Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), Vigil

February 8, 2020

 

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The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us this Sunday.

* With unforgettable, down-to-earth images, Jesus will tell us that we have a double mission with respect to everyone else: to be the Salt of the Earth and the Light of the World.  Notice, first what he doesn’t say: Jesus doesn’t calls us the salt or light of the Church, because our mission is to go out and transform the whole world. Likewise, Jesus doesn’t say, “You mustbecome the Salt of the Earth and the Light of the World.” He says, rather, “You are the Salt and Light.” This is very significant because by our baptism, we have already received this identity and vocation.

* Let’s look at each of the images.

* When Jesus called his followers and us to be the salt of the earth, they would have understood it in three different ways because there were three fundamental uses of salt in the ancient world:

* The first was as apreservative. Salt was used to preserve meat or fish from rotting. There was obviously no electricity and therefore refrigeration in the ancient world. If any fish or meat was going to last in the sweltering Middle Eastern climate, it needed to be salted. This points to the fact that Jesus calls us to be his instrument to prevent the earth from going to corruption, from dying. We’re supposed to keep the world and others good. We all know that there are certain people who when they walk into a room keep others on their best behavior, because they lift others to a higher standard by the way they themselves live. That’s what Jesus is calling all of us to do. Are we the types of people who lift others to better behavior?

* The second purpose of salt was tostart a fire. At Jesus’ time, people would take animal dung, mix it with a lot of salt and then light it on fire. The dung alone couldn’t be ignited, but when it was mixed with salt, the salt would be able to be lit and then would gradually heat the dung, which kept heat for a really long time. Salt was the ancient equivalent of starter wood or lighter fluid for a barbecue. In calling us to be the Salt of the Earth in this way, Jesus is reminding us of two parts of our mission. First, we see in this use of salt that salt can redeem almost anything, even turning excrement into something good and useful. As Salt of the Earth we’re called to be God’s instrument for bringing good out of the evil we encounter, to help even those who were given over to evil to start producing something good. Secondly, salt is supposed to be a fire-starter. We are supposed to easily lit and capable of heating up others.

* The third and final function of salt at Jesus’ time we’ve maintained today, to give flavor to the food we consume.A little bit of salt as we know can influence a whole meal. This points to the fact that we, as salt of the earth, are called to give flavor, to bring joy, to the earth. So many in the world think that to enjoy themselves, there has to be a frat house atmosphere, where there’s plenty of booze, drugs, dim lights, lots of willing members of the opposite sex and other types of behavior that leads people to hangovers, methodone treatments, STDs and other regrettable and preventable consequences. Jesus calls us to show what real joy in life is, to be people who are happy,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Feast of the Presentation (A), Vigil

February 1, 2020

 

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

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The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and part of every episode of Conversations with Consequences involves focusing on the consequential conversation Jesus wishes us to have with him on Sunday.

* This Sunday we celebrate the great feast of the Presentation of the Baby Jesus in the Temple, a feast fixed 40 days after Christmas, so it can fall on any day of the week. It’s rare, then, that it falls on a Sunday, which is a shame, because, ordinarily, no one but daily Mass-goers has a chance to celebrate this feast and all that it means in Jesus’ life and is supposed to mean in ours.

* The point of this feast is summarized in the beautiful instructions and prayers that the Church prays at the beginning of Mass just before the procession with candles. They describe the Presentation fundamentally as an encounter. “Today is the blessed day when Jesus was presented in the Temple by Mary and Joseph,” we said. “Outwardly he was fulfilling the Law, but in reality he was coming to meet his believing people.” After describing how Simeon and Anna met him in the Temple, we continue. “So let us also, gathered together by the Holy Spirit, proceed to the house of God to encounter Christ. There we shall find him and recognize him in the breaking of the Bread until he comes again, revealed in glory.” They prayers and others convey that Jesus is constantly being presented to us and we are supposed to be constantly presenting ourselves to him. The Christian life is meant to be a continuous mutual presentation, a lifetime encounter of love and life.

* The celebration contains many practical applications to help us keep that continuous encounter throughout our life. I’d like to ponder what it says about encountering the Lord when we’re young, when we’ve become young parents, when we’ve gotten older.

* Let’s begin with the rich lessons this feast has for seniors and for those who are beginning to get up in years. How was it that Simeon and Anna, the two seniors in Sunday’s Gospel, recognized Jesus when he was brought to the temple? Among the tens of thousands of people there that day, why were they the only two to recognize that the child wrapped in swaddling clothes in Mary’s arms was the long awaited Messiah? The reason, I believe, is because they were present in the temple differently from everyone else. They were waiting for the Lord in the temple. They were longing for him. They were expecting him with hearts and “minds made pure” so that with that purity they could see the Lord when at last he came. They were so in love with the Lord that they burst forth speaking of him toward others. Simeon took Jesus in his arms, praised God, and then presented him not just to Israel as her glory but to all the nations as their light. Anna, as soon as she saw Jesus, began to praise God and began to speak of him to all who were looking for the redemption he had come to bring into the world. They show seniors that the best way to use our later years is to grow closer to the Lord, by encountering him in prayer, in sacrificial love, in time spent worshipping the Lord in his holy temple. It’s a time for prayer. A time to go to daily Mass. A time to get involved in charity. Simeon’s words, “Now, O Lord, let your servant depart in peace, … for my eyes have seen your salvation!,” are words each of us should want to say at the end of our life when the Lord Jesus returns for us.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), Vigil

January 25, 2020

 

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The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us this Sunday.

* St. Matthew tells us that Jesus left his native Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Napthali. The reason he did so was not just that his fellow Nazarenes had tried to kill him by tossing him off the cliff on which Nazareth had been built, but to fulfill a prophecy, the prophecy that Isaiah announced 700 years before in Sunday’s first reading: “Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles: the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.”

* Jesus, the Light of the World, came to bring those in darkness, those who were disparaged, those who were suffering, those who were in sin, on a pilgrimage out of darkness and into the light. It wasn’t enough for them to see the light. He was going to help them walk in the light, to live in the light. That’s why, as St. Matthew recounts for us, Jesus’ first words were “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is another way of saying, “Leave the Darkness. Come, believe in, and live in, the Light!”

* Then Jesus made that pilgrimage from darkness into light even more specific. He saw two brothers, Simon and Andrew, fishing. He said, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Even though St. Peter’s first words to the Lord, recounted in St. Luke’s version of this encounter, were “Depart from me, O Lord, because I am a sinful man,” even though he was a man who was living in darkness, Christ called him. And he left the darkness behind, he left his boats, he left his catch, he left everything immediately and followed Christ. As did his brother Andrew. As did James and John moments after. Such was the power of Christ, of his personality, of the way he radiated the luminous presence of God, that ordinary, hard-working men would leave everything on an instant to follow him.

* But that was just the beginning for the apostles. We see in the Gospel that they accompany the Lord as he went throughout Galilee, passing on the light of his teaching and curing every disease and sickness, showing others that just as he took them from the darkness of ignorance, suffering and pain into the light of knowledge and health so he wanted to take their souls from the darkness of sin and doubt, the gloom of depression, the pall of grief, into the radiance of a life changing relationship of love with him.

* The call that was so personal for Peter, Andrew, James, John and Matthew is meant to be just as personal for us. The Lord calls each of us by name, he points to you and to me with his dazzling divine digit, and he summons us to follow him into the light so that we, in turn, can become his light, the light of the world, illumining the paths of others to him, and through, with and in Him, to the dazzling house of the eternal Father.

* It is crucial for each of us to recognize this personal call that Christ makes to us to leave any and all darkness behind and follow him into the light, to live and walk always illumined by him. It’s not enough for us as Christians just to turn the lights on for an hour on Sunday mornings or for a few minutes before we go to bed — a...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), Vigil

January 18, 2020

 

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The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us this Sunday.

* This Sunday we revisit the scene that we marked last week, celebrating the feast of Jesus’ Baptism. Last week we heard St. Matthew’s version, which focuses mainly on the facts of what happened. Today we hear St. John the Evangelist’s account, which concentrates more on the perspective of St. John the Baptist. And we see something surprising if not shocking. The Baptist says that that the whole reason for his mission, the point of his life, the purpose for which he was baptizing with water at the Jordan, was so that he would be able to point out the one who was coming after him who would baptize with the Holy Spirit. And when that long-awaited person came, the Baptist didn’t cry out, “Behold the Lord!,” “Behold the Messiah!,” “Look! The Son of God!,” “Here is the Savior, the King of Jews and King of Kings, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Light of the World, the Resurrection and the Life,” — or any of the other fitting titles that would have filled his listeners with awe at the incredible majesty of the One whose sandal strap John was saying he wasn’t worthy to untie.  Instead he used an expression that was not majestic at all: “Behold the Lamb of God!”

* We have grown so accustomed to the phrase “Lamb of God” — which we use in the Gloria, sing or say three times in the prayer called the Lamb of God, and hear the priest say when, echoing the very words of John the Baptist, he holds Jesus in his elevated hands as tells us to behold him — that many of us no longer sense what the Jews would have felt when the Baptist referred to Jesus in this way. Imagine, however, that someone said to you, “Look! There is the pigeon of heaven! Or behold the squirrel of the Almighty! Or welcome the chihuahua of God!” Your reaction would be something similar to the first reaction of the Jews to Jesus when they heard the term lamb. Lambs aren’t high on our list of beloved and admired animals. They’re not noted for their strength, or looks. They’re not impressive like elephants or tigers, stallions, bulls or eagles.

* Jesus, however, identified with the humble attributes of the lamb. He identified with the lamb sacrificed by Abel that was pleasing to God; with the lamb that God provided for Abraham’s sacrifice so that Isaac wouldn’t die; with lambs whose blood was placed on the lintels of the Jews during the Passover; with the lambs that were offered each day to God in the Temple in atonement for sins. Jesus assimilated in himself the identity and sacrificial purpose of the Lamb in Jewish mentality to become precisely the acceptable sacrifice offered to the Lord to take away the sins not just of the Jews but of the whole world. Beholding Jesus as the Lamb of God, the Jews were invited to see something far greater at work than just a carpenter from Nazareth, but the fulfillment of all the sacrifices of the Old Covenant, the realization of the much-prophesied work of the long-awaited Messiah. They were challenged to see in him something far greater than met the eye. And through the Baptist’s words and work, God was calling all of them to relate to Jesus under this title, to allow him to take away their sins and, later, to eat him, just like the Jews needed to eat the Passover lamb to be freed from Pharaoh and ...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord (A), Vigil

January 11, 2020

 

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

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The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us this Sunday, as the Church celebrates the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord.

* At the end of decades of hidden life, Jesus’ full identity was revealed at the Jordan when the Holy Spirit descended upon him and God the Father spoke from heaven saying, “This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased!” There, Jesus received a baptism and another baptism — and more significant and efficacious one — was announced. The baptism he received from John was merely a sign of repentance “to fulfill all righteousness;” he, who came to the world to take away the sins of the world, foreshadowed in the waters of the Jordan what he would later accomplish in the baptism of blood on Calvary. But at the Jordan, right before Jesus’ baptism, John announced that there was another baptism — one not just of water, but of “the Holy Spirit and fire” (Lk 3:16) — that Jesus himself would institute. “I must be baptized by you,” the Baptist declared. This is the baptism Jesus inaugurated at the Jordan, when he by his own baptism made the waters of baptism capable of delivering on what they signified: not just representing the need for the forgiveness of sins, but actually forgiving those sins. This is the baptism that Jesus, in his valedictory address immediately before ascending into heaven, gave as his “great commission” to the disciples, whom he entrusted with the completion of his own salvific mission: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (Mt 28:18-20).

* Countless generations before us put those words into action and eventually each one of us was brought to that saving stream of life-giving water, where Christ, through a minister, cleansed us of our sins and filled us with God’s own life. On the day of our baptism, God claimed us as his own; we were made members of Christ’s own body (1Cor 12:12ff) we entered into his death and own risen life (Rom 6:3-5); the Holy Spirit came down upon us and made us each a “temple of the Holy Spirit” (1Cor 6:19); God the Father lovingly adopted us as his beloved children and inaudibly but truly said of us what he said of Christ, “This is my son, this is my daughter, my beloved, in whom I am well-pleased.”

* St. John the Evangelist stressed the joy of this baptismal reality in his first letter: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed; when it is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is” (1John 3:1-4). The deepest thing that can be said about any of us is that we are children of God. Even though the world, as St. John writes, “does not know us,” — even though the world does not register this reality — this is who we are most profoundly. The most important day of our life — no matter how old we are, no matter how much or how little we’ve accomplished in the eyes of the world — is the day of our baptism. The Father’s words taking us as his own (“This is...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord (A), Vigil

January 4, 2020

 

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The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us this Sunday, as the Church celebrates the Feast of the Epiphany of the Lord, his “manifestation” to all the Gentiles in the persons of the Magi coming from afar.

* The Lord’s epiphany was also an epiphany of the men whom tradition has always called “wise,” as essential aspects of their true character was revealed. It’s key for us to ponder the response of the wise men, go on pilgrimage with them to Bethlehem, and learn from them invaluable lessons about how we’re called to relate to the coming of God into the world. This Sunday we can ponder seven lessons.

* The first thing we learn from the wise men is the importance of seeking God.

* When they saw the star at its rising, they not only interpreted that God was trying to communicate something to them in general, but that God was specifically heralding the birth of the newborn King in the east, who would be a universal king. The stars as we know were incredibly important to ancients. 2000 years ago, in the deserts of the Middle East and on the seas, people were highly dependent on the fixed stars in the sky as references for their direction. They firmly believed that God had made them this way for that reason. Whenever anything happened in the sky that was new — like the appearance of a comet, or meteor shower, or a planet’s or star’s shining more brightly — the ancients thought that it had to bear some message from God, the creator of the heavens and the earth. When they saw a star at its rising, they didn’t respond as curious astrologers but as those who hungered to find what they sought. Led by the star, and their simple faith in its meaning, the wise men went on a journey toward the Holy Land. We don’t know how long their pilgrimage took, but the Gospel gives us indications that it wasn’t brief. After Herod asked them the exact time of the appearance of the star, and then, a short time later, after they did not return to him, he proceeded to kill every boy in Bethlehem under two years of age. So the time of their preparation and the journey to get there probably took 18-24 months. Whether they walked or had the help of animals, we don’t know, but they came. The made a journey of many months each way because they believed God was speaking to them through the star.

* Do we search for God as ardently as they did? .

* The second thing the wise men show us is that the life of faith is a pilgrimage.

* The wise men were ready to move. Even though they must have had good lives where they were since they could afford a long journey and precious gifts at their arrival, they accounted being with the newborn universal king more important than staying where they were. They were willing to leave everything behind and make a long, difficult journey, following the star they had seen in the East.

* Are we ready to make the continuous journey of faith, a spiritual pilgrimage?

* Third, they show us that this pilgrimage of life is not one that we’re supposed to make alone.

* The wise men didn’t journey solo. They walked together. They knew that it order to make the destination they needed each other, but more than that,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Feast of the Holy Family (A), Vigil

December 28, 2019

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.27.19_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us this Sunday, as the Church celebrates the Feast of the Holy Family.

* It’s highly significant that when the Son of God became man, when the Word became flesh, he chose to be conceived and born within a family of an already committed husband and wife. He didn’t choose to come as a 30-year-old adult, or a teenager, or an 80 year old. He didn’t choose to be born of a single mom, or raised by two men or two women, or some other arrangement. He chose to be born within a family … precisely in order to redeem the family. The family is always in need of redemption. We see with the first family of Adam and Eve how the devil succeeded in separating husband and wife from God and from each other, and we see the immediate consequences of the devil’s work in the next generation when Cain slew his brother Abel. Because the family is meant to be the world’s greatest image of God as a communion of persons in love, the devil never ceases to go after the family. We see how he did through Herod in this Sunday’s Gospel, terrorizing not only the Holy Family but all the families of ancient Bethlehem.

* And as surveys across the globe have shown, the devil has been rather effective in his attack on the family. Many think that marriage is simply a piece of paper and don’t even bother getting married any more. There’s the attempt to redefine marriage and make it a husband-less or wife-less institution. There’s the challenge in many parts of the world by polygamy, where men fail to make a commitment to one woman. There’s the struggle of so many single-parent families whether by accident or by abandonment but choice. There’s the widespread notion that marriage lasts for as long as two shall love, rather than for as long as they shall live, and the problems that come from the no-fault divorce culture. There’s the problem of the separation of families, like that is happening in the desperate situation at the border, but also happens voluntarily through the mobility of family members.

* We can spend many homilies focusing on the problems confronting the family today, but it’s more important to consider how to strengthen the family one by one. It’s a great blessing that we have the feast of the Holy Family, so that we can reflect together on the purpose of the family, what it means to be a husband and father, a wife and mother, a child and brother or sister. The family has a purpose in God’s plan; it’s meant to be a school of love, a domestic Church, a gift of God to help all of the members of the family grow into the realization of who God created each of them to be.

* In the Opening Prayer of Sunday’s Mass, we’ll pray, “O God, who were pleased to give us the shining example of the Holy Family, graciously grant that we may imitate them in practicing the virtues of family life and the bonds of charity.” All of us can learn so much from their virtues and love about how to make our families schools of love. Their family is called the “Holy Family” because holiness is the perfection of love. For a family to be a school of love, it needs to model itself on the loving choices and priorities we see in them.

* When we look at the Holy Family, we easily see several crucial elements about what made it holy:

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Advent (A), Vigil

December 21, 2019

 

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.20.19_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us this Sunday.

* In human life as we know, it’s difficult to have a meaningful conversation when we don’t know the name of the person with whom we’re speaking. It’s similar with God. God doesn’t want us trying to converse with him as some type of cosmic higher power or generic force. Throughout salvation history we see him revealing his name. He reveals himself to Moses as YHWH, “I am who am,” as well as identified himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, showing he wants to have a personal relationship with each of us.

* In Sunday’s readings, we see revealed the names with which Jesus wants us to relate to him, so that we will be able to call upon the Son of God and have a personal bond with him. Both of these names help us to ground our relationship with him on what he seeks to do in us.

* The first name we encounter is Emmanuel. Throughout this Season we’re singing, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” and we need to know what we’re praying. There’s a dramatic scene in Sunday’s first reading. Isaiah the prophet goes to see King Ahaz of Judah during the time when the capital of Judah, Jerusalem, is being sieged by the kingdoms of Israel (Ephraim) and Syria. Ahaz is about to make an alliance with the brutal kingdom of Assyria so that the Assyrians will come to liberate Jerusalem. Isaiah goes to Ahaz to tell him not to seal that Alliance, but to have more trust in God than in the King of Assyria. Isaiah told him that God would give him this sign: “a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall name him Emmanuel.” Regardless, Ahaz rejected the sign, ignored God’s counsel through the prophet and formed the alliance with the King of Assyria, a cascade of bad choices that eventually led to the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile.

* The true and definitive fulfillment of the sign given to Ahaz, however, we see in the Gospel. Seven centuries later, in describing the miraculous events of Jesus’ conception and birth, St. Matthew wrote, “All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God-is-with-us.” But Jews pondering Isaiah’s words never fathomed that the fulfillment would be anything more than a sign of the God who bears all of those attributes, that God would literallyfulfill that prophecy in two ways: that a virgin would conceive a child and remain a virgin; and that “God-with-us” would actually be God with us, that God would take on our nature and come to abide with us, that he would be “descended from David according to the flesh” (today’s second reading) and the very Son of God. The fulfillment of this prophecy would not just be a sign that God was on their side but actually the signified presence of God at their side. This would make the sign announced by Isaiah a sign for all times. God has given this enduring sign that even when we’re experiencing tremendous human difficulty, like Ahaz, we’re never abandoned.

* Jesus of course is with us in many ways — through creation, through grace, through Sacred Scripture, through his image in others, through those he ordained to act in his very person, through his mystical body, the Church.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Third Sunday of Advent (A), Vigil

December 14, 2019

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.13.19_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us this Sunday.

* The followers of John the Baptist came to Jesus to ask him, “Are you the one who is to come or should we look for another?” John was imprisoned and his friends were likely wondering if Jesus were the long-awaited Messiah why he was waiting so long to do something. So John sent them to ask the question of Jesus directly. Jesus’ response was to show how he was fulfilling everything the Prophet Isaiah said the Messiah would do when at last he arrived: he has made the blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the lepers have the skin of newborns, the dead live again and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them. He was doing everything Isaiah foretold. In fact, he was fulfilling everything all the prophets had foretold. But he was not meeting the expectations of those who thought that the Messiah would have a political mission, kicking out the Romans and their stooges like Herod, setting John free, and instituting an earthly kingdom. That’s why Jesus finished by saying, “Blessed is the one who takes no offense at me.” Some of them clearly were taking offense that Jesus was not behaving according to their political expectations. There are some people in every age, however, who don’t like the way the God-man chooses to reign. Not only does evil remain, but those who do evil often seem to get rich, hold political office, even commit atrocities against children, the defensely, or even those who are faithful to Jesus, like John the Baptist. It’s important for us to ponder Jesus’ words, “Blessed is the one who takes no offense at me.” Jesus would ultimately be crucified himself — the greatest scandal of all to worldly ideas of a Messiah — but he rose from the dead on the third day, and he can and does similarly draw good out of evil, and, rather than take scandal, we need to grow in trust.

* Jesus went on in this conversation to say some extraordinary things about John the Baptist. He praises him, calling him the greatest man born of woman. He says he is more than a prophet, but the one about whom it was written, “I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare the way before you.” He not only foretold the Messiah’s coming but pointed him out when at last he came and helped people prepare the way to follow him. John continues that work of preparation every second and third Sundays of Advent. He sends us to Jesus so that we might find out personally how Jesus is and follow him.

* But then Jesus says something about us in the Gospel. As great as John the Baptist was, Jesus says “the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” John could announce the Lord’s coming. He could point him out. But the least in the kingdom of heaven, into which we enter by Jesus’ baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire, is able to literally to receive the Lamb of God within — receive his very life, his words, his being — and live and reign in communion with him.

* So if John is more than a prophet, and the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he, we must really ponder our vocation and mission, who are called to be even greater than John. We’re called to do more than to point out Christ when he comes, but, together with Christ dwelling within, take him to others,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent (A), Vigil

December 7, 2019

 

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https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.6.19_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us this Sunday.

* Last week, on the first Sunday of Advent, we began a new year in the Church. Advent is a time of spiritual reawakening and growth, a call to get up, get excited and get moving toward Jesus who never ceases to come to us. But to have this renewed, life-changing encounter with Jesus, we first have to confront and overcome the obstacles that might be in the way between the Lord and us. The biggest barrier of all is our sins and the way we hold on to them rather than allow the Lord Jesus to take them away.

* That’s why, on the Second Sunday of Advent each year, in order to help us make a totally fresh start, God sends us the same person he sent to get the people of Israel ready to encounter, embrace and follow his Son Jesus when Jesus finally revealed himself at the Jordan River. St. John the Baptist announces for us anew, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.” And he tells us what’s involved in that road repair: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!”

* In the ancient world, the dirt roads were a mess. Every time there was a battle, the roads would be attacked and bridges destroyed, to try to stop the advance of the enemy. The weather took its toll as well, leading to all types of serious potholes and other obstacles. Any time a dignitary would be coming, they would have either to fix the roads or build new ones so that the rolling caravan accompanying the dignitary could arrive without delay or hassle. St. John the Baptist is telling us that to get ready for the Lord who is coming this Advent, we, too, need to prepare a road for him. We, too, need to make straight the paths.

* 2000 years ago, preparing such a path meant a great deal of manual work, making crooked paths straight, rough ways smooth, and even charting paths through the forests, mountains and valleys. For us, that pathway will not be traced on the ground, but within. It will not be made in the wilderness, but in our day-to-day life. It’s not something that will make our hands dirty, but our souls clean. St. John the Baptist indicated the necessary road repair quoting the prophet Isaiah: “Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth” (Lk 3:5). He’s calling us to level the mountains of our pride and egocentrism, to fill in the valleys that come from a shallow prayer life and a minimalistic way of living our faith, and to straighten out whatever crooked, sinful paths we’ve been walking. This work won’t be accomplished principally by willpower and elbow grease, but by God’s power and amazing grace. The way we receive this help of God to cleanse the path between Jesus and us of the worst obstacles of all is the Sacrament of Confession. We need to be as attentive clearing the way for Christ through this Sacrament as highway workers are to removing dead deer from the high-speed lane.

* This Sunday, December 8, is also normally the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of our Lady, which this year will be transferred to Monday. Mary lived at the culmination of that first Advent, longing with her fellow Jews for the Messiah and then, after the Annunciation, welcoming that Messiah within her womb.