Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Landry, Bishop of Paris (d. 660)

June 10, 2020

1 Kings 18:20-39, Ps 16, Mt 5:17-19

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.10.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* We continue today with the third of 16 installments of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount at daily Mass, which will continue to nourish us for nearly three weeks. After proclaiming the Beatitudes and our vocation to be salt of the earth and light of the world, today Jesus speaks to us about how he has come to fulfill the law and how we will become great in his kingdom through participation in that fulfillment and helping others to do so. While Jesus wasn’t going to let the smallest part of a letter pass away, he also wasn’t going to get us to focus first on the smallest part of the letter — as many of his contemporaries did — but on the big, bold headlines that oriented every letter and every part of the letter: how God’s law is all about loving God with all we are and have, and loving our neighbor as totally as God has loved us. That’s what the law is and Jesus was coming to fulfill it.

* Because of Jesus’ being the incarnate fulfillment of the law of God, he said that the greatest in his kingdom would be the one who would obey the law and teach others to do the same. The greatest would be the one who loved God and neighbor as fully as he or she could and trained others to love God and neighbor with similar wholehearted abandon. The law of God, God’s holy word, is something that must be received as a word to be lived. It’s the word of eternal life.

* Elijah was someone who obeyed God and taught others to do the same. He obeyed when God called him. He obeyed when God instructed him to journey through the desert. His whole prophetic life was meant to help others to learn how to obey God with all one’s heart, mind, soul and strength. But Elijah, generally considered the greatest of all of the Old Testament prophets (unless Moses is considered a prophet), is not known for his prophetic writings or speeches. He’s known for his prophetic actions. He taught by unforgettable gestures. Today we see one. People were “straddling the issue” as whether to obey God or obey their own impulses through the worship of Ba’al. He told them it was time to decide. And today we have one of the great scenes and illustrative miracles of the Old Testament. With faith in the power of God, he set up a test to demonstrate the falsity of the Ba’al and the truth of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel. He bathed the sacrifice in twelve big jars of water that needed to be taken from the stream at the bottom of the mountain on which the sacrificial duel was taking place. But he could have put the sacrifice at the bottom of the Mediterranean. That was nothing compared to God’s power. And we see what God did in response to Elijah’s prayer and proclaiming of the Gospel through deeds: “The Lord’s fire came down and consumed the burnt offering, wood, stones, and dust, and it lapped up the water in the trench.” It consumed everything. And the people came to believe.

* Today we celebrate the Memorial of another who became great by seeking to fulfill the law of two fold charity and helping others to receive, reciprocate and imitate Christ’s love: St. Landry, Bishop of Paris from 650-660. Few Americans — outside Louisiana, where there is a whole county (called a parish) named after him and a huge Church in Opelousas where I celebrated my tenth Mass a week or so after my ordination — have a devotion to him,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Tuesday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Ephrem, Deacon and Doctor of the Church

June 9, 2020

1 Kings 17:7-16, Ps 4, Mt 5:13-16

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.9.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today we continue with three weeks of prayer about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, which sketches out for us the way to live as Christians. Today we come to a dual vocation he announces for us: as salt and light. For me it’s very intriguing that Jesus calls his disciples “salt of the earth” and “light of the world” at the beginning of his public ministry. At this point they were “barely” his disciples. It points to something, I think, very powerful. That almost by nature we’re called to be salt and light. Human beings are supposed to exhibit the properties of salt and light. Christians, true disciples of Jesus, should live these identities and carry out these missions all the more. Let’s see how.

* In the ancient world, salt had three purposes. The first was as a preservative. There was no refrigeration in ancient Palestine and so to preserve meat or fish from corruption, they covered it with salt. This points to how Christ came into our world in order to prevent our corruption and has sent us out to help others from going bad. The second purpose was as a fire starter. There was no lighter fluid or starter wood for fires in the ancient world. What they’d do is take dung and mix it with salt and light these salted dung pellets on fire. Alone, dung wouldn’t ignite, but the salt would get the whole thing started and once the dung was lit, it could burn hot for a long time. (One of the things I’ve learned from my work at the UN is that in some poorer regions of the world, dung remains used as fuel). In a similar way, Christ has come into the world in order to light a fire on earth and longs for it to be enkindled in us so that he can send us out to light the world on fire. Christians are supposed to be a fire starter. The third function was what we still use salt for today, to give flavor. A little bit of salt can make a big difference between tasty or bland food. In a similar way, Christ came to give meaning to all experiences, no matter how bland or bitter, giving us his life to the full and instilling in us his joy. Christians, marked in this way by Christ’s mercy, are meant to bring this flavor, personality, joy and life to the environments we inhabit.

* The second part of the vocation Jesus gives us today is to be the “light of the world.” There are two fundamental purposes for light. The first is to help people to see. The second is to warm. Christ has done both for us. He has come and mercifully taught us in such a way that we may walk as children of the light and be true children of the light. So the Christian life is supposed to be luminescent, like the lights on a landing strip at an airport on a foggy night that help planes land. In the midst of many walking in valleys of darkness, Christians are called to burn with the light so that others can follow us in following Jesus the Light of the World. Similarly, light gives off warmth, and Christ has come into the world to warm us by his love, to burn away whatever in us is frigid or tepid, so that we in turn may warm others by the fire of divine love. When we approach Jesus and when others approach us, we and they should feel like someone cold approaching a lit fireplace.

* Jesus points out, however, that it’s possible for salt to lose its flavor and light to be hidden. Rather than preventing corruption, starting a fire of faith,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Monday of the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time, Year II

June 8, 2020

1 Kings 17:1-6, Ps 121, Mt 5:1-12

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.8.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today, on Monday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time, we begin twelve weeks of focus at daily Mass on the Gospel of St. Matthew, which will accompany us through the end of August. As we always do, we begin with the most famous part of the Gospel of St. Matthew, which is likewise one of its most important passages: the Beatitudes. Especially at this time of crisis, Jesus’ words take on even greater importance. Pope Francis, in his 2018 apostolic exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate, told us, “Jesus explained with great simplicity what it means to be holy when he gave us the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes are like a Christian’s identity card. So if anyone asks: ‘What must one do to be a good Christian?,’ the answer is clear. We have to do, each in our own way, what Jesus told us in the Sermon on the Mount. In the Beatitudes, we find a portrait of the Master, which we are called to reflect in our daily lives.”

* How are we called to live, and help others to live, as Jesus would during these time?

* Jesus calls blessed the poor in spirit whose treasure is God. This is different from a spirit of entitlement, a spirit of privilege, a spirit of acquisitiveness.

* Jesus called blessed those who mourn, who are so compassionate that they weep over others misfortune, promising that they will be consoled. This is a time in which we’re called to mourn over the injustice blacks have had to endure, to mourn over the death of George Floyd and others killed by brutality of police officers who have ceased to protect and serve, to mourn over the diabolical destruction visited upon so many businesses, vehicles, and lives by those taking advantage of the protests to harm others or for personal gain.

* Jesus calls blessed those who are meek, who have a strength that they realize courageously they don’t have to put on display, to flex their muscles or show their force, to retaliate at every provocation. Jesus promises they will inherit the earth. They don’t have to seize it, or steal it.

* Jesus says we’re blessed when we hunger and thirst for righteousness, which first and foremost means being right with God, but also includes being right with others. Justice is a virtue for which we should strive. But we must strive for justice with justice, with holiness, remaining right with God. Jesus promises those who do will be satisfied.

* Jesus calls blessed the merciful, who don’t seek revenge, but who imitate him in asking God the Father to forgive those who do evil because they don’t know what they’re doing. These people, Jesus says, will receive mercy from God, because the measure with which we measure is measured back to us.

* Jesus calls blessed the pure of heart, because they will see God. The chief breakdown in the evil we have been witnessing is the failure to see God in others, a blindness that allows us to label and categorize others, to strip them of their divinely given dignity, to dehumanize them. A heart purified of sin loves others more and more with the love of God.

* Jesus calls blessed the peacemakers, those who seek to heal rather than expand or exploit divisions. They will be called children of God like Jesus, who came to reconcile all things in himself. During a time of crisis, real leaders are peacemakers, they try to bring God’s children together in a way united with justice.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Trinity Sunday, Year A

June 7, 2020

Ex 34:4-6.8-9, Dt 3, 2 Cor 13:11-13, Jn 3:16-18

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.7.20_Homily_1.mp3

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* These past two weeks have been very difficult. Jesus Christ, echoed 18 centuries later by Abraham Lincoln, told us that “a house divided against itself cannot stand” (Mk 3:25), and we have watched with horror as profound divisions and the sins that cause them have not only been exposed but exacerbated. The evil murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers reopened the gaping wound of racial division, dehumanization and injustice and that social lesion has been hemorrhaging non-stop since. The evil manipulation of protests against that injustice by anarchists, organized crime networks, and opportunistic bandits to smash store windows, loot businesses, vandalize cars, burn and descecrate Churches, and defile buildings with graffiti, has given everyone a glimpse of the chaos and violence of hell. It has not only siphoned our attention from the long-overdue conversation and conversion our society must have about the evil of racism but aggravated public antagonism between police and protestors, between politicians and the public, between law-abiding and law-breaking citizens, between business owners and those who think rage gives them the green light to take crowbars and molotov cocktails to others’ livelihoods. We all know where division ultimately comes from: the same fallen spirit who sought to divide Adam and Eve from each other and from God. The evil we have experienced, from racism to the killing of the defenseless to the vandalism, destruction and robbing of strangers’ property, all come from a deep-rooted sin, a failure to see and reverence the dignity of others made in God’s image, which comes from a failure to see and reverence God himself. Attacks against God’s sons and daughters and against the works of their hands are sins against God, against others, and against the perpetrators themselves.

* That’s why today’s feast of the Holy Trinity is so important. Every Sunday is, in a very real sense, dedicated to God and therefore every Sunday really is Trinity Sunday. But since the 1300s, the Church has celebrated on the Sunday immediately following Pentecost a feast dedicated explicitly to the Holy Trinity, to help all of us focus more directly on God is in his profound mysterious depths, and therefore on who we’re called to be made in His image.

* “The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity,” we read in a key paragraph in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “is the central mystery of Christian faith and life.” It’s the central mystery, note, not just with regard to what we believe but how we live. The Catechism goes on to say why: “It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the ‘hierarchy of the truths of faith.’” The mystery of the Trinity enlightens the mystery of Creation, the mystery of Redemption, the Mystery of Sanctification. It illumines every page of Sacred Scripture. It helps us to understand the commandments. It sheds light on the four last things. It reveals what is at the root of all of the sacraments and prayer. And it illumines for us the way out of the dark basements of divided houses. The Catechism paragraph concludes, “The whole history of salvation is identical with the history of the way and the means by which the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, reveals himself to men ‘and reconciles and unites with himself those who turn away from sin” (CCC 234).

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for Trinity Sunday (A), Vigil

June 6, 2020

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.6.20_Landry_ConCon_1.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 tomorrow on Trinity Sunday.

* Every Sunday is, in a very real sense, dedicated to God and therefore every Sunday really is Trinity Sunday. But since the 1300s, the Church has celebrated on the Sunday immediately following Pentecost a feast dedicated to the Holy Trinity, to help all of us focus more explicitly on who God is in his profound mysterious depths, and therefore who we’re called to be made in His image and likeness.

* “The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity,” we read in an incredibly important paragraph in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “is the central mystery of Christian faith and life.” It’s the central mystery, note, not just with regard to what we believe but how we live. The Catechism goes on to say why: “It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the ‘hierarchy of the truths of faith.’” The mystery of the Trinity enlightens the mystery of Creation, the mystery of Redemption, the Mystery of Sanctification. It illumines every page of Sacred Scripture. It helps us to understand the commandments. It sheds light on the four last things. It reveals what is at the root of all of the sacraments and prayer.

* The Catechism paragraph concludes, “The whole history of salvation is identical with the history of the way and the means by which the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, reveals himself to men ‘and reconciles and unites with himself those who turn away from sin” (CCC 234). Underneath the history of the world, underneath our own personal history from the moment of our conception in our mother’s womb, until now and beyond, has developed within this mystery of the Blessed Trinity. Therefore, it’s crucial for us as human beings, not to mention believers, to pour ourselves into the mystery of the Trinity. This means not just pouring our minds, but our heart, soul, strength and entire existence, into this reality. The Christian life is meant to be a Trinitarian life. Your life, my life, is meant to be a Trinitarian life.

* How do we live a Trinitarian life?

* We certainly are helped to live this reality liturgically, although often we fail to recognize it. This whole Mass, for example, is lived in communion with the Trinity. We begin Mass in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We will end it by receiving the blessing of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Everything we do and say during this Mass is nothing other than a dialogue between us and the Father, through the person of Jesus Christ, in the light and with the help of the Holy Spirit. The priest greets us all with St. Paul’s words from the second reading of Trinity Sunday, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” The Mass is supposed to help us to enter into God’s grace, love and communion. In the middle of Mass, we loudly proclaim that we have grounded our lives in the mystery of the Trinity, uniting ourselves to the entire Church on earth, in heaven and in Purgatory as we say: “I believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth… I believe in one Lord,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Saturday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Norbert

June 6, 2020

2 Tim 4:1-8, Ps 71, Mk 12:38-44

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.6.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today in the Gospel Jesus contrasts two types of persons and believers. The first are the Scribes, who, despite their intellectual knowledge of the law, are vain and rapacious. They vainly “go around in long robes and accept greetings in the marketplaces, seats of honor in synagogues, and places of honor at banquets.” Worse, he says, “They devour the houses of widows and, as a pretext, recite lengthy prayers.” Their religion is a show and a means by which they can take advantage even of the poor, by persuading them to give to them out of a desire to give generously to God. On the surface the scribes seem very holy, but underneath, Jesus — as he says elsewhere — says they’re full of dead men’s bones, a hypocrisy that would show itself in starkest relief as they conspired to get him executed by the Romans. In contrast to their external display, Jesus points out a poor widow who contributed to the Temple treasure two lepta, together worth less than a penny, but Jesus said that constituted “all she had, her whole livelihood.” She wasn’t giving a show out of hypocrisy. She was giving herself with integrity.

* There’s a similar distinction in today’s moving first reading from the end of St. Paul’s Second Letter to St. Timothy. St. Paul describes those teachers and prevaricating believers who do “not tolerate sound doctrine, but, following their own desires and insatiable curiosity, … accumulate teachers, … stop listening to the truth, and … [are] diverted to myths.” These are sophists and curiosity seekers, who are constantly looking for the latest novelty in the faith. We see this today in preachers who, for example, use their pulpits to speak disproportionately about their political opinions in opinable areas, or who try foremost to entertain, or who deform rather inform people’s consciences with regard to intrinsic evils, and people who look for gurus who reduce the Gospel to politics on the right or the left, who want to be entertained, and who are looking for those who won’t call them to conversion but rather pat them on the back even when they’re turning their back on Christ. In contrast St. Paul charges St. Timothy on behalf of God to “proclaim the word” rather than what people want to hear, to “persist” no matter the circumstances, to “convince, reprimand, encourage” with patience and sound teaching according to where the person is with regard to living according to God, to be “self-possessed” rather than fly off the handle, to “endure hardship” because it will inevitably come to every sign of contradiction to the age, to share the fulness of the Gospel rather than only those parts that will please the listeners, and to fulfill rather than leave incomplete the work God has given him to do. And, as he often did with Timothy, St. Paul showed that he was not merely saying, “Do as I say,” but “Follow me.” He was writing from a Roman prison where he was about to sacrifice his life for God. He put into practice all of these imperatives he gave to his spiritual son. As he was preparing for his end in Rome, he said, however, that he had fought the good fight of faith, had finished the race with urgency, had kept the faith by passing it on,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Boniface, Martyr

June 5, 2020

2 Tim 3:10-17, Ps 119, Mk 12:35-37

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.5.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: [to be completed]

* In today’s first reading, we continue to see how St. Paul encourages the young St. Timothy and the young Church that has been entrusted to Paul’s spiritual son. He praises Timothy for striving to follow Paul’s “teaching, way of life, purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecutions, and sufferings.” He reminds him that “all who want to live religiously in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” by “wicked people and charlatans” who are both “deceivers and deceived,” but just as “the Lord delivered him” from all of his past hardships, so the Lord is trustworthy to be with him and them in future situations. But then, after describing for him what awaits, St. Paul taught him bout the principle and means of fidelity: to “remain faithful to what you have learned and believed, because you know from whom you learned it, and that from infancy you have known the sacred Scriptures.” Timothy learned it from the Holy Spirit through St. Paul and through Sacred Scripture, which Timothy, growing up Jewish, had learned from his mother and grandmother. St. Paul says that the Scriptures give us “wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus,” because they are ” inspired by God and [are] useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness,” and makes one who belongs to God “competent and equipped for every good work.”

* St. Paul underlines for St. Timothy, for the early Church, and for the Church at all times the importance of Sacred Scripture. It is the way that God the Holy Spirit trains us in holiness and forms us for the work of the Gospel, since it helps us to unite ourselves to God in faith so that we will never do any work alone. The same Holy Spirit who inspired it helps us to know, understand and live by it. We’re called to live by every word that comes from the mouth of God. It is an extraordinary gift to us, imparting to us God’s perspective, making us wise, leading us to salvation through faith.

* In the Gospel, we see Jesus pointing out the deeper meaning of Scripture. After having been interrogated by the Scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees in the Temple area, Jesus finally asks a question himself, something to show that the scribes — like the one who asked him yesterday about the most important commandment and whom Jesus challenged not just to know but to live the two-fold commandment of love — despite all their study might not know about Sacred Scripture, particularly Psalm 110. He asks, “How do the scribes claim that the Christ is the son of David?” and puts to them an enigma from Sacred Scripture if that is indeed true. “David himself, inspired by the Holy Spirit, said: ‘The Lord said to my lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I place your enemies under your feet.’ David himself calls him ‘lord’; so how is he his son?’” Jesus affirms that the Holy Spirit inspired David in the writing of the Psalms, since “all Scripture is inspired by God.” But then he says that the Scribes themselves are unable to solve that enigma, as to why David’s descendent would be called “Lord.” It wasn’t just because he was the Messiah. Jesus, of course, is the answer to that question and he was trying to open them u...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Votive Mass in Times of War or Civil Disturbance

June 4, 2020

2 Tim 2:8-15, Ps 25, Mk 12:28-34

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.4.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted during the homily: 

* Today we pray in the Psalm, “Teach me your ways, O Lord!,” and Jesus and Paul both respond to that plea. Their answers give us a lot of guidance during this Votive Mass in Time of War and Civil Disturbance, when organized mobs, using legitimate protests again racism and the killing of George Floyd are being used as cover for organized crime and diabolical destruction in the City of New York. God’s ways provide light in the midst of the darkness enveloping our city each day as dusk falls.

* The Gospel involves an honest question among the interrogation of Jesus we see in Mk 12, in anticipation of the Passion. He was asked a question about the authority by which he was cleansing the Temple, about whether it was lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, about whose wife would a woman married successively to seven brothers be in heaven, all designed to try to trip him up, get him to lose the crowds, and potentially to have a cause to persecute him unto death. Jesus transcended each of those questions. Today, a lawyer of Sacred Scripture, having heard his answers, approaches with a question designed to know the truth. It focuses on what is the most important thing we need to do, and Jesus replies, loving God with all we have and then adds a second command, similar to the first, loving our neighbor with all we have. The lawyer who asked the question responded with joy at Jesus’ answer. Jesus told him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God,” because knowing the truth and doing the truth are two different things. To enter the kingdom of God, the scribe needed concretely not just to know about the need to love God and neighbor but actually to love them. And Jesus had come to teach us the Lord’s ways and to help us learn how to follow him in loving God the Father and loving neighbor.

* This is very important for us during these days of diabolical destruction. Walking here this morning through Midtown, it was like a lumber yard with construction workers with chain saws and hammers boarding up almost every store and business that hadn’t already been boarded. That’s to try to prevent some of what I saw on Monday returning from celebrating Mass for the Sisters at St. Andrew’s, where I saw cars torched, glass all over the sidewalks, car windows and windshields demolished, graffiti everywhere, ransacked high level stores and convenience stores. I bet if we interviewed the looters, they would have all heard of the Golden Rule. They would have all heard of the command to love one’s neighbor as oneself. But despite that knowledge in their minds, those words are sterile and inert in their hearts. What’s happening is exactly the opposite of love of neighbor and treating others how you would want to be treated. That similarly goes for the four officers who presided over the death of George Floyd on camera, despite his pleas and those from bystanders. It’s the further thing from love. And how did we get to this point of such bald-faced contradictions to the love of neighbor that is at the root of peace? Jesus indicates it to us. The “second” is based on, or “like,” the first. Once we fail to love God — and to love him with passion, to love him with our minds and come to know him, to love him with our hearts above over loves, to love him with our strength even when it’s ...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Charles Lwanga and Companions, Martyrs

June 3, 2020

2 Tim 1:1-3.6-12, Ps 123, Mk 12:18-27

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.3.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* At times like now, with the coronavirus pandemic and demonic destruction and looking in our major cities, all of us need to be buttressed with the gift of courage. Today’s martyrs, St. Charles Lwanga and his companions, are great examples for us all. That courage comes from the Holy Spirit. It is conditioned by a firm faith in God and in a belief in eternal life, that even should we have to suffer and die, that will not be the end but the beginning. Today’s readings and feast help us to enter more deeply into these truths and be strengthened to live as salt, light and leaven at a time in which Christians are needed to shine with full Christian splendor.

* Today in the Gospel, Jesus speaks about the reality of eternal life with him, fortifying our faith in eternity. In anticipation of Jesus’ imminent passion, those conspiring to have Jesus murdered continue to try to interrogate him in the temple area to undermine his authority and catch him in his speech so that they might undermine his authority or find a pretext to have him dispatched. After yesterday’s question about paying taxes to Caesar, today’s question comes from the Sadducees, who didn’t believe in the Resurrection. They based their theology only on the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, and claimed that the Pentateuch didn’t say anything about the Resurrection. They present the situation of a woman married to seven brothers consecutively as part of the Levirate custom of the Jews, something that seemed to correspond a little bit to the situation of Sarah in the Book of Tobit. Because the woman in their hypothetical had become “one flesh” (Genesis) with seven different men, they queried, to which of the seven husbands’ bodies would she be one flesh in the afterlife, after the Resurrection of the Body? It was absurd to them that she would be one flesh with seven different brothers simultaneously, because that would imply they would be one flesh with each other. Jesus’ answer was that they knew neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. If they were expert even the Pentateuch they claimed to believe, they would know from God’s appearing to Moses in the burning bush, that God “is” — not was — the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that he is the God of the living, and that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, though long dead on earth, are somehow alive. The second thing Jesus mentioned is the “power of God.” Jesus was implying that the Sadducees didn’t believe God had the power to raise the dead. God had in fact manifested that eternally-life-giving power in the lives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and would obviously do so again in Jesus’ resurrection of the body. The biggest upshot of the passage is about eternal life. Jesus engaged the question — unlike the question about his authority, or the question of taxes to Caesar — because of the importance of eternal life, which he came to reveal and make happen. He described the reality of heaven as a place where there is no marriage or giving in marriage, because there’s one marriage, the wedding feast of the Lamb and his Bride. The purpose of marriage is the sanctification of the spouses and the generation and education of children, and in heaven the spouses would be already saints and there would be no children born from their union. But while there will be no human marriage in heaven,...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Tuesday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Votive Mass for Times of War and Civil Disturbance

June 2, 2020

2 Pet 3:12-15.17-18, Ps 90, Mk 12:13-17

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.2.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* We have a chance to ponder the Second Letter of St. Peter in the liturgy only two days every two years. Since yesterday we had the proper reading for the Memorial of Our Lady Mother of the Church, today is the only time we will be able to focus on Second Peter between June 5, 2018 and — because in 2022, the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time not appear in the liturgical calendar because we lose a week and a half of Ordinary Time each year depending upon the dates of Ash Wednesday and Pentecost — the next time it will appear in the liturgy will be June 3, 2024. So this is our one shot in six years to listen liturgically to this book. Insofar as we’re called to live off of every word that comes from the mouth of God, and this is the only time in six years to do so liturgically, it behooves us to be like Ezekiel and St. John and eat every morsel of the scroll.

* And there’s a striking message in the section we have today as we celebrate this Votive Mass in Times of War and Civil Disturbance as riots and diabolical destruction take place in New York and in various other cities in our country. The Second Letter of St. Peter was written during a time of gnostic antinomianism — gnostic pointing to a “secret spiritual knowledge” not contained in Sacred Scripture and antinomianism pointing to the fact that they were “opposed” (anti) to any and all “laws” (nomian) governing their conduct including God’s law explicit or written on our hearts — that was pretending as if God indulgently allows us to do whatever we want regardless of his commandments and the intrinsic demands of truth and genuine love. What we’re seeing today in the violence mobs plaguing our cities, torching cars, breaking in and looting our businesses is a modern form of this gnostic antinomianism or smug anarchy. The sacred author, after describing “flames” and “elements melted by fire,” tells us, “Be on your guard not to be led into the error of the unprincipled and to fall,” something we wish all of those doing violence would hear, as well as those who respond to evil by descending to the level of evil. What should we be doing, rather, at this time? The author says, “Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ.” We need to be turning to God, who in every age, as we pray in the Psalm, is our refuge. We’re summoned to become more like Jesus at this time.

* That brings us to the Gospel, taken from Jesus’ time in the Temple teaching after Palm Sunday, where two groups that were archenemies conspired to try to provoke and trap Jesus. Both the Herodians and the Pharisees were trying to get Jesus out of the way, because both felt threatened by him. They decided to ask him a question about which they themselves were constantly in disagreement — whether it was lawful to pay taxes to or support in any way the Roman empire. The Herodians were laxist sycophants, and, regardless of how they personally felt about a foreign power’s ruling over them, decided that if you couldn’t beat the Romans, you should join them. Herod and his partisans cooperated with the Romans in almost everything, including taxes. The Pharisees, like most of the Jewish people, deeply resented being dominated by a pagan power, and found utterly repulsive the thought of giving a...