Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Saturday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Mass for Independence Day

Memorial of St. Elizabeth of Portugal and Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati

July 4, 2020

Amos 9:11-15, Ps 85, Mt 9:14-17

 

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

 

To following points were made in today’s homily: 

* Today as the United States marks its 244th birthday as a nation and we focus, on independence day, on freedom, not only on the historical liberation from King George III and the United Kingdom but on what our freedom is for, what Madison described as “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” We Christians can deepen these aims of freedom expressed in the Declaration by the Biblical ideas of zoe (not just biological life but the higher life of the soul that Christ came to give us to the full), freedom (Christ has set us free precisely so that we might love God and others by his standard), and the pursuit of happiness (which is far more than pleasure, and meant to last far more than even 244 years, through the pursuit of holiness). The United States of America was formed with this deeper context in mind, to allow for the possibility of fulfilling it. But for that to be achieved, we need a revolutionary spirit in every generation, the courage of many of our founding fathers to be willing to risk their lives for this ideal, and to remember what so many of them remarked, that if we’re going to have a republic conceived in liberty remain, the citizens must use their liberty in a particular way, tied to responsibility. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people, as John Adams once wrote, and it is fit for no other. So today is a good today, helped by today’s readings, to ponder that reality.

* In today’s first reading, we finish a week-long prayerful examination of the Prophet Amos. He was sent by God from Tekoa south of Jerusalem in the Kingdom of Judah to prophesy in the Kingdom of Israel to the north about the rampant injustice taking place there, the infidelity of the professional priests and prophets, of businessmen, of average Joshuas and Miriams. Throughout the book Amos constantly points out the failure of the people to live justly. They were prosperous and had begun to live for money, marginalizing God, selling off needy people for goods, oppressing the poor, taking advantage of the helpless, men were using women for pleasure. They needed a deep conversion and Amos was unsparing. Many were frightened as a result. Today we get to the last five verses, which foretell the consolation that awaits if they turn back to the Lord and to justice and charity in their relations with others. Through Amos God promises mercy, to “raise up the fallen hut of David … and rebuild it as in the days of old.” He promises that “the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the vintager, him who sows the seed; the juice of grapes shall drip down the mountains, and all the hills shall run.” Those are incredible images, saying that people will not be able to plant or crush grapes fast enough and that there will be tremendous fruit and joy, like grapes running down a mountain.

* In the Gospel, we see how all of this would be fulfilled. Jesus uses two images to describe how his people need to receive and respond the fulfillment of Amos’ prophecies. The first image is that of a patch. He says no one sews a new patch on an old set of clothing, because the new patch when it shrinks will tear the old fabric. Jesus has come not to patch up the difficulties in Judaism, but rather to give us new clothing. He has come to clothe us in himself. He has come to give us a baptismal garment, which is the garment that the sons and the daughters of the wedding chamber — whom he refers shouldn’t be mourning but celebrating,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Feast of St. Thomas, Apostle

July 3, 2020

Eph 2:19-22, Ps 117, Jn 20:24-29

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* A couple of years ago I had the privilege as a Missionary of Mercy to concelebrate Mass with Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Square on Divine Mercy Sunday. The Gospel for the Feast  always includes today’s Gospel and Pope Francis began his homily by commenting on St. John’s mentioning that Thomas was called Didymus, for twin. That almost certainly means that he had a twin and Pope Francis said that we can interpret all of that spiritually, that we’re meant to be a twin of Thomas, that he is meant to be our “twin brother.” And so today we can focus on what we can learn from the faith of our twin.

* It’s a pity in many ways that St. Thomas, who left everything to follow the Lord Jesus, who gave his entire life for the Lord and died in witness to faith, is called “Doubting Thomas” as much as he is called “Saint.” He is the most famous doubter in history! But his doubts were not unique among the first disciples and apostles. With the exception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, none of the early disciples believed after the resurrection. The women went to anoint a corpse. The disciples in Emmaus were talking to an anonymous Wayfarer about a Jesus whom they thoroughly believed was dead. When Mary Magdalene and these Emmaus disciples went to inform the other apostles that they had seen Jesus, the apostles didn’t believe them. That’s why Jesus, when he appeared to them as St. Mark reminds us through St. Peter, “rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart because they had not believed those who saw him after he had been raised” (Mk 16:14). Faith, as we know, is the belief in something on the basis of a belief in someone giving witness. They had a double-distrust that led to their lack of faith in Jesus’ resurrection. First they distrusted the witness of Mary and the disciples on the Road to Emmaus, thinking that they were just too gullible. But more importantly they distrusted in Jesus’ words that he would rise on the third day. Thomas’ distrust was not qualitatively different at all, just quantitatively: he didn’t believe his fellow apostles’ testimony either.

* We’ll get to his doubts a little bit more shortly, but what I’d like to do first is to talk about what St. Thomas teaches us precisely about faith. He doubts are a blessing for us because they open us up to what we need to know for our faith to be strengthened. I’d like to focus on the three recorded sayings of St. Thomas in the Gospel and what we can learn from each of them.

* The first is his statement during the Last Supper when Jesus was talking about his needing to go away but then come back again. Jesus stated, “Where I am going, you know the way.” That’s when Thomas, who had the guts to say what others were thinking but were perhaps too timid to ask, blurted out, “Lord, we do not know where you are going, how can we know the way?” His was what St. Anselm, basing himself on St. Augustine, would later call fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding. He believed in the Lord, but wanted to understand better what Jesus was saying. We, too, need to be willing to ask questions of the Lord. Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman once said that a thousand questions don’t constitute a single doubt. St. Thomas Aquinas’ whole method in the Summa was to question aspects of the faith, to raise all of the objections to truths of faith, in order to understand the faith better. As a biologist, I can’t wait to meet Jesus face to face and get a definitive answer to how he got the Y-chromosome, a question that Fr. Mendel, the servant of God Jerome Lejeune and probably many others have already asked him!

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Feast of St. Thomas, Apostle

July 3, 2020

Eph 2:19-22, Ps 117, Jn 20:24-29

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* A couple of years ago I had the privilege as a Missionary of Mercy to concelebrate Mass with Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Square on Divine Mercy Sunday. The Gospel for the Feast  always includes today’s Gospel and Pope Francis began his homily by commenting on St. John’s mentioning that Thomas was called Didymus, for twin. That almost certainly means that he had a twin and Pope Francis said that we can interpret all of that spiritually, that we’re meant to be a twin of Thomas, that he is meant to be our “twin brother.” And so today we can focus on what we can learn from the faith of our twin.

* It’s a pity in many ways that St. Thomas, who left everything to follow the Lord Jesus, who gave his entire life for the Lord and died in witness to faith, is called “Doubting Thomas” as much as he is called “Saint.” He is the most famous doubter in history! But his doubts were not unique among the first disciples and apostles. With the exception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, none of the early disciples believed after the resurrection. The women went to anoint a corpse. The disciples in Emmaus were talking to an anonymous Wayfarer about a Jesus whom they thoroughly believed was dead. When Mary Magdalene and these Emmaus disciples went to inform the other apostles that they had seen Jesus, the apostles didn’t believe them. That’s why Jesus, when he appeared to them as St. Mark reminds us through St. Peter, “rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart because they had not believed those who saw him after he had been raised” (Mk 16:14). Faith, as we know, is the belief in something on the basis of a belief in someone giving witness. They had a double-distrust that led to their lack of faith in Jesus’ resurrection. First they distrusted the witness of Mary and the disciples on the Road to Emmaus, thinking that they were just too gullible. But more importantly they distrusted in Jesus’ words that he would rise on the third day. Thomas’ distrust was not qualitatively different at all, just quantitatively: he didn’t believe his fellow apostles’ testimony either.

* We’ll get to his doubts a little bit more shortly, but what I’d like to do first is to talk about what St. Thomas teaches us precisely about faith. He doubts are a blessing for us because they open us up to what we need to know for our faith to be strengthened. I’d like to focus on the three recorded sayings of St. Thomas in the Gospel and what we can learn from each of them.

* The first is his statement during the Last Supper when Jesus was talking about his needing to go away but then come back again. Jesus stated, “Where I am going, you know the way.” That’s when Thomas, who had the guts to say what others were thinking but were perhaps too timid to ask, blurted out, “Lord, we do not know where you are going, how can we know the way?” His was what St. Anselm, basing himself on St. Augustine, would later call fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding. He believed in the Lord, but wanted to understand better what Jesus was saying. We, too, need to be willing to ask questions of the Lord. Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman once said that a thousand questions don’t constitute a single doubt. St. Thomas Aquinas’ whole method in the Summa was to question aspects of the faith, to raise all of the objections to truths of faith, in order to understand the faith better. As a biologist, I can’t wait to meet Jesus face to face and get a definitive answer to how he got the Y-chromosome, a question that Fr. Mendel, the servant of God Jerome Lejeune and probably many others have already asked him!

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the 13th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Votive Mass of the Mercy of God

July 2, 2020

Amos 7:10-17, Ps 19, Mt 9:1-8

 

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, we see the priority of mercy in Jesus’ saving mission. Friends bring their paralyzed pal to Jesus obviously with faith and hope that Jesus could and would cure his paralysis. But Jesus instead forgives him his sins. Some scholars will argue that this is because Jewish mentality was that every physical illness was the result of some type of sin and that Jesus was addressing the cause and not just the symptoms. But the likelier reason is because Jesus wanted to demonstrate that he had come as far more than a free wonder-doctor curing sick bodies, but had come precisely to heal the whole person, soul and body, and especially of the worst illness of all, which would be the cancer of sin and the communion it attacks with God, others and within oneself. Pope Francis said in 2013 in a homily based on this Gospel that everything Jesus did was connected to his mission of mercy: “When Jesus healed a sick man he was not only a healer. When he taught people — let us think of the Beatitudes — he was not only a catechist, a preacher of morals. When he remonstrated against the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and Sadducees, he was not a revolutionary who wanted to drive out the Romans. No, these things that Jesus did, healing, teaching and speaking out against hypocrisy, were only a sign of something greater that Jesus was doing: he was forgiving sins.” He went on to say, basing himself St. Paul’s words in today’s Gospel verse, “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation,” that reconciling the world in Christ in the name of the Father “is Jesus’ mission. Everything else — healing, teaching, reprimands — are only signs of that deeper miracle which is the re-creation of the world. Thus reconciliation is the re-creation of the world; and the most profound mission of Jesus is the redemption of all of us sinners. And Jesus did not do this with words, with actions or by walking on the road, no! He did it with his flesh. It is truly he, God, who becomes one of us, a man, to heal us from within.” It was only to prove that he had the authority on earth to forgive sins that Jesus cured the paralysis. He had already given him a far greater gift!

* The key for us is to cooperate with Jesus’ mission. Tomorrow, if we didn’t have the feast of St. Thomas the Apostle, we would have the Gospel of Jesus’ calling St. Matthew and his fellow sinners, and his words to the Pharisees who were complaining about Jesus’ keeping company with sinners just like the Scribes were complaining about his “blasphemously” forgiving sins, “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. … I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.” To receive Jesus, to receive his greatest miracle, we have to recognize we’re sick in need of a doctor. We have to recognize we’re sinners. Today we have three examples of those who didn’t.

* The first were the Scribes in the Gospel. They were opposed to Jesus’ mission of the forgiveness of sins. They objected ostensibly based on the truth that only God can forgive sins against God. But after Jesus demonstrated through healing the paralyzed man that he had divine authority to do so, they still refused to accept him, eventually ascribing such behavior to the evil one.

* The second are Jesus’ fellow Nazarenes. There’s a very subtle reference at the beginning of today’s Gospel that Jesus,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the 13th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Votive Mass of the Mercy of God

July 2, 2020

Amos 7:10-17, Ps 19, Mt 9:1-8

 

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, we see the priority of mercy in Jesus’ saving mission. Friends bring their paralyzed pal to Jesus obviously with faith and hope that Jesus could and would cure his paralysis. But Jesus instead forgives him his sins. Some scholars will argue that this is because Jewish mentality was that every physical illness was the result of some type of sin and that Jesus was addressing the cause and not just the symptoms. But the likelier reason is because Jesus wanted to demonstrate that he had come as far more than a free wonder-doctor curing sick bodies, but had come precisely to heal the whole person, soul and body, and especially of the worst illness of all, which would be the cancer of sin and the communion it attacks with God, others and within oneself. Pope Francis said in 2013 in a homily based on this Gospel that everything Jesus did was connected to his mission of mercy: “When Jesus healed a sick man he was not only a healer. When he taught people — let us think of the Beatitudes — he was not only a catechist, a preacher of morals. When he remonstrated against the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and Sadducees, he was not a revolutionary who wanted to drive out the Romans. No, these things that Jesus did, healing, teaching and speaking out against hypocrisy, were only a sign of something greater that Jesus was doing: he was forgiving sins.” He went on to say, basing himself St. Paul’s words in today’s Gospel verse, “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation,” that reconciling the world in Christ in the name of the Father “is Jesus’ mission. Everything else — healing, teaching, reprimands — are only signs of that deeper miracle which is the re-creation of the world. Thus reconciliation is the re-creation of the world; and the most profound mission of Jesus is the redemption of all of us sinners. And Jesus did not do this with words, with actions or by walking on the road, no! He did it with his flesh. It is truly he, God, who becomes one of us, a man, to heal us from within.” It was only to prove that he had the authority on earth to forgive sins that Jesus cured the paralysis. He had already given him a far greater gift!

* The key for us is to cooperate with Jesus’ mission. Tomorrow, if we didn’t have the feast of St. Thomas the Apostle, we would have the Gospel of Jesus’ calling St. Matthew and his fellow sinners, and his words to the Pharisees who were complaining about Jesus’ keeping company with sinners just like the Scribes were complaining about his “blasphemously” forgiving sins, “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. … I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.” To receive Jesus, to receive his greatest miracle, we have to recognize we’re sick in need of a doctor. We have to recognize we’re sinners. Today we have three examples of those who didn’t.

* The first were the Scribes in the Gospel. They were opposed to Jesus’ mission of the forgiveness of sins. They objected ostensibly based on the truth that only God can forgive sins against God. But after Jesus demonstrated through healing the paralyzed man that he had divine authority to do so, they still refused to accept him, eventually ascribing such behavior to the evil one.

* The second are Jesus’ fellow Nazarenes. There’s a very subtle reference at the beginning of today’s Gospel that Jesus,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A) (Vigil)

June 27, 2020

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.27.20_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.

* There are two essential aspects of our Christian life, discipleship and apostolate, on the one hand, our following Jesus and on the other, our proclaiming him. We could also phrase it as our work to become holy as God is holy and our fidelity to the mission he gives us to become instruments in the sanctification of others. These can also be summarized by the two principle verbs in Jesus’ vocabulary, come and go. We come to him and then he sends us forth.

* We see both of these aspects in the dialogue Jesus has with us in this Sunday’s Gospel. First he talks to us about the conditions of discipleship and then he speaks to us of our apostolate.

* Jesus describes that to be his disciple, to enter into his kingdom, isn’t easy. It requires a decisive choice. To do so, he tells us, we must love him more than father and mother, more than son or daughter. We must take up our cross and follow after him, losing our life for his sake in order to find it. Many people today do not recognize the seriousness of the call of Jesus. The people in Jesus’ own day had a similar problem. For centuries, they anticipated that a Messiah would come, overwhelm all foreign powers, and they would ride his coattails to great triumph and riches. They were unprepared for the cost of discipleship, for the fact that to follow him might involve family opposition, not to mention the Cross, suffering, and struggle. In terms of family relations, Jesus says that we can only have one absolute in our life, only one love can have primacy, only one thing can have our ultimate obedience and affection, either God or our parents, or our spouse, or our children. The same God who calls us to honor our mother and father, who calls us to reverence our spouse out of love for Christ, who calls us to love our children as God loves us, at the same time calls us to love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength. When we choose to love God above all, we do not love our family members less, but better. Many times we won’t have to choose between the love of God and the love of family members, but when faced with the choice, Jesus is saying God must come first.

* This choice sadly comes up sometimes and we all need to be ready for it. When I was in seminary, many of my classmates were there over the opposition of their family members, who didn’t want them to become priests because, sadly, in many cases their family members preferred them to marry and continue on the family name than to help make children for God through baptism and the Sacraments. I’m a spiritual director to many religious women and many of them, too, have received not encouragement but opposition from their families, who think they’re throwing their lives away when they give them to Jesus. A few weeks ago, a priest friend of mine died, Fr. John Jay Hughes, a famous convert. I just wrote a tribute to him for the National Catholic Register. His father and grandfather were well-known influential Episcopal priests in Newport, RI and at St. John Divine Cathedral in New York. Fr. Jay himself became an Episcopal priest. But eventually he realized that God was calling him to be a Catholic. His dad told him that if he “perverted to Rome,” he would never be welcome again in the family home. Fr. Hughes knew, however,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Anthony of Padua Parish, New Bedford, MA

Nuptial Mass for Louis Alexander Duncan and Cassandra Marie Borges

Extraordinary Form

June 27, 2020

Eph 5:22-33, Mt 19:3-6

 

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

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

The beautiful reality we’re celebrating today of God’s uniting Louis Alexander Duncan and Cassandra Marie Borges a faithful, fruitful and indissoluble bond has a long prehistory, one that goes back beyond Louis’ proposal to Cassandra on April 21, 2019 at the lip of a pond in Whispering Willows Park in Conyngham, Pennsylvania, a short distance from the Duncan home. It goes back well before their first date, December 21, 2017, in Providence, RI. It extends past the first time they communicated two months earlier, on October 15, when Cassandra signed up for Catholic Match and Louis messaged her, or beyond October 13, when Louis signed up for that online Catholic dating service. It goes back even further than when their parents, Marlin and Patricia, Deacon Ed and Ann, got the joy-filled news to expect them 27 years ago. The prehistory to their wedding extends back to even before God said, “Let there be light,” And to understand the significance and beauty of this day, we need to see where it fits into God’s plan for them and for the world.

When Jesus, in the Gospel we just heard, was asked about the nature of marriage, he took it back to the “beginning,” when God made them “made them male and female.” In the Book of Genesis, when God created Adam, Adam had God all to himself in the garden. All of creation had been made for him to govern. He was perfectly in right relationship with God. Even though he seemed to have everything one could ask for, something — more specifically, someone — was missing. And after God had said in the first six phases of creation, “It was good,” “It was good,” “It was good,” “It was good,” “It was good,” “It was good,” and with the creation of the human person, “It was very good,” God finally thundered, “It is not good…for man to be alone.” So he created Eve, a fitting partner, symbolically out of his side, to show that they stand side-by-side, equal, before him. When Adam saw her, he exclaimed, “Finally this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!,” a Hebrew idiom saying that they shared strengths and weaknesses. As Jesus reiterates in the Gospel, this is the reason why a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh in love. The upshot of the Creation account is that God, who is love, has created the human person in his image and likeness … in love and for love. Since no one can love in a vacuum, God could not be solitary, there needed to be a Lover and a Beloved, and in God the eternal love between them was so strong as to take on personality. In creating the human person, therefore, God created not just a “him, male and female” but a “them,” a communion between man and woman, whose love for each other could be so strong as to “make love,” to generate new life, as a fruit of their loving communion of persons. From the first marriage of Adam and Eve, to your marriage today, Louis and Cassandra, matrimony was created by God to be a sacrament of love, to help you to grow to be more and more like God and at the same time more fully human. Today you have not only received a Sacrament. Today you have become a Sacrament, a visible sign, as St. John Paul II used to say, pointing to the invisible reality of the Trinitarian loving communion of persons. You have been called, chosen and commissioned by God to be not just a living reminder of the fruitful, faithful, indissoluble love of God and to reflect efficaciously in your own marriage Christ’s love for his bride the Church, but to preach that Gospel of human love in the divine plan, in words and in body language,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Anthony of Padua Parish, New Bedford, MA

Nuptial Mass for Louis Alexander Duncan and Cassandra Marie Borges

Extraordinary Form

June 27, 2020

Eph 5:22-33, Mt 19:3-6

 

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

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

The beautiful reality we’re celebrating today of God’s uniting Louis Alexander Duncan and Cassandra Marie Borges a faithful, fruitful and indissoluble bond has a long prehistory, one that goes back beyond Louis’ proposal to Cassandra on April 21, 2019 at the lip of a pond in Whispering Willows Park in Conyngham, Pennsylvania, a short distance from the Duncan home. It goes back well before their first date, December 21, 2017, in Providence, RI. It extends past the first time they communicated two months earlier, on October 15, when Cassandra signed up for Catholic Match and Louis messaged her, or beyond October 13, when Louis signed up for that online Catholic dating service. It goes back even further than when their parents, Marlin and Patricia, Deacon Ed and Ann, got the joy-filled news to expect them 27 years ago. The prehistory to their wedding extends back to even before God said, “Let there be light,” And to understand the significance and beauty of this day, we need to see where it fits into God’s plan for them and for the world.

When Jesus, in the Gospel we just heard, was asked about the nature of marriage, he took it back to the “beginning,” when God made them “made them male and female.” In the Book of Genesis, when God created Adam, Adam had God all to himself in the garden. All of creation had been made for him to govern. He was perfectly in right relationship with God. Even though he seemed to have everything one could ask for, something — more specifically, someone — was missing. And after God had said in the first six phases of creation, “It was good,” “It was good,” “It was good,” “It was good,” “It was good,” “It was good,” and with the creation of the human person, “It was very good,” God finally thundered, “It is not good…for man to be alone.” So he created Eve, a fitting partner, symbolically out of his side, to show that they stand side-by-side, equal, before him. When Adam saw her, he exclaimed, “Finally this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!,” a Hebrew idiom saying that they shared strengths and weaknesses. As Jesus reiterates in the Gospel, this is the reason why a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh in love. The upshot of the Creation account is that God, who is love, has created the human person in his image and likeness … in love and for love. Since no one can love in a vacuum, God could not be solitary, there needed to be a Lover and a Beloved, and in God the eternal love between them was so strong as to take on personality. In creating the human person, therefore, God created not just a “him, male and female” but a “them,” a communion between man and woman, whose love for each other could be so strong as to “make love,” to generate new life, as a fruit of their loving communion of persons. From the first marriage of Adam and Eve, to your marriage today, Louis and Cassandra, matrimony was created by God to be a sacrament of love, to help you to grow to be more and more like God and at the same time more fully human. Today you have not only received a Sacrament. Today you have become a Sacrament, a visible sign, as St. John Paul II used to say, pointing to the invisible reality of the Trinitarian loving communion of persons. You have been called, chosen and commissioned by God to be not just a living reminder of the fruitful, faithful, indissoluble love of God and to reflect efficaciously in your own marriage Christ’s love for his bride the Church, but to preach that Gospel of human love in the divine plan, in words and in body language,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Josemaria Escriva

The 21st Anniversary of my Ordination

June 26, 2020

2 Kings 25:1-12, Ps 137, Mt 8:1-4

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Over the past two-and-a-half weeks at daily Mass, we have been pondering Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount, in which he sets forth his standards — and the standards by which he wishes us to live — that surpass that of the Scribes, Pharisees and virtuous pagans. He calls us to be “perfect” (teleios) as his Father in heaven is perfect, to be great by keeping his commandments and teaching others to do the same, to seek first the kingdom of heaven and God’s holiness. He calls us to seek to be, in contrast to the standards and behavior of so many in the world, poor in spirit, compassionate to the point of mourning, meek, merciful, peacemaking, hungry and thirst for holiness, pure of heart, and willing to suffer for the sake of holiness. He calls us to love our enemies, pray for our persecutors, do good to those who are evil, to turn the other cheek, to walk the second mile, to give our cloak when all that’s asked for is our tunic, to not hate and not only not kill, to be chaste in heart and not just continent in the body, to have our eye mean yes and our no mean no, to pray, fast and give alms only for God the Father and not for show, not to worry about what we are to eat, drink or wear but to trust in the Father’s providence, to take out the beams from our own eyes and stop judging, to enter through the narrow gate of life, to do to others what we ourselves wish to be done to us, to become a good tree bearing good fruit and to build our whole life on his word. After hearing all of this, it is understandable that we might feel overwhelmed, as if the standards Jesus is proposing are unreachable. We may recognize just how often, every day, we fall short.

* That’s why in God’s providence, and in the Holy Spirit’s inspiration of St. Matthew, right after the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus makes clear the standards by which Christians are called to live, we have Chapter 8, which features seven different miracles of healing. The first we have today, in which a leper approaches Jesus, kneels down in homage, and humbly asks, “Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.” We can say the same, with similar adoration and trust: “Lord, if you will, you can cleanse me of all of the ways I’ve lived by the standards of the world rather than by yours. If you will, you can give me the help you know I need to become teleios, to become great by keeping and teaching your commandments, to seek first your kingdom, and to base my whole life on the rock of your holy word!” And we have every confidence Jesus will respond like he did to the leper, to all the others who approached him through Chapter 8 and in other scenes in the Gospel, and say, “I do will it! Be made clean!” After hearing God’s wisdom at length, now we encounter God’s healing power to strengthen us to live up to the high standards of ordinary Christian living to which Jesus calls us.

* God’s desire to cleanse us, to make us pure, to fill us with his mercy to overflowing, explains the motivation behind Jesus’ incarnation, his hidden life, his passion, death and resurrection. Jesus’ whole life screams the ardor of God’s hunger to make us clean, to heal us of our words and the leprosy of sin that alienates us from God, others and our truest selves. In the ancient world, leprosy was the worst disease one could have. Not only would it eat away one’s flesh and bones and make one stink in ...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Josemaria Escriva

The 21st Anniversary of my Ordination

June 26, 2020

2 Kings 25:1-12, Ps 137, Mt 8:1-4

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Over the past two-and-a-half weeks at daily Mass, we have been pondering Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount, in which he sets forth his standards — and the standards by which he wishes us to live — that surpass that of the Scribes, Pharisees and virtuous pagans. He calls us to be “perfect” (teleios) as his Father in heaven is perfect, to be great by keeping his commandments and teaching others to do the same, to seek first the kingdom of heaven and God’s holiness. He calls us to seek to be, in contrast to the standards and behavior of so many in the world, poor in spirit, compassionate to the point of mourning, meek, merciful, peacemaking, hungry and thirst for holiness, pure of heart, and willing to suffer for the sake of holiness. He calls us to love our enemies, pray for our persecutors, do good to those who are evil, to turn the other cheek, to walk the second mile, to give our cloak when all that’s asked for is our tunic, to not hate and not only not kill, to be chaste in heart and not just continent in the body, to have our eye mean yes and our no mean no, to pray, fast and give alms only for God the Father and not for show, not to worry about what we are to eat, drink or wear but to trust in the Father’s providence, to take out the beams from our own eyes and stop judging, to enter through the narrow gate of life, to do to others what we ourselves wish to be done to us, to become a good tree bearing good fruit and to build our whole life on his word. After hearing all of this, it is understandable that we might feel overwhelmed, as if the standards Jesus is proposing are unreachable. We may recognize just how often, every day, we fall short.

* That’s why in God’s providence, and in the Holy Spirit’s inspiration of St. Matthew, right after the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus makes clear the standards by which Christians are called to live, we have Chapter 8, which features seven different miracles of healing. The first we have today, in which a leper approaches Jesus, kneels down in homage, and humbly asks, “Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.” We can say the same, with similar adoration and trust: “Lord, if you will, you can cleanse me of all of the ways I’ve lived by the standards of the world rather than by yours. If you will, you can give me the help you know I need to become teleios, to become great by keeping and teaching your commandments, to seek first your kingdom, and to base my whole life on the rock of your holy word!” And we have every confidence Jesus will respond like he did to the leper, to all the others who approached him through Chapter 8 and in other scenes in the Gospel, and say, “I do will it! Be made clean!” After hearing God’s wisdom at length, now we encounter God’s healing power to strengthen us to live up to the high standards of ordinary Christian living to which Jesus calls us.

* God’s desire to cleanse us, to make us pure, to fill us with his mercy to overflowing, explains the motivation behind Jesus’ incarnation, his hidden life, his passion, death and resurrection. Jesus’ whole life screams the ardor of God’s hunger to make us clean, to heal us of our words and the leprosy of sin that alienates us from God, others and our truest selves. In the ancient world, leprosy was the worst disease one could have. Not only would it eat away one’s flesh and bones and make one stink in ...