Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Saturday of the 26th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Mother Theodore Guerin

October 3, 2020

Job 42:1-3.5-6.12-17, Ps 119, Lk 10:17-24

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* On Thursday the Church was able to focus on the meaning of spiritual childhood, with the feast of St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the “little way of trust and love” that helped make her a doctor of the Church. Yesterday, on the feast of the Guardian Angels, we heard Jesus’ call to convert and become like little children to inherit the kingdom of heaven, and how our guardian angels, even from the time we’re the littlest of children, are constantly before the Father’s throne in heaven praying for us so that we paradoxically grow to full stature while continuously converting to being spiritual children. Today Jesus speaks about spiritual childhood when he rejoices in the Holy Spirit and praises his Father for revealing the most important things — especially who the Father is — to the childlike rather than to the worldly wise and learned. He was rejoicing because the 72 had just returned from proclaiming the Gospel and had participated in Jesus’ authority over Satan and the demons. The disciples were full of joy. Jesus responded by saying, “I have observed Satan fall like lightning from the sky.” This meant that they had “tread[ed] upon serpents and scorpions and upon the full force of the enemy and nothing [harmed] them” but was also a warning for them not to become proud as a result of it, because Satan himself had fallen. He then helped them to rejoice fundamentally because their names had been written in heaven, that they were known by God before they had done anything. He finished the whole passage by saying how blessed they were to see and hear what they do and not to take it for granted. He wanted them to share his joy in what God was doing, which was far greater than what they themselves had done!

* We can see the drama between being childlike and worldly “wise and clever” throughout the Book of Job we’ve been pondering this week. Job had a childlike faith that rejoiced in both what the Lord gave and took away and blessed God’s name. His friends, however, were educated and tried to draw him to look at things in a sophisticated manner, without childlike trust. His sufferings challenged him to begin a little rebellion. But when God spoke and took him on a spiritual journey through creation seen from the perspective of the Creator, he repented and returned anew to his childlike situation. He humbly admitted today, “I have dealt with great things that I do not understand; things too wonderful for me, which I cannot know.” His childlike faith was rewarded, by receiving more than he had had before. The extended allegory of Job helps us to appreciate the way God’s mercy works: As St. Ambrose teaches, our state after having been forgiven is greater than if we had never sinned, because we know know God in his mercy better than we would have otherwise.

* Someone who lived with this mature childlike faith and helped thousands of others to learn to do so is the American saint we celebrate today, St. Mother Theodore Guerin, the foundress of the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana, who was baptized on this day back in 1798 in France. (She died on May 14 in 1856, but May 14 is the Feast of St. Matthias and so the Church celebrates the day of her baptism). As a young girl she distinguished herself by her love for God and those God had made her neighbor. When she made her first communion at the age of 10, she confided to the priest that she was being called to religious life, but after her father was murdered by bandits when she was 15,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Feast of the Guardian Angels

October 2, 2020

Ex 23:20-23, Ps 90, Mt 18:1-5.10

 

To listen to the audio recording of this homily, please click here: 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* What an incredible gift it is that God has sent an angel before us, as we read in the Book of Exodus, to guard us on the way and bring us to the place he has prepared! At the beginning of Mass we prayed that God who is pleased to send his holy Angels to guard us, may hear our supplication that we may “always be defended by their protection and rejoice eternally in their company.” It’s to that eternal, celestial company to which God has sent them to guide us.

* The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “The whole life of the Church benefits from the mysterious and powerful help of angels. … In her liturgy, the Church joins with the angels to adore the thrice-holy God. She invokes their assistance. … From its beginning until death, human life is surrounded by their watchful care and intercession. ‘Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life’ (St. Basil the Great). Already here on earth the Christian life shares by faith in the blessed company of angels and men united in God” (CCC 334-336).

* The reality we have to confront, however, is that many of us are oblivious in day-to-day life to the presence of our guardian angels. This is a larger problem of scientism, or the rationalistic, materialistic understanding that the only thing we can know we can observe with our senses or with scientific instruments. And so many of us go about our life without an awareness of the supernatural realm, of angels on the one hand, of the devil and his fallen angels on the other. While we theoretically believe they exist or at least could exist, we live as if they don’t. Today’s feast is an opportunity for us to open up to the truth that reality is much broader than we ordinarily think and begin to live it better in all its practical circumstances.

* Today God tells the Israelites about the angel sent to guard them: “Be attentive to him and heed his voice. Do not rebel against him. … If you heed his voice and carry out all I tell you, I will be an enemy to your enemies and a foe to your foes.” God calls us to acknowledge that he has sent his angel in front of us, to be attentive to him, to heed his voice, and to carry out all he tells us through him. But how we do that? None of us wants to disobey what God commands us through them, but how can we follow someone we cannot see, how can we heed someone whose voice doesn’t register on a decibel meter, how can we can we observe commands that are not communicated in ways that up until this point at least we haven’t been able to perceive?

* The first thing we need to be is to be aware of our guardian angel’s presence. To acknowledge him. To recognize we’re not alone. Even if we can’t perceive him with our five senses, to recognize that he is nevertheless there as the biggest supporter we’ve ever had, seeking to help us.

* Second we need trustingly to ask for his help. Today we can ponder how to do that with regard to certain fundamental aspects of our life.

* First, with regard to our prayer. We can pray to our guardian angel. There’s a great prayer that many of us learned as children that we should pray with fervor. It’s based on what we ponder in Sacred Scripture today: “Angel of God, my guardian dear, to Whom His love commits me here, ever this day be at my side to light and guard to rule and guide. Amen.” We can also rely on his prayers for us before God’s throne, because he is “always looking upon the face of the Heavenly Father,” and interceding for us. We can also ask our guardian angel to help us to pray and pray better.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the 26th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face

October 1, 2020

Job 19:21-27, Ps 27, Lk 10:1-12

 

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

 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* On Tuesday, if we did not have the proper Gospel reading for the Feast of the Archangels, we would have come to the fulcrum of St. Luke’s Gospel (Lk 9:51), in which we read how Jesus fixed his face on Jerusalem, on Calvary, on his redemptive passion, and how everything thereafter in St. Luke’s Gospel is meant to be understood with that focus in mind, a focus he wants us to share. That’s what grounds today’s commission of the 72 to proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom. Jesus was heading toward his coronation (with thorns). They were to be the heralds of the Kingdom, which means that that King is present, the King is alive, the King provides, the King brings peace. All of the instructions Jesus gives is with that in mind. There’s an urgency to the task: they’re to pray for fellow laborers for the harvest, because the harvest is ripe; they’re to greet no one along the way, but be focused on completing their mission; they’re being sent not as assassins but as lambs, to announce meekly to others’ freedom, rather than compel them; they’re to show their trust in God’s providence by not taking money, a sack of food, a second pair of sandals; they’re to announce the peace that the Prince of Peace has brought through the forgiveness of sins; they’re to eat whatever is set before them, whether served by Pharisees or by Publicans, whether kosher or not, because the King created it all and it’s not a forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; they’re to stay in the same place, grateful to God and to their hosts, and not looking for a better one; they’re to cure the sick as a sign of the cure of the soul that the King is bringing about. All of these flow from a living relationship with the King.

* We see the same relationship with a living King in Job. After his friends failed to persuade him that his sufferings were a result of sin, after his arguments likewise failed to persuade them, after he was experiencing profound pain and sorrow, he made an extraordinary profession of faith. That even should he die and return to the dust from which he came, “I know that my Vindicator lives and that he will at last stand forth upon the dust.” He knew that his Redeemer, God, is alive and would live on after his death — and not only that but “I myself shall see Him … with my own eyes … from my flesh,” something that filled his inmost being with longing. As he was in great pain throughout his body, his innards were longing not for “relief” but for his Redeemer!

* That type of faith, trust and love in the living Lord, the Redeemer of the human person, is what characterized the faith of St. Therese Lisieux, whom the Church rejoices to celebrate today. It is the essence of her “little way of trust and love” that was validated by the Church when it proclaimed St. Therese as a doctor. On Saturday, I met with many of the new fellows for this year’s Leonine Forum and one of them mentioned that St. Therese was her favorite saint because she made the way of holiness simple. That’s what God has done through her. St. Therese has taught us all through her little way of spiritual childhood how to trust in God like a little child and to let God do the heavy lifting for our holiness. We need to open ourselves up with grateful love to receive that gift and to cooperate with the holy stubbornness of a child.

* Holiness, however, is not just following Christ as disciples, but being transformed by him so that we might share his Mission,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the 26th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Jerome on the 1600th Anniversary of His Death

September 30, 2020

Job 9:1-12.14-16, Ps 88, Lk 9:57-62

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily:

* Yesterday, if we didn’t have the feast of the Archangels, we would have heard the fulcrum of St. Luke’s Gospel, which is verse 9:51: Jesus “fixed his face toward Jerusalem,” toward Golgotha, toward the fulfillment of his Messianic mission. Everything for the rest of St. Luke’s Gospel needs to be interpreted within that context. And as he was heading there, he met three different people, two of whom volunteered to follow him and one of whom Jesus directly called. But to all of them, Jesus described what it would mean to follow him. What he taught them is crucial for us to know in order for us to follow Christ faithfully and help others to become his true disciples.

* In the first vocation story, a man runs up to Jesus and says, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus had come into the world to make disciples and many would refuse to follow him, so we would have expected this man who wanted to follow Jesus to fill Jesus with joy. Instead Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and the birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Jesus wanted him to know the cost of discipleship, especially at a time in which messianic expectations had hyped up the Jews to think that the Messiah would kick out the Romans and set up a political administration in which there would be plenty of patronage. Jesus wanted the man to grasp that to follow him wherever he went meant to go after someone who was basically homeless, to value him more than one’s own home and one’s own bed, to realize that you wouldn’t even have what foxes and birds take for granted. We, too, need to ponder the radical nature of God’s call. Are we willing to follow Jesus wherever he goes? If he asks us, like God asked Abraham, to leave our own native place at 75 and go to a place he would eventually show us, would we follow him, or would we value our home, our bed, our old habits more than we do the Lord?

* The second scene involves a man to whom Jesus said, “Follow me!” But this man replied, “Lord, let me go first to bury my father.” When we hear this, we can presume that the person’s dad had just died and he just wanted to go home for the funeral and then immediately return. The text doesn’t say that, however. What’s much more likely was that the man’s father was very much alive and might live for decades still. What the interlocutor was likely communicating was, “Jesus, I’d like to follow you, but my father comes first. As soon as I’ve fulfilled all of my obligations to him, then I’ll be free to come and follow.” Jesus’ reply was strong: “Let the dead bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the Kingdom of God.” As Jesus would say a little later at the raising of Lazarus, he is the Resurrection and the Life and everyone who lives and believes in him will never die, even if he dies (Jn 11:25-26). For us to become alive in the most important sense of all, we need to be in a living relationship to him. If we’re not following him, if we’re not allowing his life to reign within us, we’re dead, even if all our corporeal vital signs are healthy. He was calling this man to become fully alive and was seeking to give him a participation in the Resurrection. He was giving him a choice between life and death, between living and dying even while breathing, and Jesus was encouraging him to let those who are “dead,” who don’t have this relationship, bury their confrères. Jesus doesn’t call most people to make a strict choice between him and their family members. He calls us, after all,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Feast of the Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael

September 29, 2020

Rev 12:7-12, Ps 138, Jn 1:47-51

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* In the Gospel today, Jesus describes for us the two-fold activity of angels: “ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” They “ascend” in order to serve the Lord and “descend” in order to serve us on behalf of God. This double service was also alluded to in the Opening Prayer as we turned to God and asked that he “graciously grant that our life on earth may be defended by those who watch over us [descending] as they minister perpetually to you in heaven [ascending].” As we ponder today their double work, we are also called to let them help us to learn how to ascend and descend with them in praise of God and service of others.

* The Archangel’s first and most important activity is to praise God. “Praise him, all you angels,” the Psalms say (Ps 148:2). They want to help us to learn how to praise God with them. We prayed together in today’s Responsorial Psalm, “In the sight of the angels, I will sing your praises, Lord!” With a watchful gaze, they want to help us to be able to say, both in this world and forever, “I will give thanks to you, O Lord, with all my heart, for you have heard the words of my mouth; in the presence of the angels I will sing your praise; I will worship at your holy temple and give thanks to your name.” They help us to do that obviously in the Mass, which features two great angelic hymns, the one that that derives from what the angels chanted on Christmas morning, the “Glory to God in the Highest,” and the one that comes from what the Prophet Isaiah saw in an angelic vision, the “Holy, Holy, Holy.” Today is a day in which we recognize that we’re not praying alone, but that the angels are helping us to praise and thank God with all our being.

* Their second activity is to descend upon us to bring us God’s assistance. The Archangel Gabriel brought Zechariah and Mary God’s word, Raphael brought Tobias God’s accompaniment, Michael brings the Church protection. Their names say a lot about how they seek to serve us. Gabriel means God’s strength and he seeks to strengthen us, like he strengthened the sinless Virgin Mary, not to be afraid to respond to God’s call. Raphael means “God’s medicine” and he strives to heal us not of physical cataracts like he did Tobit/Raguel but rather everything that hinders our seeing God and growing in his image. Michael means “He is who like God” and he strives to defends us from all evil that renders us dissimilar to God who is holy, holy, holy. By our baptism we are united to Christ in his three-fold identity as prophet, priest and king, and the Archangels help us in this triple munera: Gabriel helps us to become prophets like Christ, Raphael helps us to bring God’s medicine especially through the Sacraments, and Michael helps us to reign by serving, protecting us from the way the evil one seeks to help us to serve him rather than God and others.

* Their presence accompanies us in a particular way throughout every daily Mass. We invoke Gabriel before every Mass as we pray the Angelus at 6 am and ponder the Good News of the Incarnation that never becomes old news. We invoke St. Michael at the end of Mass asking us to defend us together with Jesus whom we now bear inside. And St. Raphael seeks to help us to live the Mass, the medicine of God, the medicine of immortality, through the day into eternity. We need to live these realities more.

* At least for me, when I pray the Angelus, I’m focused most on the “Verbum caro factum est,” “The Word [who] became flesh and dwelled among us” and the “Ancilla Domini,” Mary,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Monday of the 26th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Lorenzo Ruiz and Companions, Martyrs

September 28, 2020

Job 1:6-22, Ps 17, Lk 9:46-50

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Jesus never says to us merely “Do what I say,” but always, “Come, follow me!” He sets the example for us to follow. That’s why, if in today’s Gospel, he tells us that the path to greatness is to receive children in his name, it’s because he himself has received us as children. We don’t ponder Jesus’ “fatherhood” enough because we always look at him as Son in relation to God the Father, but many Fathers of the Church looked at him as the perfect icon of the paternity of God the Father, pondering how Jesus gives us life through his passion, death and resurrection and the sacraments that flow from them. He wishes to receive us as children. But the resistance we put up is to try to be grown-ups. That’s the essential sin found in the Parable of the Prodigal Son: the younger son wants to treat the Father as if he’s dead, as if he no longer needs him in his life. For us to become great, we first need to exercise our divine filiation to the full, allow Jesus to receive us as children, and then, learning from Jesus’ love for us, similarly extend that same, loving, often unrequited gift of self to all those children of God sent to us.

* One of the saints who shows us best how to do this is St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, whose feast the Church will celebrate on Thursday. She became a doctor of the Church, even though she never graduated high school, because she was filled with Divine Wisdom and simplicity and showed us all how to respond to God like beloved children. She taught what she described as her little way of spiritual childhood, the little way of trust and love, by linking two passages in Sacred Scripture about the Kingdom of God. The first is that if we wish to enter the kingdom, we “must convert and become like little children.” Paradoxically to grow in full stature in Christ is to become more childlike. The second passage is “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” The essence of spiritual childhood is spiritual poverty, totally dependence on God, approaching him in everything with open hands and recognizing that everything we’ve received is a gift.

* Today’s first reading from Job shows us a particular aspect of that way of spiritual childhood. After Job has lost all his oxen, asses, herdsman, sheep, shepherds, camels and those tending them, sons, daughters and house — everything but his wife, health and life — his response was not to curse but to praise God: “Naked I came forth from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I go back again. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!” The Lord should be blessed when he gives and when he strips. Spiritual childhood is a way of trust and love that recognizes that both things that seem propitious and adverse are meant to be united with God. It’s easy to blessed God for the obvious gifts in life, like oxen, asses, herdsman, sheep, shepherds, camels, loyal employees, sons, daughters and houses. It’s much harder when he takes them away. But that’s what Job does. St. Therese taught us that God often loves us by “subtraction.” When a novice once sighed, saying,“When I think of everything I still have to acquire!” Therese replied, “You mean, to lose! Jesus takes it upon himself to fill your soul in the measure that you rid it of its imperfections. I see that you have taken the wrong road; you will never arrive at the end of your journey. You are wanting to climb a great mountain and the good God is trying to make you descend it; he is waiting for you at the bottom in ...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Agnes Church, Manhattan

17th Sunday after Pentecost, Extraordinary Form

September 27, 2020

Eph 4:1-6, Mt 22:34-46

 

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

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* Paul, in today’s passage from his Letter to the Ephesians written when he was chained to a wall in Rome, made an appeal to the Christians there and to Christians everywhere and at all times. “I, then, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received.” The call about which he is speaking is the vocation to follow Christ, to be holy, to live with faith according to the Holy Spirit, and to share the gift of faith as of the first importance with others. Jesus makes that calling very plain in today’s Gospel.

* A lawyer asks Jesus, “What is the greatest of all the commandments?,” and Jesus replies by describing for him the human being’s vocation, 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. 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.” Then God through Moses gave them instructions to keep hammering this reality home every day: “Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (Deut 6:4-9). Even though Jesus’ contemporaries recited this when they awoke and went to bed, even though they made a phylactery to hang it down from their hair so that it would be an emblem on their forehead, even though the put it on a scroll and installed it next to their front door, Jesus’ Jewish interrogators still hadn’t realized its supremacy, in other words, why God had them do all of these things. It was precisely because 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 his image 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 yours...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

September 26, 2020

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.26.20_Landry_ConCon.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.

* Jesus will give us another parable this week, popularly called the parable of the two sons. As he did last week, he employs the image of working in a vineyard. Last week he spoke to us about his calling all hands on deck, going out at 6 and 9 am, noon, 3 and 5 pm, to call laborers into his vineyard, because he wants us all working. This time he focuses on two brothers called by their Father to work in his vineyard. The first son initially refuses when his father tells him, “Son, go out and work in the vineyard today,” but afterward he changes his mind and goes to work. After the parable, Jesus implies that this is the proper way to understand those prostitutes and tax collectors and other types of sinners, who even though for lengthy periods of time they said “no!” to the sixth, seventh and other commandments, eventually converted and were now living and working in the Lord’s vineyard, building up and entering into his kingdom. The second son responds to his father’s command saying respectfully, “I will go sir,” but never acts on that promise. Jesus says that this applies precisely to those he was addressing, the scribes and the Pharisees, who so many times very publicly prayed in the temple chanting their loud “amens!” to God, but who were not following through on their covenantal commitments. The Pharisees, scribes and elders, who with their lips were saying yes to the Father’s will but with their actions were not, ended up showing where this hypocrisy can lead: they ended up framing Jesus and having him tortured, crucified and killed.

* It’s obvious that the Lord wants all of us today to reflect not only on what we say to God, but especially on how we follow through on our commitments. We’re listening to this program dedicated to growing in faith because we are people who have said “yes” to God many times over the course of our lives. On the day of our baptism, our parents and godparents spoke up for us and made our baptismal promises. At our Confirmation, we stood up and renewed those promises to reject Satan, his evil works and empty promises, and to believe in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, forgiveness of sins, resurrection of the body and life everlasting; we also made the commitment at our Confirmation to go to work in the Lord’s vineyard, with tongues of fire, to proclaim the Lord’s Gospel with ardent passion. The Lord wants us to ask ourselves today whether we’ve been following through on those commitments and been getting down to work in his vineyard. If we have not been following through, if we’ve been saying “no” to the Lord with our bodies despite the “yes-es” of our lips, then he wants to help us to learn from the example of the first son. It’s not fundamentally words that matter, but deeds of conversion and faith. For many of us sons and daughters of God, our “yes” in faith has become routine. We say it so naturally and readily that we have ceased to understand the meaning of what we’re saying and to act on that commitment. Every week we say “Amen!” to the words, “The Body of Christ,” but do we really structure our lives in a way consistent with this affirmation? We say, “Thanks be to God!” when the Word of God is proclaimed at Mass, but do we show that gratitude for this incredible gift ...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Saturday of the 25th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of SS. Cosmas and Damian

September 26, 2020

Eccl 11:8-12:8, Ps 90, Lk 9:43-45

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today’s readings are about death and life, about what really matters and what doesn’t, about wisdom and foolishness, about eternity and evanescence. In the Responsorial Psalm, we prayed to God, “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain wisdom of heart.” It’s only when we know that we don’t have all the time in the world, it’s only when we realize that our days are numbered, it’s only when we grasp that today may be the last day in our earthly sequence, that we begin to live the right way, for what really matters. It’s only when we begin to recognize that God has given us a finite time here on earth that we begin to get our true priorities straight.

* In the first reading, we finish our brief examination of the Book of Ecclesiastes, which focuses on the vanity of living just for this world. “Vanity of vanities,” it concludes, repeating a refrain from earlier in the Book, “All things are vanity!” Vanity means worthless or futile from the Latin word vanus or “empty.” It’s common understanding of “conceited” is derivative, flowing from getting puffed up by worthless things. Through the Book of Ecclesiastes Qohelet describes the various vain things in which human beings place their treasure. Today he focuses on the vanity of youth and he counsels us to remember our Creator in the days of youth, never to forget that we will age and die, and that “God will bring [us] to judgment” for the way we lived. He was encouraging us to live for God, the one type of life that is not vain.

* Jesus teaches us this path in the Gospel by his own example. After he has worked a great miracle of curing a boy whose diabolically-induced attacks would lead him repeatedly to the brink of suicide, “all were amazed at his every deed.” It would have been the time for Jesus to ride the wave of popularity, if that’s what he was seeking. But he wasn’t. At that moment of earthly acclaim, Jesus told the disciples: “Pay attention to what I am telling you. The Son of Man is to be handed over to men.” He was telling them for the second time that he was going to die. We had the first time in yesterday’s Gospel. Right after Peter proclaimed Jesus to be the Christ or Messiah, Jesus announced to them that he would be a suffering Messiah: “The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.” Peter, according to St. Matthew’s eyewitness account, vainly protested, even rebuking Jesus and telling him that there was no way any such thing would happen to him. This second time they didn’t understand it any better, but “they were afraid to ask him about this saying,” because they didn’t want to know the answer, because it seemed to go against the vain desires they had for cabinet positions in his worldly messianic administration. Jesus was keeping them focused, however, on the vanity even of the gift of human life if not lived for and together with God. He, too, would die, and if they wanted to live for what mattered, they not only needed to accept that fact but live that truth. They needed to learn not to have their life taken from them but freely to lay it down (Jn 10:18) as a ransom for many (Mk 10:45). For their life to have meaning, they needed to “lose” it for Jesus’ sake and the sake of the Gospel being shared. All of the apostles except Judas eventually got that lesson.

* St. Paul would be the one who would explain it best, when he wrote to the Philippians,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the 25th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

September 25, 2020

Eccl 3:1-11, Ps 144, Lk 9:18-22

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* In today’s first reading, the sacred author of Ecclesiastes says that there’s a time, a “kairos,” for everything under the heavens, and lists several of them. He shows time more or less as the undulating waves of opposites, from night to day, without end, without direction, almost in a circle of endless repetition. This is what life may seem to those who live life without God: everything can seem pointless, where the human person accomplishes nothing from all his labors and sufferings in life, a vanity of vanity. But the author then shifts gears and says that God “has put the timeless into their hearts, without man’s ever discovering.” God has placed his eternal self within us in a way that far exceeds our knowledge or comprehension. This placement of God happened with the appearance of Jesus as the Messiah of God in the “fullness of time,” as St. Paul describes in his Letter to the Galatians.

* In today’s Jesus asked a question about what the people were saying about him not because he was curious but because he wanted to lead them on a journey of faith to recognize that the long-awaited time had really come. After Peter, however, moved my God the Father had courageously confessed his faith in Christ, Jesus announced the type of Messiah he would be in the fullness of time: a Messiah who would suffer and die in order to bring us salvation, a Messiah who would summon us to be co-redeemers with him precisely through entering into his suffering, his death, and his resurrection. This is the Messiah we are called in every time and in eternity to confess. In his Passion, we have a shift from death to life, from darkness to light, from sin to salvation, but one that is not cyclical but ultimately linear. There is a time to die but also a time to rise and the advantage that comes from all this toil is eternal reward. This happens, as the Psalm indicates, when we build our life on God as our rock, mercy, fortress, stronghold, deliverer and trustworthy shield. Even though man’s life is like a breadth and his days on earth like a passing shadow, the Lord notices him and takes thought of him, and comes to make his days not a passing shadow but an eternal life. There is indeed “an appointed time for everything,” but in birth and death, planting and uprooting, weeping and laughing, rending and sowing, silence and speech, God’s grace is given to unite those moments to God so that they may all enhance the way we build our life on God as a stable, secure Rock and thereby confess him to be the long awaited Messiah and Savior, the “same yesterday, today and forever.”

* After Peter’s confession as the Messiah in the Gospel, Jesus told the apostles “not to tell this to anyone.” It wasn’t the kairos yet for them to tell everyone they met directly about the Messiah’s coming. Later it would be the time for them to proclaim the Gospel to every creature. But both were done in obedient love of the one who entered time so that we might enter eternity. Today at Mass, as we prepare in time to receive within the “Timeless One,” we ask him for the grace to recognize, as St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Now is the acceptable time. Now is the day of salvation,” and seize this time to love and confess him with constant faith, hope and love.

 

The readings for today’s Mass were:

Reading 1 ECCL 3:1-11

There is an appointed time for everything,

and a time for every thing under the heavens.