Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

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

October 29, 2020

Eph 6:10-20, Ps 144, Lk 13:31-35

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in today’s homily: 

* Today in the Gospel, Jesus is confronted by the fact that Herod was trying to kill him. Jesus was unafraid, however. He sent him a message, calling him a “fox,” an indication that he was sly and ferocious, and then gave this paranoid man who thought Jesus might be the risen John the Baptist whom he beheaded a mysterious thing for him to dwell on, which summarizes his whole mission: “Behold, I cast out demons and I perform healings today and tomorrow, and on the third day I accomplish my purpose. Yet I must continue on my way today, tomorrow, and the following day, for it is impossible that a prophet should die outside of Jerusalem.” First, he synthesizes his work as exorcizing and healing — something that would come to its fulfillment in the two days of the Last Supper/Good Friday and the rest in the tomb — and then on the “third day,” accomplishing his purpose, a clear sign of the Resurrection. He also gave a clear indication that he knew he would die in Jerusalem, something that would have taken away any intimidation factor Herod might have thought he had but also open Herod up to the fact that this was part of Jesus’ plan.

* The sad thing, however, that got Jesus to weep over Jerusalem was that despite his work of healing and exorcizing, some would not receive it. Jesus says, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how many times I yearned to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were unwilling!” They were unwilling. They didn’t want to allow God to gather them, to heal them, to free them from the power of Satan. They didn’t respond to the appeals of God’s loving mercy through the prophets but instead killed them, much like many of them were preparing to call for the crucifixion of God’s own Son and image. It’s a reality that we need to face in every age, that sometimes we’re unwilling to let Jesus do his work and transform us the way he wants to do. But nevertheless, he goes ahead, accomplishing his work, healing, casting out the devil, and gathering us from the evil one who wounds and possesses. Jesus’ courage is compelling as is he love.

* Jesus wants to give us a similar courage so that, having gathered us, we might be his instruments to gather with him, to heal with him, to cast out with him. In the Responsorial Psalm today, we bless God because he is our “rock who trains my hands for battle, my fingers for war,” because he is our “fortress,” “stronghold,” “deliverer,” and “shield.” He strengthens us. We see how in today’s first reading, which is the end of our study of the Letter to the Ephesians, dedicated to how Jesus has come into the world to reconcile and sum up all things and help us, united to him, to become holy and immaculate in his sight, to become his Bride purified by water and the word. In uniting us to himself, Jesus wants us to become strong with him, as he is our fortress, stronghold, deliverer and shield. St. Paul urges us to “put on the armor of God,” which means to “put on God” who will make us courageous.

* St. Paul reminds us that our struggle isn’t fundamentally “with flesh and blood” — meaning other people, for whom we’re called to give our lives to help Jesus save — but “with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens.” We see in the Gospel how Jesus himself battled against these evil spirits. Herod’s opposition didn’t derive fundamentally from “flesh and blood,” but from his being under the sway of the “principalities,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Feast of SS. Simon and Jude, Apostles

October 28, 2020

Eph 2:19-22, Ps 19, Lk 6:12-16

 

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

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* St. Paul in today’s first reading tells the Ephesians and us that our Christian existence is “built upon the foundation of the Apostles.” Today’s feast of the apostles SS. Simon and Jude gives us a chance to ponder several aspects of our Christian life and how to strengthen them by grounding them more firmly on the foundation of what the Lord has done and continues to do through these two apostles.

* The first thing we can examine is the theme of our calling. The apostles’ vocation, we see, was born from Christ’s prayer. Jesus had pulled an all-nighter praying to his Father about whom he should choose and praying for those he would choose. His prayer was not just a single invocation, but a persevering intercession. During the ordination rite of the Last Supper we would see how fervently Jesus would pray to the Father. “I pray for them,” he said aloud, “I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me because they are yours. … Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are. … I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil one. … Consecrate them in the truth. …  I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth.” And then he prayed for the apostles’ work to be fruitful, for all “those who will believe in me through their word,” and prayed for their salvation, “I wish that where I am they also may be with me, that they may see my glory that you gave me, … that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them.” Jesus’ ongoing prayer would take on a very specific form, as we would see in Jesus’ Holy Thursday dialogue with St. Peter, “Simon, Simon, behold Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed that your [singular] own faith may not fail; and once you have turned back, you must strengthen your brothers.” It’s important regularly for us to take the time to recall with gratitude and wonder that our vocation, likewise, has its beginning in Jesus’ prayer. Just as much as Jesus prayed all night and then called Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James, Simon, Jude, and Judas Iscariot,” so he has prayed and called each of us. He has prayed for each of us, to keep us in the Father’s name, to unite us to God and to each other, to consecrate us in the truth of God’s word, in the truth of Jesus’ own consecration to the Father. Jesus has prayed for us that our faith may not fail and that we will strengthen the faith of each other and those we serve. Jesus continues to pray for us. He’s praying for us at this Mass. He’s praying for us when we have difficulties in our work. His persevering prayer for us is an example for us to persevere in prayer together with him during it as well.

* The second theme is our discipleship. When Jesus came down the mountain, St. Luke tells us, he chose the twelve from among the “disciples,” from among those who were already as the Greek word disciple means Jesus’ “students,” who were zealously following him, who were living by faith, who were hearing his words and seeking to put them into practice. Together with Jesus’ prayer, their faith was the crucial job qualification. Jesus didn’t raid the rabbinical schools for the greatest young Scriptural scholars of the day who could more easily preach and teach. He didn’t turn to the ascetical Pharisees whose whole life was dedicated to trying to live the Mosaic law to its perfection, to those who were already praying, tithing, fasting far more than was explicitly required. He turned to common, ordinary folk.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

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

Votive Mass for the Family

October 27, 2020

Eph 5:21-33, Ps 128, Lk 13:18-21

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* What is the kingdom of God like? Jesus asks because he wants us to be able to understand it. But it’s something that we can understand only by simile, only by analogy. Until it’s fully flourishing, we’re only going to be able to see certain of its reflections.

* Today Jesus wants to stress that the kingdom of God, first, begins really small. But then it grows. And it grows in such a way that so many, like the birds of the air flying from all over the planet, are able to find rest in its branches. It grows in such a way that it gives us rest, a home, we can make a nest there. We might not be able to see the nest and the birds with the seed we plant in the garden, but Jesus wants us to have that confidence and that hope, that even the littlest of beginning can result in that end.

* Likewise, he describes yeast, a tiny pinch of yeast from previously leavened bread, put it into a new loaf that elevates the whole dough. In a sense, we know not how: it’s from the inside, acting to lift the whole dough up. In a similar way the kingdom starts with just a little pinch: one Christian on a street, one sister in a convent or even in an order, one priest in a diocese, can have an enormous impact. We see that in the life of every saint. Even if they seem to be hidden, they’re not hidden at all. A young girl with tuberculosis in a convent in northwestern France can change the whole history of the church simply by her prayers and by her obediently writing down what God was doing in her soul. The prayers of a priest in a concentration camp long forgotten by the world is able to redeem that hellhole. A parish priest in New Haven, Connecticut, caring for his people, could found a legacy, the Knights of Columbus, that would stretch across the globe. One teenage girl in a place like Nazareth could change salvation history by a simple, faithful, yes. So we have to know this about the kingdom, that little things are extraordinarily consequential. All we do sometimes is plant that tiny little mustard seed or try to be that pinch of yeast. And then we trust that God will do the rest.

* Today in the first reading, we see one of the most important areas in which this kingdom is meant to grow, the soil in which the seed is planted, the dough in which the little pinch of yeast is given. It’s marriage and the family. We see how the kingdom can come just from that place. St. Paul’s words here in his Letter to the Ephesians have two contexts. The first context is the entirety of his letter. His the Ephesians, which we’ve been hearing for almost the two weeks, is about the kingdom and what Christ came to do. Christ came to reconcile all things in himself in the heavens and on earth. His entire mission was to bring us anew into harmony with the Father and in reconciled harmony with each other. This is the outgrowth of our being holy and immaculate in the Lord’s sight, as we heard two Thursdays ago. And it’s key for us to grasp that in the family, even just one little family, the kingdom can explode.

* Probably one of the best written documents of the Church of all, is Evangelii Nuntiandi, Saint Paul VI’s 1975 Apostolic Exhortation on evangelization. In one section of it, he was describing the evangelization of Africa. The way it happened was not just by White Fathers coming as missionaries from France. The most effective way it happened, he described, is when families would be “planted.” They’d take one family from one village and send the family to another.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

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

October 26, 2020

Eph 4:32-5:8, Ps 1, Lk 13:10-17

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* St. Cyril of Alexandria, one of the early doctors of the church, said about Christians that they are the ones who behave like God. Christians are not those who merely believe in God, and in the Son whom God the Father, sent. Christians are the ones who seek to behave like God with God’s own help, with God’s own love.

* Today, in the first reading, that’s the message that St. Paul gives to the Christians in Ephesus. Be imitators of God, as his beloved children, and live in love. We don’t just seek to imitate God on the outside out of some type of duty. But having been loved in such a way by God, we seek to imitate that love and live in it. And the way that we live in that love is not just by being loved by God, but allowing God to love others through us, together with our entire personality.

* There’s a particular way in which we’re called to live that love of God. Having received God’s mercy — because God’s love for us is always merciful —  we seek to imitate that merciful love toward others. So St. Paul begins today, “Be kind to one another.” Be really benevolent. That word crestos in Greek means that we care about somebody else’s needs just as much as we care about our own. If we were hungry, we’d be looking for something to eat, and therefore if someone else is hungry, we feed them. Just as we like to be clothed, we clothe others. Just like we hate to suffer and are grateful for the care for others, so we care for them. “Be kind to one another, compassionate,” that we really take into consideration another person’s sufferings, even when we might not visibly see them, but to recognize that everyone is suffering. So often a person’s behavior is explainable by the sufferings that that person is presently enduring and not just has endured. “Forgiving one another is God has forgiven you in Christ.” And this forgiveness is not just an extrinsic action in which we basically say, “I don’t hold any grudges.” When St. Paul says “Forgive one another as God has forgiven you in Christ,” we know how God forgave us in Christ. It wasn’t just by words that corresponded to the heart. It was by dying, in order to take somebody else’s sins away. It was through real sacrifice, to reestablish somebody, to the right relationship with the Father. In all of these ways, we are being called to imitate God as his much loved children. St. Paul says, “Christ loved us and handed himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma.” He recognized that his love for others was sweet incense. It was an extraordinarily beautiful prayer that rose up to God. It was, in a sense, his greatest worship. The care that we have for others is a fragrant offering. It’s part of the holocaust we bring as praise before God. And St. Paul himself sought in particular detail to imitate Jesus in this way and so make his life sweet smelling incense, rising up to God as the supreme prayer of his life.

* St. Paul wants us to be that same type of prayer. He describes what is the foul smell that we could bring toward God. In contrast, he says that “immorality, any impurity or greed must not even be mentioned about among you. Because this is idolatry.” Do we recognize this? None of us wants to engage in idolatry. We believe in God. We love God. But when we are immoral, we’re worshipping an idol, whatever it be. When we’re acquisitive, we’re putting our treasure not so much in growing to be more and more like God through receiving his own grace,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Agnes Church, Manhattan

Christ the King

October 25, 2020

Col 1:12-20, Jn 18:33-37

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

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* Today’s feast of Christ the King is, by the standard of Church history, still very young. It’s only 95 years old. It was instituted by Pope Pius XI during the 1925 Jubilee at the request of many bishops and faithful from around the globe. There was a militant atheism spreading at the time that was trying to repress belief in Christ and suppress Christian presence in the world, something that continues sadly in 2020. Just eight years before Pius XI institute the feast, Bolshevik communism had begun to show its evil head and was seeking to “free” the people from the “opium” of faith in God, which they said was a only a means to keep people subjugated.In Mexico, there had been a similar revolution against the “old order” and one of the first results was anti-clerical persecution based on a militant atheism. Religious orders were banned. Churches, monasteries, convents and other religious buildings were confiscated by the State. The Church needed to go underground and many Catholic priests, religious and lay people were martyred. Since there really was no God, they stated, the churches and Christians were just seeking greater foundation for their pursuit of political power. To counteract these lies and proclaim both thefactof Christ’s kingship and the typeof kingdom he established, the Holy Father proclaimed this feast.

* The first thing Pope Pius XI stressed was that Christ had not come to inaugurate a political but a spiritual kingdom. The Jews anticipated that when the Messiah finally came, he would rule in the way that his ancestor David had ruled. He would defeat all foreign powers and triumph over all who opposed him. After Jesus worked some of his stupendous miracles and the people were ready to put him on their shoulders and proclaim him king, he took off to other towns, so that people were able to receive him, and his kingdom, on his terms, not those false ones. In today’s Gospel we see the brutal contrast between the Kingdom Christ came to inaugurate and the political kingdom people expected. The last thing Jesus looked like as he hung upon the Cross on Good Friday was a king. He was bathed in blood, not clothed with royal purple. He was hammered to a Cross, not seated on a bejeweled throne. He was crowned with thorns, not capped with gold and diadems. To ridicule him and Jews in general, Pilate had ordered that an inscription in three languages be placed above his head: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” Rather than pay him homage, most in the crowd mocked him. The chief priests mocked him. The Roman soldiers and passers-by mocked him. Even the thief on his left mocked him. And all of them mocked him in the same way: “If you’re truly the king of the Jews, the Messiah, the Christ, come down from that Cross and save yourself.” Such visible force was the only demonstration of kingly power that they could comprehend.

* For most Jews at the time, Jesus’ crucifixion was the proof that he was precisely notthe long awaited Messiah-king for whom they had been waiting for centuries. Rather than using power to subjugate all those who opposed him, Jesus took their abuse and endured a horrible death to save his abusers. Ancient rulers were used to sending soldiers to die for the king’s personal aggrandizement. They were totally unprepared for a king who would serve at all, not to mention die so that his subjects would live. The Romans were likewise unprepared for a king like Jesus. When Pontius Pilate interrogated Jesus, asking him, “Are you the King of the Jews?,” Jesus answered, “My kingship is not of this world; if my kingdom were of this world, my servants would be fighting that I not be handed over to the Jews; but my ...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

October 24, 2020

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.24.20_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, when Jesus will speak to us about the single most important thing we need to do in life. If we do everything else but don’t do this, we will not have lived life well. If we do this but don’t get to everything else, we will still have passed the test of life with flying colors.

* The consequential conversation happens after a lawyer asks Jesus, “What is the greatest of all the commandments?.” We’ve heard Jesus’ response so many times that we can think that the question was a soft ball, but it was really a 100 mph slider. There were 613 commands in the Old Testament. To choose which of them was the greatest was something that the scholars of the law had found difficult for centuries. Jesus’ answer came from what God had inspired Moses to teach the Jewish people after God had rescued them from Pharaoh. From that point forward, faithful Jews have recited it every day: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” Loving God with all we are and have is not just the most crucial thing we need to do in life but the way by which we most grow in the image of God who is love by opening ourselves up to his love. The command makes clear that it’s not enough to love God only with some, half, most of, or even almost all of our mind, heart, soul and strength. God gives us himself, he gives us his grace, precisely so that we can love him with as close as possible to 100 percent of all we are and have. He gives us his own love to make it possible for us to love like him, to sacrifice for God with agape like he sacrificed for us.

* But then Jesus added something else, unsolicited. He knew that if he stopped merely with the love of God, many people would think that they were doing just fine, because so many of us think we love God by the simple fact that we acknowledge him, revere him and have feelings of affection and gratitude toward him. Jesus wanted to give a clear means by which we could evaluate whether we are truly loving God, because to love him means to love what and whom he loves. Jesus said that there is a second commandment, taken from the Book of Leviticus, that is similar to the greatest: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev 19:18 ). The clear index of how we love God is how we love our neighbor loved by God and made in his image. Jesus during the Last Supper would set his love up as a model for our love. No longer would our love for ourselves be the standard for the love of our neighbor, but his love for us would be the standard: “Love one another as I have loved you!” (Jn 13:34; Jn 15:12). When he asked Simon Peter three times after the resurrection whether he loved him and three times Simon said he did, Jesus told him “feed my sheep,” “feed my lambs,” and “tend my sheep.” Peter’s love for the Lord would be shown in the way that he loved all those whom God has entrusted to care. In St. Luke’s version of Jesus’ response to a similar question by a scribe, when the lawyer followed up by asking Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?,” the neighbor we’re supposed to love as ourselves, Jesus gave the Parable of the Good Samaritan, stressing that everyone is in our neighborhood, that we’re called to cross the street to care for others in their need,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Saturday of the 29th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Anthony Maria Claret

October 24, 2020

Eph 4:7-16, Ps 122, Lk 13:1-9

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Yesterday we shifted emphasis in our biennial two-week liturgical lectio divina on St. Paul’s words to the members of the early Church in Ephesus, from the theological truths he makes in the first half of his letter about how Jesus has come into the world in order to reconcile all things in himself to how he calls us morally to live in a manner worthy of the vocation we have received to be holy and immaculate in God’s sight. Today he continues to build on that connection, stressing that Jesus’ work makes possible that vocation. He tells us that grace is given to each of us “according to the measure of Christ’s gift,” who is total self-giving. Christ ascended to heaven to give us every spiritual blessing in the heavens. He’s given us charisms — St. Paul describes some: apostles (traveling witnesses of the Lord who knew him and witnessed his resurrection and whom he made pillars), prophets (who travel to actualize the word of God and call to conversion), evangelists (who repeat what Jesus said in the Gospel so that people, in an age before many could read or had books or scroll to read, could learn the word of God), shepherds (who guide, nourish and protect the flock from wolves), and teachers (catechists, who help apply the word of God to particular circumstances) — with a clear purpose: “to “equip the holy ones for the work of ministry, for building up the Body of Christ.” Every gift is to help us to form others for their Christian mission, which is service and loving others and building up Christ’s body the Church “until we all attain to the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God.” The goal of the Church is unity. We pondered this yesterday in St. Paul’s appeal for us to dwell in the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, conscious of the fact that there’s one baptism, one faith, our Lord and Father of all. To know Christ Jesus is to act on his will that we be one. This is what St. Paul describes as “mature manhood to the extent of the full stature of Christ” and “grow[ing] in every way into him who is the head, Christ, … who brings about the Body’s growth and builds itself up in love.” This process of maturation happens through “living the truth in love.” When we live the moral truth, when we live the doctrinal and sacramental truth, we begin to love others to the full stature of Christ, we grasp that he wants us to love them just as much as he loves us, to remember that that whatever we do to them, we do to him — and the more we do so, the more communion comes about. To live the truth in love means to grasp that we are called to live together as one body, one spirit in Christ.

* In the Gospel today, Jesus calls us to repentance with urgency. Using current events at the time — Pilate’s massacre of Galileans and the falling tower of Siloam — Jesus tells us, “If you do not repent, you will all perish as they did.” He then gives a parable about how we’re called to bear fruit rather than be barren fig trees. He’s cultivated the ground around us and fertilized it with his blood, he’s equipped us for building up the Body of Christ, but he wants us to act, to bear fruit, and that fruit is living the truth in love. Today we celebrate the feast of someone who did, and who was God’s instrument to help so many others grow to mature manhood to the extent of the full stature of Christ. St. Anthony Mary Claret was born in Catalunia in 1807. I once happened upon his birthplace walking in the Pyrenees back in 1993.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the 29th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. John of Capistrano

October 23, 2020

Eph 4:1-6, Ps 24, Lk 12:54-59

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today we shift gears in our biennial two-week liturgical meditation on St. Paul’s deepest and most eloquent Epistle. Since a week ago Thursday, St. Paul has been sketching out in the first three chapters of the Letter the theology of Christ’s whole mission, which can be summarized as his work to “sum up,” to reconcile “all things in himself, in the heavens and on earth.” In the last three chapters of his missive, he begins to draw moral consequences for how we’re supposed to participate in that reconciliation between us and God and in God with each other. God’s ultimate plan in Christ is to form us as a family, as a true communion of saints. In today’s passage, St. Paul pushes on that accelerator.

* He urges us to “live in a manner worthy of the call [we] have received,” the call to be — as he said last week — “holy and immaculate in [God’s] sight” and describes the virtues we need to respond to his call for reconciliation: first, humility, because pride always separates us from God and from others; second, meekness, so that we will have the self-discipline to control our anger and choose the good; and third, patience (makrothumia) so that we can “bear with one another through love.” These are the means by which we can “preserve the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” Then St. Paul sketches what I might call the theological grounds of our unity: that in Christ we have been made “one Body.” We have become temples of the “one Spirit.” We all have the “one hope of our call” to eternal communion with God and others. We are all disciples of the “one Lord.” We each have the “one faith” or trust in God and his promises. We have the “one baptism” that has made us spiritual siblings. We all recognize our divine filiation of the “one God and Father of all,” who is over all (omnipotent), through all (provident) and in all (omnipresent). God who calls us to live in a manner worthy of our calling to be in a loving communion with him and others will give us all of the means we need — and these are the means! And these means are not merely individual; as we prayed in the Psalm, we are a “people that longs to see [God’s] face.”

* In today’s Gospel, Jesus talks about the signs of the times. Just as we are able to interpret meteorological indicators and adapt our clothing and associated behavior, so Jesus wants us to perceive the signs of his kingdom and make similar adjustments to live in accordance with his calling to that kingdom, a kingdom of unity, holiness, charity and peace. He gives the analogy of making peace with adversaries before the judge sentences us to prison, communicating that as we’re walking through life toward our judgment, we should reconcile now, we should love now in deeds. This is a mystery hidden to the wise and the clever of the world, as we prayed in the Alleluia versicle but revealed to the childlike, who forgive easily. God who wants to reconcile all things in Christ wants us to reconcile whenever we see to settle something with a brother or sister who shares with us the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace and the one Body, Spirit, hope, Lord, faith, baptism and God and Father of all. The pilgrimage of life is meant to be a kairos of mercy received and shared and we need to reconcile with God and others along the way.

* Today we have a great example of someone who read the signs of the times and after his conversion lived in a manner worthy of his Christian calling. St. John of Capistrano (1386-1456) was a brilliant young man who became mayor of his town at 26.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the 29th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of Pope St. John Paul II

October 22, 2020

Eph 3:14-21, Ps 33, Lk 12:49-53

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today in the first reading, St. Paul prostrates himself before God the Father in prayer begging him to grant the Christians in Ephesus and us to send the Holy Spirit to strengthen us in our inner self — strengthen us in mind, will and conscience — to help us allow Christ his Son to dwell in our hearts, and, rooted in love, to have the courage to understand “the breadth and length and height and depth [of] the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” and “be filled with all the fullness of God.” Several early saints interpreted the breath, length, height and depth as the dimensions of the Cross, which is fundamentally not a sign of pain but of the unbelievable love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge that bore that pain for love of us. St. Paul was praying to the Father to raise us as his children by the Holy Spirit to be strengthened by the Cross, to allow Christ his Son to abide in us and to help us to understand that cruciform dimensions of the Christian life so as to open ourselves to the fullness of the God of love. It’s an extraordinary prayer, begging for a fullness St. Paul himself had already experienced when he himself admitted he had been crucified with Christ and the life he was living in the flesh he was living by faith in the Son of God who loved him and died for him, a fullness he called “God’s power and wisdom.”

* That prayer for us to be filled with the fullness of the love of Christ is an echo of the prayer Jesus makes in the Gospel, when he speaks about the fire he had come to earth to ignite, and links that to “the baptism with which [he] must be baptized,” which is the baptism of blood on the Cross. He said he was in “anguish” until that baptism be accomplished and that fire begin blazing. His love on the Cross is meant to be a fire of love that is meant to light the world ablaze, the type of love that will transform and strengthen us within. It’s a living flame that will eventually unite — as a flame does all that it consumes— all people in the love of the Father who sent his Son to form a loving family. That union will happen only when people allow themselves to be “burned” and “transformed” by Christ’s love. Many are afraid of the fire, afraid of zeal. That’s why Jesus says that he has come not to “bring peace but division,” because he and the fire of his love would be a sign of contradiction dividing even family members. This is not because Christ is a divider. He is the Prince of Peace who told us during the first Mass that he was leaving and giving us his peace. But when someone in a family opts for Christ, others who don’t want to give God his due or want to be in God’s place get jealous and angry, and that’s what divides. Sin divides. The fire of Christ’s love is opposed by the coldness of a heart that doesn’t love God and others. Dante depicts Hell not as fire — based on the “fire of Gehenna,” the valley where trash was burned — but as ice-cold. The division that flows from opposition to Christ and the fire of his love was true in the early Church. Often when Jews converted to Christianity, they were disowned by their family. Still today when a Muslim converts to Christianity in Pakistan and various other fundamentalist Muslim countries, or a Hindu converts in certain fundamentalist areas in India, a contract is put out on them, and most often by the members of his or her own family. There are those who find the all-consuming fire of Christ’s love a threat and the sinful reaction to other’s coming alive in love does divide.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Agnes Church, Manhattan

20th Sunday after Pentecost, Extraordinary Form

October 18, 2020

Eph 5:15-21, Jn 4:46-53

 

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

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* Today St. Paul exhorts the Ephesians and each of us not to waste the gift of life God has given us but to take full advantage of the time God has given us, the means of salvation with which he has blessed us, the opportunities he has placed before us to do something great, holy, life-giving and life-saving. Most people, including most Christians, do not live with sufficient intentionality. We sleepwalk through human existence, osmotically taking in our environment, adapting ourselves to what everyone else is doing, wasting so much time doing things that in the final analysis matter little. St. Paul is trying to wake us up, to help us to mature spiritually, and to make full use of the time we have. “Watch carefully then how you live,” he tells us today, “not as foolish persons but as wise, making the most of the opportunity, because the days are evil.” We can live in one of two ways, he says: as fools or by God’s wisdom. We can cozy up to the fallen things of the age, or we can be the seeds of sanctification. And St. Paul is calling us to live like Christ did in the midst of what Jesus called a “wicked and perverse generation,” as Paul did in the midst of the sins of his own epoch, as the Popes have incessantly urged us to do in the modern world, and as Christians as salt of the earth and light of the world are called to do in every age.

* And so St. Paul gets practical: “Therefore,” he says, “do not continue in ignorance, but try to understand what is the will of the Lord.” Real wisdom is doing God’s will, seeking his kingdom, hallowing his name. To live ignorantly is to do just as one pleases, without reference to the holy will of God, as if God doesn’t really exist or doesn’t care how we spend our day or dedicate our life. To live wisely is constantly to discern what God is asking in the concrete situations and places in which he has placed us, to be alert to his presence, accompanying us, guiding us, strengthening us, precisely — as we note on this World Mission Sunday and on the feast of the Evangelist St. Luke — to understand and do his will and help him save and sanctify the world.

* Paul therefore continues, “Do not get drunk on wine, in which lies debauchery.” That’s both a concrete counsel against getting hammered as well as a metaphor to depict what it means to live foolishly. When we get drunk, we are impaired not just from driving well but from living as God wants. Why do people get drunk? Some get drunk because they like the stuff, but lack self-control, and one drink soon becomes four, or eight or ten. Others do so because they don’t like something else, and rather than turning to God and others for help to face situations of stress and anxiety, they try to escape with a bottle. And we know that once we’re drunk, our guard is down to say no to things to which we would never consent otherwise. That’s why St. Peter would say to the first Christians, “Stay sober and alert. Your opponent the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for [someone] to devour. Resist him, solid in your faith” (1 Pet 5:8-9). Drunkenness is the opposite of spiritual vigilance and many of us get drunk by imbibing too much worldliness, getting addicted to entertainment and distractions, setting our hearts on Friday and Saturday night rather than on Sunday, eating, drinking and being merry as if human life is a cocktail party with nothing really important going on outside the club. Others get intoxicated and cockeyed over politics, binge-watching cable news more than a faithful nun adores the Lord. Others get soused on social media, or sports, or celebrity gossip.