Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life

Saturday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Martha

July 29, 2020

Jer 15:10.16-21, Ps 59, Jn 11:19-27

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Two of the most important days of “reparation” in the liturgical calendar are July 3 and July 29, for St. Thomas and St. Martha respectively. Like St. Thomas, St. Martha is one of the saints who throughout Church history have seemed to be remembered not for their great faith but for the way Jesus challenged them to grow in faith. Thomas will forever be remembered more for his “doubt” — a doubt the other apostles shared before Jesus’ first appearance — than for his Christological confession. Likewise Martha has suffered in comparison to her sister, Mary, as someone whom Christian tradition has deemed to have had her priorities mixed up. Today is a day to try to correct the record and do ecclesiastical penance by learning from them! The Church has us celebrate the feasts of the saints, as you know, not merely so that we can beg for their intercession but so that we can learn from them the virtues we need to live the Christian life in a holy, faithful and truly fulfilling way. Today on this Feast of St. Martha, therefore, I’d like to ponder four of her great virtues, virtues that Sisters of Life, that Catholic priests and indeed all Catholic faithful should be known for.

* We should ponder first her hospitality. St. Luke tells us, “Jesus entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him.” The evangelist mentions that it was Martha — not Martha, Mary and Lazarus — who welcomed Jesus, because she was the one who really put in the effort of hospitality. That’s also what today’s opening prayer features, when we turn to God the Father “whose Son was pleased to be welcomed in Saint Martha’s home as a guest” and ask for the grace similarly to be received by him in the house of heaven. Together with St. Benedict, she is the most famous saint of hospitality in the history of the Church. It’s not by coincidence that the guest house in the Vatican where Pope Francis now lives and where all the Cardinals stay during the conclave is called the Domus Sanctae Marthae, “St. Martha’s House.” Her hagiographically famous hospitality to Jesus and the apostles should help us to examine our own, first to Jesus and then in him, to others. St. Josemaria used to call the chapels he would make and adorn to house Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament “Bethanies,” and would say that we should welcome Jesus in that chapel and elsewhere with the same love Jesus found there. He would use that as an illustration to show how our hearts, our lives, our bodies and souls are likewise meant to be like Martha’s House in Bethany, receiving Jesus within. Once we learn how to receive Jesus in that way, then it becomes so much easier to extend a similar hospitality to others because, as Jesus said, whenever we welcome a stranger, Jesus says, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” Welcoming the Lord and others as we would the Lord is something in which we need to persevere. It’s not enough in welcoming to give a good “first impression,” but the welcoming must continue. We must receive others as gifts given by the Lord, including those who are near us, to make them feel valued, loved, appreciated, at home.

* Second, we should ponder St. Martha’s loving service. St. John says that after the raising of Lazarus she threw a reception for Jesus and she was “ministering” to the guests present (Jn 12:2). We see her doing the same when she and Martha received Jesus into their home in St. Luke’s Gospel (10:38-42). She was cleaning and cooking for Jesus and working so hard that she began to resent that her sister Mary wasn’t doing any work at all but sitting at Je...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life

Saturday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Martha

July 29, 2020

Jer 15:10.16-21, Ps 59, Jn 11:19-27

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Two of the most important days of “reparation” in the liturgical calendar are July 3 and July 29, for St. Thomas and St. Martha respectively. Like St. Thomas, St. Martha is one of the saints who throughout Church history have seemed to be remembered not for their great faith but for the way Jesus challenged them to grow in faith. Thomas will forever be remembered more for his “doubt” — a doubt the other apostles shared before Jesus’ first appearance — than for his Christological confession. Likewise Martha has suffered in comparison to her sister, Mary, as someone whom Christian tradition has deemed to have had her priorities mixed up. Today is a day to try to correct the record and do ecclesiastical penance by learning from them! The Church has us celebrate the feasts of the saints, as you know, not merely so that we can beg for their intercession but so that we can learn from them the virtues we need to live the Christian life in a holy, faithful and truly fulfilling way. Today on this Feast of St. Martha, therefore, I’d like to ponder four of her great virtues, virtues that Sisters of Life, that Catholic priests and indeed all Catholic faithful should be known for.

* We should ponder first her hospitality. St. Luke tells us, “Jesus entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him.” The evangelist mentions that it was Martha — not Martha, Mary and Lazarus — who welcomed Jesus, because she was the one who really put in the effort of hospitality. That’s also what today’s opening prayer features, when we turn to God the Father “whose Son was pleased to be welcomed in Saint Martha’s home as a guest” and ask for the grace similarly to be received by him in the house of heaven. Together with St. Benedict, she is the most famous saint of hospitality in the history of the Church. It’s not by coincidence that the guest house in the Vatican where Pope Francis now lives and where all the Cardinals stay during the conclave is called the Domus Sanctae Marthae, “St. Martha’s House.” Her hagiographically famous hospitality to Jesus and the apostles should help us to examine our own, first to Jesus and then in him, to others. St. Josemaria used to call the chapels he would make and adorn to house Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament “Bethanies,” and would say that we should welcome Jesus in that chapel and elsewhere with the same love Jesus found there. He would use that as an illustration to show how our hearts, our lives, our bodies and souls are likewise meant to be like Martha’s House in Bethany, receiving Jesus within. Once we learn how to receive Jesus in that way, then it becomes so much easier to extend a similar hospitality to others because, as Jesus said, whenever we welcome a stranger, Jesus says, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” Welcoming the Lord and others as we would the Lord is something in which we need to persevere. It’s not enough in welcoming to give a good “first impression,” but the welcoming must continue. We must receive others as gifts given by the Lord, including those who are near us, to make them feel valued, loved, appreciated, at home.

* Second, we should ponder St. Martha’s loving service. St. John says that after the raising of Lazarus she threw a reception for Jesus and she was “ministering” to the guests present (Jn 12:2). We see her doing the same when she and Martha received Jesus into their home in St. Luke’s Gospel (10:38-42). She was cleaning and cooking for Jesus and working so hard that she began to resent that her sister Mary wasn’t doing any work at all but sitting at Je...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Tuesday of the 17th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of Blessed Stanley Rother, Martyr

July 28, 2020

Jer 14:17-22, Ps 79, Mt 13:36-43

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* There’s been a progression among the eight Parables Jesus has been preaching to us as recorded in the 13th Chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel. They’ve gone from focusing on the power of the seed of the Word of God to bear 30, 60, 0r 100 fold fruit in those with good soil, to showing how the growth of the Kingdom happens, as a mustard seed or leaven, once someone really begins to bear that fruit. Today Jesus says that once we receive Him as the Seed sown in us, once we become united with him, he seeks in turn to sow us together with him in the field of the world, as “children of the kingdom.” At the same time, however, he describes in today’s explanation of the Parable of the Weeds and Wheat, which we would have heard on Saturday if we didn’t have the proper Gospel for the Feast of St. James, that while God the Father wants to sow Christians like wheat as children of the kingdom in the world (united with Christ), so the “Enemy” sows like weeds the “children of the Evil One.” How are we supposed to relate to this reality as wheat and weeds, of children of the kingdom versus those of the evil one?

* The first thing we should ponder is what it means to be in a relationship of filiation, of being children. At the end of the Parable Jesus speaks about the righteous’ “shining like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” and earlier he mentioned that the weeds are “children of the evil one.” At first glance, it might seem that this parable points to an almost Calvinist notion of predestination, that we’re born either of God or of the devil. But in the spiritual case, what we’re talking about is a relationship of adoption. Through baptism, we become adopted children of God (Rom 8:15; Gal 4:5; Eph 1:5). There’s a choice on God’s part to extend to us this supreme gift and there’s an acceptance of it on our part and a desire to live as chips off the old divine block. Similarly with the devil, there’s an offer on his part — seldom explicit, but through temptation — and an acceptance on the part of free men and women to live according to him, the world and the flesh. This is something we can see. In the middle of the field of the world there are so many faithful religious and ascetic priests, pious prayerful grandmothers and innocent children on the one hand and Porn makers, abortion doctors, and drug cartel leaders on the other. Today is an opportunity for us to examine the principle on the basis of which we’re living, whether we’re ardently seeking to live as children of the Father, righteous and shining like the sun, and allowing him to plant us wherever he wishes, or whether, rather than good wheat that nourishes others, we’re growing more like weeds under the influence of evil, living according to the spirit of the world.

* The main point of the parable is about what to do with the weeds. The slaves ask their Master, “Do you want us to go and pull them up?” And he shouts, “No!,” lest “you pull up the weeds [and] uproot the wheat along with them.” Out of concern for the wheat — for the children of the kingdom — he urges patience until the harvest. In order to understand better Jesus’ message, it helps to know something about wheat and weeds (called lolium temulentum) in the Holy Land. The wheat and the weeds Jesus was likely pointing to are indistinguishable during the early phases of growth. Not even expert farmers can tell the difference between them. When they grow enough to distinguish between them, their roots are so intertwined that you can’t separate them without ripping out the wheat by the roots a...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Tuesday of the 17th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of Blessed Stanley Rother, Martyr

July 28, 2020

Jer 14:17-22, Ps 79, Mt 13:36-43

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* There’s been a progression among the eight Parables Jesus has been preaching to us as recorded in the 13th Chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel. They’ve gone from focusing on the power of the seed of the Word of God to bear 30, 60, 0r 100 fold fruit in those with good soil, to showing how the growth of the Kingdom happens, as a mustard seed or leaven, once someone really begins to bear that fruit. Today Jesus says that once we receive Him as the Seed sown in us, once we become united with him, he seeks in turn to sow us together with him in the field of the world, as “children of the kingdom.” At the same time, however, he describes in today’s explanation of the Parable of the Weeds and Wheat, which we would have heard on Saturday if we didn’t have the proper Gospel for the Feast of St. James, that while God the Father wants to sow Christians like wheat as children of the kingdom in the world (united with Christ), so the “Enemy” sows like weeds the “children of the Evil One.” How are we supposed to relate to this reality as wheat and weeds, of children of the kingdom versus those of the evil one?

* The first thing we should ponder is what it means to be in a relationship of filiation, of being children. At the end of the Parable Jesus speaks about the righteous’ “shining like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” and earlier he mentioned that the weeds are “children of the evil one.” At first glance, it might seem that this parable points to an almost Calvinist notion of predestination, that we’re born either of God or of the devil. But in the spiritual case, what we’re talking about is a relationship of adoption. Through baptism, we become adopted children of God (Rom 8:15; Gal 4:5; Eph 1:5). There’s a choice on God’s part to extend to us this supreme gift and there’s an acceptance of it on our part and a desire to live as chips off the old divine block. Similarly with the devil, there’s an offer on his part — seldom explicit, but through temptation — and an acceptance on the part of free men and women to live according to him, the world and the flesh. This is something we can see. In the middle of the field of the world there are so many faithful religious and ascetic priests, pious prayerful grandmothers and innocent children on the one hand and Porn makers, abortion doctors, and drug cartel leaders on the other. Today is an opportunity for us to examine the principle on the basis of which we’re living, whether we’re ardently seeking to live as children of the Father, righteous and shining like the sun, and allowing him to plant us wherever he wishes, or whether, rather than good wheat that nourishes others, we’re growing more like weeds under the influence of evil, living according to the spirit of the world.

* The main point of the parable is about what to do with the weeds. The slaves ask their Master, “Do you want us to go and pull them up?” And he shouts, “No!,” lest “you pull up the weeds [and] uproot the wheat along with them.” Out of concern for the wheat — for the children of the kingdom — he urges patience until the harvest. In order to understand better Jesus’ message, it helps to know something about wheat and weeds (called lolium temulentum) in the Holy Land. The wheat and the weeds Jesus was likely pointing to are indistinguishable during the early phases of growth. Not even expert farmers can tell the difference between them. When they grow enough to distinguish between them, their roots are so intertwined that you can’t separate them without ripping out the wheat by the roots a...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Monday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

July 27, 2020

Jer 13:1-11, Dt 32:18-21, Mt 13:31-35

 

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

 

The allowing points were attempted in the homily: 

* There is a huge contrast in today’s readings between the organic growth of God’s kingdom in and through those who cooperate with God in faith and the corruption that occurs when people fail to listen.

* We begin with the growth. In today’s Gospel, Jesus gives us two parables to describe the growth of the Kingdom in us and through us among others. In the Parable of the Mustard Seed, we see that the kingdom can begin very small, in the heart of one faithful person, but then over time, it can grow huge. This is, of course, what we see in how the Kingdom began in the Annunciation, when out of Mary’s yes, the Seed conceived within her by the power of the Holy Spirit, began to grow and eventually all nations would be embraced in the branches of his arms on the Cross. We saw that this is what happened on Pentecost, when out of this small band of apostles, the Church started and experienced great growth. We’ve seen this happen in the founding of parishes out of a few committed families, of religious movements and orders that only began with the founder, and in families when one person’s conversion led to the conversion of so many others.

* This type of organic growth is contrasted with the prophet ôt, the symbolic action, that God asked the Prophet Jeremiah to carry out in today’s first reading. God told him to get a brand new linen loincloth, basically the ancient underwear worn by the priestly class, and after wearing it for a while, take it off and place it unlaundered in the soily cleft of a rock in Parath, a place a short distance from his home. A long interval later, God had him retrieve the loincloth and he discovered that it had been rotted in contact with the earth and other elements. That was an image, God communicated to him so that he could communicate it to others, to show the rotting of the people of Judah and Jerusalem. God wanted the whole houses of Israel and Judah to cling to him intimately like the linen underwear. He wanted them to be his people, his renown, his praise, his beauty. He wanted to see them grow in relationship with them. “But they did not listen,” God said. They refused to obey his words, they walked in the stubbornness of their hearts, they followed and adored false gods, and that special priestly garment rotted. In the Responsory, the Church has us return to the Book of Deuteronomy detailing the infidelity of the Israelites 700 years before because history was repeating itself: they were unmindful of the God who gave them birth, they were fickle with no sense of loyalty, they treated God as if he didn’t exist, angering him with their idols. And they would bring demise on themselves. God wouldn’t so much punish them as allow them to experience the punishment of their own actions when they turned their back on him, when they allowed the intimate relationship in the Covenant he formed with them to rot like the loincloth.

* It behooves us to examine which of these two vectors we are on personally and communally. We’re either on a path of growth in the kingdom, like the Parables of the Leaven and the Mustard Seed indicate, or we are on the path of corruption. Our relationship with God is even more intimate than that of the Jews, but is that a source of growth for us or are we forsaking that incredible treasure? We can begin communally. Are we growing as a Church, as an Archdiocese, as a religious institute, are we lifting up all of society, or are we recapitulating what we saw in Moses’ and Jeremiah’s times? We can of course point to certain places where the Church really is growing and thriving and others wh...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Monday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

July 27, 2020

Jer 13:1-11, Dt 32:18-21, Mt 13:31-35

 

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

 

The allowing points were attempted in the homily: 

* There is a huge contrast in today’s readings between the organic growth of God’s kingdom in and through those who cooperate with God in faith and the corruption that occurs when people fail to listen.

* We begin with the growth. In today’s Gospel, Jesus gives us two parables to describe the growth of the Kingdom in us and through us among others. In the Parable of the Mustard Seed, we see that the kingdom can begin very small, in the heart of one faithful person, but then over time, it can grow huge. This is, of course, what we see in how the Kingdom began in the Annunciation, when out of Mary’s yes, the Seed conceived within her by the power of the Holy Spirit, began to grow and eventually all nations would be embraced in the branches of his arms on the Cross. We saw that this is what happened on Pentecost, when out of this small band of apostles, the Church started and experienced great growth. We’ve seen this happen in the founding of parishes out of a few committed families, of religious movements and orders that only began with the founder, and in families when one person’s conversion led to the conversion of so many others.

* This type of organic growth is contrasted with the prophet ôt, the symbolic action, that God asked the Prophet Jeremiah to carry out in today’s first reading. God told him to get a brand new linen loincloth, basically the ancient underwear worn by the priestly class, and after wearing it for a while, take it off and place it unlaundered in the soily cleft of a rock in Parath, a place a short distance from his home. A long interval later, God had him retrieve the loincloth and he discovered that it had been rotted in contact with the earth and other elements. That was an image, God communicated to him so that he could communicate it to others, to show the rotting of the people of Judah and Jerusalem. God wanted the whole houses of Israel and Judah to cling to him intimately like the linen underwear. He wanted them to be his people, his renown, his praise, his beauty. He wanted to see them grow in relationship with them. “But they did not listen,” God said. They refused to obey his words, they walked in the stubbornness of their hearts, they followed and adored false gods, and that special priestly garment rotted. In the Responsory, the Church has us return to the Book of Deuteronomy detailing the infidelity of the Israelites 700 years before because history was repeating itself: they were unmindful of the God who gave them birth, they were fickle with no sense of loyalty, they treated God as if he didn’t exist, angering him with their idols. And they would bring demise on themselves. God wouldn’t so much punish them as allow them to experience the punishment of their own actions when they turned their back on him, when they allowed the intimate relationship in the Covenant he formed with them to rot like the loincloth.

* It behooves us to examine which of these two vectors we are on personally and communally. We’re either on a path of growth in the kingdom, like the Parables of the Leaven and the Mustard Seed indicate, or we are on the path of corruption. Our relationship with God is even more intimate than that of the Jews, but is that a source of growth for us or are we forsaking that incredible treasure? We can begin communally. Are we growing as a Church, as an Archdiocese, as a religious institute, are we lifting up all of society, or are we recapitulating what we saw in Moses’ and Jeremiah’s times? We can of course point to certain places where the Church really is growing and thriving and others wh...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

July 26, 2020

1Kings 3:5.7-12, Ps 119, Rom 8:28-30, Mt 13:44-46

 

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

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* While I was a seminarian in Rome working as a guide to the necropolis underneath St. Peter’s Basilica where St. Peter’s tomb and bones were unearthed in the 1940s, I was asked to give a special private tour to a couple from Houston, George and Annette. George’s father, George Sr., had financed the excavations. After the tour, I was able to join them for a meal and talk to them about what his father had told him about the excavations, something that led to a conversation about his dad and how he had gotten his start. It was a gripping story that illustrates not only in a pristine form what the American dream is all about, but also showcases the chief lessons Jesus is teaching us in today’s Gospel parables.

* George, Sr., was orphaned at age 7 in St. Louis. He worked super hard in school in order to get a scholarship to study at a good university. After college, he served during World War I in the Army Air Corp and, after the war went to Mexico and Cuba to work in and learn the oil business. In 1929, the year of the great depression, he went to Houston, where his wife Susan was from, with very little money but a lot of hope to fix that situation. He had learned during his time in Tampico (Mexico) and Havana the types of surface formations that increase the odds of finding oil underneath. So he began to drive up and down the back roads of East Texas in search of these formations. Most nights he would come back with a search as empty as his gas tank. He did this for almost a whole year, until one day, following a creek bed outside a town called Conroe, he spotted a formation like the one for which he had been looking. At great risk to his family, he sold basically all they had to obtain the land. The risk paid off. Eventually two wells were struck and he became over time one of the wealthiest oilmen in Texas — and with his family, great philanthropists to various good Catholic causes.

* George, Sr., made millions during the Great Depression, at a time when, obviously, so many others were struggling to survive or losing all that they had. Some might say that he was just lucky, in the right place at the right time. There’s no denying that he did have some good fortune — for example, his being in born in the age of automobiles that he could take to survey land, his wife’s being from Houston rather than some oil-barren location, and so on — but to a large degree he made his luck by excelling in three things: first, he had a hunger for a finding a treasure that could help him not only to support his family but to do great good with his life; second, a recognition of what would lead to that treasure, as he scoured back road and creek beds; and third, a willingness to sacrifice all he had to obtain that treasure.

* Jesus is saying that Christians need the same three virtues in today’s twin parables of the treasure buried in a field and the pearl of great price. The parables are simple enough to understand. The first is of a poor peasant finding a buried treasure in the midst of his work in the field. There were no real banks in ancient Palestine. People would often bury things of value in secret locations in fields. There was also no sense of “finders keepers, losers weepers”; whatever was discovered in a field belonged not to the discoverer but the owner because the land was essentially his bank. That’s why the peasant needed to buy the field. It’s quite obvious that the one selling had no idea that an ancient treasure was buried on his property. He didn’t place the same value in the field as much as his laborer did. For the peasant,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

July 26, 2020

1Kings 3:5.7-12, Ps 119, Rom 8:28-30, Mt 13:44-46

 

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

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* While I was a seminarian in Rome working as a guide to the necropolis underneath St. Peter’s Basilica where St. Peter’s tomb and bones were unearthed in the 1940s, I was asked to give a special private tour to a couple from Houston, George and Annette. George’s father, George Sr., had financed the excavations. After the tour, I was able to join them for a meal and talk to them about what his father had told him about the excavations, something that led to a conversation about his dad and how he had gotten his start. It was a gripping story that illustrates not only in a pristine form what the American dream is all about, but also showcases the chief lessons Jesus is teaching us in today’s Gospel parables.

* George, Sr., was orphaned at age 7 in St. Louis. He worked super hard in school in order to get a scholarship to study at a good university. After college, he served during World War I in the Army Air Corp and, after the war went to Mexico and Cuba to work in and learn the oil business. In 1929, the year of the great depression, he went to Houston, where his wife Susan was from, with very little money but a lot of hope to fix that situation. He had learned during his time in Tampico (Mexico) and Havana the types of surface formations that increase the odds of finding oil underneath. So he began to drive up and down the back roads of East Texas in search of these formations. Most nights he would come back with a search as empty as his gas tank. He did this for almost a whole year, until one day, following a creek bed outside a town called Conroe, he spotted a formation like the one for which he had been looking. At great risk to his family, he sold basically all they had to obtain the land. The risk paid off. Eventually two wells were struck and he became over time one of the wealthiest oilmen in Texas — and with his family, great philanthropists to various good Catholic causes.

* George, Sr., made millions during the Great Depression, at a time when, obviously, so many others were struggling to survive or losing all that they had. Some might say that he was just lucky, in the right place at the right time. There’s no denying that he did have some good fortune — for example, his being in born in the age of automobiles that he could take to survey land, his wife’s being from Houston rather than some oil-barren location, and so on — but to a large degree he made his luck by excelling in three things: first, he had a hunger for a finding a treasure that could help him not only to support his family but to do great good with his life; second, a recognition of what would lead to that treasure, as he scoured back road and creek beds; and third, a willingness to sacrifice all he had to obtain that treasure.

* Jesus is saying that Christians need the same three virtues in today’s twin parables of the treasure buried in a field and the pearl of great price. The parables are simple enough to understand. The first is of a poor peasant finding a buried treasure in the midst of his work in the field. There were no real banks in ancient Palestine. People would often bury things of value in secret locations in fields. There was also no sense of “finders keepers, losers weepers”; whatever was discovered in a field belonged not to the discoverer but the owner because the land was essentially his bank. That’s why the peasant needed to buy the field. It’s quite obvious that the one selling had no idea that an ancient treasure was buried on his property. He didn’t place the same value in the field as much as his laborer did. For the peasant,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A) (Vigil)

July 25, 2020

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/7.25.20_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.

* Jesus will give us two, I like to call them twin, parables that sum up the approach we should have to him and to our faith. The parables are simple enough to understand. The first is of a poor peasant finding a buried treasure in the midst of his work in the field. There were no real banks to speak of in ancient Palestine. People would often bury things of value in secret locations in fields. There was no sense of “finders keepers, losers weepers”; whatever was discovered in a field belonged not to the discoverer but the owner. That’s why the man needed to buy the field. It’s quite obvious that the one selling had no idea that an ancient treasure was buried on his property. He didn’t place the same value in the field as much as his peasant did and so he sold it. For the peasant, selling all he said in order to get the money to buy the field was nothing compared to what he knew he would be gaining.

* The second parable is of a wealthy merchant searching for precious pearls, going from place to place in pursuit of something truly valuable and beautiful. Finally he found the pearl of his dreams, whose worth was unsurpassable, but whose owner valued it less than the money he would get in exchange. And so the wealthy merchant sold all that he had before, doubtless houses, gems and other valuables, to obtain that pearl of great price.

* I’d like to focus on three spiritual lessons Jesus teaches us in these parables.

* The first quality is an insatiable desire for the treasure of the kingdom of God, which is basically an unquenchable thirst for God. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told us, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Mt 6:21). He told us in that same Sermon that many of us seek to “store up for [ourselves] treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal,” but he wanted us to “store up for [ourselves] treasures in heaven,” a treasure not measured in clothing that moths can wreck, metals that rust can corrode, or money that thieves or taxes can take. Jesus is telling us that our heart must be set on God, and not just in general, but more than Tom Brady wants to win another Super Bowl, more than an ambitious politician seeks to win high office, and more than a man in love will do everything he can to win over and marry the woman he can’t stop thinking about.

* The second is a recognition of where the treasure of the kingdom can be found. The merchant in the parable knew the places he needed to go, and so he visited the shops and markets where pearls would be sold. The farmer wasn’t so much searching for a buried treasure, but what he discovered it in the middle of his workday tilling new parts of the property that had not yet been farmed for the landowner, he knew what to do. Where do we go to find the treasure? We find God in personal prayer, we find him in the Sacraments, especially Mass and confession. We can find him speaking to us in Sacred Scripture. We find him radiantly shining in the lives and writings of the saints. We find him living within us in the truly Christian moral life with virtue. We can find him in the loving service of our neighbor, since every time we care for someone who is hungry, thirsty, naked, a stranger, ill, imprisoned or otherwise in need,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Feast of St. James the Apostle

July 25, 2020

2 Cor 4:7-15, Ps 126, Mt 20:20-28

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* I had been looking forward this month, if COVID-19 had not come, to walking the Camino de Santiago with my brother’s family as a means to defy my bodily odometer that surpassed 50 clicks in February. Every summer tens of thousands of people from around the world, from devout Catholics to agnostics trying to find themselves, make the 478-mile Camino to the tomb of St. James the Apostle whose feast we celebrate today. Although we are not able to go to Spain because of restrictions, nevertheless we’re asked to make what I would call the true way of St. James, following his footsteps as he sought to follow the Lord’s, knowing that this sainted apostle is praying for us that we may indeed take that route.

* The Way of St. James begins at the seashore of Galilee when the apostle left his boats, his fish, his parents to respond to Jesus’ call “follow me!” and he kept following Jesus not only in the occasions he shared with all of the apostles, but when Jesus called him, his brother John and Peter, apart from the rest to cure Peter’s mother in law, to raise the daughter of Jairus from the dead, to be transfigured among them, and to pray in the Garden that, if it be the Father’s will, the chalice of suffering God the Father was giving him might be taken away. For us to follow the way of St. James, we, too, must follow Jesus, leaving other things behind; to follow him to the sick; to follow him to the dead and mourning; to follow him in times to prayer; to follow him into the moments of great suffering.

* To do that, we need to have our desires, our ambitions, our longings transformed just like St. James did. Why did Jesus choose Peter, James and John from among the twelve to be the ones closest to him and his work? I think in all three cases it was capacity for leadership, ambition, zeal. Peter showed that he was a real leader among the others in prayer, being the one who heard God the Father intimate to him that Jesus was the Messiah and Son of the Living God and had the courage to say it. James and John were nicknamed by Jesus “Boanerges,” or “sons of thunder,” because they were the ones who, out of righteousness indignation wanted to have fire rain down from heaven to destroy Samaria for their inhospitality to Jesus just like Sodom and Gomorrah had been destroyed in times past. They were zealous. They were also plainly ambitious, as we see in today’s Gospel, something that perhaps came from the fact that the two of them, like Peter and Andrew, were fishermen, helping to run their own business. We see that ambition in today’s Gospel, after his mother asks whether James and John could have the choicest positions in Jesus’ messianic administration. Jesus, wanting to transform their ambition from worldly to supernatural, asks, “Can you drink the chalice I am to drink?,” the chalice Jesus would reveal in Gethsemane he would rather have taken from him, the chalice of suffering foretold in Isaiah’s suffering servant song. They both responded with ardor, “We can” — they gave him a blank check, not knowing exactly what it meant — and Jesus confirmed that they would, but they would be able to do so only through a humble acceptance of the power of the Holy Spirit after Pentecost, since we know both refused to drink it with Jesus on Holy Thursday night. That chalice is a death to ourselves so that Christ can rise, it’s a joining him in giving our life as a ransom for all, becoming with him a servant and slave of the rest, starting from serving those “among us” rather than neglecting them to serve neighbors elsewhere.

* That path of self-sacrificial loving service of drinking ...