Catholic Preaching

By Father Roger LandryReligion & Spirituality Christianity

Catholic Preaching episodes

July 07 Imitating Jesus’ Gut-Bursting Mercy, 14th Tuesday (II), July 7, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Vincentian Seminary, Kraków, Poland
Tertio Millennio Seminary
Tuesday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of the Martyr St. Peter To Rot, and the Martyrs of the Ulma Family
July 7, 2026
Hos 8:4-7.11-13, Ps 115, Mt 9:32-38

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below:
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The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 HOS 8:4-7, 11-13
Thus says the LORD:
They made kings in Israel, but not by my authority;
they established princes, but without my approval.
With their silver and gold they made
idols for themselves, to their own destruction.
Cast away your calf, O Samaria!
my wrath is kindled against them;
How long will they be unable to attain
innocence in Israel?
The work of an artisan,
no god at all,
Destined for the flames—
such is the calf of Samaria!When they sow the wind,
they shall reap the whirlwind;
The stalk of grain that forms no ear
can yield no flour;
Even if it could,
strangers would swallow it.
When Ephraim made many altars to expiate sin,
his altars became occasions of sin.
Though I write for him my many ordinances,
they are considered as a stranger’s.
Though they offer sacrifice,
immolate flesh and eat it,
the LORD is not pleased with them.
He shall still remember their guilt
and punish their sins;
they shall return to Egypt.
Responsorial Psalm PS 115:3-4, 5-6, 7AB-8, 9-10
R. (9a) The house of Israel trusts in the Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Our God is in heaven;
whatever he wills, he does.
Their idols are silver and gold,
the handiwork of men.
R. The house of Israel trusts in the Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
They have mouths but speak not;
they have eyes but see not;
They have ears but hear not;
they have noses but smell not.
R. The house of Israel trusts in the Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
They have hands but feel not;
they have feet but walk not.
Their makers shall be like them,
everyone that trusts in them.
R. The house of Israel trusts in the Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Alleluia JN 10:14
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
I am the good shepherd, says the Lord;
I know my sheep, and mine know me.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel MT 9:32-38
A demoniac who could not speak was brought to Jesus,
and when the demon was driven out the mute man spoke.
The crowds were amazed and said,
“Nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel.”
But the Pharisees said,
“He drives out demons by the prince of demons.”
Jesus went around to all the towns and villages,
teaching in their synagogues,
proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom,
and curing every disease and illness.
At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them
because they were troubled and abandoned,
like sheep without a shepherd.
Then he said to his disciples,
“The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few;
so ask the master of the harvest
to send out laborers for his harvest.”
The post Imitating Jesus’ Gut-Bursting Mercy, 14th Tuesday (II), July 7, 2026 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
19 min
July 03 Prayer in the Life of Those Sent on Mission, TPMS-USA Missionary Preaching Academy, July 3, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Missionary Preaching Academy
The Pontifical Mission Societies USA
The Augustine Institute, Florissant, Missouri
July 3, 2026

To listen to an audio recording of today’s presentation, please click below:
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To download a PDF of the slides for this talk, please click below:
7.3.26 Prayer in the Life of Missionary Preachers
The post Prayer in the Life of Those Sent on Mission, TPMS-USA Missionary Preaching Academy, July 3, 2026 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
58 min
July 03Confessing the Lord like Thomas the Twin, Feast of St. Thomas the Apostle, July 3, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
The Augustine Institute, Florissant, Missouri
TPMS-USA Missionary Preaching Academy
Feast of St. Thomas, Apostle
July 3, 2026
Eph 2:19-22, Ps 117, Jn 20:24-29

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
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The following text guided the homily:
We began the inaugural Missionary Preaching Academy with the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul and today we conclude it with the Feast of St. Thomas, all among the first missionaries the Lord sent out to the ends of the earth. Today we can focus on what we can learn from Saint Thomas to strengthen us in building on the foundation of the apostles’ missionary labors. Eight years ago I had the privilege as a Missionary of Mercy to concelebrate Mass with Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Square on Divine Mercy Sunday. The Gospel for the Feast always includes today’s Gospel and Pope Francis began his homily by commenting on St. John’s saying that Thomas was called Didymus, for twin. That almost certainly means that he had a twin brother. But Pope Francis said that we can interpret that reality spiritually: that we’re meant to be a twin of Thomas and by our looks and actions resemble him. So today we can focus on what we can learn from the faith of twin missionary.
It’s a pity in many ways that St. Thomas, who left everything to follow the Lord Jesus, who gave his entire life for the Lord and died in witness to faith, is called “Doubting Thomas” as much as he is called “Saint.” He has become the most famous poster boy in history for a doubter! But his doubts were not unique among the first disciples and apostles. With the exception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, none of the early disciples initially believed in the resurrection. The women went to anoint a corpse. The disciples in Emmaus were talking to an anonymous Wayfarer about a Jesus whom they thoroughly believed was dead. When Mary Magdalene and these Emmaus disciples went to inform the other apostles that they had seen Jesus, the apostles didn’t believe them. That’s why Jesus, when he appeared to them as St. Mark reminds us through St. Peter, “rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart because they had not believed those who saw him after he had been raised” (Mk 16:14). Faith, as we know, is the belief in something on the basis of a belief in someone giving witness. They had a double-distrust that led to their lack of faith in Jesus’ resurrection: first, they distrusted the witness of Mary and the disciples on the Road to Emmaus, thinking that they were just too gullible. But more importantly they distrusted in Jesus’ words that he would rise on the third day. Thomas’ distrust was not qualitatively different at all, just quantitatively: he didn’t believe his fellow apostles’ testimony either.
We’ll get to his doubts a little bit more shortly, but what I’d like to do first is to talk about what St. Thomas teaches us precisely about faith, because to be effective missionaries, our faith is more important than our words. St. Thomas’ doubts are a blessing for us because they open us up to what we need to know for our faith to be strengthened. I’d like to focus on the three recorded sayings of St. Thomas in the Gospel and what we can learn from each of them.
The first is his statement during the Last Supper when Jesus was talking about his needing to go away but then come back again. Jesus stated, “Where I am going, you know the way.” That’s when Thomas, who had the guts to say what others were thinking but were perhaps too timid to ask, blurted out, “Lord, we do not know where you are going, how can we know the way?” His was what St. Anselm, basing himself on St. Augustine, would later call fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding. He believed in the Lord, but wanted to understand better what Jesus was saying. We, too, need to be willing to ask questions of the Lord. Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman once said that a thousand questions don’t constitute a single doubt. St. Thomas Aquinas’ whole method in the Summa was to question aspects of the faith, to raise all of the objections to truths of faith, in order to understand the faith better. As a biologist, I can’t wait to meet Jesus face to face and get a definitive answer to how he got the Y-chromosome, a question that Fr. Mendel, the Venerable Jerome Lejeune and probably many others have already asked him! I would like to ask what happened to the body of Elijah before the general resurrection of the dead. I’d love to ponder the miraculous mystery of transubstantiation more at a biochemical level. But questions about these matters and others don’t cause us to doubt Jesus or what he himself has revealed. On the contrary, they help us to solidify our faith.
The second thing St. Thomas teaches us are about the consequences of faith. Faith is meant to be lived. We are called to stake our life on what he reveals to us, to become a martyr, a witness, to what he reveals. St. Thomas showed this in the scene outside of Bethany. Martha and Mary had sent word to Jesus that Lazarus was deathly ill and Jesus committed to going there. Some of the apostles noted that people were threatening to kill Jesus and they tried to persuade him from walking into an ambush. But Thomas said, “Let us also go to die with him” (Jn 11:16). He was willing to die for Jesus who was going to give his life in a week for Thomas and us. That’s where faith leads. A faith that doesn’t trust in the Lord, in his promise of resurrection, in his teaching us the way to live and die enough to stake our life on his resurrection and ours, really isn’t worthy of the description “faith.” St. Thomas shows us that. Even though he, like the other apostles, would abandon Jesus in fear as Jesus was arrested in the Garden, even though he would spend the first Triduum cowering, he was one who, like Peter, had a willing spirit despite his weak flesh. And he knew that faith wasn’t meant to be merely conceptual. It was supposed to be existential. That’s a really important lesson for us to grasp.
Third, we come to the scene in today’s Gospel. Thomas is unwilling to accept the testimony of the other apostles, the women or the disciples from Emmaus, as if they were all together in a collective hallucination. But it wasn’t a general incredulity. He had obviously been struggling about the criteria to accept Jesus’ resurrection, almost certainly because he had been pondering Jesus’ words that he would rise from the dead. And he had come to the conclusion that the criteria would be Jesus’ wounds. The stigmata were the sign of Jesus’ love, which would be the connection between Jesus’ risen body and his earthly body. Thomas somehow had intuited that for whoever would appear to be the same Jesus — even though his appearance could be different, his voice different, everything else different — the connection would be his wounds. That’s why he said what he did: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” He was in some ways a proto-scientist, but he was not someone testing God by generalized incredulity. He knew what the signs of the Resurrection would be. Much like the apostle Nathanael earlier who was doubtless pondering the Messiah under the fig tree only to burst out with Messianic exuberance once Jesus mentioned that he had seen him under that fig tree, so Thomas, as soon as Jesus appeared and said, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe,” burst out with the greatest theological confession of Jesus’ divinity recorded in Sacred Scripture: “My Lord and my God.” He shows us that we just can’t merely take others’ words for it as if words were enough — since many people have put their faith in false claims. Our truly Christian faith must be in the crucified Christ risen from the dead, and for that we need to have contact with Jesus’ crucified love, with the person of Jesus, with the sufferings of Jesus. St. Thomas’ whole focus on Jesus’ wounds were like an ancient devotion not merely of the Crucifix but of the Sacred Heart — and Thomas knew that he wanted to probe and enter Jesus’ wounds.
St. Thomas’ confession — “My Lord and my God” — is the essential message of every missionary. We proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen, as Lord and God. We do so, of course, with the faith of the Church. But we do so, too, in our own name. At that Mass with Pope Francis in 2018 that I alluded to earlier, the Holy Father focused on St. Thomas’ celebrated phrase from another profound angle. Pope Francis said, “Thomas, after seeing the Lord’s wounds, cried out: ‘My Lord and my God!’ (v. 28). I would like to reflect on the adjective that Thomas repeats: my. It is a possessive adjective. When we think about it, it might seem inappropriate to use it of God. How can God be mine? How can I make the Almighty mine? The truth is, by saying my, we do not profane God, but honor his mercy. Because God wished to ‘become ours.’ As in a love story, we tell him: ‘You became man for me, you died and rose for me and thus you are not only God; you are my God, you are my life. In you I have found the love that I was looking for, and much more than I could ever have imagined.’ God takes no offence at being ‘ours,’ because love demands confidence, mercy demands trust. At the very beginning of the Ten Commandments, God said: ‘I am the Lord your God‘ (Ex 20:2), and reaffirmed: ‘I, the Lord your God am a jealous God’ (v. 5). Here we see how God presents himself as a jealous lover who calls himself your God. From the depths of Thomas’s heart comes the reply: ‘My Lord and my God!’” Jesus wants us, too, to relate to him as our Lord and our God, as my Lord and my God, to belong to each of us as we belong to him, to be jealous for him as he is for us in love. St. Thomas teaches us this personal entrustment and relationship so that when we go to preach as missionaries, we not only preach the faith of the Church but we also give witness to our own faith in Jesus.
Today we come on his feast day inspired by his faith to renew our missionary commitment by echoing St. Thomas’ great profession that Jesus our own Lord and God. Thomas, our twin, is a pillar for our faith as St. Paul reminded us in today’s first reading. We ask St. Thomas to intercede for us that we may understand our faith better, follow Jesus along the way, die to ourselves together with him, and proclaim him boldly, wherever we are sent. We ask through his intercession for the grace to hide ourselves in Jesus’ wounds as Jesus, in his body, blood, soul and divinity comes within us to dwell within and heal our wounds. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote about the connection of St. Thomas and our approach to the Eucharist in his Adoro Te Devote when he declared, “Plagas, sicut Thomas, non intueor, Deum tamen meum te confiteor. Fac me tibi semper magis credere, in te spem habere, te diligere,” literally, “Wounds, like Thomas, I do not see, nevertheless I confess you my God to be. Make be always more and more believe in you, have hope in you and love you.” As we prepare to enter into the celebration of that Mass Thomas participated in on Holy Thursday in the Upper Room and had the joy to make present across the world, all the way to his death in Goa, we ask for the grace as we are about to receive him here to believe, hope in and love Christ as our Lord and God ever more and be so transformed as to confess him as Thomas did publicly as well and bring Him and his message to all the world.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 Eph 2:19-22
Brothers and sisters:
You are no longer strangers and sojourners,
but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones
and members of the household of God,
built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets,
with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone.
Through him the whole structure is held together
and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord;
in him you also are being built together
into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.
Responsorial Psalm PS 117:1bc, 2
R. (Mark 16:15) Go out to all the world and tell the Good News.
Praise the LORD, all you nations;
glorify him, all you peoples!
R. Go out to all the world and tell the Good News.
For steadfast is his kindness for us,
and the fidelity of the LORD endures forever.
R. Go out to all the world and tell the Good News.
Alleluia Jn 20:29
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
You believe in me, Thomas, because you have seen me, says the Lord;
blessed are those who have not seen, but still believe!
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel Jn 20:24-29
Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve,
was not with them when Jesus came.
So the other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.”
But Thomas said to them,
“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands
and put my finger into the nailmarks
and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
Now a week later his disciples were again inside
and Thomas was with them.
Jesus came, although the doors were locked,
and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.”
Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands,
and bring your hand and put it into my side,
and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”
Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
Jesus said to him,
“Have you come to believe because you have seen me?
Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”
The post Confessing the Lord like Thomas the Twin, Feast of St. Thomas the Apostle, July 3, 2026 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
17 min
July 03Proclaiming the Mission of Mercy, 13th Thursday (II), July 2, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Augustine Institute, Florissant, Missouri
TPMS-USA Missionary Preaching Academy
Thursday of the 13th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Votive Mass of the Evangelization of Peoples
July 2, 2026
Amos 7:10-17, Ps 19, Mt 9:1-8

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
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The following points were attempted in the homily:
Today’s readings have us focus on two essential aspects of what we’ve been pondering during this Missionary Preaching Academy. The first is that to proclaim the Gospel is to proclaim God’s mercy. Jesus’ first words in the public ministry of his mission were “Repent and believe.” He sent the apostles out so that “preaching for the forgiveness sins will be preached beginning in Jerusalem and into Samaria and unto the ends of the earth.” The second lesson is that all are called to be part of proclaiming this mission of mercy, in words and in action.
Let’s begin with the mission of mercy itself. Today in the Gospel, we see the priority of mercy in Jesus’ saving work. Friends bring their paralyzed pal to Jesus obviously with faith and hope that Jesus could and would cure his paralysis. But Jesus instead forgives him his sins. Some scholars will argue that this is because Jewish mentality was that every physical illness was the result of some type of sin and that Jesus was addressing the cause and not just the symptoms. But the likelier reason is because Jesus wanted to demonstrate that he had come as far more than a free wonder-doctor curing sick bodies, but had come precisely to heal the whole person, soul and body, and especially of the worst illness of all, which would be the cancer of sin and the communion it attacks with God, others and within oneself. Pope Francis said in 2013 in a homily based on this Gospel that everything Jesus did was connected to his mission of mercy: “When Jesus healed a sick man he was not only a healer. When he taught people — let us think of the Beatitudes — he was not only a catechist, a preacher of morals. When he remonstrated against the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and Sadducees, he was not a revolutionary who wanted to drive out the Romans. No, these things that Jesus did, healing, teaching and speaking out against hypocrisy, were only a sign of something greater that Jesus was doing: he was forgiving sins.” He went on to say, basing himself St. Paul’s words in today’s Gospel verse, “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation,” that reconciling the world in Christ in the name of the Father “is Jesus’ mission. Everything else — healing, teaching, reprimands — are only signs of that deeper miracle which is the re-creation of the world. Thus reconciliation is the re-creation of the world; and the most profound mission of Jesus is the redemption of all of us sinners. And Jesus did not do this with words, with actions or by walking on the road, no! He did it with his flesh. It is truly he, God, who becomes one of us, a man, to heal us from within.” It was only to prove that he had the authority on earth to forgive sins that Jesus cured the paralysis. He had already given him a far greater gift!
The key for us is to cooperate with Jesus’ mission. Tomorrow, if we didn’t have the feast of St. Thomas the Apostle, we would have the Gospel of Jesus’ calling St. Matthew and his fellow sinners, and his words to the Pharisees who were complaining about Jesus’ keeping company with sinners just like the Scribes were complaining about his “blasphemously” forgiving sins, “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. … I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.” To receive Jesus, to receive his greatest miracle, we have to recognize we’re sick in need of a doctor. We have to recognize we’re sinners. Today we have three examples of those who didn’t.
The first were the Scribes in the Gospel. They were opposed to Jesus’ mission of the forgiveness of sins. They objected ostensibly based on the truth that only God can forgive sins against God. But after Jesus demonstrated through healing the paralyzed man that he had divine authority to do so, they still refused to accept him, eventually ascribing such behavior to the evil one.
The second are Jesus’ fellow Nazarenes. There’s a very subtle reference at the beginning of today’s Gospel that Jesus, “after entering a boat, Jesus made the crossing, and came into his own town.” Now Nazareth didn’t have a port on the Sea of Galilee. St. Matthew was talking about Capernaum. During Jesus’ public ministry he was an itinerant preacher and didn’t have a place to lay his head (Lk 9:58). But he spent a lot of time preaching and working miracles in Capernaum, almost certainly staying in St. Peter’s house, and people — certainly there in Capernaum — began to refer to it as his home base. The reason is because Jesus had already been exiled from Nazareth, where they had tried to kill him after he preached in their Synagogue. As St. John says in his Prologue, Jesus came unto his own and his own people did not accept him (Jn 1:11). Jesus couldn’t work many miracles there — physical miracles, exorcisms, multiplications of food, and what they all pointed to, reconciliation! — because of their lack of faith.
The third rejection of God’s mercy is the Kingdom of Israel at the time of Amos the prophet (and of Hosea, whom we will consider next week.) Amos was called by God from his place in Tekoa, ten miles south of Jerusalem, to go to the north, where the Kingdom of Israel was, and preach conversion against the rampant injustice that was taking place among those who claimed to worship God in the sanctuaries, like at Bethel, but were not giving God and others the justice and love they deserved. People had become corrupt in multiple ways and Amos was sent to expose that corruption and call people to conversion. But he was opposed. Today we see the opposition of Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, who sought to turn King Jeroboam II against Amos and get him booted from Israel. Israel at this time was very prosperous, the King was wealthy, the priests were wealthy, the upper class was wealthy, but so many were suffering in their midst. Amaziah didn’t want the boat rocked and the status quo upended. We can see a little bit of his corruption through money when he tells Amos, to flee to the land of Judah and “there earn your bread by prophesying.” To “earn one’s bread” is a Hebrew idiom for making money, and he thought Amos was there for the money. In Amos’ brief vocation story, we see how false that was. Amos replied, “I was no prophet, nor have I belonged to a company of prophets. I was a shepherd and a dresser of sycamores. The Lord took me from following the flock, and said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’” At the time there were professional prophets, trained in schools, and they made money much like “seers” or tarot card readers do, by giving predictions based on the future, and they knew they would do better if they prophesied in a way that would make themselves useful and tickle the ears of those who paid them, like the king. Amos was a “herdsman” (that’s the first word, translated shepherd, meaning he had cattle), would care for sycamore trees and the fruit they produced, and also had a flock of sheep. He was, in other words, a well-to-do mixed farmer with various animals. He was a layman who had a job, but God said to him in the midst of his word, “Go, prophesy to my people Israel” in the north, and he did. He shows us that we’re all called to be God’s prophets. In the first reading, we see the role of the friends of the paralyzed man in bringing him to Jesus. We also see how, after the miracles, the cured man and all those present glorified God for his mercy and his wondrous deeds. Amaziah, however, resisted Amos’ mission. Amos said, was “You say: ‘prophesy not against Israel, preach not against the house of Isaac.’” Amaziah was utterly opposed to the call to conversion God was giving him and all of Israel and he wanted him expelled from the kingdom. Amos therefore prophesied the ruin that would come to such a false prophet and corrupt priest and to his family as a result of the sinfulness of their husband and father.
What do we learn from these rejections? We learn to trust in the power and believe in the desire of God to forgive sins. We learn of the need to respond to God’s help to make of ourselves Jesus’ home, as he cleanses us interiorly to be able to receive him. We learn of the importance of heeding and announcing God’s message of mercy. By our baptism and confirmation — and more so by my priestly ordination and your religious profession — we have become prophets in the school of prophets that is the Church. In the book of Numbers, Moses says, “Would that all God’s people were prophets!” He wants us all to prophesy, to actualize, God’s message, at the forefront of which is his desire for our reconciliation through mercy and conversion.
That process begins here at Mass, as we offer to the Eternal Father his dearly beloved Son’s Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, in expiation for our sins and the sins of the whole world. It’s here that Mercy incarnate seeks, in healing us, to strengthen us to pick up our mat and go home where we can be ambassadors of his merciful love. It’s here that we should be repeatedly “struck with awe” and glorify God” who has given us this message of reconciliation and given such authority to forgive sins to the same men through whom he gives us his Body and Blood.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 AM 7:10-17
Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent word to Jeroboam,
king of Israel:
“Amos has conspired against you here within Israel;
the country cannot endure all his words.
For this is what Amos says:
Jeroboam shall die by the sword,
and Israel shall surely be exiled from its land.”
To Amos, Amaziah said:
“Off with you, visionary, flee to the land of Judah!
There earn your bread by prophesying,
but never again prophesy in Bethel;
for it is the king’s sanctuary and a royal temple.”
Amos answered Amaziah, “I was no prophet,
nor have I belonged to a company of prophets;
I was a shepherd and a dresser of sycamores.
The LORD took me from following the flock, and said to me,
‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’
Now hear the word of the LORD!”
You say: prophesy not against Israel,
preach not against the house of Isaac.
Now thus says the LORD:
Your wife shall be made a harlot in the city,
and your sons and daughters shall fall by the sword;
Your land shall be divided by measuring line,
and you yourself shall die in an unclean land;
Israel shall be exiled far from its land.
Responsorial Psalm PS 19:8, 9, 10, 11
R. (10cd) The judgments of the Lord are true, and all of them are just.
The law of the LORD is perfect,
refreshing the soul;
The decree of the LORD is trustworthy,
giving wisdom to the simple.
R. The judgments of the Lord are true, and all of them are just.
The precepts of the LORD are right,
rejoicing the heart;
The command of the LORD is clear,
enlightening the eye.
R. The judgments of the Lord are true, and all of them are just.
The fear of the LORD is pure,
enduring forever;
The ordinances of the LORD are true,
all of them just.
R. The judgments of the Lord are true, and all of them are just.
They are more precious than gold,
than a heap of purest gold;
Sweeter also than syrup
or honey from the comb.
R. The judgments of the Lord are true, and all of them are just.
Alleluia 2 COR 5:19
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ
and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel MT 9:1-8
After entering a boat, Jesus made the crossing, and came into his own town.
And there people brought to him a paralytic lying on a stretcher.
When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic,
“Courage, child, your sins are forgiven.”
At that, some of the scribes said to themselves,
“This man is blaspheming.”
Jesus knew what they were thinking, and said,
“Why do you harbor evil thoughts?
Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’
or to say, ‘Rise and walk’?
But that you may know that the Son of Man
has authority on earth to forgive sins”–
he then said to the paralytic,
“Rise, pick up your stretcher, and go home.”
He rose and went home.
When the crowds saw this they were struck with awe
and glorified God who had given such authority to men.
The post Proclaiming the Mission of Mercy, 13th Thursday (II), July 2, 2026 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
21 min
June 30 Baptismal Missionary Identity and Integration within the Church’s Mission, TPMS-USA Missionary Preaching Academy, June 30, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Missionary Preaching Academy
The Pontifical Mission Societies USA
The Augustine Institute, Florissant, Missouri
June 30, 2026

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6.30.26 Baptismal Missionary Identity and Integration within the Church’s Mission
The post Baptismal Missionary Identity and Integration within the Church’s Mission, TPMS-USA Missionary Preaching Academy, June 30, 2026 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
1 hr 8 min
June 30The Lord With Us In the Midst of the Storms, 13th Thursday (II), June 30, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Augustine Institute, Florissant, Missouri
Missionary Preaching Academy of The Pontifical Mission Societies USA
Thursday of the 13th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of the First Martyrs of the Church of Rome
June 30, 2026
Amos 3:1-8.4:11-12, Ps 5, Mt 8:23-27

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The following points were attempted in the homily:
Today’s Gospel about Jesus’ calming of the winds and the seas is much more than a demonstration of the Lord’s power over the forces of nature. He who with a word created the heavens and the earth, the seas and all they contain, with a word could calm them. And, as we see in the Gospel, he did. Neither is today’s Gospel a manifestation of the failure of the apostles to believe in this power of Jesus. They knew that he had the power, which is why they woke him up in the first place. They had already seen him cast out demons, cure Simon Peter’s mother-in-law and others who were ill, heal lepers, forgive the sins and paralysis of a crippled man, and straighten a man’s withered hand. There were no doubts about Jesus’ omnipotence. The point of today’s Gospel is that, even though they knew Jesus had the power to calm the seas and the wind, they began to doubt whether he would do so. It is a display of their failure to believe in Jesus’ love for them. In St. Mark’s version of the same scene, as they startled Jesus from what must have been a very deep and long-overdue sleep on an uncomfortable and rocky boat, they asked, “Master, do you not care that we are perishing?” Do you not care?! They had begun to doubt whether Jesus gave a hoot whether they drowned in the lake. They had begun to question whether he was indifferent to their plight, as if he didn’t care whether they died.
Jesus’ whole life, of course, is an answer to that question. He did care that we were about to die and that was the reason why the Son of God, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, took our human nature and was born of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He cared enough that he spent himself to the point of exhaustion teaching, healing the sick and comforting the afflicted. He cared enough ultimately to take our place on death row, giving his life so that we might survive. Like Jonah, who was tossed into the sea in order to calm the ferocious storm of the sea, so Jesus tossed himself overboard to quell the tempests that were causing us to die. As he hurled himself into the abyss from the Cross, he calmed the storm of sin so that we might reach the eternal shore. He did care!
The problem was that the apostles doubted in his loving concern. In this the twelve were like the twelve tribes of Israel 1300 years before. After they had witnessed God’s hand in the ten plagues of Egypt, after they had seen him part the Red Sea, after they had seen pharoah’s horsemen and chariots perish in the sea, after they had witnessed Moses’ strike the rock to provide them water, after they had been fed miraculously with manna and then quails from heaven, after they had seen the thunder and lightening of Moses’ conversations with God on the top of Mt. Sinai, the Jews continued to doubt in God’s love for them. They obviously knew that God had the power — he had already shown them this power on all these occasions — but they doubted whether he would continue to use that power to help them. “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt,” they complained to Moses, “that you have taken us away to die in the desert?” (Ex 14:11). Whenever anything got difficult, they grumbled. They doubted. They began to whether God’s solicitude had an expiration date. His past actions didn’t factor into their equation.
The same thing was happening with their descendants in the boat. They had witnessed Jesus’ power and his goodness on so many occasions, but they began to wonder whether his love — not his power — had a limit. They began to question whether he was indifferent to their plight. It was, simply put, a lack of faith in who he was, based on a failure to grasp the meaning of all he had done up until then. That’s why Jesus, as soon as he had awakened turned to his followers and said, “Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?”
The same lack of faith that happened to the Jews in the desert and to the apostles on the Sea of Galilee can happen to all of us. Generally, few of us question whether God has the power to work a miracle, but very often we begin to wonder whether he has the will. We, too, can begin to think that he is indifferent to our plight. When we’re assailed by the storms of sorrow, the downpours of doubt, the twisters of uncertainty, the hail of anxiety, and the blizzards of loneliness, we can start to imagine that he is having sweet dreams while we’re experiencing nightmares. We can start to reckon that he’s snoring while we’re screaming for help. This happens when we, like the twelve tribes and the twelve apostles, begin to forget all that the Lord has done for us up until now and what that shows about who he is and how loved we are by him. As St. Paul wrote to the Romans, “If God didn’t even spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, would he not give us everything else along with him? (Rom 8:32). If God the Father was willing to allow his Son to be brutally killed so that we might live, he is going to respond with love in every circumstance, by giving us what he knows we need. But we need to have faith in him and in the power of his love. The apostles were anxious in the boat because they were paying more attention to the waves and to the winds around them than to the presence of Jesus with in the boat. The same thing happens with us. We need to focus more on Christ than on our problems. This is the mark of a life of faith. Jesus turns to us in the midst of whatever hardship we are experiencing and says, “Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?” To believe in him means not just to trust in his power, but to have faith in his goodness and love and that that goodness and love perdures.
In today’s first reading we see an instance of God’s continued goodness and love when his people lose their faith. He intervenes to help them rediscover it. Through the Prophet Amos, God reminds the children of Israel that he brought them out of the land of Egypt, that he favored them “more than all the families of the earth,” but they forgot that that privilege had a purpose, namely so that through their fidelity they might become a light to the world. That’s why God then says, “Therefore I will punish you for all your crimes.” When we hear a phrase like that, we can think that God is like us, taking vengeance on people who didn’t obey his rules; but what God was saying, rather, would be that he would bring them repentance by allowing them to suffer things that will remind them of how much they need him and his mercy and how when they live by sin rather than by faith they eventually weaken such that opposing powers like the Assyrians will triumph over them. The Prophet Amos goes through a list of things describing the principle of cause and effect: two people walk together because they agreed to do so; lions roar because they’ve caught pray; birds fall to the ground when they’re caught by a snare; trumpets sound to announce a battle cry. All of these point to the fact that “the Lord God does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants, the prophets,” and just as people take fright when they hear a lion roar so when someone like Amos hears the Lord God speak, he must prophesy! That’s what he was doing. God caused him to come to proclaim his merciful castigation. They hadn’t learned the lessons of Sodom and Gomorrah, they had “not retuned to me,” the Lord said, and so now, he said, “I will deal with you in my own way, O Israel! … Prepare to meet your God.” They would suffer. They would long for a redeemer. And eventually one would come in his Son. God cared for them enough not to write them off but to redeem them. But everything, like storms, like the fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, are meant to help us grow in faith, and God wants us to act on this care and trust in it rather than take it for granted and forget it.
This truth is also illustrated in the feast we celebrate today, that of the first martyrs of the Church of Rome. After Nero had set fire to the city of Rome in order to rebuild it to his own glory, destroying 10 of the 14 sections of Rome and killing many of the inhabitants, the Romans blamed him and he needed a scapegoat. He found one in the first Christians who had a reputation of being an atheist, cannibalistic, promiscuous sect: atheist because they didn’t believe in the pagan gods and would get the gods angry at everyone; cannibalistic because when they got together to worship God they were said to eat someone’s body and drank his blood; and promiscuous because after that worship they would have a big “agape” meal, a love banquet, which was interpreted as an orgy. They wouldn’t have many defenders. And things got stormy for the Christians right away, the equivalent of a hurricane, a tornado and an earthquake all at the same time. On October 13, 64, a few months after the July 19 fire that destroyed Rome, Peter and the first Christians were rounded up in the Circus of Caligula and Nero for a game in which they would be killed as arsonists supposedly for destroying the city of Rome. They had prayed and it might have seemed God was asleep, but through their testimony, and that of martyrs after them, God was going to help convert the Roman empire. We have an eyewitness account of what they suffered from the Roman pagan historian Tacitus, who was a 7 year old boy there in the circus when the Christians perished. A few decades later, he wrote down what happened: “To get rid of this rumor, Nero set up [i.e., falsely accused] as the culprits and punished with the utmost refinement of cruelty a class hated for their abominations, who are commonly called Christians. Christ, from whom their name is derived, was executed at the hands of the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. Checked for a moment, this pernicious superstition again broke out, not only in Judea, the source of the evil, but even in Rome…. Accordingly, arrest was first made of those who confessed [to being Christians]; then, on their evidence, an immense multitude [elsewhere in his writings he used this expression to refer to 3,000 to 5,000 men] was convicted…. Besides being put to death they were made to serve as objects of amusement; they were clothed in the hides of beasts and torn to death by dogs; others were crucified, others set on fire to serve to illuminate the night when daylight failed. Nero had thrown open his grounds for the display, and was putting on a show in the circus, where he mingled with the people in the dress of charioteer or drove about in his chariot. All this gave rise to a feeling of pity, even towards men whose guilt merited the most exemplary punishment; for it was felt that they were being destroyed not for the public good but to gratify the cruelty of an individual.” With Peter, they followed the Lord Jesus as others stretched out their hands and dragged them to places where according to the flesh they would never want to go. But immediately after their torture Christ’s plans for their salvation were brought to fulfillment. Rather than conquering the evil of Sodom and Gomorrah by fire from heaven, God overcame the evil with good, irrigating the soil of Rome with what it would need for the Church to grow. And their example led to the salvation of many others.
We invoke their intercession today so that we may know that the Lord is always with us in the boat of Peter so that we may be rooted on Christ the Cornerstone and on Peter the Rock even if the storms should blow and buffet against the house. The Eucharistic Lord is with us always even when he seems asleep. He sometimes allows us to endure the difficulties as well as his seeming lack of response so that we can become great in faith. In the Eucharist, he shows us how much he cares.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 AM 3:1-8; 4:11-12
Hear this word, O children of Israel, that the LORD pronounces over you,
over the whole family that I brought up from the land of Egypt:
You alone have I favored,
more than all the families of the earth;
Therefore I will punish you
for all your crimes.Do two walk together
unless they have agreed?
Does a lion roar in the forest
when it has no prey?
Does a young lion cry out from its den
unless it has seized something?
Is a bird brought to earth by a snare
when there is no lure for it?
Does a snare spring up from the ground
without catching anything?
If the trumpet sounds in a city,
will the people not be frightened?
If evil befalls a city,
has not the LORD caused it?
Indeed, the Lord GOD does nothing
without revealing his plan
to his servants, the prophets.
The lion roars—
who will not be afraid!
The Lord GOD speaks—
who will not prophesy!
I brought upon you such upheaval
as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah:
you were like a brand plucked from the fire;
Yet you returned not to me,
says the LORD.
So now I will deal with you in my own way, O Israel!
and since I will deal thus with you,
prepare to meet your God, O Israel.
Responsorial Psalm PS 5:4B-6A, 6B-7, 8
R. (9a) Lead me in your justice, Lord.
At dawn I bring my plea expectantly before you.
For you, O God, delight not in wickedness;
no evil man remains with you;
the arrogant may not stand in your sight.
R. Lead me in your justice, Lord.
You hate all evildoers;
you destroy all who speak falsehood;
The bloodthirsty and the deceitful
the LORD abhors.
R. Lead me in your justice, Lord.
But I, because of your abundant mercy,
will enter your house;
I will worship at your holy temple
in fear of you, O LORD.
R. Lead me in your justice, Lord.
Alleluia PS 130:5
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
I trust in the LORD;
my soul trusts in his word.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel MT 8:23-27
As Jesus got into a boat, his disciples followed him.
Suddenly a violent storm came up on the sea,
so that the boat was being swamped by waves;
but he was asleep.
They came and woke him, saying,
“Lord, save us! We are perishing!”
He said to them,
“Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?”
Then he got up, rebuked the winds and the sea,
and there was great calm.
The men were amazed and said,
“What sort of man is this,
whom even the winds and the sea obey?”

The post The Lord With Us In the Midst of the Storms, 13th Thursday (II), June 30, 2026 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
18 min
June 30 Finding and Proclaiming the Missionary Dimension of Scripture, TPMS-USA Missionary Preaching Academy, June 30, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Missionary Preaching Academy
The Pontifical Mission Societies USA
The Augustine Institute, Florissant, Missouri
June 30, 2026

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6.30.26 Finding and Proclaiming the Missionary Aspect of Sacred Scripture

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57 min
June 30 Catholic Homiletics and the Art of Constructing an Effective Homily, TPMS-USA Missionary Preaching Academy, June 30, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Missionary Preaching Academy
The Pontifical Mission Societies USA
The Augustine Institute, Florissant, Missouri
June 30, 2026

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6.30.26 Catholic Homiletics and the Art of Constructive an Effective Homily
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1 hr 8 min
June 30 Preaching as a Participation in the Mission of Christ, TPMS-USA Missionary Preaching Academy, June 29, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Missionary Preaching Academy
The Pontifical Mission Societies USA
The Augustine Institute, Florissant, Missouri
June 29, 2026

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6.29.26 Preaching as a Participation in the Mission of Christ
The post Preaching as a Participation in the Mission of Christ, TPMS-USA Missionary Preaching Academy, June 29, 2026 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
1 hr 5 min
June 24 Christian Mission and Integral Human Development, Acton University 2026, June 24, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Acton University 2026
Grand Rapids Convention Center
Grand Rapids, Michigan
June 24, 2026

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6.24.26 Christian Mission and Integral Human Development

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1 hr 19 min

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Father Roger J. Landry is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, who works for the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations in New York.