Pharisees, the particular corruption about which he’s been speaking for several days. Pharisaical hypocrisy is a cancer that metastasizes and grows. Jesus wants us to be a different type of leaven, in correspondence with the Holy Spirit with which we’ve been sealed. When the Holy Spirit works within, we receive, among other things, his help to live with integrity, to proclaim the faith, to trust in God’s providence and to live with courage. The Holy Spirit reminds and convinces us of the truth of what Jesus teaches, so that we may proclaim it in light from the housetops. The Holy Spirit helps us to cry out “Abba! Dad,” and to grasp that we are worth more than many sparrows and all the lilies of the field. The Holy Spirit helps us to live in the presence of God and all of his angels and saints, conscious that there is nothing done in secret that will not be known. The Holy Spirit forms us to live, for those reasons, with great courage, not fearing those who can only kill the body, but rather living with a holy awe of the One who can cast into Gehenna — God himself — but who chooses us instead to be his own and blesses us with e...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Teresa of Avila

October 15, 2020

Eph 1:1-10, Ps 98, Lk 11:47-54

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in today’s homily: 

* Today we begin two weeks of study of St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, which is one of the most uplifting and synthetic of all the great apostle’s teaching of the early Church, in which he makes plain God the Father’s plan and will to bring all things into a union of love through the work of Christ his Son continued and carried out in his body the Church. At the very beginning of the letter, which we have today, St. Paul describes what God has done for us and what he asks of us. It’s important for us to ponder these truths often, especially when we are having a bad day or are tempted to forget who we are.

* St. Paul begins by reminding us of how blessed we are to be Christians: the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has “blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens.” God held nothing back. There are no blessings we haven’t been given. And we’ve been given those blessings not just through Christ but in Christ who is the greatest blessing of all. God’s greatest blessing is himself.

* He then reminds us of our vocation: God chose us in Christ, “before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him.” Before God said, “Let there be light” and “Let us make man in our image,” he not only had us in mind but chose us and he gave us the vocation to be saints, to be holy and immaculate before him. If he’s given us this vocation, he will provide the means, and those means constitute the “every spiritual blessing in Christ” his Son.

* He then reminds us of our filiation and inheritance: “In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ, in accord with the favor of his will, for the praise of the glory of his grace that he granted us in the beloved.” In St. Paul’s day, when someone was adopted, he was treated identically to a biologically child; if he were older than the eldest biological child, he received all the rights of primogeniture. For St. Paul to talk about our being adopted, he means that we have received the full inheritance of Jesus! How can we not praise the glory of this grace?

* Though obviously we’re sinners and fallen, God has taken that into consideration as well from before the creation of the world. “In Christ, we have redemption by his Blood, the forgiveness of transgressions, in accord with the riches of his grace that he has lavished upon us.” He has lavished his mercy upon us in Christ, as part of “every spiritual blessing.”

* And he has also made plain his plan so that we can cooperate freely and fully with it: “In all wisdom and insight, he has made known to us the mystery of his will in accord with his favor that he set forth in him as a plan for the fullness of times, to sum up all things in Christ, in heaven and on earth.” The mystery is now an open secret: God wants to bring us into communion, communion with God, communion with each other. He wants us to grasp that all of creation is part of God’s plan of love. Christ’s mission is to restore to unity the various divisions that entered through sin.

* That’s God’s blessing, calling, help and plan, but he has made us free and each of us needs to respond to that plan by embracing it and letting our whole life develop in accordance with it. As we prayed in today’s Psalm, “The Lord has made known his salvation,” but we’re called to “sing a new song to the Lord for he has done wondrous deeds.” That’s obviously what the saints do, letting God’s blessing in Christ develop within them so that,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Callistus, Bishop and Martyr

October 14, 2020

Gal 5:18-25, Ps 1, Lk 11:42-46

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today we come to the end of our reading of St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians and he summarizes everything he’s been saying about the contrast between living while thinking one is saved by the law and external deeds versus living to be saved by God through his grace received and responded to with faith. He does so in describing two totally divergent sets of effects. One he calls the “works of the flesh,” because this is what living focused on the “works of law” produces and is entirely the production of the individual; and the other is called the “fruit of the Spirit,” which like fruit is made requires the cooperation between the one who sows a seed (in this case, the Holy Spirit) and the one who receives it (in this case, us). The contrast couldn’t be greater. Often when we think of the “works of the flesh” we think first of those living under the three fold concupiscence of the lust of the eyes (materialism), lust of the flesh (carnal sensuality) and the pride of life (a desire for control and dominion). But St. Paul makes clear in context that living according to the works of the law, rather than in communion with the Legislator, can produce these same works of the flesh. He says that the works of the flesh are “obvious”: “immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and the like.” He says that those who do such things “will not inherit the kingdom of God,” not so much because they’ll be punished but because they won’t be interested in God’s kingdom after having made other things their god.

* Jesus pronounces a series of “woes” (indications of a cursed life) in the Gospel to those Scribes and Pharisees who, even though they thought they were living the way God wanted them to live were living ultimately according to the flesh. Unless they convert, he said, they’ll be doomed, because while they pay tithes on the smallest of garden herbs they “pay no attention to judgment and to love for God.” They focus on the most conspicuous seats and the greetings of others, but are spiritually dead, “like unseen graves over which people unknowingly walk.” To use the words of today’s Psalm, they’re ultimately like the “chaff that the wind drives away.” They impose burdens on others hard to carry without lifting a finger to help them, the exact opposite of a Good Samaritan. We see the works of the flesh in the way they attacked Jesus and others he had come to save. We see their idolatry of the law. We witness their immorality, hatred, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of anger, acts of selfishness and envy in the way they conspired to have Jesus framed and executed. We see their dissensions and factions in the discussions of the Sanhedrin, to which many of them belonged. On the outside they seemed to be doing the works of God, Jesus was saying, but on the inside they were just doing works of the flesh, refusing to enter the kingdom, and producing only chaff and interior death.

* St. Paul calls the Galatians and all of us Christians to another path. In the Psalm, it’s described as the way of the “blessed man” who “delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on His law day and night,” not as a dry document or as an idol but as a means of growing in love with the Lord who gives us the law to train us to love God and others. Such a person, the Psalm says, is “like a tree planted near running water that yields its fruit in due season and whose leaves never fade.