Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. LandryVisitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the First Week of Advent

December 2, 2020

Is 25:6-10, Ps 23, Mt 15:29-37

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

The following points were attempted in the homily:

* Today the two main coordinates of Advent intersect. The first is that Advent is a double-dynamism: Christ comes to us and we are called not to stay where we are but to go out to meet him. The second is that there’s a triple meaning to Christ’s Advent or coming: his coming in history (Bethlehem), in mystery (prayer and the sacraments) and in majesty (at the end of time or end of our time on earth). Today we see these two sets of coordinates, these two principal ways of understanding Advent, intersect in the readings the Church gives us.

* First we see the double-dynamism. In the Gospel, Jesus walked by the Sea of Galilee and then up a mountain where he waited for the vast crowds to follow him. It would have been much easier for him to stay at the sea shore, but he wanted to have the people make an effort to climb a hill to be with him. Through his incarnation, he came near to us because he wanted to make the encounter with us easy. On the other hand, he didn’t want to make it too easy. He wants us to work a little. He wants us to overcome our inertia. He wants to train us in little ways to be faithful to the pilgrimage of earthy life which is an uphill Way of the Cross following in his footsteps. We see a similar theme at work in the Responsorial Psalm. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, calls us by name and leads us into dark valleys, where we’re called to follow him on the path to verdant pastures where he will give us repose. Jesus doesn’t take us by a short cut or an easy route. Dark valleys can be frightening. But it’s by journeying through them following Jesus that we grow in faith.

* And we see in the readings what Jesus prepares for us when we catch up to him on the mountain for the encounter. He gives us a banquet. Isaiah tells us in the first reading that this is mountain banquet features “a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines.” In the psalm we see that the Good Shepherd “spreads the table” before us and makes our “cup overflow.” And in the Gospel we see the first of three fulfillments of these prophecies when Jesus feeds the crowd of four thousand with seven buns and a few fish. This is one of two miracles of the multiplication of the loaves and fish (the other was a crowd of five thousand, when Jesus multiplied five buns and two fish and the leftovers of which filled twelve baskets, more than the seven baskets here). St. John called this miracle a “sign,” meaning that it points to another banquet. The first banquet signified is when Jesus would take bread and wine in the Upper Room and totally change them into the richest food and choicest wine ever known, his own Body and Blood. But even that was a sign pointing to the eternal wedding banquet, for which the Eucharist is a foretaste.

* The encounter with Christ after his Advent and our movement happens, as we see, in a three-fold banquet. The first banquet is the actual multiplication of the loaves and fish in history. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, a place that means “house of bread,” and he is the Father’s answer to the prayer Jesus put on our lips, “Give us today our daily bread.” The miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and the fish is the first fulfillment of Isaiah’s and Psalm 23’s prophecy. The second fulfillment is in mystery, in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, the perpetuated Last Supper through time. The third is fulfilled in majesty, in the eternal wedding banquet. In Advent we prepare for each of these three banquets. Christ comes to set the table for us in each of these three ways and we’re called to go out to meet him at all three, in a sense simultaneously.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Tuesday of the First Week of Advent

December 1, 2020

Is 11:1-10, Ps 72, Lk 10:21-24

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

Today in the readings, we continue to focus, as we do each Advent, on the qualities of our response in preparing to run out to meet Christ who comes to us in history (Bethlehem), mystery (prayer, the Sacraments, his word, and other) and majesty (on the clouds of heaven at the end of time).

Today the Church wants us to focus, first, on childlike trust. In the Gospel, Jesus praised his Father for his “gracious will” to reveal the mysteries of the kingdom to the “childlike,” to those who trust in him as beloved children, to those who are docile, uncomplicated, simple and pure in vision, and unrebelliously dependent on his providential care and love. These mysteries are hidden from the “wise and the clever” of the world, not because God doesn’t want them to receive the revelation and come to salvation but because they obscure their own perception of revelation through their own complications. The fullness of that revelation, Jesus says, is the knowledge of the Father and the mystery of his love. The fullness of that revelation is seen in the image of the Father, Christ himself, who incarnated that wisdom. The plenitude of that revelation happens when we enter into Christ’s own relationship with the Father by the work of the Holy Spirit. Elsewhere in the Gospel Jesus says that unless we convert and become like little children, we will not inherit the kingdom of God. Unless we learn to trust in him, unless we see things with simple pure faith, unless we learn to depend on him and recognize that we’re never going to be “self-sufficient,” we won’t be able to understand his kingdom and receive it. Jesus says these words in the Gospel right after he castigates those in Chorazin and Bethsaida for not converting after all his miracles. They witnessed him and his works, but it didn’t lead them to conversion and faith because they sought “adult” explanations that were, in fact, erroneous. The Church wants us to recover the pure vision, the wonder, the trust that should characterize everything we do as Christians. Jesus says that when we do recover that vision, we will be filled with joy. At the beginning of the Gospel, St. Luke tells us, “Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit.” He was full of joy at the reality that it was God the Father’s “gracious will” to reveal the mysteries of the kingdom to the “childlike.” And at the end of today’s Gospel, Jesus turned to his disciples and told them, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I say to you, many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.” All the great heroes of Old Testament times hungered to receive “all the things” that had been handed over to Christ by the Father. They longed to see and hear the fulfillment of all the prophecies in the Messiah who would be Son of God and Savior in a way far greater than they had imagined. Jesus rejoiced at the disciples’ good fortune. If that’s true, how much greater is Jesus’ joy that we not only behold him in his real presence, hear his words in the Gospel, but have a chance to touch him and be touched by him in a way far more profound than even his disciples when he was proclaiming these words for the first time! This is why St. John, in his first letter, overflowing with joy wrote, “What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we looked upon and touched with our hands concerning the Word of life … we proclaim now to you … so that our joy may be complete.”

In the first reading we see where we really need to have that childlike trust. The Prophet Isaiah tells us about the “shoot” that will “spr...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the First Sunday of Advent (B)

November 28, 2020

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/Landry_ConCon_for_11.28.20.m4a

 

The text that guided the homily is: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday, when we begin a new liturgical year. Sometimes Christians find this a little strange, that in the Church New Year’s Day begins on the First Sunday of Advent, rather than about a month from now, but that’s an indication that most of us take our cues more from balls dropping in Times Square or months decreed by Julius Caesar in 46 BC than by the liturgical year that traces the life of Christ from the time when the Jews anxiously awaited his appearance (Advent proper) to ultimately his return in glory, which we celebrated last week with the Solemnity of Christ the King. Jesus said to us over and again in the Gospel, “Follow me!” and each liturgical year we do just that, tracing his footsteps along the route of salvation history, trying to become more and more like him whom we’re following. The liturgical year is not a “same old, same old,” but something that helps us to enter into the mysteries we celebrate far more profoundly than the last time. Like re-reading a great book or watching anew a classic movie, each retracing of the life of Christ is supposed to reveal to us elements we haven’t seen before and remind us of important things that we once knew but have forgotten about the mystery of God, his love for us, and his hopes and plans for us. This is another time for us to enter into the life of Christ, to accompany him and be accompanied by him as we live the events of his earthly life and heavenly reality. This may be the last liturgical year we have, because we never know the day or the hour. So let’s make the most of this one and begin it well.

* Jesus speaks to us very clearly in the Gospel this Sunday about how he wants us to start and live this year. He uses two sets of verbs. The first has to do with our alertness. “Wake up!” he shouts. “Stay awake!” he adds. The second set of verbs involves what we’re supposed to do when we’re awake. “Be constantly on guard!” “Be on the watch!” He says in the Gospel that we should be like porters, like door openers. … “He leaves home and places his servant in charge, which with his own task; and he orders the man at the gate to watch with a sharp eye. Look around you! You do not know when the master of the house is coming… Do not let him come suddenly and catch you asleep.” Jesus wants us to be like door-keepers who are always awake and on guard.

* Here in Manhattan where I live, many of the residences have doormen, just like hotels in most parts of the country. The doormen are really quite professional. There are two parts to their job. The first is that they are always on the lookout for the arrival of any resident or guest. As soon as they see one arriving, they open the door. If the residents are returning from a trip or shopping, they help with the bags and other ways needed. But they also have a second job: namely to prevent those who shouldn’t be entering from doing so, something that in an age of terrorism and riots is also crucial.

* 5) Jesus calls us to be spiritual porters, to be door-keepers. This involves the same two tasks. The first is to be awake and alert to welcome Jesus from wherever and whenever he comes. To go out and meet him when we see he’s coming, as we like to say, in history, mystery and majesty. We focus on meeting him in Bethlehem in the celebration of Christ.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the 34th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Catharine of Alexandria

November 25, 2020

Rev 15:1-4, Ps 98, Lk 21:12-19

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.25.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today Jesus continues to describe in the Gospel what will happen at his second coming. Yesterday he mentioned some of the physical, international, meteorological and geological events, from the destruction of the temple, to wars and insurrections, to earthquakes, famines, plagues and mighty signs from the sky. Today he turns to what will happen to his followers. It may make the events he described yesterday seem beautiful by comparison: he describes how we will be seized and persecuted, handed over to religious and civil authorities, put into prisons, betrayed by parents, siblings, relatives, and friends, hated by all because of his name, and some of us killed.

* Yet Jesus doesn’t preach this as bad news. He says that there is a two-fold purpose for all of this, one to strengthen us as devout disciples and the other as ardent apostles. First, it’s meant to help us to secure our salvation: Jesus says “by your perseverance you will secure your lives.” This means not that salvation will be given to us as a reward for “objective perseverance,” but that to be saved we need the subjective virtue of perseverance and he wants to train us in it. Second, he says it will lead to our effectively carrying out our apostolate: all of this “will lead to your giving testimony.” With regard to the latter point, he assures us that “I myself will give you a wisdom in speaking that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute.” He also promises that even though we will be hated, suffer, and some of us will be put to death, “not a hair on your head will be destroyed,” since every follicle is under God’s providential care, he’s numbered each one and we’ll get back every strand at the resurrection of the body. In order to grasp this passage, however, it’s key for us candidly to acknowledge two things that occasionally make us and other Christians uncomfortable.

* First, Jesus never promised that being a Christian would be easy. He said, in fact, the opposite. He told us that to be his disciple we’d need to deny ourselves, pick up our Cross each day and follow him whose footsteps eventually became bloody and whose feet were eventually nailed to a Cross. We need to face squarely what Jesus says about the Christian life, because unless we grasp it, we will not persevere and save our souls. If we don’t grasp, for example, that we will be hated by many people, that we will be betrayed by family members and friends, that we may have to suffer from civil and religious believers on account of our fidelity to Jesus, then when those things happen, we might lose heart and abandon Jesus. If the martyrs never grasped that Jesus was saying that as Christians they might be martyred, they might never have remained faithful when they were being arrested and tortured for Christ. If a wife didn’t realize she might suffer from her husband if she seeks to love Jesus with all her mind, heart, soul and strength, she might not persevere in fidelity. I don’t know how some priests and religious would survive the barrage of criticism we normally get for faithfully preaching and teaching the Gospel of life and love or about treating immigrants as we would treat Christ unless we knew that, like Jesus, we would be hated, even by some good people, for doing so, even sometimes from our own families. Jesus is telling all of us clearly about the “cost” of being his disci...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Tuesday of the 34th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Andrew Dung Lac and Companions

November 24, 2020

Rev 14:14-19, Ps 96, Lk 21:5-11

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.24.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

Throughout the month of November, but especially in this last week of the liturgical year, the Church has us ponder the four last things. Today the Church puts before us lessons on the first two last things, death and judgment. The lesson is for us to prepare well for it, to prepare correctly, to prepare as true Christians.

Many of us when we think about death and judgment we can be filled with fear, anxiety, even dread. On the surface today’s readings might buttress those trepidations. In the first reading, the Book of Revelation describes the time of judgment as two angels and someone looking like a son of man coming out with sharp sickles in their hands to reap the harvest of judgment, being instructed to use that sickle to “cut the clusters from the earth’s vines, for its grapes are ripe” and then throwing them into the “great wine press of God’s fury.” In the Gospel, Jesus describes how all the stones and votive offerings in the resplendent Temple of Jerusalem will be thrown down, how there will be impostors coming and saying deceptively “I am he” and the “time has come!,” how there will be wars, insurrections, earthquakes, famines, plagues (like the present coronavirus pandemic) and “awesome sights and mighty signs” from the sky. All of this can make us think that death and judgment will be straight out of a Stephen King horror movie in which we’ve become the victims.

But fear is not supposed to be our reaction. Jesus tells us in the Gospel, “Do not be deceived,” “Do not follow them!,” and “Do not be terrified.” He’s describing these events so that we can be at peace while they occur. We see it in St. Matthew’s parallel version of today’s Gospel. After he describes what will happen at the end of time he says, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” He wants us to build our lives on his word as the foundation of rock that will keep us secure even when the earthquakes, wars, insurrections, famines and plagues happen. Everything else is like building on sand (Mt 7). The proper reaction is likewise summarized by the Responsorial Psalm, in which we prayed four times, “The Lord comes to judge the earth!,” and we added, “Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice; let the sea and what fills it resound; let the plains be joyful and all that is in them! Then shall all the trees of the forest exult before the Lord, for he comes; for he comes to rule the earth. He shall rule the world with justice and the peoples with his constancy.” We’re to focus more on the Lord than we do on these events and we’re supposed to focus on him both now and in anticipation of that moment. As long as we’re not being deceived by impostors but living by the Lord’s truth, as long as we’re not following the pretenders but following the Good Shepherd, as long as we’re not focusing on terrors but recognizing that the Lord seeks to tell us, “Do not be afraid, it is I!,” then there’s absolutely no reason to fear death and judgment. In fact, we should look forward to the Lord’s coming and the signs that augur that his second coming is near. It’s only when we’re not really living as the Lord wants in the present that we begin to become afraid.

And so the real lesson of today’s readings is for us to live today how we would want to be found by the Lord if today were the day of the Lord. It’s to live without fear,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life

Monday of the 34th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of Blessed Miguel Pro, as well as St. Clement and St. Columban

November 23, 2020

Rev 14:1-5, Ps 24, Lk 21:1-4

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.23.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today we have the privilege to be able to continue reflecting on the reality of Christ’s kingdom we celebrated yesterday and on the reality of how to enter it, remain in it, and draw others to seize it.

* In the Gospel, we see how to seize the Kingdom as the pearl of great price. Jesus had said at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the poor in spirit: theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” To enter into the kingdom we must treasure God and his kingdom above all other things. In the Gospel, we see someone who did. After Jesus had finished his “formal” teaching in the courtyard of the Temple of Jerusalem, he began to “people watch,” in order to continue to instruct his apostles about how to put what he taught into action. They saw the stream of people putting money in the temple treasury, which was a tuba-shaped receptacle leading to a secure money box. People would put their coins in the horn at the top, which was like a funnel, and then the sound of the coin would resonate as it rolled down the metal tubing into the box. Many rich people, St. Luke tells us, were putting in large sums and “making a lot of noise” on the treasury trumpet. But then a poor widow came and put in two lepta, two small coins which together were worth less than a penny and likely barely made a sound. Then Jesus gave a surprising lesson that obviously the disciples never forgot. Jesus praised the poor widow rather than all the rest, saying that she had contributed more than all them, for they “gave out of their surplus, but she gave everything she had, all she had to live on.” This widow, because of her poverty, could easily have been excused for giving nothing. She could have easily chosen to drop into the trumpet only one of the coins and kept the other for herself. But she didn’t. She gave it all. And her generosity was praised by Jesus and will remain until the end of time. Jesus had said elsewhere that we could not be his disciple, we could not really enter his kingdom, unless we valued him and his kingdom more than family members, possessions and even our very life. That’s what characterized this poor wisdom. She believed so much in God and was so convinced of the importance of what was going on in God’s house that she wanted to dedicate her life and all her goods to continuing and expanding that work of salvation. She accounted the continuance and expansion of that work even more than her own life.  That’s living for the kingdom. This woman sacrificed her entire livelihood, spending herself and what she had in the service of the Lord. We should always seek to give in such a way that Christ the King would be tempted to pull the saints aside in heaven and point out the way we are spending ourselves in his service, seeking to build up his Kingdom.

* In the first reading from the Book of Revelation and in the Psalm, we see other characteristics of the Kingdom and other examples of those who, like the widow, give all to the God who has given all to us. The 144,000 dressed in white, whose garments were washed in the blood of the Lamb, are a snapshot of the redeemed. The number 144,000 is a symbolic, not a literal one (as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and some fundamentalist Protestants claim). 12 is one of the magic numbers in Hebrew, flowing from the 12 tribes. 144 is a sign of the multiplication of the descendants of the ...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Solemnity of Christ the King (A)

November 21, 2020

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.21.20_Landry_ConCon.mp3

 

The text that guided the homily is: 

* 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 as we celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King this Sunday.

* Christ the King is, by the standard of Church history, still a very young feast. It’s only 95 years old. It was instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1925 Jubilee in response to the rise of communism, fascism and aggressive secularism, all of which were trying to eliminate Christian influence in society to be supplanted by communist, fascist or secularist pseudo-religious ideologies. Pope Pius XI stressed both the importance of Christian believers influencing society for the good as salt of the earth, light of the world and leaven, but also cautioning them to recall that Christ had not come into the world to inaugurate a political but a spiritual kingdom. That’s a lesson Pontius Pilate didn’t get when he asked Jesus whether he was a king. That’s a point that most Jews didn’t get when they anticipated the long-awaited Messiah would rule in the way that his ancestor David had ruled, defeating all foreign powers and triumphing over all who opposed him. That’s a truth that not even the apostles grasped as they jockeyed for the choicest cabinet secretariats in what they presumed would be earthly administration.

* The King we celebrate does not fit into any of those earthly categories. As St. Paul wrote in his letter to the Philippians, Christ the King “even though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave and being born in human likeness. He humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross” (Phil 2:6-8). Christ’s whole kingship is caught up in his saving service until death. Whereas most terrestrial kings have slews of servants caring for their every need, Jesus came “not to be served but to serve” those who by creation ought to be his servants. Whereas earthly leaders regularly have sacrificed their subjects as soldiers for their personal royal aggrandizement, Christ the King came to die for his subjects, “to give his life as a ransom for the many.” That’s the king we fête. That’s the kingdom he has established. That’s the way we’re called to reign with him.

* In the Gospel for the feast, Christ the king identifies as someone who hungers and thirsts, as a stranger, as someone naked, imprisoned or sick, as someone suffering or in need, and says that whatever we do to anyone in these circumstances he will take personally. These are not just words for Jesus. When Jesus was on the Cross, for example, he himself was needy in all of the ways he described. He was hungry and cried out, “I thirst!” He was stripped naked. He was a stranger even in the world he created, kicked out of his own city of Jerusalem to die as a malefactor at the place of the skull. He was sick and wounded, having had his flesh ripped open by a brutal Roman scourging, having been beaten and crowned with thorns. He was imprisoned not only in the high priest’s dungeon but pinned to the cross not by chains but by nails. The more we look to him on his throne of the Cross, the easier it is supposed to be for us to see his sufferings in the suffering members of his Mystical Body.

* Just as it shocked the people 2,000 years ago that Jesus crucified was really the King of Jews,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Saturday of the 33rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

November 21, 2020

Rev 11:4-12, Ps 144, Lk 20:27-40

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.21.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today’s readings focus us — as the Church normally throughout the month of November — on eternity and specifically on heaven and how we’re supposed to prepare for it in our conceptions and in our actions. So often our conceptions of heaven are erroneous projections of the little things of earthly life. Jesus, in today’s Gospel, helps us to grasp that heaven is something far greater. St. Paul has told us, “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it entered the human heart [to conceive] what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor 2:9) and St. John has added, “What we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). Today Jesus helps us to see that heaven is even greater than one of the greatest gifts on earth and that that earthly gift is meant to prepare us for a much greater realization. And then he, the Book of Revelation, Our Lady and those praying for us in monasteries across the world show us how to live with that reality in mind.

* The Sadducees came to Jesus with a question designed to test him and prove their point that there is no resurrection of the dead. The Sadducees were the priestly aristocracy and they only accepted the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, which they claimed gave no evidence whatsoever of the resurrection. They were often in dispute with the Scribes and the Pharisees, who accepted the entire Hebrew Bible, which gives ample prophecy of the resurrection. We see evidence of this dispute in the detail that after Jesus’ response it was the Scribes who said, “Teacher, you have answered well,” since the Scribes were regularly arguing with the Sadducees about this very point. The Sadducees pose to Jesus a question based on the truth of marriage and one aspect of the Mosaic law. We know that in the beginning, God said that when a man leaves his mother and father and clings to his wife, they become one flesh, and no man can render their bond asunder (Gen 2:24). The Jews also practiced what is called the levirate law of marriage. Moses taught, “When brothers live together and one of them dies without a son, the widow of the deceased shall not marry anyone outside the family; but her husband’s brother shall go to her and perform the duty of a brother-in-law by marrying her. The first-born son she bears shall continue the line of the deceased brother, that his name may not be blotted out from Israel” (Deut 25:5-6). The first son born from the woman would technically become the heir of the deceased brother in order to carry on his name through successive generations of progeny. The Sadducees’ question about the seven brothers who married the same seemingly sterile woman was essentially this: if this woman became one flesh with seven different men, to whom will she be united in one flesh forever? The implication was that since she couldn’t be one flesh with all seven, there could be no eternal life, because it would make the one flesh bond of marriage absurd. People must really be dead — and dead for real — for a new bond to be formed.

* How does Jesus respond? He responds first about the connection between marriage and the afterlife, describing how marriage is an institution God founded for this world meant to help people enter into a far greater marriage bond,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the 33rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Mass of the Dead for JoEllen Wieseler, mother of Sr. Desirae Purissima, SV

November 20, 2020

Rev 10:8-11, Ps 119, Lk 19:45-48

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.20.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted during the homily: 

* Today, as we prepare for the Solemnity of Christ the King, we see in the Gospel how the King wants to get us ready. First he wants to purify us, something we see in his cleansing of the Temple. Second, he wants to fill us with everything we need so that we can become a temple, a “house of prayer,” a dwelling place for God, by helping us to hang on his word, to devour it, so that we can become living commentaries of it. In the couplet of the Our Father Jesus taught us, we pray successively “Thy kingdom come!” and “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” To enter into the Kingdom of Christ the King, we must do God’s will, we must live his word, and that’s what the liturgy of the Word emphasizes for us today.

* The Jesus in today’s Gospel is one with whom many, especially today, are unfamiliar. The same Jesus whom Isaiah prophesied would “not break a bruised reed nor quench a smoldering wick” (Is 42:3), the same Jesus whom the psalms would call “kind and merciful” (Ps 145:8) the same Jesus who called himself “meek and humble of heart” (Mt 11:29) started to overturn tables, tossing money on the floor, and making a whip of cords to drive the sheep and the cattle out of the temple. And there is no contradiction between the image of Jesus as the kind, merciful friend of sinners and Jesus as consumed with zeal for his Father’s house, because out of love for sinners and his Father, he really hated sin that can kill sinners and self-alienate them from God. Jesus’ mercy does not baptize our sin and indulgence, but rather seeks to eradicate it. The word St. Luke uses to describe how Jesus “drove out” the animals is ekballein, the same verb used when he did exorcisms. Jesus wants to exorcise whatever in us is not fit for  God. The Temple in Jerusalem, built in order to be the dwelling place of God on earth, constructed to be a place of encountering God in prayer, had become something very different by Jesus’ time. It wasn’t so much the fact that animals were being sold and money exchanged in the temple precincts that bothered Jesus. It was two things associated with this selling of animals and exchanging money: The first was that the moneychangers and animal sellers were drastically overcharging the people. The temple had become a “den of thieves.” When people came to the temple, they needed to sacrifice an animal to God, the size and value of the animal being determined by their personal means and the type of sacrifice being made. Rather than carry an animal with them for the many miles’ uphill walk to the temple — which was too much of a burden — most would buy one at the temple. But because there was such a demand, especially at the time of the Passover, the merchants had the market to charge the people who needed the animals whatever they wanted. Others who would try to save money by bringing an animal of their own often had to get the animals inspected by Temple officials who needed to verify that the animals were unblemished, as the Mosaic law stipulated. These inspectors often were on the take of the animal sellers to find blemishes that weren’t there and disqualify the affected animals. The poor who had saved their money over the course of the whole year for the trip to the temple, therefore, one way or the other, had to pay these enormous prices.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the 33rd Week of Ordinary Time, Year II

Mass for the Repose of the Soul of JoEllen Wieseler, Mother of Sr. Desirae Purissima, SV

November 19, 2020

Rev 5:1-10, Ps 149, Lk 19:41-44

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.19.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today, as we draw closer to the Solemnity of Christ the King on Sunday, we have a scene in the Gospel that seems incongruous to the proclamation of Jesus King of the Universe: Jesus, the King of King and Lord of Lords, is weeping. Understanding his tears and responding with what alone will help turn his tears into joy is the point of the Christian life and the best means by which we will not only celebrate appropriately this upcoming feast but learn to live in his kingdom so that we may celebrate the reality of his kingdom eternally.

* We begin with Jesus’ tears. As he drew near Jerusalem, Jesus saw the city and wept over it. There’s a Church on the Mount of Olives overlooking the city called Dominus Flevit, “The Lord wept,” built on the spot traditionally where we believe this scene happened and where Christians are able to ponder the Lord’s tears. When I was there a few of years ago with a big pilgrimage group it was pouring outside, a meteorological event that movingly allowed us to ponder the immensity of the Lord’s weeping. St. Luke tells us why Jesus was weeping. “If this day you only knew what makes for peace,” Jesus lamented, “but now it is hidden from your eyes. For the days are coming upon you when your enemies will raise a palisade against you; they will encircle you and hem you in on all sides. They will smash you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another within you, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.” Jesus was weeping because the inhabitants of Jerusalem, which in Hebrew means “City of Peace,” didn’t know what makes for peace. He was weeping because the city and its inhabitants would be destroyed. He was weeping because all of this would happen because they didn’t recognize the time of their “visitation.” As religious sisters know well, there’s a difference between a visit and a visitation. Anybody can pay a visit, but a visitation is something much longer. It’s a time when you receive a visitator, when you submit to an evaluation, where you are commended for what you are doing well and corrected for what you need to change. It’s a time, in short, when the Visitator helps the whole community to take a good look at itself and where it’s going. In the incarnation God had not just “visited” his people but come for a “visitation.” The Prince of Peace had come to establish the definitive peace treaty between God and man, to help people see where they were in terms of peace with God and with each other. The inhabitants of Jerusalem, however, representing the vast majority of Jews, hadn’t embraced Jesus and the path to divine peace he had come to leave us and give us, as he said during the Last Supper. Had they embraced the life he was announcing, had they grasped the type of kingdom he was inaugurating, the political tensions that had led to Rome’s destroying Jerusalem in 70 AD, Jesus was prophesying by implication, likely wouldn’t have come about. And Jesus was weeping over all of these realities.

* It’s important for us to grasp that Jesus was not weeping over ancient Rome. He wasn’t weeping over modern day Amsterdam, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Kenosha. He wasn’t weeping over the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,