Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, New York

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

Memorial of St. Peter Claver

September 9, 2020

1 Cor 7:25-31, Ps 45, Lk 6:20-26

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* St. Paul tells the Corinthians today and us, “I tell you brothers, the time is running out. … The world in its present form is passing away.” The world is in the midst of a “present distress.” These words don’t mean that St. Paul was predicting the imminent end of the world, but rather that he was describing the urgency of reordering our priorities for the eternal rather than the ephemeral. The biggest trick in the devil’s arsenal, if he can’t convince us that he doesn’t exist, is to persuade us that there’s plenty of time “later” for us to get our act together, that there’s no urgency for us to make big choices for God now. Today St. Paul is continuing to teach both us and the Christians in Corinth the path to true wisdom, which is also the path by which we’ll be considered foolish by those who are worldly. But he’s not just indicating the path: he’s also urging us to choose to live by that path.

* There’s no greater illustration of the choice we’re called to make for what’s everlasting instead of what’s evanescent than what Jesus mentions in the Gospel today. This is St. Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, taken from Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain. The fact that there are differences between this version and what Jesus says in Matthew 5-7 in the Sermon on the Mount is a clear sign that Jesus returned to his central messages often and developed different nuances. Rather than the eight beatitudes he proclaimed on the mountain, today in the plain he focuses on four and contrasts them clearly to four “woes.” But his essential teaching remains the same: that the real path to happiness, the way to have life to the full forever, is not just different, but in fact opposite, than what those infected by spiritual worldliness often presume.

* Jesus makes four contrasts today.

* The first is “Blessed are you who are poor, for the Kingdom of God is yours,” and “Woe to you are rich, for you have received your consolation.” It is simply revolutionary — not just in Jesus’ age, not just our era, but in every epoch — to believe that we’ll be happier if we’re poor than if we’re rich. Jesus says that the “rich” are to be pitied because they have already received their consolation in their money and possessions, whereas the poor are blessed because they are therefore able to seek with hope God and his kingdom. Material wealth is what those who live for the present age often believe will bring them happiness, but God’s kingdom is the hope and the treasure of those who are living knowing that time is running out and eternity is about to begin. Today many people, including Christians, spend more time nourishing their hope to win the lottery rather than to win the eternal bonanza, and Jesus says that these people are “woeful” because they think that the monopoly money and temporary houses on Park Avenue are more valuable that the Father’s House and treasure.

* The second is “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be satisfied,” versus, “Woe to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry.” Like at Paul’s time with the Epicureans, there are many people today who have made pleasure their deity. St. Paul says in his letter to the Christians in Philippi that the “enemies of the Cross” have made their “bellies their god.” There are people who live to satiate their bodily appetites, obsessing about meals at restaurants, storing up precious wines in cellars, all living with their hearts set on earthly banquets and often, like the Rich Man in Jesus’ parable (Lk 16),

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

September 5, 2020

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.5.20_Landry_ConCon.mp3

 

The text that guided the homily was: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday, when Jesus will speak to us about two important realities in our faith: prayer and fraternal correction.

* The first is prayer. Jesus says, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there will I be in their midst.” This is an incredible promise given to us by Jesus, but we have to understand first what it means and why he said it. It does not mean that whenever two or more Christians are in the same place doing anything whatever that Jesus is automatically there. Jesus promises to be there, rather, when they are gathered “in his name.” To gather in Jesus’ name means to gather in his person seeking what Jesus seeks. While we can obviously pray to Jesus when we’re alone and should, Jesus particularly incentivizes gathering together in his name. Many people today think it’s sufficient to have a so-called “private” relationship with Jesus, to pray on their own and say that’s an adequate substitution for coming to Mass, or praying as a family. It’s very clear, however, that Jesus wanted us to come together to pray. When his disciples asked him to teach them how to pray, he taught them to pray “Our Father,” not “My Father, who art in heaven,” for the obvious reason that he wanted us to pray it with others. Even when we pray the “Our Father” alone, he wants us to remember others, which is why he taught us to pray, “Give usthis day our daily bread, forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive…,” etc. Jesus came down from heaven to earth to found a family, and he wants us to live and to pray as a loving family.

* This leads us to the second thing he teaches us in the Gospel this Sunday, what the saints have called “fraternal correction.” Whenever we gather together with others in the name of the One who saves us from our sins, as a family whose members deeply love each other, then it’s obvious that we should always desire lovingly to help the other members of the family truly to overcome any obstacles flowing from sin that prevent communion with God or each other. Jesus says, “If your brother sins [against you], go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother. If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you. … If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector.” These stages should us the effort the Lord asks of us to accompany those who make mistakes, those who sin, so that they’re not lost. Whenever a brother or sister has wandered through sin, whenever he or she is going off the deep end, Jesus tells us to gather with that brother or sister in his name and try to help that sibling realize and begin to overcome his or her sin.

* Jesus’ teaching on fraternal correction is very challenging. We are living in a culture that thinks the greatest value is to be “nice.” Many believe that we really should never correct anyone else, because that would make us seem “judgmental” or “offensive” or “harsh.” They say it’s important to be civil, to agree to disagree, to live and let live, to mind our business, and to be tolerant. But this mentality comes from a lack of courage, a lack of seriousness about what sin really does, and a lack of love for them and for God. If we really care for a person,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Pontifical Josephinum Seminary, Columbus, Ohio

40 Hours Retreat on “Living the Mystery Placed in a Priest’s Hands”

Saturday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Teresa of Calcutta

September 5, 2020

1 Cor 4:6-15, Ps 145, Lk 6:1-5

 

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

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* Last Sunday, Jesus told Simon and Peter, and through him all of us, that he was thinking not as God does but as human beings do. All week long, with the help of St. Peter’s First Letter to the Corinthians, we have been pondering the contrast between being wise in the mentality of the world versus truly wise in seeing everything from the perspective of God in faith. These lessons are particularly important when it comes to our living by God’s wisdom in giving us himself in the Holy Eucharist, and becoming “fools for Christ,” truly crazy in love, about the Lord of the Sabbath in the Holy Eucharist.

* We will be talking later this morning about true worship of God and in the Gospel scene today we see the contrast between how God envisions true worship and the way human beings can sometimes form their own religion pretending it’s what God wants. God gave us the gift and the command to keep holy the Sabbath Day so that we would be able to be with God and allow him to refresh us in the “rest” that he gave us as an example by his own rest on the seventh day of creation. To keep the Sabbath holy, according to the Jewish conception of holiness (quadosh) was to consecrate it to God, to sever it from profane purposes so that it can be better united with God. After the exile, when the class of scribes arose to study the law and make sure the Jews weren’t violating it — because they recognized it was because of their infidelity that the exile happened in the first place — they began to create all sorts of regulations to keep themselves and their fellow Jews’ from getting anywhere close to breaking the law. So while God said, “Keep Holy the Sabbath Day” so that they wouldn’t return to the slavery of constant work like they experienced in Egypt, the scribes said that they couldn’t do basically any work at all. With regard to today’s Gospel, they said that you couldn’t do any reaping (plucking), threshing (rubbing it in their hands), winnowing (chucking the husks) and preparing (eating), all things that Jesus and his disciples did in today’s Gospel. Their understanding had become that to honor God and grow in holiness, they couldn’t do any work at all to prepare the food that God had given them, as if wanted his sons and daughters to starve on the day especially given to him. But these commands weren’t God’s wisdom, but man’s folly. When those who were spying on Jesus objected that he and his disciples had “violated” all of these restrictions, Jesus tried to take them back to the meaning of the law. Jesus reminded them that David had eaten the “bread of presence” in the temple, the 12 loaves that would remain there as a sign of God’s providence, and were to be eaten after their service only by the priests. Jesus was showing himself to be the new David and showing that his disciples were like David’s soldiers in fighting the battles of the Lord. Jesus was saying it’s not a violation of God’s law, or of consecrating oneself to God, or of the Sabbath rest to eat or to do a little work to obtain and prepare the food. But Jesus went further that this correction. In saying, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath,” he was saying that to find the Sabbath rest, we would need to rest in Him: to take his yoke and learn from him, who is meek and humble of heart, so that we might find the rest for their souls that God wanted. To honor the Sabbath is not to be neurotic about reaping, threshing, winnowing and preparing food but to honor and be united with the Lord in mee...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Votive Mass of the Sacred Heart

September 4, 2020

1 Cor 4:1-5, Ps 37, Lk 5:33-39

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Four times a year at daily Mass — on the 2nd Monday of Ordinary Time, on the Friday after Ash Wednesday, on the 13th Saturday, and on the 22nd Friday — the Church has us focus on Jesus’ words about feasting and fasting and the parables of the patch and of the wineskins. It is one of the most common themes we have, because it’s central to our life as believers. Jesus, in them, teaches us about how he wishes us to relate to him. He has come to give us new life but the new life is not a minor revision to our “operating system,” to eliminate some “bugs” in the software; rather it’s a thorough revamp. At the time of Jesus there were three purposes for fasting: reparation for one’s sins and those of others; supplication, or prayer in the body, for some petition; and the desire for authentic self-mastery through the capacity to say “no” to one’s appetite for food and “yes” to some other purpose, developing a moral muscle that can help to say no to other temptations in order faithfully to say yes to God. These purposes flowing from Old Testament times were not bad or immoral. But Jesus today gives thoroughly new purpose. He says the purpose of fasting is to help us hunger for him in his absence. When he is “ripped away” — the same verb that is used for his arrest in Gethsemane — it is then that we fast. With regard to fasting, we need to do more than just copy what they did in previous times. We need more than a minor correction or  “patch.” We need a new heart. We need a new longing. We need a new hunger.

* Today the readings specify three “new” ways we need to relate to Christ.

* First, as “friends of the bridal chamber,” which is what is poorly translated as “wedding guests.” Because Jesus the Bridegroom is with us, pouring himself into our life, we must like groomsmen and bridesmaids be full of joy. That’s the first type of wine he wants to pour into us anew. A Christian must be defined by a sense of joy because of the presence of the Bridegroom. To be a Christian is, to some degree, always to be living out the joy we see on wedding days, as friends of the Bridal Chamber as Christ unites himself to others, and as Bride, as the Bridegroom unites himself to us. Sometimes as Christians we do better at fasting than we do at feasting in the Lord’s presence. We behave as if the Lord is absent more than we live in his presence, pondering in depth what it means. Today is an opportunity to receive new wineskins from Christ so that we might live out that spousal mystery.

* Second, St. Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians says we’re called to be servants of Christ. The word servant he uses is not diakonos or doulos, the common Greek words for “servant” or “slave.” It’s huperetes, which means the slave who mans the rudder in a big ship, whose doesn’t establish the direction (the captain does) but helps head in that direction. That’s what we are called to do for Christ, trying to point our lives and those of others in the direction Jesus sets, not steering off course. This is true in this life and toward the eternal port. Jesus wishes to renew us in that direction today.

* Third, St. Paul says that we’re likewise called to be stewards of the mysteries of God. The word steward is economos, which means the one who implements the law of the house, who administers. We’re entrusted with the mysteries of God, which first means all God’s graces, the new wine he seeks to pour into our fresh wineskins. It also means the sacraments, the effect of which he wants to see grow as we invest these...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Gregory the Great, Pope and Doctor of the Church

September 3, 2020

1 Cor 3:18-23, Ps 24, Lk 5:1-11

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* In today’s first reading, St. Paul tells the Corinthians and us, “If anyone among you considers himself wise in this age, let him become a fool, so as to become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of God.” We see an illustration of how God’s wisdom turns human wisdom upside down in today’s Gospel. After having borrowed Peter’s boat as a floating pulpit to preach to the crowds, Jesus tells Peter to take his boat and put out into the deep water, lowering his nets for a catch. Peter had already worked all night and caught nothing. He wasn’t just tired but discouraged. The command of the Lord was absurd to anyone experienced in fishing on the Sea of Galilee, where people caught fish in shallow water at night time, not deep water in daylight. It would be as if a fisherman had told Jesus, a carpenter, to drive in nails by holding the head of the hammer and striking with the handle. Peter, however, at the Lord’s word, put out into the deep and caught the biggest catch of his life. The wisdom of this world is indeed foolishness in the God-man’s eyes! That trust in the Lord that led Peter to put out into the deep was meant by the Lord to teach him and Andrew, James and John, about the life of faith and the work of evangelization: even when it seems something “won’t work,” God can bring extraordinary results.

* We see this truth contrasting God’s wisdom versus worldly wisdom throughout this scene and throughout salvation history. Worldly wisdom would choose a good man rather than one whose first words were “depart from me for I am a sinner,” a rabbi rather than a fisherman, a nobleman rather than someone most considered a nobody. As St. Paul told us on Saturday, however, “God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise.”

* If we wish, like Peter, to be Jesus’ followers, we need to learn to trust in his wisdom far more than the world’s. We need to learn how to become a fool for and with him. To the Jews, as St. Paul described last Friday, the Cross is a scandal, to the Greek’s it’s folly, but to those with faith, to those who are fools full of God’s wisdom, it’s the “power and the wisdom of God.” It’s craziness to have Jesus’ version of talent recruitment, choosing the weak and ignobly born ignoramuses to shame the strong and worldly wise nobles of the world, but that’s precisely what God did. Perhaps most strikingly, to worldly wisdom the beatitudes are farcical. To be happy, worldly wisdom says we need to be rich, whereas Jesus’ wisdom says we need to be poor in spirit; worldly wisdom says we need to be strong and powerful, Jesus’ wisdom says we need to be meek and peacemaking; worldly wisdom says we need to have all our desires satiated,  whereas Jesus’ wisdom says we must starve for holiness; worldly wisdom says we need to give our libido free rein, whereas Jesus says we need to be pure in heart; and worldly wisdom says we need to be popular and liked by everyone, whereas Jesus’ wisdom says we need to be willing to be persecuted and reviled because of him.

* The question for us is whether we’re wise according to God’s wisdom or the world’s. Many consider themselves wise in this age and judge the wisdom of God by those standards rather than the other way around. They look at the world through the lens of politics and try to box everything in the Church into conversatives versus liberals. They are beholden to psychology and evaluate the entire spiritual life as a think of the psyche instead of the Spirit.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

September 2, 2020

1 Cor 3:1-9, Ps 33, Lk 4:38-44

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* St. Paul in today’s first reading points to the type of spiritual growth he was seeking to help catalyze among the Christians in Corinth, something that indicates the spiritual growth God would like to see in all of us. He began by saying that when he was first evangelizing them, he needed to care for them spiritually the way parents care for newborns because they were still living according to the ways of the world rather than according to the Holy Spirit. “I could not talk to you as spiritual people but as fleshly people, as infants in Christ. I fed you milk, not solid food, because you were unable to take it.” So he went slowly. We always pass the faith on according to the capacity of people to understand. When we catechize young children, we don’t give them a copy of the adult Catechism of the Catholic Church. We speak to them very simply about God, about prayer, about charity, about the Bible, about the Sacraments. We “breast feed” them, digesting the truths of the faith and passing these truths on to them in ways they can assimilate. Of course we don’t want them to stay there. Just like a little child passes from milk to Gerber’s to normal food for children to more healthy food and a richer cuisine for growing children and adults, so a similar passage is meant to happen in us spiritually. And St. Paul was saying that that’s what was not happening among the Corinthians. “Indeed you are still not able [to take solid food], even now, because you are still of the flesh.” They were living according to their earthly, fleshy desires, instead of living according to the Spirit. He then says why: “There is jealousy and rivalry among you.” Such things are not manifestations of a life according to God. We’re called to look at each other as brothers and sisters, not as competition, and we’re supposed to be happy to see them grow and thrive, not jealous. When we’re living by the Spirit, we love each other rather than resent each other and we seek communion rather than harbor division.

* St. Paul gets specific about the envy and contention that was dividing the community: Some were saying “I belong to Paul” and others “I belong to Apollos” and later, as we’ll see, “I belong to Cephas” (Peter). St. Paul is clear that that’s the talk and behavior of spiritual infants, siding according to their preferences with “ministers through whom [they] became believers” instead of with the Lord who sent them to them and who caused the growth. They were focusing on earthly likes and dislikes rather than on God, and St. Paul wanted to provoke them by his strong language to grow up. There are many similar issues of living according to the flesh in a childish (rather than childlike) way that afflict the Christians of today. In an age of spiritual consumerism, people are led to focus more on their personal preferences rather than God when it comes to which Church they attend, which music is their favorite, which pew they want to sit in and more. Many pick and choose among popes, or bishops, or priests, or Church councils, rather than receive with gratitude and follow all the Lord sends. People define themselves less with the Lord than with the instruments of the Lord who most meet their tastes. They define themselves too much with the adjectives they put to their “Catholicism,” normally taken from political categories, rather than with the faith that transcends any constricting label. And that’s why there is still so much “jealousy and rivalry” in parishes, dioceses and the Church, whereas Jesus prayed and worked that we might have a unity as profound as the unity among the Perso...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Tuesday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation

September 1, 2020

1 Cor 2:10-16, Ps 145, Lk 4:31-37

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today we meet Jesus teaching in a synagogue. After he was booted and almost killed from the Synagogue in Nazareth where he grew up — which we heard yesterday — he went to Capernaum, on the Sea of Galilee, where Peter, Andrew, James and John all lived and worked. In Nazareth when he taught, St. Luke tells us all were initially “amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth,” but eventually doubts entered because they thought they knew him and those doubts quickly passed to rage and homicidal intentions.  Today in Capernaum, St. Luke says that those in the Synagogue “were astonished at his teaching because he spoke with authority” and later, after he had rebuked a demon, they were “all amazed and said to one another, ‘What is there about his word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits and they come out!”

* One of the most important aspects of our Christian response in faith is to be amazed and astonished at Jesus and at his words. This astonishment is an experience most of us, I hope, had when we first started living by faith, when our parents read to us from the Bible or from Bible stories and told us that the Bible contains the words of God himself; when we first began to pray and we recognized that God was listening to us with love; when we first discovered that the Eucharist is God and comes down from heaven on the altar, and dwells within the tabernacle, or loves us from the monstrance; when we first started to hear about Jesus’ great miracles, his multiplication of the loaves and fish, his walking on water, his casting out the devil like he does in today’s Gospel, his healing the sick, and his rising from the dead. This is an amazement and astonishment that likewise would have enveloped us at the time of our becoming aware of God’s calling us to follow him in a special way within the call of our Baptism, when he wanted to configure us to him as his priest in my case or his Brides in yours. But what can happen over time to every Christian, including those of us in the priesthood and consecrated life, is we can lose our astonishment. The things of God can become routine. We can cease to view with amazement the fact that God has spoken to us in Sacred Scripture, that he listens to us in prayer, that he awaits us with love in the Eucharist wanting to nourish us with the only nourishment worthy of our souls, that he thirsts to forgive us in the Sacrament of his Mercy, that he is risen and alive and seeks to walk with us throughout each day, that he can continue to work great miracles if we approach him with faith and it really is in alignment with what’s best. We can begin to take things for granted, to “domesticate” Jesus, and lose our awe. It’s one of the saddest things that can happen in the life of faith. I think of those priests, religious and “professionally Catholic” lay people who have lost the basic astonishment that accompanies the life of faith, so that they begin to look at the Mass as just some dramatic ceremony, who begin to place tabernacles in “worship spaces” as if they’re placing potted plants, who begin even to use words to describe the Eucharist like “bread” and “cup,” who deconstruct the Word of God as if they’re dissecting a cadaver instead of analyzing a Living Word, who mock the Sacrament of Penance as if it’s just a historical vestige rather than a gift of God we need for salvation. Real faith always brings with it this childlike astonishment and amazement before God and what God has done and is doing.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Monday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

August 31, 2020

1 Cor 2:1-5, Ps 119, Lk 4:16-30

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Yesterday the Church pondered Jesus’ correction to Peter to think as God thinks, not as human beings do, and St. Paul’s echo not to conform ourselves to this age, but to be transformed by the renewal of our minds so that we may discern what is God’s will, what is good, pleasing and perfect. Jesus also said that the renewal of our minds must take root in our whole life, as he said that if we wish to follow him, we must deny ourselves, take up our Cross and follow him, losing our life to save it. This is what St. Paul himself encouraged the Christians in Rome to do when he told them “to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.” The way we most transform our minds to conform them to Christ’s rather than to this age, the way we most think as God things and follow Jesus is through the living sacrifice of a crucified life of love. That’s what we see St. Paul describe for us in the way he approached Corinth and what we see Jesus preach about and foretell in his visit to his hometown synagogue.

* St. Paul tells the Corinthians that he hadn’t come to them with “persuasive words of wisdom,” the worldly wisdom of the Greeks and the age, so that their “faith might not rest on human wisdom.” Instead he was coming in “weakness and fear and much trembling” as a “demonstration of spirit and … the power of God.” He was fearful because he was preaching Christ crucified, which was “folly” to the hedonistic Corinthians, because for those who loved pleasure and sought to minimize pain, what would be less appealing than following someone on a path of self-denial and a way of the Cross? But Paul was doing so anyway, and preaching Christ crucified — as we heard on Saturday, the “power and the wisdom of God” — not just by his lips but by his life, having suffered together with Christ to such an extent that he was able to say to the Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.” His conformity to Christ was the demonstration of spirit and power. He was inviting the Corinthians, like him, to “know nothing … except Jesus Christ and him crucified,”  which means not just to “know about” Christ crucified, but to “know” him in something analogous to the Biblical sense of union, to become one with Christ on the Cross. Though his own self-denial and crucified life, St. Paul was to prove far more effective in bringing people to conversion than the lofty words of wisdom he had preached before to the Greek intellectuals in the Athenian areopagus immediately before arriving in the Corinthian isthmus.

* St. Paul wanted us to experience that same wisdom, but it’s a wisdom  learned not so much in books or homilies but through existential union with the crucified Master. In the Responsorial Psalm, we prayed first “How I love your law, O Lord! It is my meditation all the day,” but then we added, “Your command has made me wiser than my enemies. I have more understanding than all my teachers, … I have more discernment than the elders because I observe your precepts.” We become wise by living the Word of God, by observing God’s commands and precepts, by incarnating his call to a union so intense that it lasts even in worldly pain and suffering.

* This is also one of the essential lessons of today’s Gospel of Jesus’ preaching in the Synagogue of Nazareth, which begins our prayerful reliving of St. Luke’s Gospel at daily Mass that will last for the next three months. After Jesus had read the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah, Jesus said,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Monday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

August 31, 2020

1 Cor 2:1-5, Ps 119, Lk 4:16-30

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Yesterday the Church pondered Jesus’ correction to Peter to think as God thinks, not as human beings do, and St. Paul’s echo not to conform ourselves to this age, but to be transformed by the renewal of our minds so that we may discern what is God’s will, what is good, pleasing and perfect. Jesus also said that the renewal of our minds must take root in our whole life, as he said that if we wish to follow him, we must deny ourselves, take up our Cross and follow him, losing our life to save it. This is what St. Paul himself encouraged the Christians in Rome to do when he told them “to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.” The way we most transform our minds to conform them to Christ’s rather than to this age, the way we most think as God things and follow Jesus is through the living sacrifice of a crucified life of love. That’s what we see St. Paul describe for us in the way he approached Corinth and what we see Jesus preach about and foretell in his visit to his hometown synagogue.

* St. Paul tells the Corinthians that he hadn’t come to them with “persuasive words of wisdom,” the worldly wisdom of the Greeks and the age, so that their “faith might not rest on human wisdom.” Instead he was coming in “weakness and fear and much trembling” as a “demonstration of spirit and … the power of God.” He was fearful because he was preaching Christ crucified, which was “folly” to the hedonistic Corinthians, because for those who loved pleasure and sought to minimize pain, what would be less appealing than following someone on a path of self-denial and a way of the Cross? But Paul was doing so anyway, and preaching Christ crucified — as we heard on Saturday, the “power and the wisdom of God” — not just by his lips but by his life, having suffered together with Christ to such an extent that he was able to say to the Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.” His conformity to Christ was the demonstration of spirit and power. He was inviting the Corinthians, like him, to “know nothing … except Jesus Christ and him crucified,”  which means not just to “know about” Christ crucified, but to “know” him in something analogous to the Biblical sense of union, to become one with Christ on the Cross. Though his own self-denial and crucified life, St. Paul was to prove far more effective in bringing people to conversion than the lofty words of wisdom he had preached before to the Greek intellectuals in the Athenian areopagus immediately before arriving in the Corinthian isthmus.

* St. Paul wanted us to experience that same wisdom, but it’s a wisdom  learned not so much in books or homilies but through existential union with the crucified Master. In the Responsorial Psalm, we prayed first “How I love your law, O Lord! It is my meditation all the day,” but then we added, “Your command has made me wiser than my enemies. I have more understanding than all my teachers, … I have more discernment than the elders because I observe your precepts.” We become wise by living the Word of God, by observing God’s commands and precepts, by incarnating his call to a union so intense that it lasts even in worldly pain and suffering.

* This is also one of the essential lessons of today’s Gospel of Jesus’ preaching in the Synagogue of Nazareth, which begins our prayerful reliving of St. Luke’s Gospel at daily Mass that will last for the next three months. After Jesus had read the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah, Jesus said,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Agnes Church, New York, NY

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Extraordinary Form

August 30, 2020

Gal 3:16-22, Lk 17:11-19

 

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

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* To have leprosy in the ancient world was about the worst thing that could happen to someone. Not only would Hansen’s disease eat away your flesh and bones, not only would it make you stink worse than skunks, but it would lead to your total banishment from society. As outcasts they would have to stay at least 50 feet away from any non-leper forced to cry out “unclean!, unclean!,” anytime someone was approaching. Leprosy cut you off from their family members. It also cut you off from the communal worship of God because you could never return to the Synagogue on Saturday or to the Temple on the major holy days. When Jesus approached, the lepers with voices trained from yelling out “Unclean!,” stood at a distance from Jesus, raised their voice, and screamed something else: “Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!” And Jesus did have mercy. He told them, “Go, show yourselves to the priests,” because priests were the only ones under the Mosaic law who were able, intelligently, to pronounce a leper healed and return him or her to society. Even to say this, however, was to imply that he had cured them, but he actually didn’t pronounce them cured or let them see the effects. It took an act of faith on their part to start journeying to find a priest simply on Jesus’ word. But that’s what they did.

* As they were journeying, however, they became aware they were cured. St. Luke tells us one of them, a Samaritan, turned around. Before he would show himself to the priests — who may not have not wanted to deal with him because of the historic animosity between Jews and Samaritans — he wanted to thank the One who had given him a miracle. Glorifying God, he came to Jesus, fell at his feet, and thanked him. Jesus’ words are very powerful. He didn’t immediately reply, “You’re welcome.” He didn’t stress that he was the incarnate love of God in the world and that he had done this for him out of love. Rather, he asked aloud, “Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine?” He knew he had cured all ten of leprosy, but only one was showing gratitude. Jesus then pointed out that the man who returned was a Samaritan, saying, “Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?,” and implying, “Where are the Jews?” The Jews were accustomed to pray, “Give thanks to the Lord who is good, whose love endures forever!” (Ps 107:1; Ps 118:1); to chant, “With my whole being I sing endless praise to you. O Lord, my God, forever will I give you thanks” (Ps 30:13); to declare, “We thank you, God, we give thanks; we call upon your name, declare your wonderful deeds” (Ps 75:2). No Jew returned. And the reason why it mattered so much to Jesus was not because he was a jealous insecure egomaniac who wanted people to appreciate his generosity and enter into his debt. No, he wanted to give them all a far greater gift than curing them of their leprosy! He wanted to give them the fulfillment of the promise St. Paul describes in today’s passage from the letter to the Galatians.

* This is the key point: Jesus came into the world not fundamentally to heal our bodies but to restore our souls. He came not to remedy our ills but to redeem our whole life. In order to receive these greater gifts, however, we need gratefully to be in relationship with God. While all ten men were cured of the physical leprosy, nine retained leprosy of the soul, an ingratitude that took for granted the greatest gift they had received in life until then and that closed them off from an even greater one. Only the grateful leper would receive the gift of salvation because only he had a heart that was opened to receive it,