Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Tuesday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Leo the Great

November 10, 2020

Ti 2:1-8.11-14, Ps 37, Lk 17:7-10

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today, Jesus teaches us about a fundamental Christian attitude. Yesterday, if we didn’t have proper readings for the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran, we would have pondered Jesus’ words about setting good example rather than scandal and of forgiving continuously when someone repents, which led his apostles, because of the difficulty they foresaw, to say, “Lord, increase our faith!” Jesus described for them the power of faith the size of a mustard seed, that that amount of faith is enough to translocate mountain ranges, and so, even with a little faith, persevering in good example and forgiveness ought to be easy in comparison! That leads Jesus today to talk about the perseverance, humility and gratitude that flow from faith, describing the situation of a servant who has just come in from the fields. Such a servant would never expect his boss to have him sit down at table and serve him as some type of reward for doing what he was supposed to do; rather he would expect him to continue serving. “So should it be with you,” Jesus draws the lesson. “When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.’” Jesus wants us to go on continuing to work in his vineyard, to set good Christian example, to be merciful like he is merciful, to live by faith. There’s no point at which we should say, “I’ve forgiven enough, now I can stop.” There’s no time when we should think, “I set a good example earlier. Now I can do my own thing.” Jesus wants us to persevere with gratitude for the gift of faith and like him continue serving others with love as he loved and served us to the end.

* In today’s first reading, St. Paul describes various traits that we should have in order to set that good Christian example. He talks about various classes of people — senior men, senior women, young people, even Titus himself. While at certain times of life various virtues may be more important, we should aspire to all of these virtues “so that the word of God may not be discredited” and so that critics “will be put to shame without anything bad to say about us.”

* Say what is consistent with sound doctrine — We all have a duty to speak in a way that’s consistent with the truth that God has revealed. If we teach contrary to the truth — whether we consciously or unconsciously know that it contradicts what God has taught through revelation and through the Church — we can draw people to follow us down a wrong path. We need to know sound doctrine and have the love for God and for others to pass it on.

* Temperate — This means “sober” in terms of food and drink. With the passing of time, we should learn what our limits are, what are true pleasures, and how not to over-indulge. Drunks and gluttons are a sad scandal.

* Dignified — This means that one is “serious” about one’s origin and destiny in God, about one’s divine filiation, and lives accordingly.

* Self-controlled — The word means “prudent,” someone that has things under control, who doesn’t give in to flights of anger or passion.

* Sound in faith, love and endurance — We must be “healthy” in our total self-entrustment to God and what he teaches, in sacrificing ourselves for God and others, and for perseverance until the end.

* Reverent — We must learn how to revere God and the things of God, especially others. To be reverent means to be conscious that one is dealing with sacred things.

* Not slanderers — Gossip is a truly ugly scandal.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Feast of the Dedication of the Archbasilica of St. John in the Lateran

November 9, 2020

Ezek 47:1-2.8-9.12, Ps 46, 1 Cor 3:9-11.16-17, Jn 2:13-22

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.9.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* “The most holy Church of the Lateran, the mother and head of all the churches of the city and the world!” These words, in Latin, greet every pilgrim entering through the front door of the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran in Rome and clearly proclaim the Lateran’s significance in Christianity.  We call the Lateran the mother of every church edifice because it was the first Christian legalized Christian Church in history. It is the head, because Rome is the principal Church of the principal local Church in the world, the Diocese of Rome, the see of St. Peter, the vicar on earth of the Head of the Mystical Body.  The Lateran, not St. Peter’s, is the Pope’s Cathedral, where his cathedra, the chair symbolic of his teaching authority, rests. The Lateran, not the Vatican, is where the Popes resided for the first millennium of legalized Christianity (324-1308). This is the reason why on November 9 every year not just the Diocese of Rome but the whole Roman Catholic Church celebrate the feast of the dedication of their Head and Mother. “With this feast,” Pope Francis said a few years ago in an Angelus meditation, “we profess, in the unity of the faith, the bond of communion that all the local Churches, spread throughout the earth, has with the Church of Rome and with its Bishop, the successor to Peter.” St. John Lateran is, we can loosely say, the Cathedral of the world.

* The history of the Lateran symbolizes, in many ways, the history of the Church for which she is its liturgical mother and head. The Lateran Archbasilica is a fitting symbol for the Church that as theologians say is semper reformanda or always in need of reform. Over the centuries, the Lateran has been multiply pillaged by vandals, three times decimated by fire, toppled by an earthquake, and neglected by the Popes and faithful sometimes for decades. After every deformation, however, the Lateran rose again, continuing to proclaim to the city and the world the Church’s faith, through the words of the popes and five ecumenical councils held there, and through the language of its art and architecture. It’s therefore a sign of hope for the Church in every age and place.

* That perpetual reform is also depicted in its name. The true and original name of the Basilica is “Christ the Savior,” which is emblazoned on the front of the Basilica’s façade. Every reshaping in Church history happens when Christians return to Christ and to the salvation he came to bring into the world. When Pope Sergius III rebuilt the Basilica after a 9th century earthquake, he rededicated it to the Savior through the intercession of St. John the Baptist, because, symbolically, we needed to hear once more St. John the Baptist’s summons to conversion, to make straight the paths for Christ, to level the mountains of our pride, and fill up the valleys of a shallow spiritual life, so that we could encounter Christ. Pope Lucius II (1144-1145) added the intercession of St. John the Evangelist to the dedication as a means to remind of what St. John wrote in his Gospel, that “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” The rebuilding of the Church always involves living more fully with the Lord who came to live with us. (The name Lateran comes from the Roman Senatorial family of Plautus Lateranus who at the time SS. Peter and Paul lived in Rome owned the vast area in which the Lateran now stands.)

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

November 7, 2020

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.7.20_Landry_ConCon.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday. We are preparing for the feast of Christ the King in two weeks and Jesus today is teaching us about his kingdom.

* He does so using an image that might seem a little strange to us but the details would have been very well understood by his contemporaries in Palestine. There were two main stages in a marriage. The first would be the exchange of vows. When this took place, they were married, but they would continue to live apart for a while, even up to a year, while the husband prepared everything to welcome his new wife into his home. The second stage was when the husband would come to the bride’s house to pick her up and take her to their new home. He would send out some of his groomsmen with word that the Bridegroom is coming, meaning that he could arrive within hours, days, or up to a week. He would be accompanied by all the guests from his side and meet his wife with all the guests from her side, her bridesmaids and others. Both groups would process back together to his home and when they arrived, they would celebrate the nuptials for eight days with all their friends and family — something they would consider far more enjoyable than leaving everyone behind for a honeymoon.

* In order to decrease on the amount of guests one would need to feed for eight days, the bridegroom sometimes would come in the middle of the night. Those who weren’t ready lost their spots. As soon as the Bridegroom took his Bride into his house, the doors would be shut, to prevent latecomers crashing their party. This wedding tradition, which was universal at Jesus’ time, is still found today in certain parts of the Holy Land and Middle East.

* Jesus used that image as the background to communicate to us how we should be living in his kingdom, preparing for his return as Bridegroom at the end of our life or at the end of the world, whichever comes first. Jesus contrasts five wise bridesmaids versus five foolish ones, wanting us to imitate the lessons we see in the five wise ones. November is the month in which the whole Church reflects on the four last things — death, judgment, heaven and hell — and Jesus by this image tries to help us prepare well for the first two, so that we may experience the third and avoid the fourth. But for this to happen, we need to learn three crucial lessons from the wise virgins.

* The first lesson is vigilancefor the Bridegroom’s coming. The heralds have already gone out to announce that Jesus is coming. We need to be ready to go with him whenever he arrives. Death, for a Christian, is not meant to be a scary thing. It’s the time when Jesus the Bridegroom comes for us to take us to His home when we will celebrate with him forever. We’re called to await him with eager longing, with great expectation. He wants the lamps of our hearts burning for him, full of the oil of love. The best way for us to stay alert for the return of the Bridegroom is for us to be ready, with hearts burning with love, for the presence of the Bridegroom now. The more we long for Jesus in the Eucharist, the more we attentively listen to his Word in Sacred Scripture, the more we seek to recognize him in the persons and events of each day, and love and embrace them as we would love and embrace Christ, the more ready we will be ready to embrace Christ when he...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the 31st Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Charles Borromeo

November 7, 2018

Phil 2:12-18, Ps 27, Lk 14:25-33

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.4.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today the readings help us to focus on something far more important than the US Presidential election. Throughout the month of November, the Church has us ponder with special attention the last things. Today in the readings, the Church has us think about salvation to stoke up our desire for it and move us to make the choices that will secure it.

* In the first reading, St. Paul tells the Philippians and us to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” The word for “work” in Greek used here means to “complete the work” or to “finish the job” of your salvation; the word for “fear” is the Greek word for “reverential awe.” We’re not supposed to be afraid of God but with a holy awe to grasp the gift of God and make sure we allow him to bring to completion the work of salvation he has begun in us. The “trembling” buttresses the holy awe. If someone had a winning lotto ticket worth hundreds of millions of dollars, we can imagine how the person would take care of the ticket, making sure it wouldn’t be accidentally dropped or lost, while bringing the ticket to lottery officials to obtain the treasure. We’re supposed to treat our salvation as something far more valuable as we seek to reap God’s eternal gift.

* St. Paul tells us that in this “completing the work,” God gives us his help. “For God is the one who, for his good purpose, works in you both to desire and to work.” God both fills us with the desire for salvation and then gives us his grace to act on that desire. We see the desire described in the Responsorial Psalm when the inspired author says, “One thing I ask of the Lord, this I seek: to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, that I may gave on the loveliness of the Lord and contemplate his temple.” God has implanted within us this desire for salvation, for him, for his house, for his kingdom, for his glory, for his love. He always implants within us a desire to seek and ask for what he desires to give us. But we have to act on that desire and God helps us with that as well,  to “complete the work” that the fulfillment of that desire requires. Jesus describes that work in today’s Gospel.

* To complete the work of salvation, he says, we need to count the cost and joyfully pay it. We need to grasp that the offer of salvation God gives us through sharing his own eternal life is the pearl of great price, the treasure buried in a field, worth sacrificing everything else to obtain. With a holy awe and trembling, we need to respond to his call to follow him, and he gives us the grace both to desire and to act on that call. He tells us that to follow him as his disciple to salvation, we have to do three things. First, we need to “hate” father and mother, spouse and children, brothers and  sisters. The Hebrew word for “hate” doesn’t mean “detest,” but rather means the opposite of “prefer.” It basically conveys not putting the person or thing we “hate” in first place.” Jesus, after all, calls us to honor our father and mother, not despise them. But we have to make sure that they don’t become gods in our life, that if there is ever a choice between what God is asking of us and what our parents, or husband or wife, or children are asking of us, that we say “God’s will be done” instead of “My loved one’s will be done.” And we need to remember that if we do “hate” them i...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

The Commemoration of All The Faithful Departed, All Souls’ Day

November 2, 2020

2 Macc 12:38-46, Ps 25, 1 Thess 4:13-18, Lk 23:33.39-43

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today we come together to fulfill the sweetest of all the spiritual works of mercy, which is to pray for the dead. With Catholics throughout the world, we commemorate all the faithful departed — those who died yesterday and today, the beloved deceased members of our families, those who have died of natural causes as well the victims of war, violence and genocide, those who have died of hunger, disease and neglect, the infants who have died in miscarriages or who have been killed through exposure or abortion, the seniors who have been tragically killed through euthanasia, the Christians who have died for the faith in persecution, the anonymous who rest in common graves, and those forgotten by the world and whose names are known only by God. The Church remembers the faithful departed not just on this day but throughout the entire month of November in a special way. We begin the month, as we did yesterday, by celebrating the saints — those who are definitively in heaven, the canonized and un-canonized saints — and by invoking their intercession as we continue on our pilgrimage of faith in this world. But then we immediately turn in suffrage for all those who have died who long to share in the communion of the saints but who are not yet experiencing their joy. To pray for the dead is the main purpose of this All Souls Day. We pray for the dead because we know in faith three truths: first, contrary to the popular heresy that presumes that everyone who dies goes to a “better place,” the Catholic faith does not believe everyone who dies goes to heaven, especially immediately; second, the dead may need our help; and third our prayers and sacrifices can in fact help them. Let’s examine more deeply these three truths of faith.

* First, the Church teaches that to enter heaven, one must be completely attached to God and radically detached from all sin and everything that is not of God. “Nothing unclean shall enter heaven,” the Book of Revelation tells us (Rev. 21:27). There are many who do not live and die with that type of purity of life and hence they need to be purified to enter into the kingdom in which God is all in all. This state in which the dead are decontaminated from all sin and worldliness has been traditionally called by the Church “Purgatory” from the Latin term purgare, which means “to cleanse.” In 2007, Pope Benedict wrote an encyclical letter on Christian hope in which he talked about what happens after we die and who goes to Hell, Heaven and Purgatory. Today is a good day to review his words. He described Hell as that state where those people go “who have totally destroyed their desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within themselves.” He commented, “This is a terrifying thought, but alarming profiles of this type can be seen in certain figures of our own history.” He doesn’t mention anyone by name, but we can think that some genocidal leaders, sadistic serial killers, abortionists, if their deeds correspond to what was really in their hearts and they failed to repent, would end up here. “In such people,” Pope Benedict added, “all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable. This is what we mean by the word Hell.” Hell, the Catechism tells us, is the place of “definitive self-exclusion” from God. All who go to Hell choose it, because they would consider Heaven — where everyone adores God — a hell for them who want a life without God. I’ve seen glimpses of those who would be in Hel...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Agnes Parish, Manhattan

All Saints Day 2020

November 1, 2020

Rev 7:2-12, Mt 5:1-12

 

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

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* This is a feast about the whole point of human life. We’re made for heaven. We’re created to spend eternity with God in His kingdom of love. Jesus came from heaven to earth to show us the way from earth to heaven. Today we celebrate those people who followed Jesus all the way there, the great and famous saints we know about, and the countless quiet saints, probably many of those who passed on to us the faith, who died in the love of the Lord and now live in His love. These are the “great multitude that no one could count, from every nation.” These are the ones who are singing today in that holy place the beautiful endless song glimpsed in the passage from Revelation, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

* “Salvation belongs to our God.” Yes, heaven is always and exclusively a gift of God beyond anything we can merit. But God out of love has made heaven the result of our choice. To get to heaven, as St. Thomas Aquinas said, we need to will it, we need to desire it, we need to choose it. All who get to heaven choose it and all our choices here are earth are forks leading toward or away from God, in which we set our feet on or away from the path to heaven, to God, to eternity. It is a choice between true, lasting happiness and momentary pleasure; a choice between light and darkness; a choice between good and evil; a choice ultimately between life and death. Jesus came down to show how to choose well, and to help us to choose well, but there are competing voices that tell us to choose against what God wants. The saints are those who have chosen well. They are the multitude of men and women, just like us, from every nation and language, who have responded to God’s grace and made it. Today we recall their example and call upon their intercession so that we might follow their good example.

* In today’s Gospel, Jesus gathers us around him and presents to us the way to heaven, the way to happiness, the way to holiness. The path he shows us stands in stark contrast to the one the world tell us will make us happy. Jesus’s words present us with the choice on which our lives hinge. Let’s listen to him with both ears

* The world tells us that to be happy, we have to be rich. Jesus says, rather, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they will inherit the kingdom of heaven.”

* The world tells us we’re happy when we don’t have a concern in the world. Jesus says, on the other hand, “Blessed are those” who are so concerned with others that “they mourn” over the others’ miseries, “for they will be comforted” by him eternally.

* Worldly know-it-alls say, “You have to be strong and powerful to be happy.” Jesus, in contrast, retorts, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”

* The world says increasingly more each day, “To be happy, you’ve got to have all your sexual fantasies fulfilled” and our culture promotes people like Hugh Hefner and promiscuous, sexy Hollywood vixens as those who have it made. Jesus, however, says “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.”

* The world preaches, “You’re happy when you accept yourself,” and espouses an “I’m okay, you’re okay,” brand of moral relativism. Jesus says, though, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for holiness, for his grace and justification, for they will be filled.”

* The world says, “You’re happy when you don’t start a fight, but finish it” and people from professional wrestlers, to MMA champs, to generals, to armchair or back-seat presidents shout “No mercy,” Jesus says “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy” and “Blessed are the peacemakers,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

All Saints Day 2020

November 1, 2020

Rev 7:2-4.9-14, Ps 24, 1 Jn 3:1-3, Mt 5:1-12

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.1.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following texts guided the homily: 

* This is a feast about the whole point of human life. We’re made for heaven, to spend eternity with God in His kingdom of love. Jesus came from heaven to earth to show us the way from earth to heaven. Today we celebrate those people who followed Jesus all the way there, the great and famous saints we know about, and the countless quiet saints, probably many of those who passed on to us the faith, who died in the love of the Lord and now live in His love. These are the multitude who have “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb,” as we heard in today’s first reading, and brought those white baptismal garments “unstained into the everlasting life of heaven,” like they were instructed to do on the day of their baptism. These are the “great multitude that no one could count, from every nation,” who have not just been called “children of God” through baptism, as St. John told us in today’s second reading, but have lived as children of God throughout their lives. These are the ones who as we prayed in the Psalm have longed to see God’s face, whose hands were sinless, whose heart was pure, whose desires were not for vain things but for the things of God. These are the ones who have ascended “the mountain of the Lord,” the eternal Jerusalem, and who “stand in his holy place.” These are the ones who are singing today in that holy place the beautiful endless song glimpsed in the passage from Revelation, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

* “Salvation belongs to our God.” Yes, heaven is always and exclusively a gift of God beyond anything we can merit. 29 years ago today, in a homily to the first Sisters of Life, Cardinal O’Connor stressed that we cannot make ourselves holy. He compared the process of our sanctification to what he had observed happen to the Sistine Chapel, when the centuries of corrosion, grime, candle soot and leaks that had deteriorated Michelangelo’s frescoes had finally been cleansd to reveal a tremendous colorful, dazzling, luminous freshness. A similar process has to happen in us, he proclaimed, and it happens through his mercy: “All the power of the Christ who was ripped to shreds on the Cross just pours into our souls, washes them, scrapes them, cleans them, purifies them and does what to us? Makes us saints. That’s what holiness is. That’s what being a saint is. Having the power of Christ just pervade our very beings, wash our very bones, scrub our souls clean to the point of dazzling whiteness.” He went on to add, “Holiness does not consist of never having sinned. Holiness consists in letting Christ redeem us. … We can’t make ourselves holy. All that we can do is to open ourselves up to Christ to let Him scrub us clean, to let Him make us bright, shining.” We prayed significantly in today’s opening Collect, “Almighty ever-living God, by whose gift we venerate in one celebration the merits of all the Saints, bestow on us, we pray, through the prayers of so many intercessors, an abundance of the reconciliation with you for which we earnestly long.” And the Lord longs for that total reconciliation with us more than all of us alive today do!

* But as much as Heaven and holiness are God’s gift that we cannot earn, God out of love has made heaven the result of our choice, the result of our acting on that longing. To get to heaven, as St. Thomas Aquinas said, we need to will it, we need to desire it, we need to choose it.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Solemnity of All Saints (A)

October 31, 2020

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.31.20_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

This was the text that guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday on All Saints Day. Jesus came into the world in order to restore us to the image and likeness of God, who is holy, holy, holy. He came to make it possible for us to respond to his command, “Be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” He came to strengthen us to become perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, merciful as he is merciful. Saint Paul tells us, “This is God’s will for you: your sanctification.” And so the Solemnity of All Saints is our annual reminder of the purpose God created us, redeemed us, sent the Holy Spirit to us, founded the Church and more.

* On All Saints Day, we celebrate those people who have followed Jesus all the way, the great and famous saints we know about, and the countless quiet saints, probably many of those who passed on to us the faith, who died in the love of the Lord and now live in His love. We also hope that one day, we will likewise be remembered on this feast, numbered among them. To get to heaven, as St. Thomas Aquinas taught, we need to will it, we need to desire it, we need to choose it. All our choices here are earth are forks leading toward or away from God, in which we set our feet on or away from the path to heaven, to God, to eternity. It is a choice between true, lasting happiness and momentary pleasure; between light and darkness; between good and evil; ultimately between life and death. Jesus came down to show us the way to choose well, and to help us to choose well, but there are competing voices that tell us to choose against what God wants. The saints are those who have chosen well. They are the multitude of men and women, just like us, from every nation and language, who have responded to God’s grace and made it. On All Saints Day we recall their example and invoke their intercession so that we might follow their good example.

* In the Gospel for the feast, Jesus gathers us around him and presents to us the way to heaven, the way to happiness, the way to holiness, precisely so that we choose to follow him on it. The path that he shows us stands in stark contrast to the path that the majority of people in the world believe will make us happy. Jesus’ words present us with the choice on which our lives hinge. Let’s listen to him as if we’re hearing him for the first time:

* The world tells us that to be happy, we have to be rich. Jesus says, rather, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they will inherit the kingdom of heaven.”

* The world tells us we’re happy when we don’t have a concern in the world. Jesus says, on the other hand, “Blessed are those” who are so concerned with others that “they mourn” over their own and others’ miseries, “for they will be comforted” by him eternally.

* Worldly know-it-alls say, “You have to be strong and powerful to be happy.” Jesus, in contrast, retorts, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”

* The spiritually worldly shout increasingly more each day, “To be happy, you’ve got to have all your sexual fantasies fulfilled” and our culture promotes people like Hugh Hefner and promiscuous, Hollywood vixens as those who have it made. Jesus, however, says “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.”

* The world preaches, “You’re happy when you accept yourself,” and espouses an “I’m okay, you’re okay,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Saturday of the 30th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Votive Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Handmaid of the Lord

October 31, 2020

Phil 1:18-26, Ps 42, Lk 14:1.7-11

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today, by means of a parable on seats at a dinner gathering, Jesus teaches us about the humility necessary for us to come to the eternal banquet. The parable goes flat against the way many in the world, including sometimes many of us Christians, behave. In this world so many want to be noticed, esteemed, and exalted. They want the places of honor at table, first class seats on airplanes and front row seats at concerts. They hunger for titles of status and worldly honor and positions of power and influence. They want waiters and butlers to serve them, chauffeurs to drive them, and the rich, famous and important to call them. At a human level, this is not only common but understandable. But Jesus calls us to a different standard, a higher standard that is at the same time paradoxically a lower one. He tell us, “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” He wants us to learn from him how to serve rather than to be served, to seek the lowest place rather than the highest, to treasure God’s esteem rather than others’ adulation so that God may say to us, in this world and the next, “My friend, come up higher!” The way to be exalted at Jesus’ right side forever is humbly to serve at Jesus’ side here on earth, and to follow him not just in seeking the lowest places at table but in getting up from the table like he did at the Last Supper, picking up the basin and towel to wash others’ feet, and serving them in such self-effacing ways.

* We see this lesson described for us in St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians from which we have our first reading today. When he was young, Saul of Tarsus was a meteoric superstar. He was brilliant, one of the brightest, most zealous students of the Great Rabbi Gamaliel, someone who had been trusted with a huge commission at a young age to try to destroy the Church, which he was convinced in his Pharisaical arrogance couldn’t have been from God. But the Lord converted him and led him along a path of humility, blinding him in order to show him his spiritual blind spots before the illumination of baptism. Rather than continuing on the path to fame and power over life-and-death, he became a hunted man, needing to escape by being lowered in walls through baskets. He disappeared into the desert for 14 years to pray and learn anew. Because others didn’t trust his conversion, he returned to serving God quietly through making tents. He had a humiliating “thorn” in his flesh (2 Cor 12:6-7), whatever that was, but it was through bearing it that he learned that God’s grace was sufficient for him. After many years, St. Barnabas came for him and the Holy Spirit set them both aside for the Mission he had planned for them. And cooperating with the Spirit, he proclaimed the Gospel to the furthest expanses of the world. He proclaimed that God called nobodies, the humble of the world, to shame those who thought they were somebodies (1 Cor 1:26-29) so that no one could boast before God. He grasped that it was truly when he was weak that he was strong (2 Cor 12:10), because then God’s power was able to work through him with no resistance. And from prison, as this humble but great man wrote this letter, he sought to decrease so that Christ would increase, saying, as we heard today, that for him “life is Christ and death is gain,” that because his soul was athirst for the living God, he longed “to depart and be with Christ,” and yet was “happy to remain in the flesh for the benefit of others,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

October 30, 2020

Phil 1:1-11, Ps 111, Lk 14:1-6

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today we begin in the first reading St. Paul’s most friendly, positive, warm and joyful letter, which he sent from a Roman jail to the Church in Philippi. We’ll continue with this Letter for seven days at daily Mass, through a week from tomorrow. Paul had planted the Gospel for the first time in Europe in Philippi, where he and Silas met Lydia and women down by the river, where he was unjustly imprisoned because he put someone manipulating a possessed girl out of business, but was freed by an earthquake leading to the baptism of the jailer and his whole family. Philippi was a Church that never gave Paul heartache. They received what he proclaimed with faith and always responded with generosity, as we’ll see in Chapter 4 of the letter. And so St. Paul’s purpose and tone in this letter were to strengthen them in the faith, presenting in depth the truths of the faith, without any need for fraternal correction. When Epaphroditus was leaving him in Rome to return to Philippi, Paul was able to send the letter with him.

* St. Paul’s love for the Christians in Philippi is palpable. “I hold you in my heart,” he writes, and “long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.” Think about that for a minute. He yearns for them with the splagchna of Jesus. The term splagchna refers to the bowels, everything from the liver and upper intestines to the heart and the lungs. It was considered the real center of a person. The synoptic evangelists use it in a very to signify Jesus’ merciful love, writing that Jesus’ “heart was moved with pity.” The New American Bible in the lectionary translates it “affection,” which is complementary. Just as Jesus loves them with mercy and affection so does Paul. And so we likewise are called to love with affection and mercy. I think sometimes it’s easier for some faithful people to love with mercy than affection. We don’t treat most others with affection. Those of us who have spent a lot of time in community life can sometimes have affection stripped out of us, but that would be a defect of chaste love. Chastity, among other things, involves the integration of our emotions with our reason and will and we would not be loving with affective maturity if that were not expressed with warmth, with joy, with the heart. Jesus loved with affection, Paul loved with affection and we’re similarly called to love others as Christ has loved us first.

* We see that merciful affection of Jesus in today’s Gospel. He went for dinner to the house of a Pharisee where everyone was watching him. Someone with an edema — or swelling caused by fluid retention — was there, probably as a plant, to test whether Jesus would cure him on the Sabbath. Jesus didn’t hesitate. After asking whether it was lawful to cure on the Sabbath or not — whether it was possible to do good deeds on the Lord’s day! — he healed the man. The principle Jesus gave was no one would ever allow one of their children or even animals who fell into a cistern to remain in there on the Sabbath but would work on the Sabbath to rescue him. Jesus, therefore, with merciful affection, wouldn’t all this man one more day to remain with dropsy. Jesus’ analogy highlights that we always do something with urgency for someone or something we really care about, who matters to us, whom we love, and we would see that such authentic love for that person would not be a violation of God’s will or law. The problem for the Pharisees was that they just d...