Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

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

October 8, 2018

Gal 3:1-5, Lk 1:69-75, Lk 11:5-13

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Yesterday when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, he began by teaching them that the secret of prayer is to approach God as a loving Father. Once we do, almost everything flows. We begin to seek the glory and sanctification of his name and the building of his kingdom not only because we love Him but also because we know that, as his sons and daughters, we share that name and are heirs of that kingdom. Once we relate to him as a Loving Father than we trust in his providence to give us each day what we need and in his mercy to forgive us when we err because he loves us more than he detests the sins that hurt us and wound our relationship with him. When we relate to him as a Loving Father we trust him not to put us in a position in which we’ll fail the ultimate test but to challenge us and help us to meet those challenges that are beyond what we think are possible.

* Today Jesus continues his responding to our request to teach us how to pray by illustrating for us how to persevere in prayer. He gives us a parable based on Middle Eastern customs of hospitality. Especially during the summer months when the sun is most brutal, many Jews would travel at night and so it was not unheard of that a guest would arrive at your home — in the days before not only phones, texts and emails but also before a postal system that was affordable and efficient — unannounced at night, famished after a long journey. Because bread was baked normally in the morning, it’s possible that all the bread had already been eaten. That’s why you’d go to your neighbors to ask if they had anything to share. The second thing to understand about Middle Eastern culture is that their doors were open all day long but when they were shut and locked, that meant that the entire family and all their animals had gone to bed. They’d sleep together in an interior part of the house to stay warm during the typical middle eastern radiational cooling at night. To get up to answer the door when a neighbor was knocking at midnight meant that one might be stepping on one’s children, one’s animals and waking everyone up. It’s understandable that one would want to wait to share bread until the morning. But Jesus says that because of the perseverance of the neighbor, “I tell you, if he does not get up to give him the loaves because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence.” Jesus mentions this as a lesson in prayer precisely in order to contrast that motivation with one of God. He was saying, “If a neighbor would eventually give in because of harassment, think about how God will respond out of love?” That led Jesus to say, “I tell you, ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you, for everyone who asks receives, everyone who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks the door will be opened.” Notice that he doesn’t say that one will receive, find or have the door opened immediately. He also doesn’t say that one will receive and find exactly what one expected to find. But he does promise God will respond, precisely because God is a loving Father who always responds first and foremost by giving himself. That’s why Jesus said, “What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.” God sends the Holy Spirit not just to those who ask for the Holy Spirit but for those who ask, seek,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

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

Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary

October 7, 2020

Gal 2:1-2.7-14, Ps 117, Lk 11:1-4

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Yesterday we pondered the example of Mary of Bethany sitting at Jesus’ feet, allowing him to feed her. She had chosen the better part and the one thing necessary, the activity more important than all others. Today we see Jesus sitting at the feet of his Father in prayer. His example of prayer brought the disciples to ask him, “Lord, teach us to pray just as John [the Baptist] taught his disciples.” Jesus had already taught them much about prayer by his parables describing the need to pray with perseverance, patience, humility, purity of intention, faith, without show and in his name. He had taught them much by his example of prayer, constantly going out at night or early in the morning to pray. But they were asking for some direct instruction, to have Jesus open up to them the mystery of intimacy with God. Today we also learn how to sit at Jesus’ feet in the school of Mary his Mother as we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, and within Mary’s contemplative heart, ponder the Blessed Fruit of her Womb, the central mysteries of his life, and the central love of his sacred heart.

* We should be conscious that the Rosary grew over time. At the beginning, Christians accustomed to praying the 150 Psalms, began to substitute 150 Our Fathers when they didn’t have the Psalter with them, especially as they were walking on long journeys. Some began to do the same with 150 Angelic Salutations, the first half of the Hail Mary. Eventually the Rosary as we now have it, particularly through the preaching of the Dominican Order, began to grow. As St. John Paul II wrote in his beautiful exhortation on the Holy Rosary 18 years ago, that in praying the Rosary, “it is natural for the mind to be lifted up towards the Father. In each of his mysteries, Jesus always leads us to the Father, for as he rests in the Father’s bosom (cf. Jn 1:18) he is continually turned towards him. He wants us to share in his intimacy with the Father, so that we can say with him: “Abba, Father” (Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6). By virtue of his relationship to the Father he makes us brothers and sisters of himself and of one another, communicating to us the Spirit that is both his and the Father’s.” He cites Blessed Bartolo Longo, whose feast day we remembered two days ago, who saw in the Rosary beads “a ‘chain’ that links us to God. A chain, yes, but a sweet chain; for sweet indeed is the bond to God who is also our Father. A ‘filial’ chain that puts us in tune with Mary, the ‘handmaid of the Lord’ (Lk 1:38) and, most of all, with Christ himself, who, though he was in the form of God, made himself a ‘servant’ out of love for us (Phil 2:7).”

* This is a prayer we’re called to take up. Twenty-five years ago today, St. John Paul II, before he would bless the offices of the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the UN, prayed the Rosary in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in the presence of the first Sisters of Life, other religious and a representative from each of the over 400 parishes in the Archdiocese. He spoke to those present, and the whole Church, about the importance of praying the Rosary in the family, saying, “One prayer in particular I recommend to families: the one we have just been praying, the Rosary. And especially the Joyful Mysteries, which help us to meditate on the Holy Family of Nazareth. Uniting her will with the will of God, Mary conceived the Christ Child, and became the model of every mother carrying her unborn ...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

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

Memorial of Blessed Marie Rose Durocher; Memorial of St. Bruno

October 6, 2020

Gal 1:13-24, Ps 139, Lk 10:38-42

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Yesterday Jesus gave us the Parable of the Good Samaritan, praising the one who made the effort to take care of another in contrast to those who did nothing. In several other places in the Gospel he praised service of others: he said that he himself had come among us as one who serves (Lk 22:27); he washed his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper and told them to do the same (Jn 13:12-14); he promised to gird himself with an apron and wait on those at the heavenly banquet (Lk 12:37); and he said that the greatest among us would be the one who serves the rest (Mt 23:11). And so in today’s Gospel, Jesus was clearly not castigating Martha for her loving service. What he was saying to her, however, was that none of those efforts was strictly-speaking essential, that therefore there was no reason to get worked about them, and that there was something more important, something that Mary realized and that Martha as yet hadn’t.

* Both Martha and Mary loved Jesus very much. As an expression of that love, Martha worked very hard to prepare a meal for him, something that was much more time-consuming in the ancient world without stoves, or refrigerators, or blenders or ready-made cooking supplies than it is today. She likely also cleaned her house, which, too, was much more challenging in the age before vacuum cleaners, running water, and so forth. It’s natural that she would have been exasperated doing all of this work while her sister Mary seemed to be doing nothing. After she complained to Jesus, however, Jesus corrected not Mary but Martha, telling her that she was anxious and concerned about many small things but only one was necessary. Mary had chosen the better part, the one thing necessary — Jesus himself — and it was not going to be taken away from her to focus on relatively less important things. What Mary grasped that Martha didn’t is that Jesus had come to their home primarily to feed and not to be fed, to serve rather than to be served, and it was Mary who understood this and sat at his feet as he not only fed her with the nourishment of his word and presence but cleaned her interior house by his own purity.  The welcome he sought most was their time, their friendship, their love, their open ears and receptive hearts. Mary intuitively grasped this and sat at Jesus’ feet listening to him as if nothing in the rest of the world really mattered — because, in fact, Jesus implies, nothing in the rest of the world really does matter anywhere near as much. Jesus once said in a parable, “The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it” (Mt 13:45-46). Jesus was for Mary that pearl of great price more valuable than everything else in the jewelry collection of her life. Mary showed how much she understood the practical consequences of Jesus’ value when he and his apostles visited their home again, just a few days before his death. St. John gives us the scene: “Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served [some things never change!], and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume” (Jn 12:1-8). The aromatic nard would have cost Mary almost a full year’s salary, but she spent it entirely on Jesus because she knew he was worth ...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

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

Dedication of St. Patrick’s Cathedral

Memorial of St. Faustina Kowalska, Bl. Francis Xavier Seelos, Bl. Bartolo Longo

October 5, 2020

Gal 1:6-12, Ps 111, Lk 10:25-37

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* On Saturday, in a prayer to God the Father, Jesus contrasted the “wise and the clever” from those who accept the Kingdom like like children. Today in the Gospel, we meet one of those who is “wise and clever.” A scholar of the law approaches to test Jesus about what he needs to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus flips the question around and asks the scribe from his study of the law what he thinks the answer is. He gives the same synthetic answer that Jesus would give elsewhere (Mt 22:34-40): to love God with all we have and to love our neighbor like we love ourselves. Jesus told him that he had answered correctly, but he added something else: “Do this and you will live.” It was clear that the scholar knew what needed to be done, but Jesus, seeing his heart, recognized the struggle for this scribe would have to put into practice what he knew. Salvation isn’t dependent so much on our intelligence, on what we know, but who we are, and our character is forged by our action. We see how right Jesus was in the scribe’s follow-up question. Wishing to justify himself, he asked, “And who is my neighbor?” At first glance, the question might seem one of sincere curiosity, but behind it is the premise that there are some people who are his neighbors and some who are not. The typical Jews of the time thought that they were to love their neighbor and hate their enemy (Mt 5:43), that they were supposed to care for those Jews who followed the law, but cut themselves off from sinners, from Samaritans, from Gentiles and from basically everyone who didn’t toe the line. The scribe wanted to be justified in not loving certain of his neighbors. That’s why Jesus told him the Parable of the Good Samaritan to teach him who really loves his neighbor, before adding, “Go and do the same.”

* Jesus changed the way that the Scribe (and the people of the time) looked at loving our neighbor from “objectively” seeking to define who was and was not our neighbor that we should treat with love, to “subjectively” becoming a neighbor to everyone, to being willing to love and treat with mercy whomever we meet. St. John Paul II wrote in Love and Responsibility that a human being is someone to whom the only worthy response is love. That’s what it means to become a neighbor: a person who sees everyone as someone to whom one should show love and mercy, someone who recognizes everyone is in his neighborhood. This is what Jesus did to us, drawing close to us when we were dying, left in a ditch, mugged by the evil one, left for dead. He bound our wounds, carried us on his shoulders, poured his precious blood into us, brought us to the inn of the Church and promised to repay everyone who is kind to us at his second coming. And he as a Good Samaritan continues to come to us with all our wounds every morning. He wants us to follow him in loving like this.

* Insofar as we, too, need not just to love God with all we are but to become Good Samaritans to all in order to inherit eternal life, it’s important for us to enter more deeply into this parable of Jesus. Jesus describes a mugged man left in a ditch dying. A priest and a Levite journey by that route — two people who were religious, who should have been living by God’s command to love their neighbor — but, seeing the dying man, pass by the other side. Perhaps they were late for an appointment at the temple. Perhaps they didn’t want to become ritually impure by touching the man’s blood,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

October 3, 2020

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.3.20_Landry_ConCon.mp3

 

The text that guided today’s 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, when Jesus will give us another parable about a vineyard, this time one that is leased out to tenants who, rather than paying their rent, beat and kill the servants sent to collect it and even kill the owner’s son when he comes to speak to them. What Jesus says has both a very important historical meaning as well as a crucial actual meaning. For us to understand its present significance, though, we first need to grasp the historical lessons Jesus was teaching his original listeners.

* With the image of the vineyard, Jesus was summarizing God’s relations with the Jewish people. As God himself said through the prophet Isaiah in this Sunday’s first reading: “The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting.” The vineyard is ultimately all of God’s people, all of the children he has created. And we are meant to work and cultivate that vineyard.

* But God gave the house of Israel more than just this stewardship over the great natural endowment of creation. He also made them stewards of a greater gift, the Covenant he had established with the human race.  Through Isaiah, we see how much personal care God took in preparing the vineyard of Israel. He “dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it.” God himself, in other words, had done all of the hard work building the “infrastructure” of the vineyard, clearing it so that it can bear fruit, putting a watchtower in it to guard for animals coming to eat the fruit, establishing a wine press so that fruit can immediately produce joy. He gave the “house of Israel” the relatively light task of maintaining that vineyard and bearing fruit from that Covenant. But what happened? God tells us through Isaiah that “he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes.” It had the appearance of growth, the outward show of fruit, but the fruit was worth nothing. “Fruit” is always to be interpreted as acts of love, justice, goodness, and faith. This is not what God found. He found, rather, bloodshed. So the owner of the vineyard — God the Father, as Jesus tells us in the parable — sent his servants the prophets to them to remind them of the need to produce good fruit from all God’s gifts and to teach them by word and example how to do so. But their reaction was to beat and kill the messengers. So God the Father sent others, “more than the first, and they treated them in the same way.” This is precisely what happened to God’s prophets; almost all of them were killed. Jesus, in fact, would later lament over the holy city, Jerusalem, because it was the site of the execution of so many prophets: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!” (Mt 23:37).

* Jesus tells us that after all of those unjust deaths his Father the landowner sent his son to them, saying, “They will respect my son.” But rather than respond with gratitude for yet one more chance, they said to themselves, “‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.”  When Jesus said those words, he was telling them precisely what was occurring in their hearts at that moment a...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Saturday of the 26th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Mother Theodore Guerin

October 3, 2020

Job 42:1-3.5-6.12-17, Ps 119, Lk 10:17-24

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* On Thursday the Church was able to focus on the meaning of spiritual childhood, with the feast of St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the “little way of trust and love” that helped make her a doctor of the Church. Yesterday, on the feast of the Guardian Angels, we heard Jesus’ call to convert and become like little children to inherit the kingdom of heaven, and how our guardian angels, even from the time we’re the littlest of children, are constantly before the Father’s throne in heaven praying for us so that we paradoxically grow to full stature while continuously converting to being spiritual children. Today Jesus speaks about spiritual childhood when he rejoices in the Holy Spirit and praises his Father for revealing the most important things — especially who the Father is — to the childlike rather than to the worldly wise and learned. He was rejoicing because the 72 had just returned from proclaiming the Gospel and had participated in Jesus’ authority over Satan and the demons. The disciples were full of joy. Jesus responded by saying, “I have observed Satan fall like lightning from the sky.” This meant that they had “tread[ed] upon serpents and scorpions and upon the full force of the enemy and nothing [harmed] them” but was also a warning for them not to become proud as a result of it, because Satan himself had fallen. He then helped them to rejoice fundamentally because their names had been written in heaven, that they were known by God before they had done anything. He finished the whole passage by saying how blessed they were to see and hear what they do and not to take it for granted. He wanted them to share his joy in what God was doing, which was far greater than what they themselves had done!

* We can see the drama between being childlike and worldly “wise and clever” throughout the Book of Job we’ve been pondering this week. Job had a childlike faith that rejoiced in both what the Lord gave and took away and blessed God’s name. His friends, however, were educated and tried to draw him to look at things in a sophisticated manner, without childlike trust. His sufferings challenged him to begin a little rebellion. But when God spoke and took him on a spiritual journey through creation seen from the perspective of the Creator, he repented and returned anew to his childlike situation. He humbly admitted today, “I have dealt with great things that I do not understand; things too wonderful for me, which I cannot know.” His childlike faith was rewarded, by receiving more than he had had before. The extended allegory of Job helps us to appreciate the way God’s mercy works: As St. Ambrose teaches, our state after having been forgiven is greater than if we had never sinned, because we know know God in his mercy better than we would have otherwise.

* Someone who lived with this mature childlike faith and helped thousands of others to learn to do so is the American saint we celebrate today, St. Mother Theodore Guerin, the foundress of the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana, who was baptized on this day back in 1798 in France. (She died on May 14 in 1856, but May 14 is the Feast of St. Matthias and so the Church celebrates the day of her baptism). As a young girl she distinguished herself by her love for God and those God had made her neighbor. When she made her first communion at the age of 10, she confided to the priest that she was being called to religious life, but after her father was murdered by bandits when she was 15,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Feast of the Guardian Angels

October 2, 2020

Ex 23:20-23, Ps 90, Mt 18:1-5.10

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* What an incredible gift it is that God has sent an angel before us, as we read in the Book of Exodus, to guard us on the way and bring us to the place he has prepared! At the beginning of Mass we prayed that God who is pleased to send his holy Angels to guard us, may hear our supplication that we may “always be defended by their protection and rejoice eternally in their company.” It’s to that eternal, celestial company to which God has sent them to guide us.

* The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “The whole life of the Church benefits from the mysterious and powerful help of angels. … In her liturgy, the Church joins with the angels to adore the thrice-holy God. She invokes their assistance. … From its beginning until death, human life is surrounded by their watchful care and intercession. ‘Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life’ (St. Basil the Great). Already here on earth the Christian life shares by faith in the blessed company of angels and men united in God” (CCC 334-336).

* The reality we have to confront, however, is that many of us are oblivious in day-to-day life to the presence of our guardian angels. This is a larger problem of scientism, or the rationalistic, materialistic understanding that the only thing we can know we can observe with our senses or with scientific instruments. And so many of us go about our life without an awareness of the supernatural realm, of angels on the one hand, of the devil and his fallen angels on the other. While we theoretically believe they exist or at least could exist, we live as if they don’t. Today’s feast is an opportunity for us to open up to the truth that reality is much broader than we ordinarily think and begin to live it better in all its practical circumstances.

* Today God tells the Israelites about the angel sent to guard them: “Be attentive to him and heed his voice. Do not rebel against him. … If you heed his voice and carry out all I tell you, I will be an enemy to your enemies and a foe to your foes.” God calls us to acknowledge that he has sent his angel in front of us, to be attentive to him, to heed his voice, and to carry out all he tells us through him. But how we do that? None of us wants to disobey what God commands us through them, but how can we follow someone we cannot see, how can we heed someone whose voice doesn’t register on a decibel meter, how can we can we observe commands that are not communicated in ways that up until this point at least we haven’t been able to perceive?

* The first thing we need to be is to be aware of our guardian angel’s presence. To acknowledge him. To recognize we’re not alone. Even if we can’t perceive him with our five senses, to recognize that he is nevertheless there as the biggest supporter we’ve ever had, seeking to help us.

* Second we need trustingly to ask for his help. Today we can ponder how to do that with regard to certain fundamental aspects of our life.

* First, with regard to our prayer. We can pray to our guardian angel. There’s a great prayer that many of us learned as children that we should pray with fervor. It’s based on what we ponder in Sacred Scripture today: “Angel of God, my guardian dear, to Whom His love commits me here, ever this day be at my side to light and guard to rule and guide. Amen.” We can also rely on his prayers for us before God’s throne, because he is “always looking upon the face of the Heavenly Father,” and interceding for us. We can also ask our guardian angel to help us to pray and pray better.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the 26th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face

October 1, 2020

Job 19:21-27, Ps 27, Lk 10:1-12

 

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

 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* On Tuesday, if we did not have the proper Gospel reading for the Feast of the Archangels, we would have come to the fulcrum of St. Luke’s Gospel (Lk 9:51), in which we read how Jesus fixed his face on Jerusalem, on Calvary, on his redemptive passion, and how everything thereafter in St. Luke’s Gospel is meant to be understood with that focus in mind, a focus he wants us to share. That’s what grounds today’s commission of the 72 to proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom. Jesus was heading toward his coronation (with thorns). They were to be the heralds of the Kingdom, which means that that King is present, the King is alive, the King provides, the King brings peace. All of the instructions Jesus gives is with that in mind. There’s an urgency to the task: they’re to pray for fellow laborers for the harvest, because the harvest is ripe; they’re to greet no one along the way, but be focused on completing their mission; they’re being sent not as assassins but as lambs, to announce meekly to others’ freedom, rather than compel them; they’re to show their trust in God’s providence by not taking money, a sack of food, a second pair of sandals; they’re to announce the peace that the Prince of Peace has brought through the forgiveness of sins; they’re to eat whatever is set before them, whether served by Pharisees or by Publicans, whether kosher or not, because the King created it all and it’s not a forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; they’re to stay in the same place, grateful to God and to their hosts, and not looking for a better one; they’re to cure the sick as a sign of the cure of the soul that the King is bringing about. All of these flow from a living relationship with the King.

* We see the same relationship with a living King in Job. After his friends failed to persuade him that his sufferings were a result of sin, after his arguments likewise failed to persuade them, after he was experiencing profound pain and sorrow, he made an extraordinary profession of faith. That even should he die and return to the dust from which he came, “I know that my Vindicator lives and that he will at last stand forth upon the dust.” He knew that his Redeemer, God, is alive and would live on after his death — and not only that but “I myself shall see Him … with my own eyes … from my flesh,” something that filled his inmost being with longing. As he was in great pain throughout his body, his innards were longing not for “relief” but for his Redeemer!

* That type of faith, trust and love in the living Lord, the Redeemer of the human person, is what characterized the faith of St. Therese Lisieux, whom the Church rejoices to celebrate today. It is the essence of her “little way of trust and love” that was validated by the Church when it proclaimed St. Therese as a doctor. On Saturday, I met with many of the new fellows for this year’s Leonine Forum and one of them mentioned that St. Therese was her favorite saint because she made the way of holiness simple. That’s what God has done through her. St. Therese has taught us all through her little way of spiritual childhood how to trust in God like a little child and to let God do the heavy lifting for our holiness. We need to open ourselves up with grateful love to receive that gift and to cooperate with the holy stubbornness of a child.

* Holiness, however, is not just following Christ as disciples, but being transformed by him so that we might share his Mission,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the 26th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Jerome on the 1600th Anniversary of His Death

September 30, 2020

Job 9:1-12.14-16, Ps 88, Lk 9:57-62

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily:

* Yesterday, if we didn’t have the feast of the Archangels, we would have heard the fulcrum of St. Luke’s Gospel, which is verse 9:51: Jesus “fixed his face toward Jerusalem,” toward Golgotha, toward the fulfillment of his Messianic mission. Everything for the rest of St. Luke’s Gospel needs to be interpreted within that context. And as he was heading there, he met three different people, two of whom volunteered to follow him and one of whom Jesus directly called. But to all of them, Jesus described what it would mean to follow him. What he taught them is crucial for us to know in order for us to follow Christ faithfully and help others to become his true disciples.

* In the first vocation story, a man runs up to Jesus and says, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus had come into the world to make disciples and many would refuse to follow him, so we would have expected this man who wanted to follow Jesus to fill Jesus with joy. Instead Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and the birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Jesus wanted him to know the cost of discipleship, especially at a time in which messianic expectations had hyped up the Jews to think that the Messiah would kick out the Romans and set up a political administration in which there would be plenty of patronage. Jesus wanted the man to grasp that to follow him wherever he went meant to go after someone who was basically homeless, to value him more than one’s own home and one’s own bed, to realize that you wouldn’t even have what foxes and birds take for granted. We, too, need to ponder the radical nature of God’s call. Are we willing to follow Jesus wherever he goes? If he asks us, like God asked Abraham, to leave our own native place at 75 and go to a place he would eventually show us, would we follow him, or would we value our home, our bed, our old habits more than we do the Lord?

* The second scene involves a man to whom Jesus said, “Follow me!” But this man replied, “Lord, let me go first to bury my father.” When we hear this, we can presume that the person’s dad had just died and he just wanted to go home for the funeral and then immediately return. The text doesn’t say that, however. What’s much more likely was that the man’s father was very much alive and might live for decades still. What the interlocutor was likely communicating was, “Jesus, I’d like to follow you, but my father comes first. As soon as I’ve fulfilled all of my obligations to him, then I’ll be free to come and follow.” Jesus’ reply was strong: “Let the dead bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the Kingdom of God.” As Jesus would say a little later at the raising of Lazarus, he is the Resurrection and the Life and everyone who lives and believes in him will never die, even if he dies (Jn 11:25-26). For us to become alive in the most important sense of all, we need to be in a living relationship to him. If we’re not following him, if we’re not allowing his life to reign within us, we’re dead, even if all our corporeal vital signs are healthy. He was calling this man to become fully alive and was seeking to give him a participation in the Resurrection. He was giving him a choice between life and death, between living and dying even while breathing, and Jesus was encouraging him to let those who are “dead,” who don’t have this relationship, bury their confrères. Jesus doesn’t call most people to make a strict choice between him and their family members. He calls us, after all,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Feast of the Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael

September 29, 2020

Rev 12:7-12, Ps 138, Jn 1:47-51

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* In the Gospel today, Jesus describes for us the two-fold activity of angels: “ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” They “ascend” in order to serve the Lord and “descend” in order to serve us on behalf of God. This double service was also alluded to in the Opening Prayer as we turned to God and asked that he “graciously grant that our life on earth may be defended by those who watch over us [descending] as they minister perpetually to you in heaven [ascending].” As we ponder today their double work, we are also called to let them help us to learn how to ascend and descend with them in praise of God and service of others.

* The Archangel’s first and most important activity is to praise God. “Praise him, all you angels,” the Psalms say (Ps 148:2). They want to help us to learn how to praise God with them. We prayed together in today’s Responsorial Psalm, “In the sight of the angels, I will sing your praises, Lord!” With a watchful gaze, they want to help us to be able to say, both in this world and forever, “I will give thanks to you, O Lord, with all my heart, for you have heard the words of my mouth; in the presence of the angels I will sing your praise; I will worship at your holy temple and give thanks to your name.” They help us to do that obviously in the Mass, which features two great angelic hymns, the one that that derives from what the angels chanted on Christmas morning, the “Glory to God in the Highest,” and the one that comes from what the Prophet Isaiah saw in an angelic vision, the “Holy, Holy, Holy.” Today is a day in which we recognize that we’re not praying alone, but that the angels are helping us to praise and thank God with all our being.

* Their second activity is to descend upon us to bring us God’s assistance. The Archangel Gabriel brought Zechariah and Mary God’s word, Raphael brought Tobias God’s accompaniment, Michael brings the Church protection. Their names say a lot about how they seek to serve us. Gabriel means God’s strength and he seeks to strengthen us, like he strengthened the sinless Virgin Mary, not to be afraid to respond to God’s call. Raphael means “God’s medicine” and he strives to heal us not of physical cataracts like he did Tobit/Raguel but rather everything that hinders our seeing God and growing in his image. Michael means “He is who like God” and he strives to defends us from all evil that renders us dissimilar to God who is holy, holy, holy. By our baptism we are united to Christ in his three-fold identity as prophet, priest and king, and the Archangels help us in this triple munera: Gabriel helps us to become prophets like Christ, Raphael helps us to bring God’s medicine especially through the Sacraments, and Michael helps us to reign by serving, protecting us from the way the evil one seeks to help us to serve him rather than God and others.

* Their presence accompanies us in a particular way throughout every daily Mass. We invoke Gabriel before every Mass as we pray the Angelus at 6 am and ponder the Good News of the Incarnation that never becomes old news. We invoke St. Michael at the end of Mass asking us to defend us together with Jesus whom we now bear inside. And St. Raphael seeks to help us to live the Mass, the medicine of God, the medicine of immortality, through the day into eternity. We need to live these realities more.

* At least for me, when I pray the Angelus, I’m focused most on the “Verbum caro factum est,” “The Word [who] became flesh and dwelled among us” and the “Ancilla Domini,” Mary,