Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Saturday of the 24th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of Our Lady of La Salette

September 19, 2020

1 Cor 15:35-37.42-49, Ps 56, Lk 8:4-15

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today’s readings and feast are all about various forms of sowing and they provide an opportunity for us to consider our receptivity to God’s sowing in us and our generosity of sowing his word, His very person and ourselves to others.

* The first sowing is what Jesus himself does. He first sows the seed of his word, hoping that he will find in us not tough soil by the path that signifies a shut mind and a hardened heart that refuses to allow the word to penetrate and change; not the superficial rocky soil with just a think layer of soil over a thick subterranean layer of limestone that initially receives the seed with joy but doesn’t nourish it to make sure it grows; not the thorny soil full of the weeds of worldly cares, anxieties, riches and the pleasure of life that can suck up the energy that should be dedicated to the growth of the seed, but rather the good soil that hears the word, embraces it with a generous and good heart and bears manifold fruit through perseverance. Today is an opportunity for us to take again a soil sample of our heart to whether the word of God that Jesus seeks to sow in us daily changes our lives in 30, 60, 100 ways or more, or whether we’re resistant, superficial or existentially distracted from allowing our whole life to develop in accordance with what God proclaims.

* But that’s just the first way Jesus sows. He goes beyond it by sowing himself. In St. John’s Gospel, he says that “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit” (Jn 12:24). He is the Grain of Wheat who fell to the ground on the way of the Cross and died on Calvary to bear much fruit in us. He inseminates himself in us in Holy Communion and wants to transform us totally from the inside out, changing us in an astronomical number of concrete ways to become more and more like him, as we seek to respond to this gift by aligning our entire life with Him with Whom we enter into communion, knowing that there are far more than 100 ways in which we’re not presently like him. What’s our receptivity to that sowing with Him in his Risen life?

* St. Paul in the first reading talks about one of the effects that Christ’s sowing himself and his word in us is meant to have. Just like a seed grows and matures into a plant or tree and eventually bears fruit that contains other seeds that then can be sown, so Jesus’ sowing in us is meant to lead to our seeking to sow his word in others and to sow ourselves as grains of wheat. St. Paul talks about the way we’re supposed to imitate Jesus’ Eucharistic sowing of his own body for God and for others in the way we die. Death is not supposed to be something that just happens to us. It’s supposed to be something with which we actively cooperate, imitating Jesus in freely laying down our life for him and for others. Answering the questions of the Corinthians who wondered what the resurrected body would be like, St. Paul turns to the image of sowing, writing, “What you sow is not brought to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be but a bare kernel of wheat, perhaps, or of some other kind; but God gives it a body as he chooses, and to each of the seeds its own body.  … So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown corruptible; it is raised incorruptible. It is sown dishonorable; it is raised glorious. It is sown weak; it is raised powerful. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the 24th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St Joseph Cupertino

September 18, 2020

1 Cor 15:12-20, Ps 17, Lk 8:1-3

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* In today’s the Gospel, we see Jesus’ peripatetic preaching, journeying with the Twelve apostles from one town to another preaching and proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom. This was a snapshot of his ordinary life, what occupied most of his days. He was announcing the kingdom and inviting people to enter. In the midst of all of their sufferings, hardships and up-until-then unfilled hopes, he was proclaiming the good news. He was helping them to see that Sacred Scripture was being fulfilled in their hearing, inviting them to strive to enter through the narrow gate, encouraging them to buy the treasure buried in a field and selling everything they have for the precious pearl of the kingdom. But St. Luke adds another detail, a very important one. He said that some women were accompanying Jesus and the apostles, women who had received Jesus’ healing power — they “had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities” — and wanted to spend their life, with faith and constancy, assisting him to heal others and raise them up. Three get named — Mary Magdalene, Joanna, the wife of Herod Antipas’ epitropos or money-man Chuza, and Susanna — but he also says “and many others,” who “provided for them out of their resources.” They were the ones who, to some degree, made possible Jesus’ and the apostles’ preaching, so that Jesus everyday wouldn’t have to multiply loaves and fish, so that they wouldn’t have to appall the hypersensensitive Scribes and the Pharisees by plucking heads of grain while walking through the fields. Like the widow with her two lepta placed in the Temple treasury, these women were giving all they had not just to make possible but to assist the preaching of the Gospel. They were the ones who were providing drink to lubricate Jesus’ and the apostles’ vocal chords. They were the ones who were making sure that they would have the necessary bread within to be able to preach man doesn’t live on bread alone but on every word that comes from God’s mouth. St. Paul’s in the passage from the First Letter to the Corinthians that is for Monday of the 24th Week describes how the Holy Spirit inspires us all to cooperate for the building up of Christ’s body the Church. There’s a division of labor — apostles, prophets, teachers, administrators, etc. — like there is in a body between organs. For the body to be healthy, each of the parts must do its function. And these women were making possible everything that Jesus and his disciples were doing. This was not a group of bored do-gooders who figured that these wandering 13 men would be lost without their feminine genius and maternal practicality. Having received much from the mercy of Jesus, as we heard yesterday, they loved much, and they wanted to give Jesus and his mission all the love, the time and the material goods they could.” They’re a model for all of us.

* What was the purpose of Jesus’ preaching and the apostles’ preaching? It was to lift people up, to lead them ultimately from death to eternal life, from sin to sanctity, from light to darkness, from the kingdom of the world to the kingdom of God, from ignorance to a knowledge (conoscere) of God the Father and his Son Jesus the Resurrection and Life that would know no end. And they spent themselves fully with faith and constancy to preaching this reality, as did St. Paul. In today’s first reading, St. Paul is describing the reality of the resurrection to the Jewish and Greek Christians in Corinth who were doubting or denying it. There were doubtless some Jews who, like the Sadducees,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the 24th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Robert Bellarmine

September 17, 2020

1 Cor 15:1-11, Ps 118, Lk 7:36-50

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Yesterday, we examined St. Paul’s beautiful canticle of love from his First Letter to the Corinthians, in which St. Paul described that love is patient, kind, not jealous, pompous inflated, rude, self-interested, quick-tempered, brooding, or focused on wrong-doing rather than the truth, but how it unfailingly bears, believes, hopes and endures all things. He called love the “greater spiritual gift,” the “still more excellent way,” and said that without it, speaking in human and angelic tongues, comprehending all mysteries, having faith to move mountains, giving away everything, and handing one’s body over to torturers in witness to the faith amount to nothing. That’s how important love is.

* Today in the Gospel, Jesus teaches us how to become great in love. Great in love for him and greater in love for others in spreading love of him. It’s one of the most beautiful scenes in the Gospel. Jesus is received by a leading Pharisee, Simon, into his home, but isn’t welcomed with the three typical gestures with which guests were always greeted, with an embrace on the shoulder, the washing of feet with cold water, and a pinch of incense or smell of roses on the head. Simon, it seems, not only took typical hospitality for granted but took Jesus for granted.

* A sinful woman who heard that Jesus was there, however, did not take him for granted. As Jesus lay reclining with the others at the table, she anointed his feet with oil, then washed them with her tears — think about how copious she must have been weeping! — and then dried them with her long hair. Simon’s reaction was that Jesus couldn’t have been a prophet if he didn’t realize this woman was a sinner, but Jesus in fact recognized they both were and drew an important and obvious lesson we shouldn’t miss as he prepared to forgive her sins and send her away in peace: The one who has been forgiven more, loves more. “But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” For us to love Jesus much, we need to be forgiven much.

* Pope Francis stresses this point in a book length interview before he became Pope. “For me, feeling oneself a sinner is one of the most beautiful things that can happen, if it leads to its ultimate consequences” the future Pope Francis said in El Jesuita. “When a person becomes conscious that he is a sinner and is saved by Jesus,” Cardinal Bergoglio stated, “he proclaims this truth to himself and discovers the pearl of great price, the treasure buried in the field. He discovers the greatest thing in life: that there is someone who loves him profoundly, who gave his life for him.” Many Catholics, he said, have sadly not had this fundamental Christian experience. “There are people who believe the right things, who have received catechesis and accepted the Christian faith in some way, but who do not have the experience of having been saved, … who therefore lack the experience of who they are,” he lamented. “I believe that only we great sinners have this grace.”

* That’s why it’s essential for us to have this experience of our desperate need for Christ’s mercy and for us to come, like the woman in the Gospel, to weep at Jesus’ feet, conscious that, as we prayed in the Psalm, “his mercy endures forever” and that he has done everything he did to forgive us our sins. If we remain aloof, like Simon the Pharisee, we’ll never really understand who Jesus is or who we are. We’ll never understand how much we’re loved. We’ll never really learn therefore how to love ...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the 24th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of SS. Cyprian and Cornelius, Martyrs

18th Anniversary of Cardinal François Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan

September 16, 2020

1 Cor 12:31-13:13, Ps 33, Lk 7:31-35

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in today’s homily: 

*  In today’s Gospel, Jesus compares the people of the generation to whom he was preaching as “children who sit in the marketplace.” He says they call out to each other, “We played the flute for you, but you did not dance. We sang a dirge for you, but you did not weep.” Jesus was essentially correcting them about two aspects of childish immaturity that was preventing their becoming disciples. The first is that they were seated. They were not willing to get up and follow Jesus along the way of discipleship. They were not willing to change. The second is that that they wanted to be the ones playing the tune to which others would dance. If they were playing a joyful tune on the flute, they wanted people to dance a jitterbug; if they were playing a dirge or a fado, they wanted people weeping. They were not willing to align themselves to the ever new song, the lyrics (Word of God) and melody (tone) that Jesus was playing rather than domesticate him by getting him to conform his message to their music.

* Jesus compared the generation to a group of spoiled, fickle children, because they had hardened their hearts totally to the message of God, trying to control and judge God rather than obey and love him. He said that when John the Baptist came to them, rather than focus on his message of conversion, they criticized him for “neither eating food nor drinking wine,” because he fasted, ate wild honey and consumed locusts. They “classified and conquered” him and refused to convert at his message. When Jesus came with a totally different approach, “eating and drinking” because he was the Bridegroom and wanted to teach them how to feast in God’s presence rather than fast — we would fast when the Bridegroom would be taken away — they criticized him for not fasting and for not abstaining, calling him a “glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.” Again, they avoided his message by judging the messenger, coming at him from a position of superiority rather than docility. The upshot is that no matter whom God sent to them, they weren’t prepared to accept him, but they’d find something to criticize, something to give them the excuse to remain seated, something that would keep them in control of the jukebox or playlist.

* Jesus is forcefully calling us and the people of our generation to be something far different from “children sitting in the marketplace.” He calls us to be spiritually childlike, a son or daughter who lovingly trusts God, who believes what he says is true, recognizes what he or she doesn’t know, and who seeks to become like chips off the old (divine) block. When Jesus says at the end of today’s episode,  “wisdom is vindicated by all her children,” he is communicating that he wants us to be his vindication by living according to his wisdom as sons in the Son, eating and drinking, fasting and abstaining, dancing and making music, and doing everything in union with him and at his lead.

* The truth is that there are many in our own generation who behave before God like the spoiled children Jesus mentions in his image. We judge God, we judge his Church, we judge those whom he sends us by our own criteria. We make our preferences the most important thing of all. Many choose Churches based on whether they play the music they like, whether chant, or polyphony, or hymnody, or polka, or rock, or contemporary praise and worship, or whether there’s no music at all,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows

September 15, 2020

1 Cor 12:12-14.27-31, Ps 116, Jn 19:25-27

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Yesterday we celebrated the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. We focused on the Lord’s victory. Unlike on Good Friday when we ponder his sufferings upon the Cross, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross not only celebrates the rediscovery of the Cross after it was stolen in the early Church but the rediscovery, in a sense, of the meaning of Jesus’ triumph on the Cross as something in which we should glory rather than be ashamed.

* But today, the day after celebrating Jesus’ victory on the Cross, we ponder his mother weeping and sorrowful. It’s a little bit of a jarring juxtaposition, one that ought to get us to ask why we would contemplate her in this way. The fundamental reason why we ponder Mary’s sorrows today is because her tears are not over her Son’s victory but over so many of us who have not yet entered into his victory. It’s not over what her Divine offspring accomplished on Calvary, but how many of us allow his gifts to go in vain.

* The Church has long pondered the suffering and joys of the Blessed Virgin Mary as she accompanied her Son and shared in his redeeming work. There has for centuries been devotion to her “Seven Sorrows”: The prophecy of Simeon, when he announced not only that Jesus would be a sign of contradiction pointing to the ruin and resurrection of many but that her own heart would be pierced with a sword; the flight into Egypt after Herod’s henchmen were trying to assassinate her and God’s little boy; the loss of Jesus for three days at the age of 12; meeting Jesus on the Way to Calvary; seeing Jesus suffer and die on the Cross; receiving Jesus’ body into her arms at the foot of the Cross; and placing Jesus’ body in the tomb.

* Today is a day, first, on which we ponder Mary’s suffering for her Son, what it must have felt like to have her heart and soul pierced in these ways. As we prayed in the Stabat Mater Sequence before the Gospel, “Is there one who would not weep, ‘whelmed in miseries so deep, Christ’s dear Mother to behold?” But our meditation is not supposed to stop there. By God’s grace it’s meant to lead us to compassion, to suffering with Mary. We pray in that Sequence words we should take seriously: “O sweet Mother! font of love, touch my spirit from above, make my heart with yours accord. Make me feel as you have felt; make my soul to glow and melt with the love of Christ, my Lord. Holy Mother, pierce me through, in my heart each wound renew of my Savior crucified. Let me share with you his pain, who for all our sins was slain, who for me in torments died. Let me mingle tears with thee, mourning him who mourned for me, all the days that I may live. By the cross with you to stay, there with you to weep and pray, is all I ask of you to give. Virgin of all virgins blest! Listen to my fond request: let me share your grief divine. Let me to my latest breath, in my body bear the death of that dying Son of yours.” Today we ask her for the grace to share her grief divine, to join our tears to hers, to bear in our body the death of Jesus so that we might in turn share his life.

* But Mary’s heart is pierced not only by the sufferings of her divine Son Jesus, but also all her spiritual sons and daughters given to her in the third Annunciation carried out by her Son hanging upon the Cross, when he, seeing Mary and his beloved disciple, St. John, at the foot of the Cross said, respectively, “Woman, behold your son” and “Behold your mother.” And like any Mother, this “Holy Mother” mourns and weeps and suffers whenever she sees any of her children suffer. A couple of weeks ago we pondered the example of St.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross

September 14, 2020

Num 21:4-9, Ps 78, Phil 2:6-11, Jn 3:13-17

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today we celebrate what Saint John Paul II used to call the symbol of Christianity. We marked ourselves with it upon entering the Church. We began Mass with it. We’ll end Mass with it. We start almost every time of prayer with it. Probably every one of our bedrooms and dining rooms has one in it. All types of people wear it around their necks, from the Pope and bishops, to teenage pop stars, to newly baptized babies. The priest holds his arms in the shape of it during the Eucharistic prayer. And it is the center and focal point of every Catholic Church. We are talking about the Cross. The Cross is the greatest summary of our faith. St. Francis of Assisi used to call it his “book,” where he learned all of his wisdom. The Cross is also the key that opens the doors of heaven. St. Rose of Lima, the first saint of the Americas, said, “Apart from the Cross, there is no other ladder by which we may get to heaven.” If we wish to get to eternal life with God, we must climb up with Jesus by means of the Cross.

* To non-believers, to celebrate the feast of the Cross makes no sense at all. It is sheer lunacy. To those who don’t believe, the Cross is exclusively a symbol of pain and horrible death. Crucifixion was the worst and most cruel end imaginable in the ancient world. The modern day equivalent would be the electric chair. To celebrate or “exalt” the Cross would be akin to our “lifting up the electric chair” in jubilation. To center every Church with an image of Christ’s suffering on the Cross would be similar to constructing a place of worship in which one would put a gruesome image of someone convulsing and dying in an electric chair or placing a sculpture of someone being burned at the stake. We’ve become so used to seeing the Cross that we’ve become somewhat anaesthetized to the normal shock that should be any person’s first reaction to it and we need to recover a little of the initial human horror we should have before the Cross. This is one reason why St. Paul wrote that Christ on the Cross is “a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles.” The pagans used to mock the early Christians for worshipping someone who was killed on the Cross, who suffered such a horrible, ignoble end. Because that derision was still happening even centuries after his death, many of the first Christians were somewhat embarrassed by the Cross and didn’t use it as a popular Christian symbol until the 300s. Today, there are still some Christians who are embarrassed by the Cross. We see it in those Catholic schools and universities who have removed the Cross from classrooms lest anyone be “offended.” We’ve seen it in Catholic hospitals who have removed them from patients’ rooms even though in the hospital people need to derive meaning from their sufferings from uniting them to Christ’s. We’ve seen them in various “modern” Catholic parishes that, instead of putting up a Crucifix in the sanctuary as is required in every Church, they erect an image of the Risen Jesus, as if that “book” of St. Francis no longer had anything to teach.

* The Cross, for believers, is not so much a symbol of pain, but rather of the Love that made even that much suffering worth it. Jesus said during the Last Supper, “No one has any greater love than to lay down his life for his friends” and that’s precisely what Jesus as our Good Shepherd did when he gave his own life on the Cross so that we, might live. The Cross is a picture not principally of agonizing suffering but of this mind-blowing love of God for us. St. Paul — after he stated that the Cross is a scandal to the Jews and a folly...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Agnes Church, Manhattan

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Extraordinary Form

September 13, 2020

Gal 5:25-26.6:1-10; Lk 7:11-16

 

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

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* Eight years ago, when I was a pastor in Massachusetts, I had the privilege to lead 52 parishioners on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and we made a special trip to the place where today’s Gospel scene took place. The Palestinian bus driver and guide who were accompanying us asked me repeatedly, almost annoyingly, why we were going to go to Nain, telling me that no American groups ever go there and that neither of them, who had worked for years with pilgrims, had ever even been there. They added that the Church remembering the miracle had been closed for years and so there would be nothing to see. I politely but firmly said that we were going anyway. So after we had visited Mount Tabor where we pondered Jesus’ transfiguration, we went off the typical grid on a half-hour trip to Nain. As the bus drove through the small town, many of the kids looked up at the monster vehicle transporting all of us, something that they obviously weren’t accustomed to seeing. Our bus driver needed to ask directions a couple of times, and when he pulled up next to the closed Church, those living around it all peered at us as if we were lost. But we went to the front door of the Church and I had everyone assemble in the area before the door, in a dirt courtyard that hadn’t been cleaned of litter for months. And there we read the Gospel scene we’ve just heard and considered what it meant.

* At the end of the pilgrimage, when we had a chance to discuss our most moving experiences, several pilgrims talked about doing the Stations of the Cross at 3 am along the Via Dolorosa, married couples talked about renewing their marriage vows in Cana, some young people talked about praying on the boat in the middle of the Sea of Galilee, having Mass on Calvary or placing Jesus’ risen Body in the Eucharist back inside the empty tomb. But I’ll never forget what several from among our group commented, that the experience they’ll most remember was praying outside the Church in Nain. A few pilgrims, who had recently experienced the death of immediate family members, said that our prayer in Nain was one of the most moving and healing moments not only of the pilgrimage but of their life and that they would never be able to forget what Jesus had done there, for them, for the widow in the Gospel, and for all of us. I am very happy to say that last year, after several years of hard work of restoration of the Church and the courtyard outside, the Catholic Church on the site of the miracle in Nain, built in 1881 but on the foundations of Churches going back at least until the 300s, was reopened by the Franciscans, and prior to COVID-19, pilgrims from near and far, are making their way there to enter into today’s scene and to the reality that not only has God visited his people, but God remains with his people in his risen body and blood, seeking to give us even more than the resuscitation he worked on out love for a sorrowful mom and a lifeless son.

* What happened in Nain? Two processions met. The first was a funeral cortege involving a large crowd of residents of the city, transporting to the cemetery the corpse of a young man whose life was cut down in the springtime of life. The mourning was intense, as it always is whenever someone with so much life ahead of him suddenly dies. And what could be more poignant than a mother’s weeping over the death of her only child? But in this case the darkness was even worse.  The woman was a widow. In Jewish culture and throughout the Middle East, it was a man’s duty to provide for a woman. When a husband died, it was the duty of the eldest son to care for a mother.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

September 12, 2020

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.12.20_Landry_ConCon.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday, in which Jesus talks to us about his mercy toward us and how that is meant to transform us to love others with the same merciful love with which he has loved us first.

* Peter asks Jesus, “If my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him?” One of the most difficult aspects of living the Catholic faith is the teaching about loving even our enemies and forgiving those who repeatedly wrong us, hate us and persecute us. When people hurt us, we think it’s magnanimous and generous to give them a second chance. If we forgive them yet again, we think we’re ready for canonization. But Jesus’ standards for us are higher. He wants us to become as merciful as our heavenly Father is merciful — and each of our autobiographies shows clearly that God has given us way more than one or two spiritual mulligans.  The Rabbis taught, based on a misinterpretation of a passage from the Prophet Amos, that we needed to forgive three times, to give someone a forth chance. Peter after asking Jesus how often he must forgive, while he was waiting for his response, multiplied that figure by two and added one and said, “As many as 7 times?” This would be an almost astronomical standard, giving someone an eighth chance, before writing someone off as incorrigible. Jesus replied, however, “No, Seventy Sevens.” Whether that means 70×7 (490) or 70+7 (77) times really doesn’t matter, because seven is a number already with a sense of infinity. It means to forgive without limit. He says Peter must forgive every time a brother or sister wrongs him. And what Jesus says to Peter, he also says to us. We, too, must never refuse forgiveness to anyone who has wronged us — even and especially those who have really wounded us deeply. We must forgive fathers and mothers who have hurt us when we were younger, brothers and sisters who have betrayed us, friends who have deceived us, priests or nuns who have scandalized us, assailants who have attacked us, and terrorists who have mercilessly killed those closest to us.

* Jesus tells us why we must do this by means of the parable he gives us, which I’ve always found among his most powerful. He describes two debtors. The first is brought into the King for owing what our translation says is a “huge amount.” The actual term used by St. Matthew is “10,000 talents.” A talent was equivalent to 6,000 denarii and a denarius was a full day’s wage. That means that the man owed 60,000,000 days worth of work, something that would take him 164,271 years to pay off. His request, after he had fallen prostrate on the ground and begged for time to pay it back, was totally absurd. He would need to live to be 165,000 years old! To monetize his debt in today’s terms in order to better understand it, if he were making $100 a day (or $12.50 an hour), he would have owed $6 billion. But the text tells us that when the King saw the man on the ground begging absurdly for time, his “heart was moved with pity” and he forgave the entire debt. He didn’t even make him pay what he could. He forgave it all. We’re supposed to see in this what God does for us. He forgives our entire debt — 10,000 talents worth — seven, seventy-seven, 490 times and more. His merciful generosity is the most distinctive reality about the world!

* But then the Parable describes that the servant who...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Saturday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

The Holy Name of Mary

September 12, 2020

1 Cor 10:14-22, Ps 116, Lk 6:43-49

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily (only partial, because the battery ran out half-way through), please click below: 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today Jesus concludes the Sermon on the Plain in St. Luke’s Gospel in the same way he brought the Sermon on the Mount to a close, with powerful agricultural and architectural images describing the relationship we’re supposed to have with him and the consequences that will have in our life. He wants us, first, to be united with him as branches on the vine, promising that when we become with him a “good tree” we will bear “good fruit” through “the store of goodness in [our] heart.” Likewise, when we build our life on him like a wise master builder (as Jesus and Joseph were in Nazareth), then we will be able together with him to resist the storms of life. The danger, he says, is that we will call upon him — “Lord, Lord!” — but not innest ourselves in him, but not build our existence on him. That’s not the right foundation, it won’t resist the trials, tribulations and temptations of life, and will most often lead to our bearing bad fruit.

* St. Paul picks up on these images in his First Letter to the Corinthians. He speaks about the type of participation God willed us to have with him, saying that Holy Communion is meant to make us participation Body and Blood of Christ. We are supposed to share Christ’s life, to ground our existence in him. But such an ingestion must be not only with the body but with the soul. We can’t just cry out “My Lord and My God” with the lips but not truly seek full participation in Christ and the fruit and the strength that participation effects. That’s why St. Paul says that when we are participating in Christ as branches on the vine, as a house build on him the Rock, we will be participating in the life of all those who similarly participate in Christ, as one Body. To receive Holy Communion with Christ and not desire, and work for, and live communion with the other members of his Mystical Body is not to receive him well. It also means that we will not will any participation with sin or things that are not worthy of Christ and his Church. St. Paul says, “I do not want you to become participants with demons,” for you cannot drink the cup of the Lord, you cannot partake of the table of the Lord, and drink and partake of the table of demons. The particular application he gives is with regard to eating meat sacrificed to idols, which not only scandalized many with sensitive consciences (as we heard on Thursday) but also could in some circumstances give rise to idolatry, since eating such meat was understood at the time as participating in the sacrifice to the pagan gods to whom the oblation of meat was made. But it can certainly be extended beyond the food we eat, to everything we consume. To participate in Christ means to participate in his holiness, and that must include a sincere will not to participate in anything incompatible with it.

* Someone who is a model for us in how to participate in Christ, someone who bears the greatest Fruit of All, and who not only built her house on Christ but became a house for him, is the Blessed Virgin Mary, the feast of whose holy name the Church celebrates today with joy. Mary’s whole life, from the first moment of her conception, was a participation in the life of God. She was “full of grace,” which means “full of God.” There was no participation of the cup and at the table of demons. In fact, there was enmity between her and those demonic offerings an...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

September 11, 2020

1 Cor 9:16-19.22-27, Ps 84, Lk 6:39-42

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily:

* In today’s Gospel, Jesus gives us an indication of what he hopes we will become: “When fully trained,” he said, “every disciple will be like his teacher.” Jesus wants us to become like him, to love as he has loved, to live as he has lived. The essence of human life and of Christian existence is to become “fully trained.” God provides this training, through his Word, through his Church, even through the suffering he permits. In the Gospel, in the powerful parable of the splinter and the wooden beam, Jesus indicates to us that he wants us paying attention to the ways that we need to grow, to those aspects of our own conduct that still need to be trained, rather than to obsess about others’ faults and flaws, so that we might see clearly, virtuously, charitably and be better trained to help our neighbor.

* St. Paul in the first reading today likewise talks about the training necessary to become saints, to become like Jesus. He makes an analogy to the training of championship athletes. “Do you not know that the runners in the stadium all run in the race, but only one wins the prize? Run so as to win. Every athlete exercises discipline in every way. They do it to win a perishable crown, but we an imperishable one.” We need to learn how to exercise discipline in every way, because discipline makes disciples. In this, St. Paul leads the Corinthians and us by example. He says, “Thus I do not run aimlessly; I do not fight as if I were shadowboxing. No, I drive my body and train it, for fear that, after having preached to others, I myself should be disqualified.” He was taking out his own logs from his life and that’s why he was able to see so clearly to assist others.

* And help others he did. He wanted everyone to become fully trained disciples through exercising discipline in every way. He made himself “a slave to all so as to win over as many as possible.” He became “all things to all, to save at least some.” His love for others and his recognition of God’s love for them because the driving force of his zeal. He wasn’t doing it for money or for earthly compensation, but because of an interior obligation to share the joy of what he himself had received. “Woe to me,” he says today, “if I do not preach the Gospel!” He recognized he had been given a treasure of which he had been made a steward and sought to pass on free of charge what he himself had received. A Christian spiritual athlete fully formed will have that same holy woe.

* The importance of this training is shown most conspicuously during times of crisis. Today on the 19th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, we see the blindness of terrorism and how evil and metastatic is the jihadi approach to life, as otherwise generous and sacrificial people are inspired not to make a sacrifice of themselves in love but waste their lives in suicidal terrorist acts. We are conscious, however, that we cannot just see the evil in their world vision, but must remember that the demagogues who manipulate them do so by calling the USA, not a nation filled Christian disciples like Jesus their master, but rather the “the great Satan,” because they see the cultural and moral garbage we often blithely tolerate and export to other countries. And so 9/11 must always be a day not just of prayerful remembrance but of continual pleading to God for mercy, begging him not only to save us from the scourge of terrorism but to have mercy on us for the types of behavior that the terrorist leaders are able unjustifiably to use to incite acts of homicidal hatred and grant us the gift of conversion,