Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Monday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

February 1, 2021

Heb 11:32-40, Ps 31, Mk 5:1-20

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.1.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Yesterday we witnessed in the Capernaum synagogue the astonishing and amazing authority of Jesus not only as he taught unlike the scribes but also as he exorcised a man as the screaming demons identified Jesus as the Holy One of God and obeyed him in departing from the man. Today we see that amazing and astonishing authority on display again in another exorcism, but today’s Gospel is about more than one more dramatic expulsion of evil. It points to something that needs to be exorcised from all of us in every age. After Jesus frees this man from a legion of demons — and a legion in the Roman army was 600 troops — by casting them into a herd of 2,000 pigs who, now possessed, ran off a cliff and drowned in the Sea of Galilee, the people of that pagan region of the Gerasenes didn’t rejoice at the liberation of the man who used to gouge himself with stones, break chains that attempted to bind him, and terrorize the people of the region; they didn’t come to Jesus to ask him likewise to free the other possessed people in the region, or to cure their sick or to teach them; instead, they asked him to leave their region. Jesus was bad for business. They worried that if he stayed he might next endanger their sheep, too, or their grain, or other aspects of their livelihood. They essentially cared more for the swine they had lost than the brother they had gained.

* This is not a problem just for ancients. Still today, people can give possessions primacy over people, allowing people to be disturbed, even possessed, even killed as long as their possessions are left undisturbed. Pope Francis wrote about this in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium: “How can it be that it is not a news item,” he asks, “when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?” For many people, the stock market is more important than people dying through neglect. We know that in the terrible choice of abortion, many other things are prioritized — career, personal autonomy, the money and sacrifices necessary to raise a child — over human life and how Planned Parenthood resists any initiatives that do anything to affect their profits. Materialism, or what St. John calls the concupiscence of the eyes, remains one of the greatest ways the devil seeks to possess multitudes. We remember the way he tempted Jesus in the desert to set his sights on material bread in order to thwart him from his mission and focus on bodily wants and needs more than on his mission. But Jesus refused, saying we live on more than bread, but by every word that comes from God’s mouth. In his first beatitude, we see that the kingdom of God belongs to those who are “poor in spirit,” those who treasure God’s kingdom more than they do things. Poverty in spirit is essential not only for us to love God but also to love our neighbor. In order to love our neighbor, we have to be willing to sacrifice our things, even our life, for their good. It would have been possible for Jesus, of course, to exorcise the legion of demons and not assent to their request to be sent into the swine and lead the swine to run into the Sea of Galilee and drown. Jesus permitted it not just as an illustration of the destruction the demons were already doing within the man but also what they were hoping to do to him and to every human being: to lead us off various cliffs — jumping from the parapet of the temple!

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Missionaries of Charity Convent, Harlem, NY

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

January 31, 2021

Deut 18:15-20, Ps 95, 1 Cor 7:32-35, Mk 1:21-28

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.31.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* In today’s Gospel, we see that on the Sabbath day, Jesus entered the synagogue and taught. All those who listened to him, St. Mark tells us, were “astounded at his teaching, for he taught with authority and not like the scribes.” He then showed the tremendous power of his authoritative words by silencing and casting out a demon from a man. That amazed the crowd even further. They asked, “What is this? A new teaching — with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.”

* The same Jesus who entered the Capernaum synagogue on the Jewish Sabbath enters this chapel of the Missionaries of Charity on the Christian Sabbath. And here he teaches with the same authority he wielded two thousand years ago. He has just spoken to us in the word of God and later he who created the heavens and the earth with his word, who called fishermen and tax collectors to follow him so powerfully that at his word they immediately got up and did so, will do something far more amazing than cast out a devil or silence a stormy sea. He will change bread and wine into himself, into his body and blood, and cast himself into us. If we recognize what is really going on, if we awaken to the power of his words, we ought to be even more amazed than Jesus’ contemporaries two millennia ago.

* Jesus teaches unlike any other teacher who has ever come, before or after. His contemporaries said he “taught with authority, unlike the scribes.” The scribes, the ancient scholars of the Mosaic law, always used to cite Sacred Scripture or Jewish tradition, to base their teachings on the authority of the word of God. That was a totally appropriate way for them to teach, sharing their interpretations of God’s word rather than merely their own opinions. But Jesus didn’t need to cite the word of God, because he is the word of God. In the Sermon on the Mount, for example, he routinely contrasted himself to what Moses, their greatest teacher about the ways of God up until then, had said to them on behalf of God in the desert: “You have heard that it was said — in other words, Moses said to you — ‘you shall not kill…’ ‘you shall not commit adultery… ,’ ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth…,’ but I say to you,  you shall not even be angry with a brother, or look on a woman with lust in your heart, or if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn and offer him the other as well” (Mt 5:20-45). Jesus was capable of saying, “But I say to you,” in contrast to what the greatest Biblical figure until then had said, because he himself was the auctor of all creation. Jesus spoke with authority because he is the author, the creator, of man, woman and the world. To capture just a little of what it must have been like to listen to Jesus talk about God, about the world, about man, and about faith and about morality, it would be greater than listening to the Wright Brothers talk about airplanes, Henry Ford talk about cars, Thomas Edison describe electricity, Steve Jobs talk about Mac computers, iPads, iPods and iPhones. They could all speak with stunning authority because they were the “authors,” the inventors, of what we now take for granted. But listening to them would be just a small glimpse of what it would have been like to be in that Capernaum Synagogue listening to Jesus, the author of the world, the one through whom we and all things were made. Jesus could command even the seas and the wind (Mk 4:41) and the demons and t...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Agnes Church, Manhattan

Septuagesima Sunday, Extraordinary Form

January 31, 2021

1 Cor 9:24-27.10:1-5, Mt 20:1-16

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.31.21_EF_Homily_Edited_1.mp3

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* Today the Church marks Septuagesima Sunday, the beginning of the period of pre-Lenten preparation in the Extraordinary Form that tells us that Ash Wednesday is only 17 days away. There are two main ways to which people across the centuries have responded. The first is to say that Septuagesima begins the period of Carnival and the generalized sense of licensed indulgence for which it’s infamous, in New Orleans, Rio de Janeiro and other places. Thankfully in 2021, because of the pandemic, this hedonist form of preparation is being downplayed. The second response is that it is the time in which faithful Catholics seek to prepare for the intense spiritual discipline of Lent. The priest, like in Lent, wears purple vestments. There is no Gloria or Alleluia. And the readings the Church gives us each year are meant to help us warm up for the spiritual battle that takes place during the quadragesimaor 40 days when we join Jesus in the desert. Because the ongoing reductions caused by the COVID, it is possible for the Judean desert to extend even to our own homes. But each of us has to decide which form these next 17 days are going to take. And the readings today prepare us to focus on that choice and choose well.

* In today’s epistle, St. Paul speaks to us of the most important goal in life and the zeal and focus we should have to seize it. He had been explaining to the Corinthians that he had made himself “a slave to all so as to win over as many as possible,” that “to the weak I became weak, to win over the weak. I have become all things to all, to save at least some. All this I do,” he explained, “for the sake of the Gospel, so that I too may have a share in it.” He then gives us various sports metaphors, indicating that if athletes can do so much to win individual or team championships, we ought to be willing to pay the price to capture the far more important and lasting goal of redemption and to help Christ’s team the Church win the salvation of the world. He asks, “Do you not know that the runners in the stadium all run in the race, but only one wins the prize? Run so as to win. Every athlete exercises discipline in every way. They do it to win a perishable crown, but we an imperishable one. Thus I do not run aimlessly; I do not fight as if I were shadowboxing. No, I drive my body and train it, for fear that, after having preached to others, I myself should be disqualified.” That’s extraordinary commitment. No athlete coasts to championships. They earn them. Those who take success for granted often don’t taste it. St. Paul reminds the Corinthians that so many Israelites had walked through the Red Sea with Moses, ate the manna from heaven, and drank the water from the rock, but God, he says, was not pleased with most of them. Most of them, he implies, were just along for the ride and hadn’t been changed, hadn’t been transformed by faith and gratitude by what God had done, hadn’t put worship of God and love of others first, and had eventually suffered the consequences. St. Paul, on the other hand, was someone who ran to win, who disciplined himself to be a disciple, and who sought to train the first Christians not to be benchwarmers but Hall of Famers through seeking, likewise, to become all things to all people to save as many as possible. As we mark Septuagesima Sunday, St. Paul is giving us his annual summons for us to be ambitious in the right way for the right things —to be great, not mediocre,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Brief Course on Prayer for the Leonine Forum

Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the UN

January 30, 2021

 

To listen to the final talk on the breadth, depth and challenges of prayer in daily life, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.30.21_Prayer_in_the_Life_of_the_Church_1.mp3

 

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Brief Course on Prayer for the Leonine Forum

Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the UN

January 30, 2021

 

To listen to the second talk on how Jesus teaches us to pray, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.30.21_LF_Christ_and_Prayer_1.mp3

 

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Brief Course on Prayer for the Leonine Forum

Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the UN

January 30, 2021

 

To listen to the first talk on the necessity of prayer, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.30.21_LF_Necessity_of_Prayer_1.mp3

 

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Saturday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Votive Mass of Mary, Pillar of Faith

January 30, 2021

Heb 11:1-2.8-19, Lk 1:69-75, Mk 4:35-41

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.30.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Throughout this week, Jesus has been teaching us and helping us to grow in faith. Over the last few days he’s been talking about what faith is and does — that faith is like rich soil that hears the seed of God’s word, accepts it wholeheartedly and bears abundant fruit; that faith is meant to illumine others like a light set on a lamp stand; that faith is meant to grow through exercising it in acts of faith; that faith is like a mustard seed that God wants to help grow to become the biggest of shrubs — but today Jesus puts the disciples in a bootcamp experience to test their faith and help it to grow. The training happens on the Sea of Galilee.

* Jesus tells them, as night was coming, to get into the boat with him and cross to the other side. Jesus was so exhausted that he fell asleep in the stern of the boat and remained asleep even when the boat was beginning to rock, even when the waves that were “breaking over the boat” were doubtless splashing him in the face. Those storms were common to the Sea of Galilee because of the latitudinal mountain ranges stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Sea of Galilee that served as a wind tunnel and caused serious storms to begin almost out of nowhere. In the middle of the storm, the disciples didn’t respond with faith. They didn’t cry out to the Lord in prayer. They didn’t have confidence in the love of the Lord remaining with them. They feared for their life. They woke Jesus and said, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” Do you not care? Their fears had gotten them to think Jesus was totally insensitive to their plight and to completing his own mission for the salvation of the world! Jesus got up and rebuked the wind and the sea, calming it. Then he rebuked the disciples. He asked, “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?” Jesus allowed the entire storm to occur as a test of faith, to help them in the midst of it to pass the test so that their faith might grow.

* Jesus allows us to pass through similar tests, through analogous storms. The storms of pain and suffering, the storms of the suffering and death of loved ones, the storms of anxiety, failure, and various problems, the storms of temptations sometimes quite fierce so that in the midst of all of these tests, we might grow in faith. Every test of faith we can pass, and when we do, our faith grows. But it’s important that when we’re being tested, we respond not just with a vague perseverance, but by growing in trust of God and in trust of all that he has promised, because he is faithful to his promises.

* That’s what today’s first reading is about. The eleventh and twelfth chapters of the Letter to the Hebrews are among the most inspirational sections of the entire Bible. Yesterday we finished the tenth chapter focusing on the holy hypomone — perseverance — God wants us to have in contrast to those who “draw back.” We pondered how the early Christians allowed themselves to be dispossessed of so many of their earthly possessions — even their life! — because they knew that they had a greater possession (hyparxin) in God in faith. Today the Letter to the Hebrews builds on it. It defines faith as “the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” Faith is the hypostasis, the substance, the down payment, of what we hope for, the evidence of what we do not yet see but know is coming.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Vigil

January 30, 2021

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.30.21_Landry_ConCon.mp3

 

The text that guided the homily is: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation Jesus wants to have with us this Sunday when we willsee him enter a synagogue on the Sabbath day and teach. All those who listened to him, St. Mark tells us, were “astounded at his teaching, for he taught with authority and not like the scribes.” He then showed the tremendous power of his authoritative words by silencing and casting out a demon from a man, which amazed the crowd even further. “What is this?,” they asked,  A new teaching — with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.”

* The same Jesus who entered the Capernaum synagogue on the Jewish Sabbath enters our parishes on the Christian Sabbath. And he teaches with the same authority he wielded two thousand years ago. He speaks to us in the word of God and later he who created the heavens and the earth with his word, who called fishermen and tax collectors to follow him so powerfully that at his summons they immediately got up and did so, does something far more amazing than cast out a devil or silence a stormy storm. He changes bread and wine into God, into his body and blood, and casts himself into us. If we recognize what is really going on, if we awaken to the power of his words, people today ought to be far more amazed than Jesus’ contemporaries two millennia ago.

* Jesus teaches unlike any other teacher who has ever come, before or after. His contemporaries said he “taught with authority, unlike the scribes.” The scribes, the ancient Biblical scholars, always used to cite Sacred Scripture or Jewish tradition, to base their teachings on the authority of the word of God. That was obviously an appropriate way for them to teach, sharing their interpretations of God’s word rather than merely their own opinions. But Jesus didn’t need to cite the word of God, because he is the word of God. In the Sermon on the Mount, for example, he contrasted himself to what Moses, their greatest teacher about the ways of God up until then, had said to them on behalf of God in the desert: “You have heard that it was said — in other words, Moses said to you — ‘you shall not kill…’ ‘you shall not commit adultery… ,’ ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth…,’ but I say to you,  you shall not even be angry with a brother, or look on a woman with lust in your heart, or if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn and offer him the other as well” (Mt 5:20-45). Jesus was capable of saying, “But I say to you,” in contrast to what the greatest Biblical figure until then had said.

* Authority comes from the Latin word auctorfor “author,” and Jesus spoke with authority because he is the author, the creator, of man, woman and the world. To capture just a little of what it must have been like to listen to Jesus talk about God, about the world, about man, and about faith and about morality, it would be better than listening to the Wright Brothers talk about airplanes, Henry Ford talk about cars, Thomas Edison describe electricity, Steve Jobs talk about computers, iPads and iPhones, all of whom could speak with stunning authority because they were the “authors,” the inventors, of what we now take for granted. That’s just a glimpse of what it would have been like to be in that Capernaum Synagogue listening to Jesus, who is the author of the world, the one through whom we and all things were made.

* Even if we can’t go back in a time machine to the ...

Fr. Roger J. LandrySacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, ManhattanFriday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time, Year IMass in Thanksgiving for the Gift of Human Life

February 1, 2019Heb 10:32-39, Ps 37, Mk 4:26-34

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.29.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

Today Jesus continues to speak to us about the objective good of his Kingdom and how to receive and respond to his gracious offer of it and grow and thrive within it. On Wednesday, he gave us the Parable of the Sower and the Seed and focused on faith-filled receptivity, which he said features hearing the Word, actively accepting it, and bearing fruit 30, 60 and 100-fold. Yesterday he said that true faith can’t be hidden, but shines like the light of a lamp placed on a lamp stand, and that the more we exercise the spiritual muscle of the theological virtue of faith, the more it will grow. Today he gives us a pair of images to teach us two more angles about the increase in faith that is meant to happen when we enter and live in his kingdom.

Jesus says, first, that faith grows like a mustard seed. “When it is sown in the ground,” Jesus says, “it is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth. But once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.” Even a little bit of faith is enough, Jesus would say elsewhere, to move mountains. Even when it seems small, we should know that it contains within the power to grow to be enormous. And by another image he describes one of the most important parts of that growth: it’s God’s work. Jesus compares the growth in faith to what happens with a farmer scattering seed in the Holy Land, turning it over once, and then allowing the growth. “It is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land and would sleep and rise night and day and the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how. Of its own accord the land yields fruit, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the grain is ripe, he wields the sickle at once, for the harvest has come.” The farmer certainly does a little of the work, but most of the work happens by what is contained in the seed, what is contained in the soil, and the water that comes. So it is with growth in faith. God has given us that seed, he’ll provide the water of the sacraments, he’ll provide the sunshine of various blessings, and he’ll give so many of the nutrients like teaching and formation necessary for us to be rich, fruitful soil. And so we should have great confidence in God’s work.

One way God routinely acts to help that seed of faith grow large is through putting us in tests in which we need to exercise the spiritual muscles of faith. Every time we pass the test of faith under duress, our faith grows. We see this in today’s first reading from the Letter to the Hebrews. It describes how the faith of the first Christians grew. The sacred author tells us, “Remember the days past when, after you had been enlightened (baptized), you endured a great contest of suffering. At times you were publicly exposed to abuse and affliction; at other times you associated yourselves with those so treated. You even joined in the sufferings of those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, knowing that you had a better and lasting possession.” The last sentence points to how they were able to remain faithful in the midst of so many trials and “great contests,” including the confiscation of their goods and even the confiscation of their earthly life. They knew that they had a “better and lasting possession.”

Pope Benedict,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church

January 28, 2021

Heb 10:19-25, Ps 24, Mk 4:21-25

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.28.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Yesterday Jesus gave us the Parable of the Sower and the Seed, which allowed us to take a soil sample of our receptivity to his action in our life and to point us toward bearing abundant fruit through eliminating the packed down soil, or subterranean rock layers or thorns that can choke the growth of the seed. He also explained to us why he uses Parables, so that we’ll be provoked to put in the work to understand the imagery he is using and apply it to our life; if we don’t find ourselves doing the work but blowing off what he says, it’s a clear sign that our hearts are hardened.

* Today Jesus continues that lesson by focusing on three things that should happen when we are receiving his word on good soil.

* The first is that it will shine through us. Jesus tells us, “Is a lamp brought in to be placed under a bushel basket or under a bed, and not to be placed on a lampstand? For there is nothing hidden except to be made visible; nothing is secret except to come to light.” Jesus has lit the lamp of our minds and hearts with his holy word and he doesn’t want us to place it under a bushel basket or a bed but on a lamp stand. He doesn’t want us to keep what he teaches us secret but to make it visible, to bring it to the light of day so that others might similarly be illuminated. The word should take on our own flesh and we should become living commentaries of it in the midst of others, who should be able to “see” it in us even before they “hear” the word through us.

* Second, we will take care of it. Jesus tells us to “take care what you hear.” We can understand this in two senses. First, it means to pay attention, that we listen well to what he’s saying. We ought to be at the edge of our seats when Jesus speaks, attentive to every word, remembering it, pondering it in our hearts, placing it together with what he’s taught us before and letting it become a foundation for what he wishes to teach us later in our prayer, in our listening to Sacred Scripture, in what he reveals to us in day-to-day events. The second way he wants us to take care of what we hear is to treasure what he reveals, to nourish it, to water the seeds of his word.

* This leads to the third point: we will share the word of God generously. Jesus tells us that the “measure with which you measure will be measured out to you and still more will be given to you. To the one who has, more will be given; from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” This is basically the law of “use or it or lose it,” which every student, every athlete, every musician knows. The more we learn, the more we can learn. The more we work out, the greater our stamina and strength and the tougher the exercises we can do. The more we practice the piano, the more our talent develops; the less we practice, the more we lose our ability. Unless we use a gift, the gift atrophies. It’s similar with the light of the teaching he gives us: the more we give it, the more we’ll receive it, and if we don’t pass it on to others, we’re at risk for losing it. Any teacher will tell you that if you really want to learn something, try to teach it to others. The measure with which we measure is measured back to us. The way we let the light shine, the way we take care of the word, is to measure it out, so that we may not only grow in our possession of the lig...