Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Mass of December 29, Fifth Day in the Octave of Christmas

Memorial of St. Thomas Becket, Martyr

December 29, 2020

1 John 2:3-11, Ps 96, Lk 2:22-35

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.29.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today, on the fifth day of Christmas, the Church gives us what happened on the 40th day after Jesus’ birth, his presentation in the temple. There Simeon, moved by the Spirit, whose whole life was an Advent for the long-awaited Messiah, encountered him. And when he embraced the Anointed Child in his arms, he called him, a “light to reveal you [God] to the nations and the glory of your people Israel.” Jesus came as “light of the human race” (Jn 1:4), as the “refulgence of eternal light” (Wis 7:26) and the “refulgence of [God’s] glory” (Heb 1:3). This was indeed good news of great joy for all the people, but at the same time some treated this gift as bad news of great foreboding. As St. John would say, “The light came into the world but people preferred darkness to light” (Jn 3:19). The glory of God took on our flesh but people were seeking their own glory rather than God’s and God’s glory might get in the way. That’s why as soon as Simeon testified that his eyes has seen God’s salvation in the one named “God saves” (Jesus), as soon as he had said he was God’s light and glory, he turned to say to Mary, “This child is destined for the fall and the rise of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be contradicted… so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” The response to Jesus’ light and glory would unveil what was in people’s hearts. Even though Jesus had come to save everyone, not everyone would accept that gift. Simeon said that rather than everyone’s following and echoing Jesus’ word, many would contradict what he said in words and in body language. He would become the cause of the “ruin” and the “resurrection” of many, depending upon their response to Jesus’ word, his light, his glory, and his offer of salvation. And so it’s important for us to examine during this Christmas octave what the response of our heart is to Jesus.

* St. John in the first reading helps us to do so concretely. Throughout his first letter, St. John calls Jesus the “light” and summons us to live in the light and walk in the light. St. John describes three stages of the incarnate Jesus’ progressive illumination in our lives. At one level, they all say essentially the same thing about the type of communion Christ seeks to form with us; but on another, they go progressively deeper.

* The first level has to do with God’s word, his commandments, his truth, which are a light for our steps and a lamp for our soul. St. John says, “The way we may be sure that we know Jesus  is to keep his commandments.  Whoever says, ‘I know him,’ but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word, the love of God is truly perfected in him.” If we’ve become one with God, we’ll become one with his word, with his will, with the Truth he enfleshes. To know Jesus Christ is to become united with him in doing the will of God, which is fleshed out in the commandments, in the word of God, in what Jesus has taught, what the prophets taught in anticipation of him, what the apostles have taught in application of his life and lessons. Do we see God’s word, do we view the commandments as God’s light and glory, do we allow ourselves to experience Jesus’ resurrection through conforming our life to this truth, or do we contradict the teaching of the Lord conceptually by saying God is wrong or existentially by living accord...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Feast of the Holy Family (B)

December 26, 2020

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.26.20_Landry_ConCon.m4a

 

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 God wants to have with us this Sunday, as the Church celebrates the Feast of the Holy Family.

* On Friday we celebrated Christmas, which is first and fundamentally the celebration of how God so loved the world and every human being that he took on human nature himself so that he might fully restore us to the divine image and likeness. The priority of Christmas is always on God’s coming into our world and our following the Shepherds, the Wisemen, the angels and the animals to adore him. We make a spiritual pilgrimage to Bethlehem and, filled with awe, praise and thank God for the greatest of all gifts. This year, in the midst of the pandemic and all of its collateral hardships and losses, we recognize our need for God even more and we are filled with gratitude that God-with-us, Emmanuel, has not left us alone, but has entered our reality in order to fill our darkness with his light and even death with life.

* To celebrate the feast of Christmas well, however, we also need to look at how we receive the gift of God. That’s why the Church always has us celebrate the Solemnity of the Holy Family on the Sunday within the Octave of Christmas, because we see in the Holy Family of Joseph and Mary how to respond to the gift of God, not just as individuals but in the communion of our own family, of the family of the Church, and, even more broadly, in the human family.

* It’s highly significant that when the Son of God became man, when the Word became flesh, he chose to be conceived and born within a family of an already committed husband and wife. He didn’t choose to come as a 30-year-old adult, or a teenager, or an 80 year old. He didn’t choose to be born of a single mom, or raised by two men or two women, or some other arrangement. He chose to be born within a family … precisely in order to redeem the family. The family is always in need of redemption. We see with the first family of Adam and Eve how the devil succeeded in separating husband and wife from God and from each other, and we see the immediate consequences of the devil’s work in the next generation when Cain slew his brother Abel. Because the family is meant to be the world’s greatest image of God as a communion of persons in love, the devil never ceases to go after the family. We see it in how Herod sent his henchmen to try to assassinate the baby Jesus, terrorizing not only the Holy Family but all the families of ancient Bethlehem.

* Surveys across the globe have shown that the devil has been rather effective in his attack on the family. During the pandemic, while some families have had the beautiful opportunity to spend far more time together, not just with each other but in prayer to God, many others have been attacked by the evil one, leading to much higher rates of divorce, domestic violence and other problems.

* We can spend many homilies focusing on the problems confronting the family today, but it’s more important to consider how God wants to strengthen the family. The feast of the Holy Family allows us to reflect together on the purpose of the family, what it means to be a husband and father, a wife and mother, a child and brother or sister. The family has a purpose in God’s plan; it’s meant to be a school of love, a domestic Church, a gift of God to help all of the members of the family grow into the realization of who God created each of them to...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Mass for December 24

December 24, 2020

2 Sam 7:1-5.8-12.14.16, Ps 89, Lk 1:67-69

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.24.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* The essence of the human response to the Christmas mystery is to get ready to respond to what Zechariah calls the “tender compassion of our God,” the mercy he promised to the Jews through so many covenants, the mercy that would dawn for Zechariah in Jesus in the womb in his own house, the mercy that his own son John the Baptist would announce, “salvation through the forgiveness of their sins.” On this last day of Advent, we enter into this mystery of God’s merciful action, as John the Baptist his Son, even at eight days old, completes through his father’s words the task of making straight the paths for us to embrace our Merciful Savior.

* In today’s first reading, a millennium before the angels would sing “Hark!” in Bethlehem, King David tells the prophet Nathan that he is intending to build a temple, a fitting house for the Lord, asking Nathan to confirm that that would be pleasing to God. Nathan’s first reply was simply to have David go for it, that of course such a construction project would please God. But the Lord came to Nathan and told him to return to David saying that rather than have David build a house for the Lord, the Lord himself would mercifully establish a house for David, saying, “I will up your heir after you, sprung from your loins, and I will make his Kingdom firm. I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. Your house and your Kingdom shall endure forever before me; your throne shall stand firm forever.” One-thousand years later, God would make good on that promise. When the Archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary, he said, “Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his Kingdom there will be no end.” The Lord had spent a millennium preparing to give us that gift! David intended to do something for God and God far outdid David’s intended generosity.

* At the time of Christmas, those of us who remember that Jesus is the reason for the season, often make all types of good plans and resolutions about what we will give to God. We imitate the Shepherds in going with haste to the manger. We emulate the Magi in giving the Lord the best we have and falling down before him in prayerful homage. We model ourselves on Mary and Joseph in loving him. We echo the angels in announcing him. We strive to make loving crèche displays in our homes and convents and Churches as a sign of our loving expectation, receptivity and response in the temple we have become through baptism. But to all of this work, God says to us as he said to David, “Should you build me a house to dwell in?” God, in response builds us a house, builds us a dwelling place in him, a dwelling that will be secure forever. Christ has come in order to build that house so that where he is we may be with him (Jn 14:1-6). And the house he builds for us is even greater than the house he builds for David. Jesus would say 30 years later that John the Baptist was the greatest born of woman but the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he. The Lord wants to build us something even greater than what he did for David. The Messiah and Son of God doesn’t descend from us according to the flesh, but by baptism he makes us spiritual sons not of an earthly King but of the King of Kings.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Mass of December 23

December 23, 2020

Mal 3:1-4.23-24, Ps 25, Lk 1:57-66

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.23.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in this homily: 

* In today’s final O Antiphon, we turn to Jesus and pray, “O Emmanuel, rex et legisfer noster, espectatio gentium et salvator earum: veni ad salvandum nos, Domine Deus noster,” “O Emmanuel, king and lawgiver, expectation and Savior of the nations, come and save us, Lord our God.” God-with-us comes to rule us, to show us how to love God and others, as the fulfillment of our longings for salvation. And in today’s readings we sense not only his proximity but what he will do when at last he comes.  “Lift up your heads and see: your Redemption is near at hand,” we pray in the Responsorial Psalm. We lift our heads, our hearts, our hands and our voices, because God is coming to be with us to redeem us in his kingdom and through his two-fold law of love.

* We see two aspects of this redemption in the readings today. The first is purification. The Prophet Malachi tells us that the Messiah — “the Lord whom you seek” who would “suddenly … come to the temple” — would be “like a refiner’s fire, … refining and purifying silver. … He will purify the sons of Levi, refining them like gold or silver that they may offer due sacrifices to the Lord.” Jesus’ essential work in us is to purify the treasure we hold in clay vessels (2 Cor 4:7). That process of purification is implicitly alluded to in today’s Gospel scene. At a superficial level, the reason why we have the birth and naming of St. John the Baptist two days before Christmas is that, historically, it preceded the birth of Christ, and since December 17, we have been traversing all of the proximate historical events of that first Advent. But the birth and naming of the precursor both point to the birth and naming of the one John came to announce, Jesus. John’s Mission was to purify, to help the people prepare the path for the Messiah to come, who would say at the Jordan, “Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees. Therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. I am baptizing you with water, for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is mightier than I. I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand. He will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (Mt 3:10-12).

* The second aspect of redemption is intergenerational love. Malachi announces the mission of John the Baptist, the new Elijah, and the Messiah to whom he would point. About John, God says, “Lo, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me … to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers.” The mission of the precursor was to prepare the way and the day of the Lord, who would seek to reunite us as one family. Malachi talks about intergenerational reunion that begins not just with dry duties of familial piety and an extrinsic obedience to the fourth commandment, but something altogether full of love, that the hearts of parents and the hearts of kids would be turned lovingly toward each other. That’s one of the things that the Lord wants to have happen at every Christmas, that children, parents, grandparents, great grandparents, extended families all come together to be reunited in worshipping God-with-us. We know that the disunity that happens in families occurs because of sin,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Mass for December 22

December 22, 2017

1 Sam 1:24-28, 1 Sam 2:1.4-8, Lk 1:46-56

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.22.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* For me, the most evocative phrase of the second phase of Advent is a line we pray in the Advent Preface the Church prays on Gaudete Sunday and at all of the Masses between December 17 and 24: “The Virgin Mother longed for him with love beyond all telling.” Advent is a season of longing, of desire, and no one shows us that desire better than Mary, not only as Daughter Zion summing up in herself the longings of the Jewish people across the centuries awaiting the coming of the Messiah, but also as the Mother chosen by God the Father to conceive and bear that Messiah, that Son of the Living God. So many first-time moms are bursting with excitement for the birth of their child. Mary’s longing was, the Preface reminds us, beyond all description. She wants to help us enter into that holy longing.

* Today’s O Antiphon is a commentary on Advent longing. The Church prays,  O Rex gentium et desideratus earum, lapisque angularis, qui facis utraque unum: veni et salva hominem, quem de limo formasti. “O King and Desired One of the Nations, O Cornerstone who makes one from both [who unites the house of Israel with all the nations]: come and save the human person whom you formed from the clay.” In this O Antiphon we first make explicit what is implicit in the O Adonai of December 18 when we refer to Christ not only as the “leader of the house of Israel” who gave the Israelites the law, but also the “Adonai” or Lord who spoke as Yahweh (I am who am, the God of every being) to Moses in the burning bush. Jesus is king of all nations, not just Israel, and he comes to unite Israel with all of the nations in the worship of the one true God as one family. He is the Desideratus gentium, the Desired One of the Nations, who implanted within us a holy longing for him and for the redemption he alone brings. And we pray in this O Antiphon for him to fulfill this Mission. Just as he is the creator of us all, having breathed into our common ancestors at the beginning of time the breath of life, our soul, so he wants to remake us and reunite all of us he formed from the clay as one family.

* Today we see what’s supposed to happen with the soul he has breathed into us. It shows us what our response is supposed to be when God fulfills our longing for him with love beyond all telling. We’re called to burst with praise and thanksgiving. Mary shows us this in her famous Magnificat, when she exclaims, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” Our souls are meant to magnify God and God, in fulfilling our desires, has given us so many reasons for soul-bursting praise. The Almighty has done great things for us and holy is his name! At the same time, we see in Mary’s Magnificat, that in order to praise and thank God aright, we need to experience longing for him and for the gifts that come from his generous hand. Mary describes how God looks on us in our lowliness, how he defends the innocent, the weak and the small with the strength of his arm, how he lifts us up the lowly, how he fills the hungry with good things, how he routinely and mercifully comes to the rescue of Israel. Each of these situations — poverty, hunger, weakness, even desperation — increases our recognition of our need to be saved and stokes our longing. And then when God comes in response to the prayers made out of that longing, how can our souls remain quiet? In her Magnificat,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Mass for December 21

Memorial of St. Peter Canisius

December 21, 2019

Song 2:8-14, Ps 33, Lk 1:39-45

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.21.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* There’s a great irony of proclaiming in today’s first reading from the Song of Songs, “The winter is past,” on the day winter begins, with the winter solstice occurring at 5:02 am Eastern time this morning. But the connection will make far greater sense if we understand these words from the Song of Songs from the perspective of today’s O Antiphon* (see explanation below): O Oriens, splendor lucis aeternae et sol iustitiae: veni et illumina sedentes in tenebris et umbra mortis. “O Rising Sun in the East, splendor of eternal light and sun of justice, come, illumine those sitting in darkness and the shadow of death.” Jesus is the Rising Sun and his light — his eternal “Light from Light” — shines in the midst of the greatest darkness and makes the darkest day of the year radiant. Even when we’re walking through the dark valley of the shadow of death, Jesus comes to bring us into the kingdom of light.

* We see this happen in the Gospel. Even though John the Baptist is in the darkness of Elizabeth’s womb, Jesus comes in the womb of Mary and irradiates that darkness with his light and joy. We see the same dynamism in the first reading, the Song of Songs, which is an allegory of the dramatic loving dialogue that’s supposed to happen between God and each one of our souls. Much more than a husband and wife who have been apart for a year run across airports to embrace each other, so our longing is meant to be even greater for God because his longing is greater for us. There’s darkness in separation, but the hope of reunion shines in the midst of that darkness, and when the encounter happens, the long night is forgotten.

* Throughout Advent our desire is supposed to be growing like we see in the Song of Songs. The main purpose of the Advent wreath is to indicate what’s supposed to be happening within us, that week by week, the flame of our intense desire is meant to be doubling, tripling and quadrupling. And that’s what we see in the relationship between Bridegroom and Bride in this passage, which has inspired so many mystics, like St. Bernard and St. John of the Cross, to use it as a paradigm for the loving relationship we’re supposed to have with God. Jesus is coming as a Lover “springing across the mountains, leaping across the hills, … like a gazelle or a young stag.” He was doing that in the Gospel within Mary’s womb before he had even the tiniest of feet. He speaks, continually saying, “Arise, my beloved, my dove, my beautiful one and come!” He wants to raise us from sitting in darkness and the shadow of death, and come to him who loves us, who finds us beautiful and pure. He wants to see us, to hear our voice, to have us “sing a new song” (today’s Responsorial Psalm, literally the “song of the dove,” the song inspired by the Holy Spirit that we’re called to sing to our Emmanuel. This is the whole essence of Advent. Jesus is coming out of love for us because he seeks to espouse us to him forever. He’s coming because he loves us, because he finds us beautiful, and wants, by water and the word,  to make us like a dove, “pure and immaculate in his sight” (Eph 5:25-27).

* In our world, in our souls, the darkness that Christ wants to heal is wherever Christ doesn’t shine. St. John tells us in his Gospel about Jesus, “The light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil” (Jn 3:19). Jesus is coming into the world precisely to bring us in...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Agnes Church, Manhattan

Fourth Sunday of Advent, Extraordinary Form

December 20, 2020

1 Cor 4:1-5, Lk 3:1-6

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.20.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

At daily Masses this Tuesday (in the Ordinary Form), the Church pondered Jesus’ parable of the two sons whom the Father asked to go out and work in his vineyard. The first son said “No,” but afterward had a change of heart and went. The other son said, “Yes, Sir!” but did not go. Jesus asked the chief priests and the elders of the people who were surrounding him which of the two did the Father’s will. And they replied, “The first,” to which he said, to their shocked ears in application of the Parable: “Amen, I say to you, tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom of God before you! When John [the Baptist] came to you in the way of righteousness, you did not believe him, but tax collectors and prostitutes did. Yet even when you saw that, you did not later convert and believe him!”

Today is the third consecutive Sunday in which John the Baptist comes to us in the “way of righteousness” calling us to a particular form of hard work in the vineyard of our soul. Two weeks ago we heard his appeal in St. Matthew’s Gospel, last week in St. John’s, and today in St. Luke’s, and while there are slightly different emphases and nuances in the different accounts, what unites them is the un-nuanced priority given to his central summons, the message God sent him to announce at the Jordan 2000 years ago and sends him to reiterate every Advent. John the Baptist calls us, as a voice of Jesus crying out in the desert, to “prepare the way of the Lord,” to “make straight his paths,” to fill in the “valleys” of a shallow prayer or moral life, to lower the “mountains and hills” of our pride and vanity, to straighten the “winding roads” that distract and delay us from growth in holiness and to smooth those paths that are rough, inconsistent, coarse and unfit for encountering the Lord and following him fully.

Two weeks ago when he called us to conversion, we said, “Laus tibi, Christe!” after his words were proclaimed. Last week, we repeated that praise to Christ for the summons of his precursor. Just minutes ago, we shot for the spiritual hat trick. But the question for us is whether we’ve really followed through. Have we just said “Yes, sir!” like the second son in Jesus’ parable or have we acted on that commitment? Have we, like road construction workers and civil engineers, done the hard work of conversion to which the Baptist calls us or are the same mountains and valleys, the identical winding roads and rough ways still there?

In his parable, Jesus told the chief priests and elders of the people that the publicans and prostitutes were entering God’s kingdom before they were, because when these notorious classes of sinners heard the Baptist, they were repenting, whereas the religious leaders of the people were just giving lip service to the divine call John was announcing. When God through his Church sends us St. John the Baptist for three consecutive Sundays in Advent, he is basically saying to us, “I’ve called you not once, not twice, but three times to conversion!” Would he be able to say to us now that we’ve responded to that call the way the known sinners of John’s days did or the way the so-called more religious people did?

One of the most obvious applications of this summons to prepare the way of the Lord is to make a really good confession in Advent, what we’d like to be the best confession of our life, the confession we would make if it were our last. If you have not yet had the chance to do so,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Advent (B)

December 19, 2020

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.19.20_Landry_ConCon.m4a

 

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 God wants to have with us this Sunday, when, we have the chance to ponder how to prepare well for the celebration of the Lord’s birth by focusing on the lessons we can learn from the Blessed Virgin Mary.

* On the Fourth Sunday of Advent each year, as we draw closer to Christmas, the Church has us ponder either Mary, as we do this year with her Annunciation and next year with the Visitation, or St. Joseph, upon whom the Church meditated last year with the Angel’s words to him in a dream. Mary always leads to Christ, St. Louis de Montfort taught in a phrase St. John Paul II loved, provided that we “live her mystery in Christ.” We climb within her womb, so to speak, to draw close to the Blessed Fruit of that womb as he is silently growing, and we listen to her contemplative heartbeat as it seeks to synchronize our heart to hers and Jesus’.

* This need to take on this Marian perspective is always important, because so many of us struggle to live Advent well. We spend more time shopping, or at the post office, or watching programs on Frosty or Rudolf than we do together with the Lord. Without even knowing it, we become immersed in a secular way of living December, watering Christmas down to “season’s greetings,” listening for jingling bells, and focused more on whether there will be a white Christmas than a holy one. Our souls can be touched, as they should be, by the stories of Secret Santas who go out of their way to be good to others, but we don’t spend time on how God by coming into the world to save us has given us the greatest and most generous of all time. Even this year when because of the pandemic, there will be far less time walking in malls or traveling to parties or, sadly, getting together with family members, many people are struggling to put God first. Earlier this week, too religious sisters in a convent told me that they were really struggling in Advent because they were spending so much of their days baking gifts or preparing for volunteers for their convents and apostolates that their souls were becoming dissipated.

* That’s why we all, always, need Mary’s help, especially in Advent. She is, in some sense, Advent personified. She was the one God prepared himself, through her Immaculate Conception, for the incarnation and birth of the Word of God. She wants to help us relive her mystery. What lessons do we learn from her, especially as we ponder the scene of the Archangel Gabriel’s visit to her asking if she would become the mother of the Son of God?

* The first thing is that we need to allow God to clean our interior abode.

* God did so with Mary through her Immaculate Conception. He does so with us through baptism and confession.

* Mary continues the work of St. John the Baptist, gently, maternally, calling us to be free from sin so that, like her, we may welcome God within.

* In the first reading on Sunday, we will see how David wanted to build a house for the Ark of the Covenant, for God’s presence, but God instead told David he would build him a house. We know that this promise was fulfilled in David’s descendant according to the flesh, Jesus. And when the Son of God took flesh and dwelled among us he took up his first abode, his first tabernacle, in Mary’s womb, living there for the first nine months of his human life.

* Sometimes, like David,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Mass for December 19

December 19, 2020

Jdg 13:2-7.24-25, Ps 71, Lk 1:5-25

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.19.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today’s readings and O Antiphon help us to enter more deeply into the dynamism of God’s interaction with us as Christians, how he seeks to transform what seems lifeless into something fruitful and sacred and how we need silence to approach these mysteries with a proper sense of wonder.

* The O Antiphon that the Church has us ponder in the Gospel Verse and at Vespers today is O radix Jesse, qui stas in signum populorum, super quem continebunt reges os suum, quem gentes deprecabuntur: veni ad liberandum nos, iam noli tardare, “O root of Jesse, who stand as a sign for the people about whom kings stay silent and before whom all the nations pray: come to free us, do not delay.” These sacred fourth-century words come from two parts of the famous passage from the Book of Isaiah that we heard back on Tuesday of the first week of Advent: “A shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom. On that day, the root of Jesse, set up as a signal for the nations, the Gentiles shall seek out for his dwelling shall be glorious” (Is 11:1,10).  The other part of the Antiphon comes from the passage about the Suffering Servant later, when Isaiah, speaking about what he would suffer for us, prophesies, “Even as many were amazed at him — so marred was his look beyond that of man, and his appearance beyond that of mortals —  so shall he startle many nations, because of him kings shall stand speechless; for those who have not been told shall see, those who have not heard shall ponder it” (Is 52:14-15). Together they reveal to us the shocking surprise of the rise of the shoot from Jesse’s stump. From a stump — which seems sterile, cut down — we don’t expect much growth, but we see that the shoot would eventually reach across the globe and into eternity. Isaiah was referring not to King David’s descendant Jesus, who was set up as a sign to the nations of the presence of God. And that leads us to the response before this wondrous transformation: Before him, the O Antiphon based on Isaiah continues, kings stayed silent, as we see with the three kings at his birth, blown away by his humility, resting not in silk garments in a palace but wrapped in swaddling clothes in a manger. We see it before King Herod on Good Friday. We see it still as the kings and leaders or the earth look at Jesus on the Cross. God’s love, his willingness to become so small and humble, his willingness to suffer and die to save us, ought to make us speechless with amazement. Likewise before him all the nations come to pray, as we saw once again in the coming of the Magi, in the Centurion, Syro-Phoenician woman, the Greeks and so many others during his lifetime, and still today. His dwelling turned out out to be even more glorious than the Temple in Jerusalem in all its splendor: his very body became the refulgence of the glory of God.

* We can enter more deeply into this exodus from barrenness into fruitfulness, from silence to the fullness of wonder, in today’s readings, both of which feature sterile women. In something as wondrous as a shoot sprouting from a stump that didn’t seem capable of generating a whole forest that would never be cut down, we see two women whose wombs were barren, who after much prayer and longing finally conceived a son. In the first reading, we have the wife of Manoah (who unfortunately is never named!), who hadn’t been able to conceive. The angel appears to her doubtless as a response to her prayer and say...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

December 18 Mass

December 18, 2020

Jer 23:5-8, Ps 72, Mt 1:18-25

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.18.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* “This is the name they give him,” the Prophet Jeremiah says today. A name is essential for us to enter into interpersonal dialogue. Today we encounter five different names, names God gives to himself, names we use to refer to God. Each of them helps us to relate to God more deeply as the names complement and deepen our understanding of God, how he wishes us to interact with him and how he wishes to have us grow in his image and likeness.

* The first two names come from today’s O Antiphon, which influences how we’re supposed to live this day of Advent longing and how we’re supposed to hear and receive the Word of God announced to us in Mass. The Latin is O Adonai et Dux domus Israel, qui Moysi in igne flammae rubi apparuisti, et ei in Sina legem dedisti: veni ad redimendum nos in brachio extento, which is literally translated, “O Lord and Leader of the House of Israel, who appeared to Moses in the burning bush and gave him the law on Sinai: come to redeem us with outstretched arm!” We refer to God today as both  “leader of the house of Israel” and “Adonai” (Lord), the latter meaning not leader not just of Israel but of everyone, pointing to how Jesus came to redeem not merely the Jews but all nations. We remember how this God revealed himself as Lord of all to Moses in the burning bush, identifying himself as “I am who am” (Yahweh in Hebrew), the one gives existence to every creature. This name was so holy that only the high priest would utter it only once a year in the Holy of Holies. The Jews would substitute “Adonai” for it, “Lord,” but use it to refer to the same reality as Creator and life-giver. But the long-awaited One was also the leader of the house of Israel, the “God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob,” who specially blessed the Jews with the Covenant on Mt. Sinai featuring the commandments. Therefore, we, both Jews and non-Jews, turn to the Messiah and ask him to redeem us with his outstretched arm. The image is of someone saving us from falling off a cliff, or reaching in to the water to pull us up as we’re drowning. And the three-fold way the antiphon implies he will save us is through prayer (dialogue with God as seen in the burning bush), the moral life (shown in the commandments which train us to love), and ultimately the Cross (when Jesus stretched forth his arms to save us).

* These thoughts help us to approach the real drama contained in the readings where we find the other three titles. In the Gospel, we get both “Emmanuel” and “Jesus.” Emmanuel means “God-with-us” and Jesus means, “Yahweh saves.” The Lord and leader of the House of Israel comes to be with us in the incarnation precisely in order to save us. We see this salvation depicted in the first reading. The prophet Jeremiah describes how, in the days of the  “righteous shoot” to David,  “Judah will be saved.” Just as God redeemed Israel from slavery in Egypt, so he would redeem Israel again from the “lands of the north,” which refers not only to Assyria and Babylon to which many of the Jews were forcibly brought after conquering Israel, but much more broadly to those in other lands, since with the exception of Egypt, most of the other known inhabitants were located north of the Holy Land. The Lord would save them from them all. In the Gospel, when the Angel reveals what St. Joseph is to call Mary’s son, he says that the child will be called “Jesus,” “God saves,” precisely because “he will save his people fr...