Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

March 14, 2020

 

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The following text guided the homily: 

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

* The Church has us focus on the life-changing conversation Jesus has with a Samaritan woman at a well. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, promised that he would leave all of his other sheep behind and go in search of whatever sheep of his was lost. Today we see him putting that truth into action, in his encounter with the Liz Taylor of her day, who had married five times already and was then living with a sixth man who was not her husband. Her behavior had led to her being ostracized, as was evidenced by her going alone to draw water at the well at high noon, at the height of the piercing sun, when no one else for obvious reasons would have been there. Had she gone at cooler times in the early morning or late afternoon, she would have been the butt of criticism from other women for her past and present. Jesus went to await her at the most brutal moment of the day. In his conversation with her, not only did he break two social conventions — that Jews didn’t speak to Samaritans and that men didn’t speak to women alone in public places — but most importantly he taught her and through her us about the two essential realities about our spiritual life: God’s grace, symbolized by the “living water” he describes, and our desire or “thirst” for that water.

* Upon the Cross, Jesus said “I thirst,” and his whole life was an insatiable quest to give us that spring of living water gushing up within us to eternal life. Just like our body cannot exist without water — the human body is in fact 72 percent water — neither can our soul survive without this living water. Jesus, through whom both our body and soul were created, knows both realities, and came as the divine physician to give us the soul-sustaining remedy to the woman at the well and to each of us.

* What is this “living water” exactly? It is nothing short of God’s divine life — what we call in theology the Indwelling of the Blessed Trinity. In one place in the Gospel, Jesus identifies the living water as the presence of the Holy Spirit; in the other, he identifies it as his own presence through the holy Eucharist. Jesus wants to give us this living water of the Holy Spirit, of his life-giving flesh and blood, of the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity, but his will is not enough. He placed a condition on his own omnipotence; he won’t force us to drink of that water. He wants us freely to ask for it, to desire We see this very clearly in his invitation to the woman at the well: “If you knew the gift of God, and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would ask him, and he would give you living water.” And the woman used her freedom to say, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty!” In the same way, as God thirsts for us, we must have a thirst for him. In Psalm 63, this thirst for God is highlighted: “O God, you are my God, for you I long, for you my soul is thirsting. My body pines for you like a dry, weary land without water” (Ps 63:1). That’s what God wants to help us say to him. “My soul pines for you!” “Give me that water!” If we really mean those words, if we thirst for God, certain behaviors would follow. If we thirst for God, we will pray as much and as well as we can. If we thirst for God,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

March 7, 2020

 

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The following text guided the homily: 

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

* Every year ten days into Lent the Church has us journey with Jesus to the top of an exceedingly high mountain. It does so for the same reason why God the Father conceded to Peter, James and John the experience of the Transfiguration in the first place: to give the a foretaste of Jesus Christ’s glory to sustain them when they will see Jesus transfigured in blood, pain and suffering on Good Friday. There is an intrinsic connection between Mt. Tabor and Mt. Calvary, between the glory of the Transfiguration and the glorification of Christ on the throne of the Cross.

* We see it in what the subject matter of the conversation between Jesus and the two great heroes of the Old Testament, Moses and Elijah. Moses and Elijah are both precursors of Lent. Elijah had lived a Lent of 40 days crossing the desert to the mountain of God, Horeb, being hunted by King Ahab. Moses had spent 40 days in prayer at the top of Mt. Sinai and then 40 years with the Jews in the desert. They came specifically to speak with Jesus not about the glory that was to come, not about Heaven, but about the culmination of the Lenten Season: Jesus’ suffering, Cross and death. St. Luke tells us they spoke about the “exodus” that Jesus was to accomplish in Jerusalem. This exodus meant the passage Jesus would make from the slavery of death to the Promised Land of eternal life. Jesus, however, was speaking about this exodus while he was gloriously transfigured, not cowering in fear. God the Father wanted Peter, James and John — and all of us— to see this scene, so that it would sustain our faith when the suffering comes.

* The second connection between Tabor and Calvary is what God the Father says to the three apostles. God the Father speaks only three times in the New Testament. The first time is at Jesus’ baptism, when he said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.” The last time is during the Last Supper when he stated that he had glorified his Son and would glorify him again. This time at the top of Mt. Tabor, however, when he spoke from the cloud, he went further. After reiterating that Jesus is his beloved Son, he tells the three apostles, “Listen to Him!”  At first this makes little sense. What had the apostles been doing for the past two plus years but listening to Jesus? But God the Father knew that they had only been selectively listening, and they had been tone deaf to what Jesus had been saying to them about his upcoming crucifixion and death. They didn’t want to hear it. Jesus would tell them on three separate occasions that this would occur, but they refused to take him seriously, rebuking him, or fighting for who would sit on his right and left. Even after the foretold crucifixion, which should have been a confirmation, they still really didn’t grasp what he said about being raised on the third day and were stunned when he walked through the closed doors of the upper room. They needed to keep the connection between Jesus’ glory and his suffering. They needed to have faith that Jesus’ exodus, as painful as it would be, would lead them all to the promised land. The needed truly to listen to Jesus.

* If we’re making the connection between the two mountains,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the First Sunday of Lent(A), Vigil

February 29, 2020

 

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The following text guided the homily: 

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

* Most people have no desire at all to go to the desert, certainly for no more than a brief visit. At a spiritual level, however, we should always have a great love for the desert, because the desert is what helps us to understand the 40-day pilgrimage of Lent, in which we join and imitate Jesus in the desert and ponder the fruits of what he learned and experienced there upon his return. To go into the desert, however, is increasingly difficult for people today. We’re so connected that if we are out of cell phone range we can easily feel totally lost. While the Lord is not calling us all physically to go to the Sahara, he is calling us to the state of the desert, removing ourselves from distractions, from the television, computer, radio, newspaper, and the various things that may be fine in themselves but crowd our lives with so much noise that we can’t hear God and so much clutter that we can’t see God. The first temptation we face each Lent is to refuse to go into the desert with Christ, to think that our Lent can be complete if, for example, all we do is give up chocolate and potato chips. The first big hurdle is for us to hear Christ’s voice from the desert saying, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while” (Mk 6:31).

* The next lesson we need to grasp is what is supposed to be the fruit of our time in the desert, and that leads us to the Gospel of Jesus’ temptations by the devil in the desert, which St. Matthew could have known only if Jesus had told him. He prayed and fasted for an incredible forty days, which obviously would have left him physically weak and famished. It was at this moment of physical weakness that the Devil came to him to tempt him. In the temptations Jesus suffered and later described to his disciples, the devil brought out in a pristine form the types of temptation that Christ would undergo in his public ministry and that each of us undergoes in life. By focusing on how Christ responded, we, too, can learn how to receive his mercy and help so that we might be able to react as Jesus did.

* The first temptation was aimed right at Jesus’ tremendous hunger after 40 days of eating nothing: “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of Bread.” Jesus had come to save people, to feed their most important hunger — the hunger of their souls — and Satan was trying to induce him, as Archbishop Sheen used to say, to become a baker rather than a Savior. To feed people’s physical hunger would be a great way to win a crowd and become popular. But Jesus himself was already living off a greater source of food and was preparing to train disciples to seek this same celestial nutrition: “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” This same insight he passed on to the crowds when they were following him to have their stomachs satiated: “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you” (Jn 6:27). All of us in the Church need to remember what this greatest food source of all is. Lent is the time in which we grow in our trust for God’s providing, that he loves us more than the lilies of the field and the bir...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

February 22, 2020

 

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The following text guided today’s homily: 

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

* Over the last few weeks, we have been focusing on what Jesus said to us in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus has been calling us, as his disciples, to live by his standards, not by the standards of others. Last week, he told us that our relationship with God must surpass that of the scribes and the Pharisees, who were the most religiously observant Jews. This Sunday he tells us that we need to do better than the tax collectors who love those who love them, than the upright Gentiles who greet and do good to those who great and do good to them. He calls us to live by God the Father’s standards, which he personifies.

* Jesus this Sunday puts an exclamation point on this calling. “Therefore,” he tells us, “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Many times when we hear this, we’re thrown off by the word “perfect” and think that this is an unachievable standard, because after all, none of us is perfect, none of us will ever be perfect, and therefore if God is calling us never to make a mistake, then he’s calling us to something beyond human capacity. Therefore we feel somewhat justified in dismissing what Jesus says as if it’s clearly impossible. But before we ignore what Jesus is calling us to, as if he couldn’t possibly have meant it, we should focus on a couple of things:

* First, the main emphasis of what Jesus is saying is “Be like your heavenly Father.” He was specifically calling us to be like him in particular ways in the Gospel. Earlier in the passage he gave us specific exhortations so that we “may be children of [our] Father in heaven, who makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” Jesus implies that we will not really become children of God until we start behaving like God, that he can be our Father without our being his children unless we experience the inner revolution to which Jesus is calling us and unless we seek to act as his children, to behave like Jesus who shows us how to live as a Son of God. Just as God the Father loves everyone and does good to everyone, including those who curse him, including those who make themselves his enemy through sin and an evil life, including those who try to use him whenever they need him, Jesus calls us to do the same, to love our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us, to walk the second mile, to give our cloak as well as our tunic, to give generously to all those who need to borrow. We’re called to be good — to let our sun or life-giving rain fall — not just on those who are good to us but even on those who are not good to us, just like the Father does. This is the path to true holiness, this is the means by which we become, in action, sons and daughters of our heavenly Father, by behaving as he behaves.

* Second, to understand what Jesus means when he calls us to be “perfect” like our Father in heaven, we have to grasp the Greek word St. Matthew employs. The Greek word St. Matthew uses is “teleios,” which is the adjective that comes from the noun “telos,” which means “end” or “goal.” Teleios means fit to achieve its end or purpose. A hammer, for example, is teleios for pounding in a nail. A student is teleios when he has mastered the material,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

February 15, 2020

 

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The following text guided the homily:

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

* Every three years we have the chance to ponder at Sunday Mass Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. We begin with the Beatitudes, which, because of the Feast of the Presentation, we did not hear this year. Then, last week, we ponder our identity as Salt of the Earth and Light of the World. This Sunday we get into the heart of the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus calls us to live by a special set of Christian standards, a higher set of principles than the norms of the good pagans who love those who love them and higher than the standards even of the most observant Jews. Unless our holiness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus stresses, we will not enter into the kingdom of heaven. So the stakes can’t be higher and what he’s going to tell us is too important to ignore.

* In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus sets out seven different ways that as his disciples our holiness is supposed to surpass others’. He gives us five this Sunday and the final two next week. These marks of Christian behavior go beyond merely keeping the natural law or the Ten Commandments. They are meant to transform our heart and our whole life from the inside out. They challenge us not just to be “good” but genuinely “holy.” All are challenging, but we need to remember that by calling us to these high standards of ordinary Christian living, Jesus is showing us an exhilarating confidence that we, together with his help, can live up to them.

* The first standard Jesus teaches us this Sunday involves the whole way we treat others. He says that it’s not enough for us not to murder someone. We need to refrain also from the thoughts that set us on the path to maim and murder our brothers. He tells us, “If you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.’”  We are called, in short, to love others from our heart and head outward. We don’t love others if all we do is not kill them. If we’re envious, jealous, uncomplimentary, or vengeful within, we’re still not loving them. To enter into his kingdom, to become holy, we can’t kill without hearts or tongues either.

* The second standard to which Jesus calls us is to make the first move in reconciling ourselves with those from whom we have been alienated either by our sins or their sins. “When you are offering your gift at the altar,” he tells us, “if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.” Jesus is saying to us that it’s not enough for us to be merely “good with God,” we also have to be “good with others.”  When we come to pray and ask God’s forgiveness, we must examine first others have something against us. If they do, he tells us that we need to make the first move and go to reconcile, even if we have been the one aggrieved, just like God made the first move in reconciling us when we had sinned against him.

* The third standard to which Jesus calls us is truly to be pure of heart. It is not enough for us not to commit adultery in the flesh,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

February 8, 2020

 

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The following text guided the homily: 

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

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

* Let’s look at each of the images.

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

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

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

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

February 1, 2020

 

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The following text guided the homily: 

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

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

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

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

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

January 25, 2020

 

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The following text guided the homily: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

January 18, 2020

 

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The following text guided the homily: 

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

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

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

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

January 11, 2020

 

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

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The following text guided the homily: 

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

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

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

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