Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A) (Vigil)

June 27, 2020

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.27.20_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The text that guided the homily was: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday.

* There are two essential aspects of our Christian life, discipleship and apostolate, on the one hand, our following Jesus and on the other, our proclaiming him. We could also phrase it as our work to become holy as God is holy and our fidelity to the mission he gives us to become instruments in the sanctification of others. These can also be summarized by the two principle verbs in Jesus’ vocabulary, come and go. We come to him and then he sends us forth.

* We see both of these aspects in the dialogue Jesus has with us in this Sunday’s Gospel. First he talks to us about the conditions of discipleship and then he speaks to us of our apostolate.

* Jesus describes that to be his disciple, to enter into his kingdom, isn’t easy. It requires a decisive choice. To do so, he tells us, we must love him more than father and mother, more than son or daughter. We must take up our cross and follow after him, losing our life for his sake in order to find it. Many people today do not recognize the seriousness of the call of Jesus. The people in Jesus’ own day had a similar problem. For centuries, they anticipated that a Messiah would come, overwhelm all foreign powers, and they would ride his coattails to great triumph and riches. They were unprepared for the cost of discipleship, for the fact that to follow him might involve family opposition, not to mention the Cross, suffering, and struggle. In terms of family relations, Jesus says that we can only have one absolute in our life, only one love can have primacy, only one thing can have our ultimate obedience and affection, either God or our parents, or our spouse, or our children. The same God who calls us to honor our mother and father, who calls us to reverence our spouse out of love for Christ, who calls us to love our children as God loves us, at the same time calls us to love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength. When we choose to love God above all, we do not love our family members less, but better. Many times we won’t have to choose between the love of God and the love of family members, but when faced with the choice, Jesus is saying God must come first.

* This choice sadly comes up sometimes and we all need to be ready for it. When I was in seminary, many of my classmates were there over the opposition of their family members, who didn’t want them to become priests because, sadly, in many cases their family members preferred them to marry and continue on the family name than to help make children for God through baptism and the Sacraments. I’m a spiritual director to many religious women and many of them, too, have received not encouragement but opposition from their families, who think they’re throwing their lives away when they give them to Jesus. A few weeks ago, a priest friend of mine died, Fr. John Jay Hughes, a famous convert. I just wrote a tribute to him for the National Catholic Register. His father and grandfather were well-known influential Episcopal priests in Newport, RI and at St. John Divine Cathedral in New York. Fr. Jay himself became an Episcopal priest. But eventually he realized that God was calling him to be a Catholic. His dad told him that if he “perverted to Rome,” he would never be welcome again in the family home. Fr. Hughes knew, however,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Anthony of Padua Parish, New Bedford, MA

Nuptial Mass for Louis Alexander Duncan and Cassandra Marie Borges

Extraordinary Form

June 27, 2020

Eph 5:22-33, Mt 19:3-6

 

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

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

The beautiful reality we’re celebrating today of God’s uniting Louis Alexander Duncan and Cassandra Marie Borges a faithful, fruitful and indissoluble bond has a long prehistory, one that goes back beyond Louis’ proposal to Cassandra on April 21, 2019 at the lip of a pond in Whispering Willows Park in Conyngham, Pennsylvania, a short distance from the Duncan home. It goes back well before their first date, December 21, 2017, in Providence, RI. It extends past the first time they communicated two months earlier, on October 15, when Cassandra signed up for Catholic Match and Louis messaged her, or beyond October 13, when Louis signed up for that online Catholic dating service. It goes back even further than when their parents, Marlin and Patricia, Deacon Ed and Ann, got the joy-filled news to expect them 27 years ago. The prehistory to their wedding extends back to even before God said, “Let there be light,” And to understand the significance and beauty of this day, we need to see where it fits into God’s plan for them and for the world.

When Jesus, in the Gospel we just heard, was asked about the nature of marriage, he took it back to the “beginning,” when God made them “made them male and female.” In the Book of Genesis, when God created Adam, Adam had God all to himself in the garden. All of creation had been made for him to govern. He was perfectly in right relationship with God. Even though he seemed to have everything one could ask for, something — more specifically, someone — was missing. And after God had said in the first six phases of creation, “It was good,” “It was good,” “It was good,” “It was good,” “It was good,” “It was good,” and with the creation of the human person, “It was very good,” God finally thundered, “It is not good…for man to be alone.” So he created Eve, a fitting partner, symbolically out of his side, to show that they stand side-by-side, equal, before him. When Adam saw her, he exclaimed, “Finally this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!,” a Hebrew idiom saying that they shared strengths and weaknesses. As Jesus reiterates in the Gospel, this is the reason why a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh in love. The upshot of the Creation account is that God, who is love, has created the human person in his image and likeness … in love and for love. Since no one can love in a vacuum, God could not be solitary, there needed to be a Lover and a Beloved, and in God the eternal love between them was so strong as to take on personality. In creating the human person, therefore, God created not just a “him, male and female” but a “them,” a communion between man and woman, whose love for each other could be so strong as to “make love,” to generate new life, as a fruit of their loving communion of persons. From the first marriage of Adam and Eve, to your marriage today, Louis and Cassandra, matrimony was created by God to be a sacrament of love, to help you to grow to be more and more like God and at the same time more fully human. Today you have not only received a Sacrament. Today you have become a Sacrament, a visible sign, as St. John Paul II used to say, pointing to the invisible reality of the Trinitarian loving communion of persons. You have been called, chosen and commissioned by God to be not just a living reminder of the fruitful, faithful, indissoluble love of God and to reflect efficaciously in your own marriage Christ’s love for his bride the Church, but to preach that Gospel of human love in the divine plan, in words and in body language,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Anthony of Padua Parish, New Bedford, MA

Nuptial Mass for Louis Alexander Duncan and Cassandra Marie Borges

Extraordinary Form

June 27, 2020

Eph 5:22-33, Mt 19:3-6

 

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

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

The beautiful reality we’re celebrating today of God’s uniting Louis Alexander Duncan and Cassandra Marie Borges a faithful, fruitful and indissoluble bond has a long prehistory, one that goes back beyond Louis’ proposal to Cassandra on April 21, 2019 at the lip of a pond in Whispering Willows Park in Conyngham, Pennsylvania, a short distance from the Duncan home. It goes back well before their first date, December 21, 2017, in Providence, RI. It extends past the first time they communicated two months earlier, on October 15, when Cassandra signed up for Catholic Match and Louis messaged her, or beyond October 13, when Louis signed up for that online Catholic dating service. It goes back even further than when their parents, Marlin and Patricia, Deacon Ed and Ann, got the joy-filled news to expect them 27 years ago. The prehistory to their wedding extends back to even before God said, “Let there be light,” And to understand the significance and beauty of this day, we need to see where it fits into God’s plan for them and for the world.

When Jesus, in the Gospel we just heard, was asked about the nature of marriage, he took it back to the “beginning,” when God made them “made them male and female.” In the Book of Genesis, when God created Adam, Adam had God all to himself in the garden. All of creation had been made for him to govern. He was perfectly in right relationship with God. Even though he seemed to have everything one could ask for, something — more specifically, someone — was missing. And after God had said in the first six phases of creation, “It was good,” “It was good,” “It was good,” “It was good,” “It was good,” “It was good,” and with the creation of the human person, “It was very good,” God finally thundered, “It is not good…for man to be alone.” So he created Eve, a fitting partner, symbolically out of his side, to show that they stand side-by-side, equal, before him. When Adam saw her, he exclaimed, “Finally this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!,” a Hebrew idiom saying that they shared strengths and weaknesses. As Jesus reiterates in the Gospel, this is the reason why a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh in love. The upshot of the Creation account is that God, who is love, has created the human person in his image and likeness … in love and for love. Since no one can love in a vacuum, God could not be solitary, there needed to be a Lover and a Beloved, and in God the eternal love between them was so strong as to take on personality. In creating the human person, therefore, God created not just a “him, male and female” but a “them,” a communion between man and woman, whose love for each other could be so strong as to “make love,” to generate new life, as a fruit of their loving communion of persons. From the first marriage of Adam and Eve, to your marriage today, Louis and Cassandra, matrimony was created by God to be a sacrament of love, to help you to grow to be more and more like God and at the same time more fully human. Today you have not only received a Sacrament. Today you have become a Sacrament, a visible sign, as St. John Paul II used to say, pointing to the invisible reality of the Trinitarian loving communion of persons. You have been called, chosen and commissioned by God to be not just a living reminder of the fruitful, faithful, indissoluble love of God and to reflect efficaciously in your own marriage Christ’s love for his bride the Church, but to preach that Gospel of human love in the divine plan, in words and in body language,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Josemaria Escriva

The 21st Anniversary of my Ordination

June 26, 2020

2 Kings 25:1-12, Ps 137, Mt 8:1-4

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Over the past two-and-a-half weeks at daily Mass, we have been pondering Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount, in which he sets forth his standards — and the standards by which he wishes us to live — that surpass that of the Scribes, Pharisees and virtuous pagans. He calls us to be “perfect” (teleios) as his Father in heaven is perfect, to be great by keeping his commandments and teaching others to do the same, to seek first the kingdom of heaven and God’s holiness. He calls us to seek to be, in contrast to the standards and behavior of so many in the world, poor in spirit, compassionate to the point of mourning, meek, merciful, peacemaking, hungry and thirst for holiness, pure of heart, and willing to suffer for the sake of holiness. He calls us to love our enemies, pray for our persecutors, do good to those who are evil, to turn the other cheek, to walk the second mile, to give our cloak when all that’s asked for is our tunic, to not hate and not only not kill, to be chaste in heart and not just continent in the body, to have our eye mean yes and our no mean no, to pray, fast and give alms only for God the Father and not for show, not to worry about what we are to eat, drink or wear but to trust in the Father’s providence, to take out the beams from our own eyes and stop judging, to enter through the narrow gate of life, to do to others what we ourselves wish to be done to us, to become a good tree bearing good fruit and to build our whole life on his word. After hearing all of this, it is understandable that we might feel overwhelmed, as if the standards Jesus is proposing are unreachable. We may recognize just how often, every day, we fall short.

* That’s why in God’s providence, and in the Holy Spirit’s inspiration of St. Matthew, right after the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus makes clear the standards by which Christians are called to live, we have Chapter 8, which features seven different miracles of healing. The first we have today, in which a leper approaches Jesus, kneels down in homage, and humbly asks, “Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.” We can say the same, with similar adoration and trust: “Lord, if you will, you can cleanse me of all of the ways I’ve lived by the standards of the world rather than by yours. If you will, you can give me the help you know I need to become teleios, to become great by keeping and teaching your commandments, to seek first your kingdom, and to base my whole life on the rock of your holy word!” And we have every confidence Jesus will respond like he did to the leper, to all the others who approached him through Chapter 8 and in other scenes in the Gospel, and say, “I do will it! Be made clean!” After hearing God’s wisdom at length, now we encounter God’s healing power to strengthen us to live up to the high standards of ordinary Christian living to which Jesus calls us.

* God’s desire to cleanse us, to make us pure, to fill us with his mercy to overflowing, explains the motivation behind Jesus’ incarnation, his hidden life, his passion, death and resurrection. Jesus’ whole life screams the ardor of God’s hunger to make us clean, to heal us of our words and the leprosy of sin that alienates us from God, others and our truest selves. In the ancient world, leprosy was the worst disease one could have. Not only would it eat away one’s flesh and bones and make one stink in ...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Josemaria Escriva

The 21st Anniversary of my Ordination

June 26, 2020

2 Kings 25:1-12, Ps 137, Mt 8:1-4

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Over the past two-and-a-half weeks at daily Mass, we have been pondering Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount, in which he sets forth his standards — and the standards by which he wishes us to live — that surpass that of the Scribes, Pharisees and virtuous pagans. He calls us to be “perfect” (teleios) as his Father in heaven is perfect, to be great by keeping his commandments and teaching others to do the same, to seek first the kingdom of heaven and God’s holiness. He calls us to seek to be, in contrast to the standards and behavior of so many in the world, poor in spirit, compassionate to the point of mourning, meek, merciful, peacemaking, hungry and thirst for holiness, pure of heart, and willing to suffer for the sake of holiness. He calls us to love our enemies, pray for our persecutors, do good to those who are evil, to turn the other cheek, to walk the second mile, to give our cloak when all that’s asked for is our tunic, to not hate and not only not kill, to be chaste in heart and not just continent in the body, to have our eye mean yes and our no mean no, to pray, fast and give alms only for God the Father and not for show, not to worry about what we are to eat, drink or wear but to trust in the Father’s providence, to take out the beams from our own eyes and stop judging, to enter through the narrow gate of life, to do to others what we ourselves wish to be done to us, to become a good tree bearing good fruit and to build our whole life on his word. After hearing all of this, it is understandable that we might feel overwhelmed, as if the standards Jesus is proposing are unreachable. We may recognize just how often, every day, we fall short.

* That’s why in God’s providence, and in the Holy Spirit’s inspiration of St. Matthew, right after the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus makes clear the standards by which Christians are called to live, we have Chapter 8, which features seven different miracles of healing. The first we have today, in which a leper approaches Jesus, kneels down in homage, and humbly asks, “Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.” We can say the same, with similar adoration and trust: “Lord, if you will, you can cleanse me of all of the ways I’ve lived by the standards of the world rather than by yours. If you will, you can give me the help you know I need to become teleios, to become great by keeping and teaching your commandments, to seek first your kingdom, and to base my whole life on the rock of your holy word!” And we have every confidence Jesus will respond like he did to the leper, to all the others who approached him through Chapter 8 and in other scenes in the Gospel, and say, “I do will it! Be made clean!” After hearing God’s wisdom at length, now we encounter God’s healing power to strengthen us to live up to the high standards of ordinary Christian living to which Jesus calls us.

* God’s desire to cleanse us, to make us pure, to fill us with his mercy to overflowing, explains the motivation behind Jesus’ incarnation, his hidden life, his passion, death and resurrection. Jesus’ whole life screams the ardor of God’s hunger to make us clean, to heal us of our words and the leprosy of sin that alienates us from God, others and our truest selves. In the ancient world, leprosy was the worst disease one could have. Not only would it eat away one’s flesh and bones and make one stink in ...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

June 25, 2020

2 Kings 24:8-17, Ps 79, Mt 7:21-29

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today Jesus concludes his most extensive homily on living in his kingdom by his distinctive Christian way of life by helping us to resolve not just to know about it but to do it. He tells us that the one who will enter into his kingdom is not the one who refers to him as Lord, not the one who prophesies, or exorcizes or works miracles in his name, but the one “who does the will of my Father in heaven.” This was the way by which we would come to “know him,” through doing his will not as a dry extrinsic command but in tandem with him as we preach, act and live in his name, which means in — within — his person. Jesus calls us to listen to his words and act on them, a move he compares to a wise man’s building his own on a solid foundation that will remain firm when tested by rains, floods and gale force winds. The winds will come, the storms of life are inevitable, but Jesus wants us to build our existence on him the Cornerstone so that when they come we will be able to face them together with him who can calm the storms and lead us even through death to life. To build our existence on any other foundation than him, that the life he has indicated to us by his words, is to build on sand that will not hold up during a storm.

* Jesus, of course, was a tekton and the foster-son of a tekton, a construction worker. He knew that in the Holy Land some seeing a smooth sandy bed in the dry season found it a nice easy place to build, rather than a jagged series of rocks, but when the rains would come all of the water and the howling winds moving from the Mediterranean toward the Sea of Galilee would come into that plain and wash away a house. It’s a reminder to us that sometimes the foundation we are building our life on seems smooth and easy, but if God is not really the foundation, we’re setting ourselves up for ruin.

* He wants us to build our life on what he has revealed to us in the Sermon on the Mount, as we’ve been discussing over the last two and a half weeks. It’s not enough for us to pass a quiz on the Beatitudes. We must, with God’s help, become poor in spirit, meek, peacemaking, and pure of heart; we, like Jesus, must love others enough to mourn when they are physically or spiritually in pain, we must hunger and thirst for holiness, we must be willing to be persecuted for the sake of Jesus. We must really become with him the salt of the earth and the light of the world. We must live the seven antitheses Jesus announced, not hating others, not lusting, not divorcing and remarrying, being truthful always, reconciling with brothers and sisters, not seeking vengeance, loving our enemies and being good and praying to those who persecute us. We must refuse to serve mammon and to seek after material goods but seek first the kingdom of God and his holiness. We must pray to and relate to our Father as he taught, knowing that he knows what we need, knowing that he loves us more than the sparrows and the lilies, knowing that he won’t give us a stone when we ask for bread. In short, we must in Jesus, become perfect as a Father is perfect, which means to grow to full stature in Christ together with Christ. Not to do so is foolishly to build the house of our life out of cardboard on a foundation of quicksand.

* Today Jesus calls us to examine whether our lives are really built on the words he has taught us, whether we’re really living in the way God intends. Many of us, including priests and religious, “sort of” live by Jesus’ words. We’ll put “some” of them into practice. But it would honestly be an exaggeration to say our entire life is built on them....

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

June 25, 2020

2 Kings 24:8-17, Ps 79, Mt 7:21-29

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today Jesus concludes his most extensive homily on living in his kingdom by his distinctive Christian way of life by helping us to resolve not just to know about it but to do it. He tells us that the one who will enter into his kingdom is not the one who refers to him as Lord, not the one who prophesies, or exorcizes or works miracles in his name, but the one “who does the will of my Father in heaven.” This was the way by which we would come to “know him,” through doing his will not as a dry extrinsic command but in tandem with him as we preach, act and live in his name, which means in — within — his person. Jesus calls us to listen to his words and act on them, a move he compares to a wise man’s building his own on a solid foundation that will remain firm when tested by rains, floods and gale force winds. The winds will come, the storms of life are inevitable, but Jesus wants us to build our existence on him the Cornerstone so that when they come we will be able to face them together with him who can calm the storms and lead us even through death to life. To build our existence on any other foundation than him, that the life he has indicated to us by his words, is to build on sand that will not hold up during a storm.

* Jesus, of course, was a tekton and the foster-son of a tekton, a construction worker. He knew that in the Holy Land some seeing a smooth sandy bed in the dry season found it a nice easy place to build, rather than a jagged series of rocks, but when the rains would come all of the water and the howling winds moving from the Mediterranean toward the Sea of Galilee would come into that plain and wash away a house. It’s a reminder to us that sometimes the foundation we are building our life on seems smooth and easy, but if God is not really the foundation, we’re setting ourselves up for ruin.

* He wants us to build our life on what he has revealed to us in the Sermon on the Mount, as we’ve been discussing over the last two and a half weeks. It’s not enough for us to pass a quiz on the Beatitudes. We must, with God’s help, become poor in spirit, meek, peacemaking, and pure of heart; we, like Jesus, must love others enough to mourn when they are physically or spiritually in pain, we must hunger and thirst for holiness, we must be willing to be persecuted for the sake of Jesus. We must really become with him the salt of the earth and the light of the world. We must live the seven antitheses Jesus announced, not hating others, not lusting, not divorcing and remarrying, being truthful always, reconciling with brothers and sisters, not seeking vengeance, loving our enemies and being good and praying to those who persecute us. We must refuse to serve mammon and to seek after material goods but seek first the kingdom of God and his holiness. We must pray to and relate to our Father as he taught, knowing that he knows what we need, knowing that he loves us more than the sparrows and the lilies, knowing that he won’t give us a stone when we ask for bread. In short, we must in Jesus, become perfect as a Father is perfect, which means to grow to full stature in Christ together with Christ. Not to do so is foolishly to build the house of our life out of cardboard on a foundation of quicksand.

* Today Jesus calls us to examine whether our lives are really built on the words he has taught us, whether we’re really living in the way God intends. Many of us, including priests and religious, “sort of” live by Jesus’ words. We’ll put “some” of them into practice. But it would honestly be an exaggeration to say our entire life is built on them....

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist

June 24, 2020

Is 49:1-6, Ps 139, Acts 13:22-26, Lk 1:57-66.80

 

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

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

Why’s John’s Birthday so important? 

Today we celebrate the solemnity of the Birth of St. John the Baptist. Only three times in the Church’s year do we celebrate birthdays. December 25th is the most obvious birthday we commemorate. Daily Mass goers know that on September 8 we mark the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but we mark it rather quietly in comparison to the solemnity with which we celebrate her Immaculate Conception nine months earlier. Today, June 24th, we celebrate the birth of the famous son of Zechariah and Elizabeth. The Archangel Gabriel had said to Zechariah about the son his elderly and presumably barren wife would conceive, “Many will rejoice at his birth!” (Lk 1:14) and today we join that in that jubilation. Jesus would later say, “Among those born of women no one is greater than John” (Luke 7:28), and the Church’s liturgical calendar puts that truth into prayer: after Jesus, no one born of woman, not even the Blessed Virgin, has a more solemn celebration associated with his worldly-visible debut than John the Baptist.

It’s important to ask why the Church has always considered this feast so important. I think the fundamental answer is because the Church considers the life of John the Baptist so important and considers the events of his conception, gestation and birth highly significant aspects of his life. John’s vocation to give witness to the Lord, to go before him to prepare his way, began not when he appeared at the Jordan in camel’s hair, but in the womb. The Archangel Gabriel told his father, “Even before his birth, he will be filled with the Holy Spirit” (Lk 1:15). We saw an effect of this at the Visitation, when John leaped in the womb of his mother pointing out the presence of the prenatal Lamb of God within Mary (Lk 1:44). What God said to Jeremiah in the first reading of the Vigil of this Solemnity, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations” and to Isaiah in today’s, “The Lord, who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him,” could just as easily be said about John. He was formed in the womb and consecrated to be a prophet to the nations in order to bring God’s people back to Him, and he was already carrying out that consecrated mission from his earliest days.

John’s Mission and Ours

These truths about a consecrated mission from the womb, however, apply not just to Jeremiah, Isaiah and John the Baptist. The truth is that the Lord knows every one of us that intimately before he forms us in the womb. This is a truth to which you give witness in your daily proclamation by words and deeds of the Gospel of Life. We can all exclaim with the words of today’s Psalm, “Truly you have formed by inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb!” None of us is a number, a census statistic, just a random biological happening to God. Just like John the Baptist had a vocation and a mission from before he was born, each of us is formed by God with a divine destiny and given a vocation and mission in this world to achieve that destiny and help others achieve their own. While there will be specific differences between your and my mission and John’s, there are several characteristics in common.

* Like John’s, our mission is given by God as part of God’s plan for us from the beginning.

* Like John, the Lord fills us with the Holy Spirit at our baptism to help us accomplish this mission.

* Like John, we are called to recognize who God is, that he is so great and holy that none of us is worthy to loo...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist

June 24, 2020

Is 49:1-6, Ps 139, Acts 13:22-26, Lk 1:57-66.80

 

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

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

Why’s John’s Birthday so important? 

Today we celebrate the solemnity of the Birth of St. John the Baptist. Only three times in the Church’s year do we celebrate birthdays. December 25th is the most obvious birthday we commemorate. Daily Mass goers know that on September 8 we mark the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but we mark it rather quietly in comparison to the solemnity with which we celebrate her Immaculate Conception nine months earlier. Today, June 24th, we celebrate the birth of the famous son of Zechariah and Elizabeth. The Archangel Gabriel had said to Zechariah about the son his elderly and presumably barren wife would conceive, “Many will rejoice at his birth!” (Lk 1:14) and today we join that in that jubilation. Jesus would later say, “Among those born of women no one is greater than John” (Luke 7:28), and the Church’s liturgical calendar puts that truth into prayer: after Jesus, no one born of woman, not even the Blessed Virgin, has a more solemn celebration associated with his worldly-visible debut than John the Baptist.

It’s important to ask why the Church has always considered this feast so important. I think the fundamental answer is because the Church considers the life of John the Baptist so important and considers the events of his conception, gestation and birth highly significant aspects of his life. John’s vocation to give witness to the Lord, to go before him to prepare his way, began not when he appeared at the Jordan in camel’s hair, but in the womb. The Archangel Gabriel told his father, “Even before his birth, he will be filled with the Holy Spirit” (Lk 1:15). We saw an effect of this at the Visitation, when John leaped in the womb of his mother pointing out the presence of the prenatal Lamb of God within Mary (Lk 1:44). What God said to Jeremiah in the first reading of the Vigil of this Solemnity, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations” and to Isaiah in today’s, “The Lord, who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him,” could just as easily be said about John. He was formed in the womb and consecrated to be a prophet to the nations in order to bring God’s people back to Him, and he was already carrying out that consecrated mission from his earliest days.

John’s Mission and Ours

These truths about a consecrated mission from the womb, however, apply not just to Jeremiah, Isaiah and John the Baptist. The truth is that the Lord knows every one of us that intimately before he forms us in the womb. This is a truth to which you give witness in your daily proclamation by words and deeds of the Gospel of Life. We can all exclaim with the words of today’s Psalm, “Truly you have formed by inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb!” None of us is a number, a census statistic, just a random biological happening to God. Just like John the Baptist had a vocation and a mission from before he was born, each of us is formed by God with a divine destiny and given a vocation and mission in this world to achieve that destiny and help others achieve their own. While there will be specific differences between your and my mission and John’s, there are several characteristics in common.

* Like John’s, our mission is given by God as part of God’s plan for us from the beginning.

* Like John, the Lord fills us with the Holy Spirit at our baptism to help us accomplish this mission.

* Like John, we are called to recognize who God is, that he is so great and holy that none of us is worthy to loo...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Tuesday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

2 Kings 19:1-11.14-21.31-36, Ps 48, Mt 7:6.12-14

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* As we begin to approach the end of our annual 16-installment prayerful reexamination of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus, the Master, begins to summarize for us what he has been revealing to us over the previous two weeks. The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’ Magna Carta of Christian morality, the way he wants to form us to live like him, with a holiness surpassing that of the Scribes and Pharisees and virtuous pagans. Tomorrow, if we didn’t have the Solemnity of the Birth of St. John the Baptist, he would use the image of becoming a good tree that bears good fruit. On Thursday, he will summarize with the image of building our life on the rock. Today he gives us three images.

* The first is to recognize the treasure he is giving us. He says, “Do not give what is holy to dogs, or throw your pearls before swine.” His teaching is an extraordinary gift. It is the path to life. Just like we would never put diamonds in a toilet or priceless masterpieces in a doghouse, so we need to treasure his words and protect them within. We should never take them for granted. While we are obviously called to spread the faith and share Jesus and his teachings with others, we should at the same time do so with reverence for what we are transmitting. In the early Church, this passage was often used to refer to the Holy Eucharist. The Didache said, “Let no one eat or drink of your Eucharist except those baptized into the name of the Lord; for, as regards this, the Lord has said, ‘Give not that which is holy unto dogs.’” We need to treat every word that comes from God’s mouth in a similar way, treasuring it and not just throwing it away or giving it to others the way we could give food we cannot finish or don’t want to eat to salivating dogs at our lap. Jesus wants us to grasp that in sharing this gift with us, he is not throwing pearls before swine, but accentuating our dignity. He wants us to treasure both the gift and the recipient. That’s what he’s asking of us here in terms of the way we will live and transmit his words.

* The second image is what we call the Golden Rule. Jesus summarizes everything he has been teaching us in the update, the interiorization, the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets, as “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the Law and the Prophets.” Often it is said that the Golden Rule exists in many religions but that is false. God has given the seeds of the word to many over the course of the centuries, but it was always in some version of the “Silver Rule”: “Don’t do to others what you would not want them to do to you.” Jesus was far exceeding that here. He wants us to treat others as we would want to be treated. If we want to be loved, we love. If we want to be forgiven, we forgive. If we want to be thanked, we thank. If we want to be helped when we’re in need, we help. It translates everything from a principle of justice to one of love. St. John of the Cross would translate this principle as, “Where there is no love, put love, and you will draw love out.” “I must not harm,” is much different from “I must love.” Not to hurt others is quite possible for everyone; but to love others by the standard of the golden rule is something that requires God’s help, it requires the love of God within. To obey this command in short is to become a new person, to look at the world in a new way. It means to look at things the way Christ does, when he loves us first in the way he would have us love others. Christ ultimately calls us to what we might term the “platinum rule,