Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

October 17, 2020

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.17.20_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The text that guided the homily was: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday, something that has great relevance to us as we observe some of the questions being posed to Amy Coney Barrett during her confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court, something that has just as much relevance as we prepare for the elections in just over two weeks, something that has to do with how we as disciples of Jesus order our whole life as citizens not only of our country but of the heavenly Jerusalem.

* In today’s Gospel, two groups that were archenemies conspired to try to trap Jesus. Both the Herodians and the Pharisees were trying to get Jesus out of the way, because both felt threatened by him. They decided to ask him a question about which they themselves were constantly in disagreement — whether it was lawful to pay taxes to or support in any way the Roman empire. The Herodians were laxist sycophants, and, regardless of how they personally felt about a foreign power’s ruling over them, decided that if you couldn’t beat the Romans, you should join them. They cooperated with the Romans in almost everything, including taxes. The Pharisees, like most of the Jewish people, deeply resented being dominated by a foreign power, and found utterly repulsive the thought of giving a tribute to a foreign ruler who fancied himself a god. Both groups thought their long-standing disagreement was a perfect catch-22 by which to nail the carpenter from Nazareth.

* So they approached Jesus and manifested their mendacity and hypocrisy by a barrage of empty flattery: “Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man, teach the way of God with accordance to the truth, show deference to no one, and don’t play favorites.” Then came the question: “Is it lawful to the census tax to Caesar or not?” It was the perfect query, they thought, because no matter how Jesus answered it, they had him. If he failed to respond, he would lose authority by ducking one of the most relevant political questions of the day. If he said “yes,” he would risk losing the affection of the masses, who hated the Romans, hated the emperor, and particularly hated being forced to give him any recognition at all. If he said “no,” then they could turn him over to Pontius Pilate for inciting lawlessness among the people.

* But Jesus would not be trapped, and he showed yet again here how he always brings good out of evil. In answer to their hypocrisy, Jesus pointed the path to true human integrity. In response to their deceitfulness, Jesus gave us a truth to live by, one that is as relevant today as it ever was.

* After he had asked to see the coin used for the tax and they brought him one (showing that all of them used the money when it served their purposes!), he queried, “Whose image is this and whose inscription?” When they responded, “Caesar’s,” he gave them and us the principle that extends far beyond than the days of Rome. “Then give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.” Most of Jesus’ original listeners thought that you couldn’t serve two leaders, God and Caesar; either you gave to God, they thought, or gave to Caesar. Jesus said it was not necessarily “either… or” but could be and should be “both… and.” We have responsibilities in the social order (what we might call the horizontal plane); we also have responsibilities toward God (the vertical plane).

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Saturday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Ignatius of Antioch

October 17, 2020

Eph 1:15-23, Ps 8, Lk 12:8-12

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today in the Gospel Jesus continues his words to his disciples about bewaring of the “leaven” or “hypocrisy” of the Pharisees and about how not to fear them, not to fear the devil or anyone else who can only harm the body, but to fear God alone who has the power to throw into Gehenna. But that fear must be a holy, reverential, loving awe, because the One Jesus is telling us to fear has numbered every one of the 130,000 follicles on our head, who is attentive to every sparrow that falls to the ground and accounts us worth more than many sparrows. Jesus gives us those words to fill us with courage in the face of the challenges that will come from living and proclaiming the Gospel. We see that courage in him, as he faced the Pharisees, the Scribes, the Herodians, even the Romans, as they conspired to harass, arrest, mock, torture and crucify him. In today’s passage he calls his first disciples and us to go on proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom of God fearlessly. “I tell you,” he says,” “everyone who acknowledges me before others the Son of Man will acknowledge before the angels of God.” He cautions us to be faithful, in contrast to the duplicity of the Pharisees: “But whoever denies me before others will be denied before the angels of God.” But even with that stern warning that might frighten us, he yet again shows us how to trust, by turning us toward divine mercy should we stumble under pressure. “Everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven.” When he tells us that the “one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven,” we need to know that that blasphemy is not counting on the power of the Holy Spirit, for the forgiveness of sins, for strength under pressure, for all of the help we need. He tells us, “When they take you before synagogues and before rulers and authorities, do not worry about how or what your defense will be or about what you are to say. For the Holy Spirit will teach you at that moment what you should say.” The Holy Spirit wants to infuse us with himself — with his wisdom, knowledge, prudence, understanding, reverence, awe and courage — precisely to help us to do this, even and especially when it’s hard. Jesus promises that God will strengthen us by his own power so that we might bear witness under trial, so that we might acknowledge Christ before all, so that we might witness to faith in God before those threatening our life because we know every hair has been counted.

* St. Paul was one who lived with this apostolic courage despite all of the sufferings before synagogues, rulers and authorities he endured. He was one who acknowledged Christ before the whole world and who wrote about living according to the spirit so that, even under trial, one might experience the “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-mastery” that is the fruit of the Holy Spirit. In the section from his Letter to the Ephesians we have today, he seeks to strengthen the Ephesians to do the same. He mentions the divine help we have in order to witness to Christ audaciously and always. He describes the “spirit of wisdom and revelation resulting in knowledge of Christ” so that we can better give acknowledge him. He mentions the enlightenment of the eyes of our hearts so that we “may know what is the hope that belongs to [God’s] call, what are the riches of glory in his inheritance among the holy ones,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

October 16, 2020

Eph 1:11-14, Ps 33, Lk 12:1-7

 

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

 

The outline for today’s homily was:

* “Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.” God has indeed, as we heard yesterday from the beginning of St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, chosen us from before the foundation of the world and has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens. In today’s passage, we see how both Jews — those “who first hoped in Christ” — and Gentiles alike are blessed by God so that we might exist “for the praise of his glory.” We exist, the purpose of our life, both in an objective and subjective sense, is for the praise of God’s glory. Both Jews and Gentiles have heard the word of truth, received the Gospel of salvation, believed in God, and received the seal of the Holy Spirit. These gifts, received and lived as they’re intended, objectively give praise to God, just like the beautiful snow-capped mountain ranges, the pure streams and lakes, the wonderful ocean vistas, and many other natural phenomena all sing praise to our Creator. But this objective glorification of God is meant to be complemented by our subjective cooperation. We are called to want to praise God’s glory. To praise him in our prayer. To praise him in our good deeds, so that others in seeing them, as Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount, may give glory to our Father in heaven. To praise and glorify him by our whole life, as we seek to live by the word of truth that sets us free, as we announce the Gospel of salvation, as we walk by faith, as we are guided by the Spirit. All of these gifts that we invest and with God’s help try to grow, St. Paul concludes the passage today, are just the down payment, the “first installment” of our inheritance. We exist for the praise of God’s glory here looking ahead, we pray by God’s mercy, to the enhanced existence for the praise of God’s glory we call heaven. We have been chosen and destined according to the purpose and intention of God’s will precisely for this, “for redemption as God’s possession,” belonging to God as redeemed men and women, those who give witness at all times to the merciful love of the Redeemer and try to bring others to experience these same blessings, because they, too, were created and redeemed for the praise of God’s glory.

* This identity should strengthen us at all times and influence all our actions. In today’s Gospel, Jesus warns us of the “leaven” or hypocrisy of the Pharisees, the particular corruption about which he’s been speaking for several days. Pharisaical hypocrisy is a cancer that metastasizes and grows. Jesus wants us to be a different type of leaven, in correspondence with the Holy Spirit with which we’ve been sealed. When the Holy Spirit works within, we receive, among other things, his help to live with integrity, to proclaim the faith, to trust in God’s providence and to live with courage. The Holy Spirit reminds and convinces us of the truth of what Jesus teaches, so that we may proclaim it in light from the housetops. The Holy Spirit helps us to cry out “Abba! Dad,” and to grasp that we are worth more than many sparrows and all the lilies of the field. The Holy Spirit helps us to live in the presence of God and all of his angels and saints, conscious that there is nothing done in secret that will not be known. The Holy Spirit forms us to live, for those reasons, with great courage, not fearing those who can only kill the body, but rather living with a holy awe of the One who can cast into Gehenna — God himself — but who chooses us instead to be his own and blesses us with e...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Teresa of Avila

October 15, 2020

Eph 1:1-10, Ps 98, Lk 11:47-54

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in today’s homily: 

* Today we begin two weeks of study of St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, which is one of the most uplifting and synthetic of all the great apostle’s teaching of the early Church, in which he makes plain God the Father’s plan and will to bring all things into a union of love through the work of Christ his Son continued and carried out in his body the Church. At the very beginning of the letter, which we have today, St. Paul describes what God has done for us and what he asks of us. It’s important for us to ponder these truths often, especially when we are having a bad day or are tempted to forget who we are.

* St. Paul begins by reminding us of how blessed we are to be Christians: the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has “blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens.” God held nothing back. There are no blessings we haven’t been given. And we’ve been given those blessings not just through Christ but in Christ who is the greatest blessing of all. God’s greatest blessing is himself.

* He then reminds us of our vocation: God chose us in Christ, “before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him.” Before God said, “Let there be light” and “Let us make man in our image,” he not only had us in mind but chose us and he gave us the vocation to be saints, to be holy and immaculate before him. If he’s given us this vocation, he will provide the means, and those means constitute the “every spiritual blessing in Christ” his Son.

* He then reminds us of our filiation and inheritance: “In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ, in accord with the favor of his will, for the praise of the glory of his grace that he granted us in the beloved.” In St. Paul’s day, when someone was adopted, he was treated identically to a biologically child; if he were older than the eldest biological child, he received all the rights of primogeniture. For St. Paul to talk about our being adopted, he means that we have received the full inheritance of Jesus! How can we not praise the glory of this grace?

* Though obviously we’re sinners and fallen, God has taken that into consideration as well from before the creation of the world. “In Christ, we have redemption by his Blood, the forgiveness of transgressions, in accord with the riches of his grace that he has lavished upon us.” He has lavished his mercy upon us in Christ, as part of “every spiritual blessing.”

* And he has also made plain his plan so that we can cooperate freely and fully with it: “In all wisdom and insight, he has made known to us the mystery of his will in accord with his favor that he set forth in him as a plan for the fullness of times, to sum up all things in Christ, in heaven and on earth.” The mystery is now an open secret: God wants to bring us into communion, communion with God, communion with each other. He wants us to grasp that all of creation is part of God’s plan of love. Christ’s mission is to restore to unity the various divisions that entered through sin.

* That’s God’s blessing, calling, help and plan, but he has made us free and each of us needs to respond to that plan by embracing it and letting our whole life develop in accordance with it. As we prayed in today’s Psalm, “The Lord has made known his salvation,” but we’re called to “sing a new song to the Lord for he has done wondrous deeds.” That’s obviously what the saints do, letting God’s blessing in Christ develop within them so that,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Callistus, Bishop and Martyr

October 14, 2020

Gal 5:18-25, Ps 1, Lk 11:42-46

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today we come to the end of our reading of St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians and he summarizes everything he’s been saying about the contrast between living while thinking one is saved by the law and external deeds versus living to be saved by God through his grace received and responded to with faith. He does so in describing two totally divergent sets of effects. One he calls the “works of the flesh,” because this is what living focused on the “works of law” produces and is entirely the production of the individual; and the other is called the “fruit of the Spirit,” which like fruit is made requires the cooperation between the one who sows a seed (in this case, the Holy Spirit) and the one who receives it (in this case, us). The contrast couldn’t be greater. Often when we think of the “works of the flesh” we think first of those living under the three fold concupiscence of the lust of the eyes (materialism), lust of the flesh (carnal sensuality) and the pride of life (a desire for control and dominion). But St. Paul makes clear in context that living according to the works of the law, rather than in communion with the Legislator, can produce these same works of the flesh. He says that the works of the flesh are “obvious”: “immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and the like.” He says that those who do such things “will not inherit the kingdom of God,” not so much because they’ll be punished but because they won’t be interested in God’s kingdom after having made other things their god.

* Jesus pronounces a series of “woes” (indications of a cursed life) in the Gospel to those Scribes and Pharisees who, even though they thought they were living the way God wanted them to live were living ultimately according to the flesh. Unless they convert, he said, they’ll be doomed, because while they pay tithes on the smallest of garden herbs they “pay no attention to judgment and to love for God.” They focus on the most conspicuous seats and the greetings of others, but are spiritually dead, “like unseen graves over which people unknowingly walk.” To use the words of today’s Psalm, they’re ultimately like the “chaff that the wind drives away.” They impose burdens on others hard to carry without lifting a finger to help them, the exact opposite of a Good Samaritan. We see the works of the flesh in the way they attacked Jesus and others he had come to save. We see their idolatry of the law. We witness their immorality, hatred, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of anger, acts of selfishness and envy in the way they conspired to have Jesus framed and executed. We see their dissensions and factions in the discussions of the Sanhedrin, to which many of them belonged. On the outside they seemed to be doing the works of God, Jesus was saying, but on the inside they were just doing works of the flesh, refusing to enter the kingdom, and producing only chaff and interior death.

* St. Paul calls the Galatians and all of us Christians to another path. In the Psalm, it’s described as the way of the “blessed man” who “delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on His law day and night,” not as a dry document or as an idol but as a means of growing in love with the Lord who gives us the law to train us to love God and others. Such a person, the Psalm says, is “like a tree planted near running water that yields its fruit in due season and whose leaves never fade.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Tuesday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

October 13, 2020

Gal 5:1-6, Ps 119, Lk 11:37-41

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* There seems to be a serious contradiction in today’s readings. In the Responsorial Psalm, we expressed a great love for the law of the Lord. “In your ordinances is my hope and I will keep your law continually,” we prayed, “because I seek your precepts. I will delight in your commands which I love, and I will lift up my hands to your commands and meditate on your statutes.” Yet in the first reading St. Paul implies that the law is a “yoke of slavery,” that circumcision, which featured prominently in the law, “does not count for anything,” and that those who are “trying to be justified by law” are “separated from Christ” and “fallen from grace.” In the Gospel, Jesus scandalized the Pharisee who had invited him to dinner because he didn’t undergo the elaborate hand-washing ritual that the Scribes prescribed had to be done before eating, pouring a half egg-shell’s worth of water down his folded hands from fingers to wrists, drying the water by making a fist and rubbing the other hand, only to repeat the gesture of another half egg-shell of water poured from wrists to finger tips. Jesus replied by calling the Pharisees “fools.” What is it? Is the law our hope, delight, and meditation or is it worthless and foolish?

* This leads us to two central truths that need to be grasped in our faith. The first is the purpose of the law of God. As Jesus would say elsewhere in the Gospel, the entirety of the law and the prophets hangs on the two-fold command to love God with all we are and have and to love our neighbor. The second is that, on occasion in salvation history, some began to look at the law not within this lens of helping us to love God and others, but as an end in itself, almost even an idol. People, like the Scribes and the Pharisees Jesus confronts and the Judaizers against whom St. Paul battles, began to focus more on the law than on the Legislator and those made in his image and likeness. Over time they began to create a system of interpretations and “fences” around the law (to try to prevent someone from even getting close to breaking it) that often directly opposed love of God and neighbor. We see this often in the Gospel when Jesus is accused of doing evil because he healed people on the Sabbath day, as if the only day we couldn’t love our sick neighbors was on the day of the Lord. The harmony that flows out of the apparent contradiction in today’s readings is that we are called to hope, seek, delight in, love, meditate upon and keep the law of the Lord continuously, but what God means by this is his law of love for God and for all those God loved enough to take on our human nature and die before. Some aspects of the law, like St. Paul described for us last week, were a “tutor” that meant to train us out of our fallen nature and love God and neighbor in little things, preparing us to accept what Jesus himself would come to teach as a fulfillment of that preparation. The law of circumcision, for example, consecrated human generation to God’s plans so that men and women would not forget that human love was meant to be part of the Covenant, but the physical act of consecration was surpassed in the new Covenant by the spiritual dedication: a circumcised heart was far more important than the snipping of foreskins (Deut 10:16; Deut 30:6; Jer 4:4). The dietary laws were likewise meant to consecrate one’s appetite for food to God’s plan, to train them to recognize that it was God who gave animals life (and hence the need to drain them of blood, which symbolizes life) and therefore that they should be slaughtered with a sense of gratitude to God and reverence...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Monday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of Blessed Carlo Acutis

October 12, 2020

Gal 4:22-24.26-27.31.5:1, Ps 113, Lk 11:29-32

 

To listen to the audio homily, please click below: 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today in the first reading, we continue to explore the sharp contrast St. Paul makes in his Letter to the Galatians between Judaized Christians who think we’re saved by our own efforts to keep all the precepts of the Mosaic Law, and the Christians he worked to form who grasp that we’re saved by God, by our response to the manifold graces he gives us. Using an allegorical style of interpretation he learned in rabbinical school, he described the two spiritualities flowing from Hagar through Ishmael and Sarah through Isaac as a “yoke of slavery” versus a “freedom” in response to God’s “promise” (grace through the promised coming of the Messiah and his incarnation, passion and resurrection of Jesus) for which Christ has set us free. The Christians in Galatia were being persuaded by the Judaizers that they couldn’t be good Christians unless they yoked themselves entirely to the Mosaic law like the Scribes and Pharisees did. The law was lived by them not as an experience of freedom to love God and others maximally, but as a straightjacket in which many focused far more on the law — and all of the binding interpretations of the law made by the Scribes — than on God. St. Paul stressed that Christ, in fulfilling the Mosaic law, freed us from that slavery, and in the new and eternal Covenant, sought to help us live by faith in the freedom of the truth as beloved sons and daughters of God.

* These two different spiritualities provide a context for us better to grasp what was happening in today’s Gospel. Many of the Jews who had been influenced by the Scribes and the Pharisees were seeking signs from Jesus, despite the fact that Jesus had been working many signs. Immediately before this scene, as we saw in Friday’s Gospel, Jesus had exorcised a demon from a possessed man, but Jesus’ critics refused to accept that sign as pointing to what it obviously spotlighted, that Jesus was working for God and trying to free people from the domain of the evil one. Instead, they pretended as if the miracle were a sign of another agency, that Jesus was casting out demons by the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons. Likewise these same critics weren’t accepting any of Jesus’ other signs, his many miracles of healing and feeding. They were essentially only looking for signs that corresponded to their preconceived prejudices, that if Jesus were the Messiah, then he would work signs that pointed to his liberating them from the Romans and establishing a political renewal of the Davidic Kingdom. If he were the Messiah, then everything he did, they thought, would be signs corresponding to and indeed confirming what they were laying the foundations to establish. The Messiah couldn’t possibly work signs that would contradict what they were expecting and doing, they thought. So on the one hand, they sought miracles, but only those miracles that confirmed what they wanted confirmed. None of Jesus’ miracles seemed to be doing this, which is why they continued to seek signs. They were like children of Hagar. In contrast, we had on Saturday Jesus’ response to the shout of the anonymous woman, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you,” when the Lord responded about the real thing that makes Mary most blessed of all, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and observe it.” Jesus was looking for those who would receive the Word of God with faith and act on that saving word. These were children of Sarah … and of Mary.

* These two scenes set us up for Jesus’ words today when he says,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

October 10, 2020

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.10.20_Landry_ConCon.mp3

 

The text that guided the homily was: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday.

* In the Gospel, Jesus speaks to us about the kingdom of heaven, the invitation he has given us to join him there forever, and about how we need to respond to that invitation. He does so within the context of a parable about salvation history in which he illustrates for us, basically, how not to respond. He concludes the parable by saying, “Many are invited, but few are chosen.” We obviously want to be numbered among the “chosen few.” The chosen ones are not those whom God somehow favors over others. They are those who respond fully to having been chosen by God. Therefore it’s important for us to pay close attention to what Jesus tells us today that we will respond to his invitation, choose him who has chosen us, and help the “many” we know also learn how to become among the chosen as well!

* Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a wedding banquet a king is throwing for his son. God wants all to come to this feast, he wishes all people to be saved, but there are three parts of this parable that we need to ponder:

* The first is the invitation. Jesus says that the King sent his servants to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. When they didn’t respond the first time, he gave them a second chance. He sent other servants, saying, “Tell those who have been invited: Behold, I have prepared my banquet, my calves and my fattened cattle have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the feast.’” But again they made light of it. One went to his farm, another to his business, and yet others seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. The servants that Jesus has been describing up until now are the prophets who had been sent by God to invite the Jews to this feast, but, as we talked about last week in Jesus’ parable of the tenant farmers in the Master’s vineyard, all of the prophets were mistreated and killed by the people receiving this invitation to communion with God. Only some, like obviously the Blessed Virgin, St. Joseph, the Apostles and those who became Jesus’ disciples, responded to Jesus’ invitation.

* But God kept inviting still.  The servants went out a third time and “gathered all whom they found, both good and bad,” Jesus says, “so the wedding hall was filled with guests.” This is the mission of the Church. We don’t have a Church only for the good and the holy. All are invited. We shouldn’t be surprised, therefore, that in the Church we find great saints and great sinners, that we find the faithful and the hypocrites. Some respond to the invitation by showing up but without conversion. They are invited, but not chosen, because they cooperate with God’s desire to choose them. We see this in what Jesus says about the wedding garment: “When the king came in to meet the guests, he noticed a man there who was not dressed in a wedding garment, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how is it that you came in here without a wedding garment?’ And the man was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind his hands and feet and cast him into the darkness outside, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’”

* At first glance, it might seem that the King is both crazy and cruel. He commanded his servants to invite the man to the feast and then he’s picky about what he’s wearin...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Saturday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

October 10, 2020

Gal 3:22-29, Ps 105, Lk 11:27-28

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* In today’s Gospel, an anonymous woman from the crowd sought to praise Jesus’ mother Mary. “Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed!,” she called out. If any womb was blessed, it was the immaculate womb of Mary of Nazareth that tabernacled for nine months the Creator and Savior of the world. If any breasts were blessed, it would have been those who nursed and fed the one who gives us each day our daily bread. But Jesus wasn’t going to limit the praise of the mother whom he daily honored to her inimitable physical bonds to the Son of God made man. He replied to the woman by highlighting a far greater source of blessing, something that each and every one of us not only can emulate but is called to emulate: “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.” The profoundest source of Mary’s beatitude was her faithful listening and response to God in her life. St. Athanasius described that before Mary had ever conceived the Word of God in her womb, she had already conceived Him in her heart through faith. So many medieval depictions of the Annunciation and the miraculous virginal conception of Jesus in the Incarnation show the Holy Spirit entering through Mary’s ears, to highlight just this faith. In a parallel scene, when Mary had come to see him together with many of his cousins from Nazareth, they told Jesus inside a crowded house where he was teaching and healing that his mother and relatives were outside waiting for him. Taking advantage of the teaching moment, he replied, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother” (Mt 12:46-50). Mary is the paradigm of all those who do the will of God the Father, who hear what he asks and who act on it. To be a true brother or sister of Jesus in the family he came from heaven to earth to found, it’s not really enough just to be baptized, although that’s an essential start. We also have to listen to him as he describes for us the will of God and then, just as he did, say, mean and lovingly do the words “Thy will be done!”

* In the first reading, we see how Saint Paul describes that the entire Old Testament, the Covenant God made with the Jews, was meant to train them to hear and observe the Word of God. “The law was our disciplinarian for Christ,” he says, “that we might be justified by faith.” The word “disciplinarian” in English is the word “pedagogos” in Greek. A pedagogue was a tutor who generally lived with the family of the student, supervised his homework and lessons, and took him to class with the master. The law prepared us, he was suggesting, to meet Jesus the Master, to hear what he was saying and to put it into practice. So many times throughout the Hebrew Bible we hear God say to the Jews through Moses or the Prophets, “If you hear my voice and observe the commandments I am giving you today.” All of God’s revelation was to prepare us to hear and obey, knowing that to hear and to obey are the same word in Hebrew. One area in which we’re called to hear and obey the Master is with regard to communion with each other based on communion with God. We focused earlier this week when we pondered the Our Father God’s will for us to be one family in prayer. Yesterday we had a chance again to focus on it in Jesus’ words about how the devil seeks to divide and he comes to gather into one. But many of us,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. John Henry Newman

October 19, 2020

Gal 3:7-14, Ps 111, Lk 11:15-26

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today’s Gospel was the first Gospel I ever had the privilege to proclaim and today’s readings were the first ones about which I ever preached, 22 years ago today, the day after I was ordained a deacon, at a Mass at the Chapel of Our Lady of Fatima in the Dorothean Sisters’ Casa Fatima across from the North American College in Rome. I’ve always thought that God was very good to me in giving me these readings because they’re not particularly easy to preach on, and so from the first time I ever had the chance to act on what I was instructed at my diaconal ordination, to “Believe what you read [and] teach what you believe,” I had to do so explicitly with far greater dependence on God, far greater cooperation with the Holy Spirit. Whenever I have had the chance to preach, therefore, on the readings of the 27th Friday of Ordinary Year Year II, it always reminds me of the summons God gives to turn to him for light not just for these readings but every time I preach.

* Today we have the joy to celebrate for the first time the Memorial of Saint John Henry Newman, canonized last October 13 in Rome. In light of his life, I’d like to focus on two huge lessons from today’s readings.

* The first is about faith. In today’s reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians, the apostle talks to us about faith, saying that it is those who have faith who are children of Abraham. St. Paul was writing this to the Christians he had evangelized on his first and second journeys, but whose faith had then been reprogrammed by Judaized Christians coming from Jerusalem, those who thought that in order to be a good Christian, you first had to be a perfect Jew. They didn’t realize that the Mosaic Law was a gift to prepare God’s people for the advent of the Messiah and who he would bring the law to perfection. St. Paul will call it, as we’ll see, a pedagogue or tutor, someone would travel with you to class to the master or professor, and then, after class, go over all of the lessons. St. Paul was stressing throughout this letter as well as his letter to the Romans that we are saved by God through faith: it’s God work that we receive through the gift of faith. The Judaizers, like the Pharisees of which he was once one, thought we were saved by our actions of fidelity to God’s law. We’re judged by them, but not saved by them. We’re saved by God that we receive through faith. But the big takeaway is not just why the Judaizing Christians were wrong. The great takeaway is how we’re supposed to live. We’re supposed to live by faith just like Abraham. We’re constantly being asked by God to make journeys of faith like Abraham did at 75, leaving Ur of the Chaldeans, his security, his life as he knew it until then and journey to a place God would show him. God didn’t tell him the destination, but Abraham trusted in him enough to go. God promised that he would become the father of many nations and showed him the stars of the sky as a confirmation of how many descendants he’d have, but the text of Genesis is clear that he was asked to look into the heavens when the sky was blue, not dark, because dusk came afterward. Abraham knew the stars were there, but couldn’t see them, which is a good image of what faith means, a certainty without seeing with worldly eyes. He didn’t know that he would have to wait 25 years for the fulfillment of that promise, but he continued to believe.