Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Saturday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Norbert

June 6, 2020

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

 

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

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

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

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Boniface, Martyr

June 5, 2020

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Votive Mass in Times of War or Civil Disturbance

June 4, 2020

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

 

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

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

 

The following points were attempted during the homily: 

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

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

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Charles Lwanga and Companions, Martyrs

June 3, 2020

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

 

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

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

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

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Tuesday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Votive Mass for Times of War and Civil Disturbance

June 2, 2020

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

 

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

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

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

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

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Memorial of Mary, Mother of the Church

Foundation Day of the Sisters of Life

June 1, 2020

Gen 3:9-15.20, Ps 87, Jn 19:25-34

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.1.2020_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today for the third time, the Church celebrates with joy the Memorial of Mary, Mother of the Church, decreed in 2018 by Pope Francis to occur on the Monday after Pentecost. Today is also the 29th anniversary of the foundation of the Sisters of Life. It’s a blessed concurrence, because so many of the elements of the maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary are so central to your charism.

* Today’s feast is not just about growing in appreciation and understanding of the importance of Mary’s spiritual maternity but also concerns the way we’re all called not just to receive the fruits of her love but to love her as Jesus did. Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, wrote in his Decree establishing this memorial that in the scene we have in today’s Gospel of Mary with John on Calvary, “The Mother standing beneath the cross accepted her Son’s testament of love and welcomed all people in the person of the beloved disciple as sons and daughters to be reborn unto life eternal. She thus became the tender Mother of the Church which Christ begot on the cross handing on the Spirit. Christ, in turn, in the beloved disciple, chose all disciples as ministers of his love towards his Mother, entrusting her to them so that they might welcome her with filial affection.” So this feast is not just about the privilege we have to receive Mary’s love but about the call we have, with Christ, to love his mother with filial affection!

* It’s important for us to understand a little bit of the history of this feast because it shows us how the Holy Spirit has been guiding the Church throughout the centuries to recognize Mary’s maternity of the Church and respond with Christ-like Marian love.  St. Augustine and St. Leo the Great all spoke about the maternity of Mary in the Church. St. Augustine said that she is “acknowledged and honored as being truly the Mother of God and of the redeemer” but she must also be considered “the mother of the Members of Christ … since she has by her charity joined in bringing about the birth of believers in the Church, who are members of its head.” St. Leo said that the birth of Christ the head is also the birth of the Church his Body. Pope Benedict XIV in 1748 and Pope Leo XIII affirmed Mary as mother of the Church but it was Pope St. Paul VI who formalized the title. It was a result of the focus that the Second Vatican Council gave to Mary, taking a schema for a separate document on Mary and incorporating its insights and the Council’s teaching on Mary into the eighth and “summit” chapter of Lumen Gentium, its dogmatic constitution on the Church. On November 21, 1964, as the third session of the Council was closing, St. Paul VI reflected joyfully on the significance of putting Mary into the dogmatic Constitution and said it was time to “fulfill the vow we highlighted at the end of the last Session and that many Council Fathers have made their own, insistently asking that during this Council the maternal mission that the Blessed Virgin Mary fulfills in the Christian people be explicitly declared. For this reason, it seems necessary that in this public setting we officially announced a title with which the Blessed Virgin is honored,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Pentecost Sunday 2020

May 31, 2020

Acts 2:1-11, Ps 104, 1 Cor 12:3-7.12-13, Jn 20:19-23

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.31.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* Ten days ago, we pondered how Jesus, before he ascended to the Father, enjoined the apostles not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the “promise of the Father” about which they had heard him speak, for “in a few days,” he said, “you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” The apostles and the other followers of Jesus very wisely huddled around Mary in the same Upper Room in which Jesus had given them his Body and Blood, the same Upper Room in which they had barricaded themselves after Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion, the same place wherein he had appeared to them on Easter Sunday. And it was there that they all “devoted themselves with one accord to prayer.” They prayed together with Mary in order to learn from her how to get ready to receive the “promise of the Father,” for it was she who was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit at Jesus’ virginal conception and who continually lived as a Spouse of the Holy Spirit, receiving and responding to his inspirations in an exemplary way.

* During these days they doubtless contemplated the words of Sacred Scripture, how the Spirit of God hovered over surface of the deep and helped bring creation out of chaos (Gen 1:2), how God through the Prophet Joel had promised, “I will pour out my spirit on all flesh and your sons and your daughters will prophesy” (Joel 3:1-2), how God through the Prophet Ezekiel had said, “I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes” (Ez 36:26-28), how through the Prophet Jeremiah God had declared, “I will put my law within them and I will write it upon my hearts.” During these days they similarly would have pondered Jesus’ words about how Jesus had first told the Samaritan woman and later those present in the Temple area, “Let the one who believes in me drink. Just as Scripture says, ‘From within him will flow rivers of living water,’” and St. John tells us, “He said this about the Spirit whom those who believed in him were going to receive” (Jn 4:10.13-14, 7:37). They would have meditated on the many things he had said to them at the Last Supper, that the Father and He would send them another Advocate or Paraclete, who would teach them all things, remind them of everything Jesus taught, guide them into all truth, teach us what we ought to say, bear witness to and glorify Jesus, convict the world about sin, righteousness and condemnation, and dwell in us and be in us (Jn 14:6,16,26; Jn 15:26; Jn 16:8,13-14; Mt 10:17-20). They would also have prayed over the scene in today’s Gospel, on the night of the Resurrection, when Jesus walked through the closed doors of the Upper Room, breathed on them just like God had breathed into Adam at the beginning of Creation, and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

* United with Mary as their retreat director, they prayed and they waited. Jesus hadn’t told them how long they were to remain in prayerful expectation of the fulfillment of the Father’s promise. So their first holy hour stretched into a day of recollection. They eventually went to bed and awakened and prayed a whole second day. They might have thought that, just as God the Father had had them wait until the third day for Jesus’ resurrection, the Holy Spirit would come after three days that seemed like an eternity. But he didn’t come. So they prayed a fourth day. A fifth day. Now this was taking on the form of a retreat. A sixth day. They were doubtless wondering if the Holy Spirit would come on the seventh day, the day of divine rest. But they were thwarted again.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for Pentecost Sunday (A), Vigil

May 30, 2020

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.30.20_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

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

* The Gospel we have, Jesus tells the first apostles in the Upper Room and all of us, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” What does it mean to receive the Holy Spirit?

* We can ponder several things from Sacred Scripture. For example, on Holy Thursday, during the Last Supper, Jesus said that the Holy Spirit: would teach us everything and remind us of all that Jesus had told us, that the Holy Spirit would testify to Jesus and help us testify, and that the Holy Spirit would convict the world with regard to sin, and righteousness and condemnation. To receive the Holy Spirit, therefore, means that we cooperate with the Holy Spirit’s assistance to get to know Jesus and his teaching much better, to remember it, to share it, to live it, to thank God incessantly for it. To receive the Holy Spirit means to cooperate with him in testifying to Jesus, that he is with us always until the end of time, calling us to joy, to life, to love. To receive the Holy Spirit means to fight against sin, to seek righteousness or holiness, and to rejoice in the condemnation of the ruler of this world.

* To receive the Holy Spirit. We can learn a lot about how to do that through remembering what happened on that first Pentecost. Before his Ascension Jesus had enjoined the apostles not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the “promise of the Father” about which they had heard him speak, for “in a few days,” he said, “you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” The apostles and the other followers of Jesus very wisely huddled around Mary and “devoted themselves with one accord to prayer.” They prayed together with Mary in order to learn from her how to get ready to receive the Holy Spirit, for it was she who was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit at Jesus’ virginal conception and who continually lived as a Spouse of the Holy Spirit, receiving and responding to his inspirations in an exemplary way. United with her they prayed and they waited. Jesus hadn’t told them how long they were to wait in prayerful expectation. So their first holy hour stretched into a day of recollection. They eventually went to bed and awakened and prayed a whole second day. They might have thought that, just as God the Father had had them wait until the third day for Jesus’ resurrection, the Holy Spirit would come after three days that seemed like an eternity. But he didn’t come. So they prayed a fourth day. A fifth day. Now this was taking on the form of a retreat. A sixth day. They were doubtless wondering if the Holy Spirit would come on the seventh day, the day of divine rest. But they were thwarted again. The eighth day. Were they going to have to do this forever? The ninth day. They kept praying and waiting. And it was finally on the tenth day, the feast of Pentecost, that the Holy Spirit burst through the windows of the upper room like the noise of a strong driving wind, came down upon each of them as tongues of fire.

* It’s important for us to ask why God had made them wait so long in prayerful vigil. Some might say that he wanted to wait until Pentecost, the day on which the Jews celebrated their harvest festival and the giving of the law on Mt. Sinai, to show that the Holy Spirit was the law of the New Covenant being place...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Feast of the Visitation (translated)

May 30, 2020

Zeph 3:14-18, Is 12:2-6, Lk 1:39-56

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.30.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily:

* It’s a great joy, today, as we prepare for Pentecost tomorrow and thank God for the gift of the Easter Season that we are able to celebrate the patronal feast of your Convent and the model mystery of your ministry to pregnant women, the Visitation. Throughout the Easter Season, we ponder the reality of the presence of the Risen Jesus with us, helping us, as St. Paul tells on at the Easter Vigil, to experience a “newness of life,” and in the Visitation, we see the difference the presence of Jesus makes. During this Decenarium to the Holy Spirit that we have been making since the Ascension, we seek to grow in our awareness of, and docility to, the action of the Holy Spirit, his gifts and the fruit of his presence, and in the Visitation we see the impact he makes in the life of all of the principal characters. And so it is fitting that we look at the Visitation in a special way through the prism of Pentecost and how the Holy Spirit helps people become aware of the presence of Jesus and respond.

* As we ponder the Mystery of the Visitation in the Holy Rosary every Monday and Saturday, we normally are drawn toward the five principal characters. The Holy Spirit impacts all five and his interaction with them can help us to learn how he seeks to help us relive part of the mystery more deeply.

* The first figure is the Blessed Virgin Mary. Today’s scene is a continuation, a complement, of what happened at the Annunciation when, as St. Matthew tells us, “she was found with child through the Holy Spirit” (Mt 1:18) as a result of what St. Luke tells us that the Archangel Gabriel had said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore he who is to be born will be called holy, the Son of God” (Lk 1:35). The prophet Isaiah had foretold that “the Spirit of the Lord will rest upon … the shoot that shall sprout from the stump of Jesse” (Is 11:1-2; 61:1) but here we see that the Holy Spirit’s descent upon Mary, and her miraculous virginal conception of that Shoot, is highlighted. God’s self-giving and Mary’s self-giving together in a spousal bond brings about the miracle. The Holy Spirit had already acted upon her in her Immaculate Conception. The cooperation between Mary and the Holy Spirit led to the incarnation and her response, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word,” (Lk 1:38) is already itself a fruit of the work of the Holy Spirit within her.  After the departure of the Angel, still overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, Mary similarly departed with haste. The Archangel didn’t tell her to go. He didn’t even suggest it. But at the mere mention of Elizabeth’s being pregnant in old age, Mary went with alacrity to help her. This shows her enormous faith in everything the Archangel said, not merely that she was pregnant with the eternal Son of God but that her seemingly sterile elderly cousin was similarly pregnant. The two pregnancies were linked by the Angel, just as the two mysteries are interconnected. She shows us how the Holy Spirit impels us, together with Jesus, to charity, to go faithfully in haste to care for those in need. We also see how the Holy Spirit was influencing her prayer along the way, leading her to all truth, helping her through the gift of Understanding to synthesize revelation in what was happening in her life.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, New York, NY

Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter

Memorial of St. Paul VI on the 100th Anniversary of his Priestly Ordination

May 29, 2020

Acts 25:13-21, Ps 103, Jn 21:15-19

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.29.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* In today’s Gospel, we have one of the most powerful and poignant scenes in the Gospel, which the Church gives us to help us to summarize the graces of the Easter Season and send us forward into Pentecost and beyond. Jesus meets Peter and six other disciples on the seashore of Galilee where he cooks them breakfast. At the end of the meal, he takes Simon Peter aside in order to restore his confidence after having totally denied Jesus three times on Holy Thursday just a couple of hours after saying that even if he should have to die for Jesus, he would never betray him. Peter was not yet able to experience the joy of Jesus’ resurrection fully because of the trauma of his sins. But Jesus needed him. Jesus wanted to solidify the rock on whom he was building his Church. So in response to Peter’s three-fold denial, Jesus gave him a chance to make a three-fold affirmation of love.

* But buried within the dialogue is a real drama, but to see you, we have to know a little Greek. The first time Jesus asks Peter if he loves him, the word he uses for love is agape, which means a total self-sacrificial type of love, the type of love Jesus himself showed when he said, “No one has any greater love than to lay down his life for his friends.” “Simon, son of John,” he was asking, “do you love me with agape?” Peter’s response, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you,” doesn’t use the word “agape,” but rather “philia.” He replies, in other words, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you as a friend.” Peter, after having broken his promise to die for Jesus before he ever would deny him, wasn’t going to make the same promise again. He was still carrying around the weight of his betrayal. So Jesus asked him a second time, “Peter, do you love me with agape, with total self-sacrificial love?” Peter replied again, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you with philia, as a friend.” So Jesus in the third question lowered himself to where Peter was comfortable and asked, “Simon, Son of John, do you love me with philia?” That’s when Peter was distressed. He knew the Lord was calling him to more but the Lord was acknowledging that Peter didn’t think he was capable of heroic love. He replied, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you as a friend.”

* Jesus, however, wasn’t going to leave Peter there. He said to him that when he was younger, he used to dress himself and go about as he pleased. But when Peter would grow old, another would “stretch out his hands” — a Greek euphemism for crucifixion — and lead him to a place he didn’t want to go, something, St. John said, was indicating the type of death by which Peter would glorify God. Jesus was telling him, “Even if you don’t want to say again publicly that you love me enough to die for me, you will love me that way, even being crucified for me.” And Jesus to emphasize the point said to him, “Follow me,” because Peter would follow him all the way.

* What’s the lesson for us? Each of us, too, has had times when we haven’t been faithful to God, but no matter what our falls, Jesus wants to restore us to be capable of a love like his, of a total self-giving love in response to Jesus’ love for us. And he indicates to Peter and to us how to show it, but feeding his lambs and sheep, and tending his flock. In other words, the way we would demonstrate our love for him would be by sacrificing ourselv...