Catholic Preaching

By Father Roger LandryReligion & Spirituality Christianity

Catholic Preaching episodes

March 21, 2025 The Jubilee of Hope and the Missions, TPMS Southwest Regional Keynote, Montserrat Jesuit Retreat House, Lake Dallas, TX, March 20, 2025
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
The Pontifical Mission Societies Southwest Regional Meeting
Montserrat Jesuit Retreat House, Lake Dallas, Texas
March 20, 2025
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To download the slides of the presentation, please click below:
3.20.25 Southwest Region Keynote

The post The Jubilee of Hope and the Missions, TPMS Southwest Regional Keynote, Montserrat Jesuit Retreat House, Lake Dallas, TX, March 20, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
1 hr 7 min
March 20, 2025Lent, Saint Joseph and the Jubilee of Hope, Lenten Mission at St. Mary’s Parish in Ridgefield, Connecticut, March 19, 2025
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
St. Mary’s Parish, Ridgefield, Connecticut
Parish Lenten Mini-Mission
March 19, 2025

To listen to an audio recording of tonight’s talk, please click below:
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The outline of the talk was:
St. Joseph as a Model of Hope
Hope as the antidote to the temptations Christ faced in the desert and we face
The importance and urgency of the Jubilee of Hope
What hope is
Pope Benedict XVI
St. Frances Xavier Cabrini
The Anchor
How to Grow in Hope
Becoming Pilgrims and Witnesses of Hope in this Jubilee Year

The post Lent, Saint Joseph and the Jubilee of Hope, Lenten Mission at St. Mary’s Parish in Ridgefield, Connecticut, March 19, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
52 min
March 19, 2025The Hope of St. Joseph, Solemnity of St. Joseph, March 19, 2025
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
St. Mary’s Parish, Ridgefield, Connecticut
Solemnity of St. Joseph
March 19, 2025
2 Sam 7:4-5.12-14.16, Ps 89, Rom 4:13.16-18.22, Mt 1:16.18-21.24

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: [to be filled out]
One of the great joys of my priesthood has been to see how the Church has been growing in devotion to St. Joseph. At the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Francis extended St. John XXIII’s decision to include St. Joseph in Eucharistic Prayer I to all of the other Eucharistic Prayers. Five years ago, the Church marked a Year of St. Joseph, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the December 8, 1870 declaration by Bl. Pope Pius IX of St. Joseph’s being declared patron of the universal church. Many, helped by Fr. Donald Calloway’s book, have been consecrating themselves to St. Joseph and his protection. In an age in which authentic manliness and the importance of fatherhood have been underappreciated not just in popular culture and education but in various pockets of the Church, devotion to St. Joseph is a very healthy remedy. Today is an opportunity for us to express our gratitude for, and receive more deeply, the protection and provision God wants to give us through Saint Joseph, entrusting ourselves to his spiritual fatherhood and intercession. The best way, however, to mark this great feast — like the feast of any saint — is to seek to emulate St. Joseph in his holiness. As Pope Leo XIII wrote, “There is no doubt that [Joseph] approached nearer than any other to that super-eminent dignity of [Mary] by which the Mother of God surpasses all created natures.” For Pope Leo, St. Joseph is second on the hierarchy of holiness right behind his immaculate and sinless spouse. Today we can ponder ten special features of his holiness, ten virtues that he contagiously and helpfully exemplifies.
First, St. Joseph is just — St. Matthew writes that St. Joseph was a “just” or “righteous” man, a synonym for “holy,” a person in a right relationship with God. He may not have been flashy on the outside but he shone on the inside. St. Frances de Sales once said about him, “He was ‘a just man,’ and so his will was at all times attuned, conformed and united to the will of God.” As Pope Benedict once said in a rare play on words, St. Joseph “ad-justed” his life to the word of God. His whole life was in relationship to God. He shows us how to attune our lives fully to God’s will.
Second, he is faithful based on total trust in God— Like Abraham, to whom he is implicitly compared in today’s second reading, St. Joseph is a “father in faith” to us. His example invites us to imitate his loving trust, his total abandonment to divine Providence, to take God “at his word,” that is, without clearly seeing his design. When the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home,” he did as the angel had commanded him precisely because he believed. Bishop Jacques Bénigne Bossuet commented in his famous 17th-century panegyrics, “The Bible commends Abraham to us as the pattern of perfect faith (Rom. 4:11), but Joseph’s faith was greater: Abraham is praised because he believed that a barren woman would bear a child (Gen. 15:6); Joseph believed the same of a virgin, and in simplicity accepted that inscrutable mystery of child-bearing maidenhood.” Pope Benedict said in Cameroon in 2009, “Throughout all of history, Joseph is the man who gives God the greatest display of trust, even in the face of such astonishing news.” To say that his is the greatest display of trust of all is something extraordinary, considering he was married to the Blessed Virgin! But that’s a worthy description for his heroic faith. He wants to help us live by faith too.
Third, he is obedient — St. Joseph was “righteous” precisely because he was docile and obedient to God and was “faithful” because he did with trust what the Lord asked him. We see his prompt obedience in his response to the angel of God’s interventions in his dreams. When God sent his angel in a dream to tell him not to be afraid to receive Mary into his home because the child was conceived by the Holy Spirit, Joseph awoke and “did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him.” After Jesus’ birth, when the angel appeared to him again and instructed him to “rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you,” he rose, awakened them, and began their journey that night. A few years later, when the angel appeared to him in Egypt and told him to return with them to Israel, he did. When along the journey, the angel appeared a fourth time and told him to head to Nazareth, he likewise did. It would have been easy for Joseph, even in a pre-Freudian age, to deconstruct these dreams according to the standard of his conscious desires. Each dream was asking him to do something totally life-changing: to alter completely his notion of what his marriage would entail, so as to be the chaste spouse of the Virgin and the foster father of the Son of God and Savior of the world; to leave his job and his relatives completely behind and journey through the desert to an unknown land; to return after life was settled. But in each of these circumstances, Joseph acted immediately. He was so prone to hear God’s word and put it into practice that at the merest indication of the Lord, he didn’t debate or negotiate, but obeyed. St. Joseph repeatedly sacrificed whatever his own plans might have been to fulfill God’s plans, embracing his vocation to help Jesus and Mary accomplish theirs. To obey — ob-audire in Latin — means to listen intensively, to hang on every word. In Hebrew, there’s no distinction between the words to listen and to obey, because if we’re really listening to God we faith, we listen to do that word. There was no distinction between those words in St. Joseph. There’s the new devotion to the sleeping or dreaming St. Joseph popularized by Pope Francis. The Holy Father normally tucks special intentions under the statue of the sleeping St. Joseph at his bedside with confidence that St. Joseph can hear them as the Pope sleeps. But we also can pray to the sleeping Saint Joseph that we will be able to obey God as St. Joseph did.
Fourth, he is chaste — We invoke St. Joseph in the Divine Praises as Mary’s “most chaste spouse.” We remember what St. Paul wrote in his First Letter to the Thessalonians: “This is God’s will for you, your sanctification,” and he immediately says thereafter, “Therefore, avoid all porneia,” or unchastity. Sexual sins take us in the opposite direction of holiness, since lust is the opposite of love. To grow in holiness, we not only have to avoid all unchastity, but to be chaste. St. Joseph is holy because he is “most chaste.” He is often depicted with a lily, as a sign of purity, as he is in the statue at this altar at the bottom of his left foot, showing, symbolically, that chastity was the foundation of his life. His life shows us that the full gift of self toward another does not necessarily have to involve genital relations. He loved Mary and that meant that he was willing to dedicate himself to what was best for her and for the divine Son she was carrying. He put all his love and his life at the service of their vocations, and in doing he fulfilled his own vocation. St. Joseph teaches us that it is possible to love without possessing. Chastity is a virtue that helps a person to have self-mastery so that one can give oneself to others in the way that is best for them. Chastity raises one’s love and attraction up to the dignity of the other. Chastity allows one to see purely (to see God in another) and with piety (to reverence the divine image one beholds). That’s what Joseph was able to do in the case of his immaculate wife. Chastity in his case and every case is what allows man to be a protector of women rather than a predator. He’s interceding for us that we might become “most chaste” like him, regardless of our state of life.
Fifth, he is humble — It takes humility to dedicate ourselves totally to the service of someone else. And St. Joseph is a model of humility, in the way he cared for Jesus and Mary. One area in which this humility was important was in his day to day life raising the Son of God. He was the one who taught Jesus to pray, together with Mary. In particular Joseph himself must have taken Jesus to the Synagogue for the rites of the Sabbath, as well as to Jerusalem for the great feasts of the people of Israel, because men and women were totally separated. Joseph, moreover, in accordance with the Jewish tradition, would have led the prayers at home both every day — in the morning, in the evening, at meals — and on the principal religious feasts. The great third century theologian Origen writes beautifully that “Joseph understood that Jesus was superior to him even as he submitted to him, and, knowing the superiority of his charge, he commanded him with respect and moderation. Everyone should reflect on this: frequently a lesser man is placed over people who are greater, and it happens at times that an inferior is more worthy than the one who appears to be set above him. If a person of greater dignity understands this, then he will not be puffed up with pride because of his higher rank; he will know that his inferior may well be superior to him, even as Jesus was subject to Joseph.” At the age of 12, Jesus was already capable of dazzling the greatest masters of the law, and yet he went up to Nazareth and was obedient to Joseph and Mary. What an incredible mystery! How could that not fill Joseph with humble awe? How can it not fill us with humility before all those whom the Lord entrusts to us so that we may serve them like we would him? St. Joseph wants to help us place ourselves at the service of the vocation and mission of Jesus to save the world and of Mary, who seeks to support that redemptive work.
Sixth, he is diligent — St. Joseph was a tekton, a construction worker, a builder. Everyone knew him as such, asking about Jesus, “Is this not the carpenter’s son?” His spiritual currency was in callouses. John Paul II said about St. Joseph’s work: “Joseph guided and supported the boy Jesus, introducing him to the knowledge of the religious and social customs of the Jewish people and getting him started in the carpenter’s trade, whose every secret he had learned in so many years of practicing it. This is an aspect that I feel compelled to stress: …Saint Joseph taught Jesus human work, in which he was an expert. The Divine Child worked beside him, and by listening to him and observing him, he too learned to manage the carpenter’s tools with the diligence and the dedication that the example of his foster father transmitted to him.   This too is a great lesson: … if the Son of God was willing to learn a human work from a man, this indicates that there is in work a specific moral value with a precise meaning for man and for his self-fulfillment.” Pope St. John Paul called St. Joseph the “very epitome of the Gospel of work.” He made not only tables and chairs and houses, but formed himself and his family in virtue in the process. In the rhythm of the days he spent at Nazareth, in the simple home and in his workshop, Jesus learned to alternate prayer and work, ora et labora, and to unite the two into one continuous “work of prayer” in which he not only offered to God his labor but earned the bread the family needed. He is perhaps the greatest intercessor of all to help us consecrate ourselves to God through our work, to sanctify our work, sanctify others through our work and sanctify ourselves through our work. I always have a statue of St. Joseph on my desk to inspire me to do my work as he did his.
Seventh, he is contemplative — If we think Mary’s heart was contemplative, piecing together everything as a mosaic and holding on it with all her strength (what it means that she pondered these things, treasuring them in her heart), how easy it is to see a similar heart in St. Joseph. I used to say, with many others, that St. Joseph never said a recorded word in Sacred Scripture, because he was treasuring everything inside. Once I received series of holy cards of the saints with their images on the front and some of their famous words on the back. On the Saint Joseph card, there was nothing on the back and I initially thought someone just forgot, until I realized he was speaking through silence! Nevertheless, I said about that I “used to” say he never said a recorded word because a few years ago, a religious sister named after him reminded me that there is one recorded word of his in Sacred Scripture. We see it referred to in today’s Gospel: namely, the word Jesus. The angel instructed him, “You are to name him Jesus,” which the father was to do at the circumcision on the eighth day. We have every confidence that Joseph would have obeyed that command of the angel just like all the rest. And so he is the man of one word, the word “Jesus.” His whole life spoke God the Father’s definitive word, “God saves.” He used it as a vocative. He used it in his quiet way to evangelize. He used it all the time in prayer. Holiness comes through imitating his prayerful contemplation and his speaking the name of Jesus.
Eighth, he is charitable — St. Alphonsus Liguori preached about him, “On the last day our Savior will say to the elect: ‘I was hungry and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me to drink; I was a stranger and you took me in; naked and you covered me …’ (Matt. 25:35). These will have fed Jesus Christ, lodged or clothed Him, in the persons of the poor; but St. Joseph found food, shelter and raiment for Christ in His own person. Furthermore, our Lord has promised reward to whoever gives a cup of water in His name. St. Joseph can say to Jesus Christ that ‘Not only did I furnish you with food, house and clothing: I saved you from death at the hands of Herod.’ What then must be his reward?” Holiness is the perfection of charity and we see that selfless outpouring in him.
Ninth, he is Marian — St. Joseph is a model of how to relate to Mary. It’s traditional to relate to Mary as the model disciple. It’s natural for us to relate to her as spiritual Mother given to us by her Son on Calvary. But St. Joseph shows us how to relate to her as virginal spouse. In the recent book of meditations In Sinu Iesu by an anonymous Benedictine monk, in which the priest hears Christ and Mary speaking to him during adoration, Mary says to him, “I want to reveal myself to priests as Virgin Bride and Mother. This is a secret that I have held in my heart for this time of trial for the Church. To every priest who desires it and asks me for it, I will give the grace of living in my presence as Virgin Bride (this was the vocation given to Saint Joseph) and of living in my presence as Mother (this was the vocation given to Saint John when, from the Cross, my Son entrusted me to him and him to me).” This special vocation for priests, I think, to love Mary with the chaste spousal love we see in St. Joseph is an indication of the type of committed love each of us is meant to have with her. St. Joseph teaches us to treat her with reverence, to help her fulfill her vocation as a disciple, apostle, and mother, as she seeks to help us to grow in the likeness of her holy, holy, holy Son.
Lastly, he is Eucharistic — St. Joseph is a model for us for how to approach the Eucharist. This connection between Joseph and the Holy Eucharist has been growing in the Church; as I mentioned earlier, we invoke him now in every Mass, as well we should, in prayers for the Church. Fr. Frederic Faber, the great 19th century British priest, author and sacred lyricist, compared Joseph’s care of the Holy Family to the priest’s care of the altar. “The priest, who has most reason to deplore the poverty of his attainments in humility, is humble at least when he comes to consecrate at Mass. For years Joseph lived in the awful sanctity of that which to the priest is but a moment. The little house at Nazareth was as the outspread square of the white corporal. All the words he spoke were almost words of consecration.” He lived perpetually in the real presence. If Simeon rejoiced to hold Jesus in his arms once, St. Joseph was able to do it every day for years. St. Joseph’s life was a commentary on the words of consecration Christ would utter later. As St. Paul VI once preached on this feast day, “This is the secret of the greatness of St. Joseph…: [he] made his life a service, a sacrifice, to the mystery of the Incarnation and to the redemptive mission that is joined to it; [he gave] his total gift of himself, of his life, of his work; having converted his human vocation to domestic love into the superhuman oblation of himself, of his heart and of all his abilities, into the love placed at the service of the Messiah conceived in his home.” He shows us how to make our lives Eucharistic, giving our body and blood, our sweat and tears, our joys, our whole being to God and with him for others.
In this Jubilee of Hope, we can learn the virtue of hope from Saint Joseph. All of the characteristics mentioned above are expressions of his hope. He adjusted his life to God’s promises and trusted in them with deep faith. He obeyed God not out of duty or fear but because he looked ahead to how God’s will would be done and God’s plans for our good be accomplished. He was chaste because he hoped in the fruitfulness of God’s love. He was humble before God’s plans for his life because he believed in what God wanted to fulfill. His diligence was a sign of hope that the fruits of his labor would extend the kingdom. His prayer toward God was a manifestation of his hope, knowing that if God were with him, God would indeed give him every good thing besides. His charity was an expression of hope that as much as he gave away, God would provide. His love for Mary was a result of the hope he placed in the vocation God had given her. And his love for God truly present among him, in Jesus the God-man, was the greatest source of his hope, because Christ was hope incarnate for the whole human race.
Today as we celebrate with Mary, Jesus and the whole communion of saints the feast of this just man and our great and virtuous patron, we do so mindful of the ancient aphorism placed on so many statues and altars dedicated to him: Ite ad Ioseph (Gen 41:55), “Go to Joseph,” based on the words by Pharaoh about his viceroy to the Egyptians when they were in need because of the famine. Since the 800s, St. Joseph has been called the “Nutritor Domini,” the nourisher of the Lord, because he was the one who put food on the table for the Holy Family. Today he leads us to the greatest nourishment of all. As we prepare to receive the same Son he used to hold in his arms, as we prepare to be nourished by the Divine Child who in his humanity was nourished by the work of St. Joseph’s hands, let us go to Joseph, asking him to intercede for us today, that we may imitate his righteousness, faith, obedience, chastity, humility, diligence, prayer, charity, Marian love and Christ-centered Eucharistic way of life, and, thereby growing in holiness and in hope, we may, like him, serve Christ with love and come through a happy death to experience what Pope Benedict once called the “great hope,” eternal joy with Joseph and Mary and all the saints around Jesus, to whom Joseph’s whole life points.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 2 Sm 7:4-5a, 12-14a, 16
The LORD spoke to Nathan and said:
“Go, tell my servant David,
‘When your time comes and you rest with your ancestors,
I will raise up your heir after you, sprung from your loins,
and I will make his kingdom firm.
It is he who shall build a house for my name.
And I will make his royal throne firm forever.
I will be a father to him,
and he shall be a son to me.
Your house and your kingdom shall endure forever before me;
your throne shall stand firm forever.’”
Responsorial Psalm Ps 89:2-3, 4-5, 27 and 29
R. (37) The son of David will live for ever.
The promises of the LORD I will sing forever;
through all generations my mouth shall proclaim your faithfulness,
For you have said, “My kindness is established forever”;
in heaven you have confirmed your faithfulness.
R. The son of David will live for ever.
“I have made a covenant with my chosen one,
I have sworn to David my servant:
Forever will I confirm your posterity
and establish your throne for all generations.”
R. The son of David will live for ever.
“He shall say of me, ‘You are my father,
my God, the Rock, my savior.’
Forever I will maintain my kindness toward him,
and my covenant with him stands firm.”
R. The son of David will live for ever.
Reading 2 Rom 4:13, 16-18, 22
Brothers and sisters:
It was not through the law
that the promise was made to Abraham and his descendants
that he would inherit the world,
but through the righteousness that comes from faith.
For this reason, it depends on faith,
so that it may be a gift,
and the promise may be guaranteed to all his descendants,
not to those who only adhere to the law
but to those who follow the faith of Abraham,
who is the father of all of us, as it is written,
I have made you father of many nations.
He is our father in the sight of God,
in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead
and calls into being what does not exist.
He believed, hoping against hope,
that he would become the father of many nations,
according to what was said, Thus shall your descendants be.
That is why it was credited to him as righteousness.
Verse Before the Gospel Ps 84:5
Blessed are those who dwell in your house, O Lord;
they never cease to praise you.
Gospel Mt 1:16, 18-21, 24a
Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary.
Of her was born Jesus who is called the Christ.
Now this is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about.
When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph,
but before they lived together,
she was found with child through the Holy Spirit.
Joseph her husband, since he was a righteous man,
yet unwilling to expose her to shame,
decided to divorce her quietly.
Such was his intention when, behold,
the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said,
“Joseph, son of David,
do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home.
For it is through the Holy Spirit
that this child has been conceived in her.
She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus,
because he will save his people from their sins.”
When Joseph awoke,
he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him
and took his wife into his home.
The post The Hope of St. Joseph, Solemnity of St. Joseph, March 19, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
8 min
March 19, 2025Lent and the Lessons of the Graces of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, Lenten Mission at St. Mary’s Parish in Ridgefield, Connecticut, March 18, 2025
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
St. Mary’s Parish, Ridgefield, Connecticut
Parish Lenten Mini-Mission
March 18, 2025
To listen to an audio recording of tonight’s talk, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.18.25_Lent_and_the_Lessons_of_the_Graces_of_the_National_Eucharistic_Pilgrimage_1.mp3

This was the outline for the talk:
The Eucharistic dimension of Fasting, Prayer and Almsgiving
How this hunger, adoration, and self-giving was experienced during the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage’s Seton Route
Five particular graces:
Christian boldness
Who the Eucharist is
The Church is on a Eucharistic pilgrimage in time
Actualizing the Experience of the Gospel with Jesus
Being revivified in one’s vocation
Conclusion

The post Lent and the Lessons of the Graces of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, Lenten Mission at St. Mary’s Parish in Ridgefield, Connecticut, March 18, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
52 min
March 16, 2025The Hope That Inspires Our Lenten Journey of Faith, Second Sunday of Lent (C), March 16, 2025`
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
Second Sunday of Lent, Year C
March 16, 2025
Gen 15:5-12.17-18, Ps 27, Philippians 3:17-4:1, Lk 9:28-36

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.16.25_MCs_Homily_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
There is a spirituality and psychology built into the Lenten season. The Church expects us at the beginning of Lent to make a big and serious commitment to increasing the quantity and quality of our prayer, fasting and almsgiving in communion with and imitation of Christ and figures, ten days in, as we struggle to form new habits, that we may be questioning whether we can make it through the rest of the 40-day season. That’s why on the Second Sunday of Lent each year, the Church gives us, in the Liturgy of the Word, scenes of inspiration to fill us with great hope. She always has us meditate, in the first reading, on the hope that inspired our father in faith, Abraham; in the second reading, the hope that St. Paul brought to the early Christians; and above all in the Gospel, the hope that the scene of the Jesus’ transfiguration gave Peter, James and John, and through them the apostles, as Jesus was preparing for his passion, death and burial. It’s important for all of us, as we seek to progress in this Jubilee of Hope, to learn these lessons of hope with which the Second Sunday of Lent is meant to fill us. Hope, as the Catechism reminds us, is “is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (1817). It focuses on three elements: the goal of all our efforts, eternal life with God; the trust we’re called to have in the promises God gives us about it; and the help God provides for us to get there. We see all of these elements on display in the readings today.
We see them first with Abram. God makes to him an incredible promise. Even though he was 75 and his wife Sarah 71, even though they had tried to conceive a child by this point for likely 50 years or more, God tells him, “Look up at the sky and count the stars, if you can. Just so shall your descendants be.” God had already called Abraham to leave his native place, to pack up all his belongings and go to a place that the Lord would show him. And Abraham packed up everything he had and with his family and herds had set out, not even knowing the destination. Most of those in Ur of the Chaldeans must have thought he was out of his mind. But that external journey was just a sign of the interior pilgrimage of faith and hope that God was going to ask him to traverse. In today’s scene, God was bringing that pilgrimage to a new stage, asking him to trust that, despite their seeming sterility, despite their age, Abraham and Sara would not just conceive a child but that he would become the father of many nations, with descendants as numerous as the grains of sand on the beaches of the world and the stars in the heavens. After God asks him to look at the sky and count the stars, if he could, as a sign of how numerous his descendants would be, we read a few verses later, after Abraham had sacrificed the heifer, she-goat, ram, turtledove and pigeon. The text of Genesis says, “As the sun was about to set…” and then right afterward, “When the sun had set and it was dark….” This means that when Abraham looked up into the heavens to try to count the stars, he was looking, not at countless stars in the middle of the night but rather at a blue sky in broad daylight! He was enumerating stars he couldn’t see. God was asking him to have faith-filled hope in his promises, even though, by human eyes and reason, he couldn’t see them. He did trust in God and in his promises and relied not on human power and logic but on the gift of faith with which God was infusing him. Even though he couldn’t see his descendants, he trusted they were there, even if he would never have fathomed that God himself would become his 42nd generation descendant according to the flesh! The Lord is asking of us a similar trust, a similar reliance on his grace, a similar inspiration for the fulfillment of his words that if we have left father, mother, children, and lands for his sake and the sake of the Gospel, we would receive 100-fold more in this life, with sufferings, and eternal life. That is the hope that inspires us at the beginning of Lent.
In the Gospel, we see the journey of hope on which Jesus was leading Peter, James, John and the Church. Jesus had just told them in Caesarea Philippi that he would be a suffering Messiah, that he would be betrayed, arrested, mocked, tortured, crucified, killed and raised on the third day, and that if they wished to follow him, they would have to deny themselves and take of their own Cross on the road to crucifixion. Rather than heeding his word and denying themselves, they were in a state of denial, about what would happen to him and what he was expecting of them. So Jesus took the three apostles on a grueling hike up an exceedingly high mountain — an exertion of at least several hours — in order to pray with them. And it was there, in the midst of prayer at the top of the mountain, that the three apostles were able to see Jesus’ glory, to see him as he really is, to see that he is the fulfillment of the law and the prophets — represented respectively by Moses and Elijah — and to hear God the Father speaking, too, indicating to them who Jesus is and how we’re called to respond. St. Luke tells us that Moses and Elijah were speaking to Jesus about the “exodus” he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem, meaning his suffering, death and resurrection by which he would lead God’s chosen people not through the Red Sea and the desert to the promised land of Israel but through his baptism in blood and the desert of life to the eternal promised land of life with God in heaven. If the apostles were unable to fathom the seemingly dark words Jesus had said in Caesarea, they were able to see in blinding light that the exodus would lead to glory. And that’s why God the Father spoke, so that the three apostles would place hope in Jesus’ words, that after his passion, he would rise again, and lead them not up the Mount of Transfiguration but the heavenly Jerusalem. “This is my chosen Son. Listen to him!” He knew that they had been listening to Jesus for the previous two years, but that they were tone deaf to his words about that exodus and about their self-denial and cruciform summons if they wished to share in Jesus’ triumph. He was telling them not to ignore these crucial truths that Jesus was teaching them. He was giving them hope when the whole world would go dark because of an eclipse of the sun.
Pope Francis, for whom we continue to pray with insistence as he marks more than a month in the hospital on high flow oxygen, commented three years ago about how Peter, James and John received these words initially and the temptation that faces all of us. He said, “The evangelist Luke notes that ‘Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep,’ and that ‘when they awakened’ they saw the glory of Jesus (cf. v. 32). The drowsiness of the three disciples appears to be a discordant note. The same apostles then fall asleep in Gethsemane too, during the anguished prayer of Jesus, who had asked them to keep watch (cf. Mk 14:37-41). This sleepiness in such important moments is surprising. … Does this ill-timed slumber perhaps resemble many of our own that come in moments we know to be important? … We would like to be more awake, attentive, participatory, not to miss precious opportunities, but we are unable to, or we manage it somehow, but poorly. The powerful time of Lent is an opportunity in this regard. It is a period in which God wants to awaken us from our inner lethargy, from this sleepiness that does not let the Spirit express itself. Because … keeping the heart awake does not depend on us alone: it is a grace and must be requested. The three disciples of the Gospel show us this: they were good, they had followed Jesus onto the mountain, but by their own strength they could not stay awake. … Like them, we too are in need of God’s light, that makes us see things in a different way. … We can overcome the tiredness of the body with the strength of the Spirit of God. And when we are unable to overcome this, we must say to the Holy Spirit: ‘Help us, come, come, Holy Spirit. Help me: I want to encounter Jesus, I want to be attentive, awake.’” So we see here that hope begins with our trust in God’s promises, helped by the grace of the Holy Spirit, so that we might build our life on what Jesus promises will happen at the end of the Lent of earthly life, as we celebrate forever the reality of the resurrection, his and our definitive triumph over sin and death. That’s what the Church teaches us in the preface for today’s Mass. We pray, “For after [Jesus] had told the disciples of his coming Death, on the holy mountain he manifested to them his glory, to show, even by the testimony of the law and the prophets, that the Passion leads to the glory of the Resurrection,” for Jesus and for us.
Saint Paul similarly seeks to strengthen our hope as we live this Lent. He urges us to imitate him and conduct ourselves according to the model he gave us, who knew and preached nothing else except Christ crucified, who gloried in the Cross of Jesus, by which the world was crucified to him and him to the world. He noted in tears that many in Philippi were conducting themselves “as enemies of the cross of Christ,” who were making their bellies and pleasures their God, who were occupying their minds and souls not with the things of God but with “earthly things.” That’s the temptation so many face going through a superficial Lent or no Lent at all. But he reminded the first Christians and us about the hope we have at the end of our Christian self-denial and union with Christ on the cross. “Our citizenship,” he says, “is in heaven, and from it we also await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will change our lowly body to conform with his glorified body by the power that enables him to bring all things into subjection in him.” God’s intention is to transfigure “our lowly body to conform with [Jesus’] glorified body,” a metamorphosis that will happen precisely through entering into Jesus exodus through following him with faith along the way of the Cross. This is the way he urges them to “stand firm in the Lord.” That’s the rock solid basis of our hope, that we are citizens on our journey home, and that Christ has done everything he did to help us complete that journey. That’s the epic journey that each Lent we focus on anew and embrace.
As we prepare to enter into Christ’s exodus — his passion, death, and resurrection — in this Mass, we ask God the Father for the grace of the Holy Spirit that we might have trust in Him like Abraham our Father in faith, like the apostles Peter, James and John, like St. Paul, to listen to this Beloved Son whom the Father, out of love for us, allowed to suffer so much, that we might be true friends of his Cross and of Him on the Cross. As we get ready to receive the same flesh and blood that was transfigured in dazzling light at the top of the mountain and later transfigured in blood as Jesus hung on the Cross, we ask God the Father to awaken in us and strengthen us for the journey of faithful hope in life so that, listening to the Son so attentively that we base our lives on every word, we may come to that place where Jesus has built a booth for us, and where he is conversing with Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Peter, James, John, Teresa of Calcutta and all the saints, and wants to converse with us forever!

The readings for this Mass were:
Reading I
Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18
The Lord God took Abram outside and said,
“Look up at the sky and count the stars, if you can.
Just so,” he added, “shall your descendants be.”
Abram put his faith in the LORD,
who credited it to him as an act of righteousness.
He then said to him,
“I am the LORD who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans
to give you this land as a possession.”
“O Lord GOD,” he asked,
“how am I to know that I shall possess it?”
He answered him,
“Bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old she-goat,
a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.”
Abram brought him all these, split them in two,
and placed each half opposite the other;
but the birds he did not cut up.
Birds of prey swooped down on the carcasses,
but Abram stayed with them.
As the sun was about to set, a trance fell upon Abram,
and a deep, terrifying darkness enveloped him.
When the sun had set and it was dark,
there appeared a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch,
which passed between those pieces.
It was on that occasion that the LORD made a covenant with Abram,
saying: “To your descendants I give this land,
from the Wadi of Egypt to the Great River, the Euphrates.”
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 27:1, 7-8, 8-9, 13-14.
R. (1a) The Lord is my light and my salvation.
The LORD is my light and my salvation;
whom should I fear?
The LORD is my life’s refuge;
of whom should I be afraid?
R. The Lord is my light and my salvation.
Hear, O LORD, the sound of my call;
have pity on me, and answer me.
Of you my heart speaks; you my glance seeks.
R. The Lord is my light and my salvation.
Your presence, O LORD, I seek.
Hide not your face from me;
do not in anger repel your servant.
You are my helper: cast me not off.
R. The Lord is my light and my salvation.
I believe that I shall see the bounty of the LORD
in the land of the living.
Wait for the LORD with courage;
be stouthearted, and wait for the LORD.
R. The Lord is my light and my salvation.
Reading II
Philippians 3:17—4:1
Join with others in being imitators of me, brothers and sisters,
and observe those who thus conduct themselves
according to the model you have in us.
For many, as I have often told you
and now tell you even in tears,
conduct themselves as enemies of the cross of Christ.
Their end is destruction.
Their God is their stomach;
their glory is in their “shame.”
Their minds are occupied with earthly things.
But our citizenship is in heaven,
and from it we also await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
He will change our lowly body
to conform with his glorified body
by the power that enables him also
to bring all things into subjection to himself.
Therefore, my brothers and sisters,
whom I love and long for, my joy and crown,
in this way stand firm in the Lord.
Verse Before the Gospel
Matthew 17:5
From the shining cloud the Father’s voice is heard:
This is my beloved Son, hear him.
Gospel
Luke 9:28b-36
Jesus took Peter, John, and James
and went up the mountain to pray.
While he was praying his face changed in appearance
and his clothing became dazzling white.
And behold, two men were conversing with him, Moses and Elijah,
who appeared in glory and spoke of his exodus
that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem.
Peter and his companions had been overcome by sleep,
but becoming fully awake,
they saw his glory and the two men standing with him.
As they were about to part from him, Peter said to Jesus,
“Master, it is good that we are here;
let us make three tents,
one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
But he did not know what he was saying.
While he was still speaking,
a cloud came and cast a shadow over them,
and they became frightened when they entered the cloud.
Then from the cloud came a voice that said,
“This is my chosen Son; listen to him.”
After the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone.
They fell silent and did not at that time
tell anyone what they had seen.
The post The Hope That Inspires Our Lenten Journey of Faith, Second Sunday of Lent (C), March 16, 2025` appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
19 min
March 14, 2025 Giving Reason for the Hope Within Us: The Jubilee of Hope and the Missions, TPMS West Regional Meeting, March 14, 2025
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Pastoral Center of the Diocese of Orange
TPMS West Regional Meeting
March 14, 2025

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3.14.25 West Region Keynote
The post Giving Reason for the Hope Within Us: The Jubilee of Hope and the Missions, TPMS West Regional Meeting, March 14, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
1 hr 4 min
March 14, 2025The Righteousness and Reconciliation To Which The Lord Calls Us, Friday of the First Week of Lent, March 14, 2025
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
St. Kilian Church, Mission Viejo, California
Friday of the First Week of Lent
March 14, 2026
Ez 18:21-18, Ps 130, Mt 5:20-26

To listen to a recording of today’s homily, please click below:
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The following points were attempted in the homily:
In today’s Gospel, Jesus says that our righteousness, our justice, must surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, in order to enter into eternal life, in order not to go to Hell. The “justice” of the Pharisees was quite rigorous in terms of prayer, weekly fasting, tithing. But there were two things it lacked. First, it was external, focusing on acts rather than the heart; second, it lacked mercy. The Pharisees were the “separated ones,” those who in order to cut themselves off from sin sought to cut themselves totally off from sinners, as if they weren’t sinners themselves. That’s why they complained when Jesus was eating with Matthew and the other tax collectors, because they had no communion at all with sinners, whom they thought would just be straw for the fires of hell. Likewise, to convert them, Jesus preached the three parables of the Lost Sheep, Lost Coin and Lost Son in Lk 15, because the scribes and Pharisees were like the older brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, preferring their brothers to remain dead in sin rather than rejoicing in their resurrection through reconciliation with God. Our righteousness must surpass theirs because theirs wasn’t truly “right” with God or with others: they served him with their lips and even externally with some of their deeds, but their hearts were far from him, because they didn’t realize their need for God’s mercy and God’s desire to transform them by that mercy to be merciful like he is merciful. The whole practice of Lent is meant to help us become like God: in fasting, we learn to hunger for what he hungers; in almsgiving, we share in his providential care, passing on to others who need it more than we do what God has first given to us; and in prayer, allowing his thoughts to become our thoughts and his ways our ways. Today in the readings we enter into these truths.
God responds to a complaint he knows has welled up in the hearts of the people of Israel in Ezekiel’s day and one that arises in every age. It certainly arose for the Scribes and Pharisees whose righteousness ours needs to surpass. “The Lord’s way is not fair!,” we can complain. Ezekiel had described clearly what the Lord’s way is. On the one hand, “If the wicked man turns away from all the sins he committed, if he keeps all my statutes and does what is right and just, he shall surely live, he shall not die. None of the crimes he committed shall be remembered against him; he shall live because of the virtue he has practiced.” On the other hand, “If the virtuous man turns from the path of virtue to do evil, the same kind of abominable things that the wicked man does, can he do this and still live? None of his virtuous deeds shall be remembered, because he has broken faith and committed sin; because of this, he shall die.”
The first way we and others complain that the Lord’s way is not just is that it is a way of mercy for sinners. Someone who has lived a sinful live for decades all of a sudden converts and God says he shall live. God won’t remember the crimes he has committed. True justice, we can object, is to hold people accountable forever. Like the older brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, we can get into the state that we don’t rejoice when our lost brother is found and our dead brother comes to life again. Our self-identity is caught up, somehow, in a sense of spiritual superiority, and when he’s restored to the relationship with the Father he should have had all along, we resent it rather than rejoice. But that shows how much we need to be converted! Jesus encountered it over and again in the resistance of the scribes and Pharisees to his work reconciling, embracing and eating with sinners. God tells us today through Ezekiel, “Do I indeed derive any pleasure for the death of the wicked? Do I not rather rejoice when he turns away from evil that he may live?” God’s way is a way of mercy. He doesn’t forget the needs of justice. In fact, he himself takes on our flesh to pay the price we deserved. But his mercy surpasses what our deeds deserve. And that should give us hope.
The second way the people of Ezekiel’s time and ours complain that God’s way is unfair is that it is a way of justice for those who refuse to convert, including those who had lived a very good life for a while but then turned away from God and persevered in that alienation. There’s a sense of added shock and scandal when a virtuous man diverts his heart from God to malevolence and maleficence. Most often these are not sins of the flesh but of calculation and corruption because through the virtuous life in most cases one knew better. We want to say that if God were fair, he would balance out the life: 70 years of virtue and only several months of vice. But it’s here that God holds us accountable and makes us responsible for our decisions made in freedom. For a person in this circumstance, as long as he still lives, it’s possible for him to turn back to the Lord and live, to leave his wicked deeds behind. His path, too, can be a way of mercy, but only if he recognizes what he’s done and repents. Previous good deeds don’t excuse or outweigh the turning of one’s heart from the Lord and the persevering in that sin at the end. It’s our way, God tells us, that is unjust if we don’t want to hold someone accountable for their choices, if we refuse to recognize that we are always in need of God’s mercy, that we’re always in the first category of those needing to convert.
Conversion, as I like to emphasize, involves three moments. The first is averting (turning away) from things that are not of God. The second is adverting (turning toward) God and the things of God. And the third is converting, turning with the Lord, which is a continual process. As life is dynamic, there’s always an opportunity for us to turn away from whatever keeps us from God, turn toward him in mercy, and turn with him in life. But there’s likewise a chance that we can turn away from him, turn toward sin, and begin to walk in the way of sinners. Jesus describes the journey we’re on in the Gospel as a walk to court to meet the judge. He calls us to be like him and to seek mercy rather than justice. “Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court. Otherwise your opponent will hand you over to the judge, and the judge will hand you over to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Amen, I say to you, you will not be released until you have paid the last penny.” If we seek justice from our adversary rather than reconciliation, we may very well end up receiving justice, being found guilty, and suffering the consequences. He says we anticipate that journey every time we come to pray and he calls us to live that reconciliation for us to pray well. “If you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift.” We can’t offer the gift of ourselves to God in a pleasing way if we seek to do so with unreconciled hearts and lives. It’s not enough that our external deeds are in conformity with God’s law, but he wants our hearts to be as well — not only not killing our brother but not being angry or insulting him or harboring any of the thoughts in which we treat our brother as dead within us. Jesus is calling us to convert from these thoughts rather than to persevere in them. If we convert, we will find mercy; if we persevere in them, we will find justice, and the words of the Psalm remind us that if the Lord is strictly just, we’re in trouble: “If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, who can stand?”
Today as we come forward to present ourselves to the altar, we ask the Lord’s grace that we and our whole culture may turn from any ways that are evil, both in our actions and in our thoughts, and seek reconciliation with all those whom we have hurt and with all who have hurt us, so that together with them we may rejoice in the celebration in the House of Father, where the Father prepares for us not a fattened calf but a Lamb looking as if he has been slain. The Lord wants us to live, and we live by his mercy as we prepare to receive that holy offering that Jesus gave for the remission of sins, reconciling all of us to the Father.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
EZ 18:21-28
Thus says the Lord GOD:
If the wicked man turns away from all the sins he committed,
if he keeps all my statutes and does what is right and just,
he shall surely live, he shall not die.
None of the crimes he committed shall be remembered against him;
he shall live because of the virtue he has practiced.
Do I indeed derive any pleasure from the death of the wicked?
says the Lord God.
Do I not rather rejoice when he turns from his evil way
that he may live?
And if the virtuous man turns from the path of virtue to do evil,
the same kind of abominable things that the wicked man does,
can he do this and still live?
None of his virtuous deeds shall be remembered,
because he has broken faith and committed sin;
because of this, he shall die.
You say, “The LORD’s way is not fair!”
Hear now, house of Israel:
Is it my way that is unfair, or rather, are not your ways unfair?
When someone virtuous turns away from virtue to commit iniquity, and dies,
it is because of the iniquity he committed that he must die.
But if the wicked, turning from the wickedness he has committed,
does what is right and just,
he shall preserve his life;
since he has turned away from all the sins that he committed,
he shall surely live, he shall not die.
Responsorial Psalm
PS 130:1-2, 3-4, 5-7A, 7BC-8
R. (3) If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, who can stand?
Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD;
LORD, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to my voice in supplication.
R. If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, who can stand?
If you, O LORD, mark iniquities,
LORD, who can stand?
But with you is forgiveness,
that you may be revered.
R. If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, who can stand?
I trust in the LORD;
my soul trusts in his word.
My soul waits for the LORD
more than sentinels wait for the dawn.
Let Israel wait for the LORD.
R. If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, who can stand?
For with the LORD is kindness
and with him is plenteous redemption;
And he will redeem Israel
from all their iniquities.
R. If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, who can stand?
Gospel
MT 5:20-26
Jesus said to his disciples:
“I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that
of the scribes and Pharisees,
you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven.
“You have heard that it was said to your ancestors,
You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.
But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother
will be liable to judgment,
and whoever says to his brother, Raqa,
will be answerable to the Sanhedrin,
and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna.
Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar,
and there recall that your brother
has anything against you,
leave your gift there at the altar,
go first and be reconciled with your brother,
and then come and offer your gift.
Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court.
Otherwise your opponent will hand you over to the judge,
and the judge will hand you over to the guard,
and you will be thrown into prison.
Amen, I say to you,
you will not be released until you have paid the last penny.”
The post The Righteousness and Reconciliation To Which The Lord Calls Us, Friday of the First Week of Lent, March 14, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
11 min
March 11, 2025This Is How You Are To Pray, Tuesday of the First Week of Lent, March 11, 2025
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Saint Raphael Church, Saint Petersburg, Florida
Tuesday of the First Week of Lent
March 11, 2025
Is 55:10-11, Ps 34, Mt 6:7-15

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:
The whole purpose of Lent is for us to become fully Christian in identity and behavior and that involves rediscovering or deepening our relationship with God the Father through Christ in the Holy Spirit. On Ash Wednesday, we pondered how Jesus calls us to give alms, fast and pray differently from everyone else, doing each of these things in communion with our Father who sees in secret. We’re supposed to give alms recognizing that all that we are able to give to others we have first received from God the Father, and so our giving is an extension of his own loving Providence, as we saw yesterday in Jesus’ words about the corporal words of mercy. We’re supposed to fast in order to hunger for God and for what he hungers, as he made very clear in our readings on Friday and Saturday last week. And we’re supposed to pray by meeting God the Father in our “inner room,” the locked “store room” in a Jewish house where all valuables were kept, indicating to us not only that we are supposed to treasure God most but also that he loves us so much that he comes to meet us in the tiny “closet” of our interior life, whether we’re praying at home or in the middle of a multitude.
Today in the Gospel Jesus continues somewhat literally his Ash Wednesday instructions on prayer. Today’s passage is an excision of the Gospel passage from the Sermon on the Mount that the Church proclaims on Ash Wednesday. After Jesus said the words about the “inner room,” he elaborated about prayer in the words of today’s Gospel. He reiterates that as Christians we’re supposed to pray differently than everyone else, not looking for show like certain Pharisees, but also not “babbling on” like the pagans who think that their prayer will be heard because of the multiplication of words. Because of pagan polytheism, in which gods were warring against each other, pagan prayer would often involve trying to lobby your gods against the gods that others were supposedly lobbying, recognizing that for these gods, people were no more than pawns in their games. Prayers were thought to be heard by the greater accumulation of words and sound. Jesus said that not only should we not babble, but that we have to have a totally different conception and way of prayer altogether.
For us as Christians, prayer is to be an intimate conversation with a Father who loves us and already knows what we need. The first word Jesus teaches us is “Abba!” We’re to pray to a loving “daddy.” Then we’re supposed to seek what that loving Father who already knows what we need seeks. The first petition is that his name be hallowed rather than ours, and the way his name is hallowed is not just in our prayer but particularly through the Christian life of Christ-like love when others “seeing [our] good deeds glorify [our] Father in heaven” (Mt 5:16). We beg that his kingdom come and his will be done, rather than our own. We begin, in other words, by asking for everything related to God’s glory, kingdom and will. A loving son or daughter wants what’s best for a parent — just like a parent wants what’s best for a child — and we begin praying not for ourselves and our needs but for God and his desires, knowing that God’s desires are for us to be holy by hallowing his name (the path to our own happiness!), for us to enter his kingdom fully as heirs, and for us to do his will on earth so that we may do it forever in heaven.
From there we turn to our own needs. And we ask for what every Father wants to give: provision, pardon and protection. The first thing we ask the Father is each day to give us our “supersubstantial” (epiousios) bread. This refers not just to the material sustenance we need for the day but also for what goes beyond our material substance, a reference that many of the early saints interpreted as a clear reference to Jesus in the Eucharist, the true Manna whom God the Father rains down each day to help us to hallow his name, enter and proclaim his kingdom and do his will. Next we ask the Father for mercy just as we have been merciful to others. Jesus glosses the entire prayer by reminding us that if we don’t forgive others, the Father won’t forgive us; this is not because he’ll punish us by refusing to forgive us but principally because unless we’ve got merciful hearts we can’t receive his mercy. God’s will is for us to become merciful like he is merciful and we ask God for the grace to do so. Finally we ask him not to let us fall when we’re tempted and to deliver us from the clutches of the evil one, a clear recognition not only that the devil exists and will be seeking to tempt us but that we need God’s help — not just human will power — to remain faithful to Him. This entire prayer is not just a prayer tothe Father but a prayer to help us to become ever more united to and like the Father.
The whole mission of God the Son is precisely to reorder us properly to the Father. The Prophet Isaiah tells us today, “Just as from the heavens the rain and snow come down and do not return there till they have watered the earth, making it fertile and fruitful, … so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; It shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it.” This refers not just to God’s words, but most precisely to the Word, Jesus, who came forth from heaven precisely to water the soil of our hearts with his Living Water, to make us fertile and fruitful, and to nourish us in our divine filiation. He himself has already returned to the Father having achieved the end for which he was sent and he wants us to return through, with and in him, in his filial prayer, in his filial fasting, in his filial almsgiving, in his hallowing the Father’s name, announcing his kingdom, doing his will, becoming our supersubstantial bread, forgiving us, strengthening us in temptation and liberating us from the domination of evil. All Jesus has done is to help us to become spiritually fertile and fruitful so that we, too, might achieve the end for which we were made. That’s why Jesus’ teaching us how to pray, how to make of our life a fruitful existence made prayer, can be said to be his greatest lesson of all.
The mission of the Holy Spirit is to help us to enter into this mystery of divine sonship. St. Paul told the Romans that we do not know how to pray as we ought but the Holy Spirit has been sent into our hearts — like that rain and snow coming from the heavens — so that we might cry out “Abba!” The Holy Spirit helps us to pray not by putting words on our lips but by changing who we are as we pray, so that we might pray as beloved children crying out “Daddy!” He convinces us that we’re children of God and, if children, heirs of the kingdom provided that we suffer with Christ so as to reign with him. That’s precisely what the Holy Spirit wants to do in us each Lent.
As we prepare now to receive the answer to our prayer to the Father to give us today our supersubstantial bread, we ask our Dad in heaven to strengthen us through this communion with his only begotten, beloved Son to pray differently than the rest, to pray as Christians, to pray united to him, as together as his family of beloved sons and daughters we enter into the greatest prayer ever made.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 Is 55:10-11
Thus says the LORD:
Just as from the heavens
the rain and snow come down
And do not return there
till they have watered the earth,
making it fertile and fruitful,
Giving seed to the one who sows
and bread to the one who eats,
So shall my word be
that goes forth from my mouth;
It shall not return to me void,
but shall do my will,
achieving the end for which I sent it.
Responsorial Psalm PS 34:4-5, 6-7, 16-17, 18-19
R. (18b) From all their distress God rescues the just.
Glorify the LORD with me,
let us together extol his name.
I sought the LORD, and he answered me
and delivered me from all my fears.
R. From all their distress God rescues the just.
Look to him that you may be radiant with joy,
and your faces may not blush with shame.
When the poor one called out, the LORD heard,
and from all his distress he saved him.
R. From all their distress God rescues the just.
The LORD has eyes for the just,
and ears for their cry.
The LORD confronts the evildoers,
to destroy remembrance of them from the earth.
R. From all their distress God rescues the just.
When the just cry out, the LORD hears them,
and from all their distress he rescues them.
The LORD is close to the brokenhearted;
and those who are crushed in spirit he saves.
R. From all their distress God rescues the just.
Verse Before the Gospel Mt 4:4b
One does not live on bread alone,
but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.
Gospel Mt 6:7-15
Jesus said to his disciples:
“In praying, do not babble like the pagans,
who think that they will be heard because of their many words.
Do not be like them.
Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
“This is how you are to pray:
Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name,
thy Kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us;
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.“If you forgive men their transgressions,
your heavenly Father will forgive you.
But if you do not forgive men,
neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.”
The post This Is How You Are To Pray, Tuesday of the First Week of Lent, March 11, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
10 min
March 09, 2025Following Jesus into the Lenten Desert, First Sunday of Lent (C), March 9, 2025
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, New York
First Sunday of Lent, Year C
March 9, 2025
Dt 26:4-10, Ps 91, Rom 10:8-13, Lk 4:1-13

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.9.25_Following_Jesus_into_the_Lenten_Desert_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
Most people have no desire at all to go to the desert, certainly for no more than a brief visit. But with this morning’s frigid wintry temperatures, many of us would admit that the desert is looking a lot more appealing! 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. Every Lent, the same Holy Spirit whom St. Luke tells us led Jesus into the desert wants to guide us into the desert with him. Lent is meant to help us recapitulate Christ’s 40 days away from everything so that we, apart from distractions, can focus on who we are, on our relationship with God and others and, with Christ’s help, can confront and overcome the way that the devil seeks to distort those relations and that image. As Pope Francis, for whom we continue to pray with insistence and affection during his crisis at the Gemelli Hospital, insisted in his Angelus meditation three years ago, “The desert symbolizes the fight against the seductions of evil, in order to learn to choose true freedom.”
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 Arabah, 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 noise so that we can’t hear God and with clutter so 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 eating meat on Friday or forsaking desserts. 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 that time in the desert, and that leads us to today’s Gospel. Today’s scene is particularly special, because the only way the evangelists would have known about it would have been if Christ had told it to his disciples himself. No one else was there. Jesus must have opened up his heart to them about this seminal moment in his hidden life, which occurred immediately after he was baptized in the Jordan by John the Baptist (Mk 1:12). The Holy Spirit led him into the huge 15-by-35-mile desert between the mountain of Jerusalem and the Dead Sea so that he could pray to the Father about the public ministry that he was about to commence. He prayed and fasted for an heroic 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. Much like God the Father had once allowed Job to be tested, the same Father allowed his Son to be tempted. 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 our lives. By focusing on how Christ responded, we, too, can learn how to receive his mercy 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 this stone to become a loaf of Bread.” When the Israelites were in the desert, Satan successfully tempted them to grumble to God to feed them (Ex 16:3ff). Satan was tempting Jesus to recapitulate the Israelites’ lack of trust in God and Jesus would have nothing of it. Satan also was trying to tempt Jesus away from his mission and Jesus would have no part of that either. Jesus had come to save people, to feed their most important hunger — the hunger of their souls for God — 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. As Jesus himself realized after feeding the five-thousand men with the multiplication of the five loaves and two fish, great crowds followed him, as St. John tells us, “not because [they] saw signs, but because [they] ate [their] fill of the loaves” (Jn 6:26). Hunger is the most basic human need and the devil was tempting Christ to bribe others to follow him. 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 need to remember what this greatest food source of all is. There is no shortage of people who live by their stomachs alone. St. Paul says to the Philippians that there are many who are “enemies of the Cross of Christ” because their “god is their stomach” (Phil 3:19). The American people elected Herbert Hoover president in 1928 on his motto, “A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.” While the slogans have changed, often we do not think much higher. The most important factor in most presidential elections still today — even among Catholic voters, as we see in exit polls — is the economy, who we think will put more money in our pockets and allow us to put more food on the table. The larger spiritual issues, about whether a candidate opposes the slaughter of unborn innocents or wants to celebrate it as a civil right, wants to defend marriage or weaken or redefine it, wants to care for Christ in the disguise of the immigrant stranger or evict him, will set a good moral example or a bad one, often are pushed to the side. Even within the Church, sometimes Catholics will make all types of sacrifices to meet their own or others’ material needs but do not do very much to try to address their own or others’ greater spiritual needs. Pope Francis warned us against this materialist temptation his 2019 Angelus, saying that the first temptation ultimately concerns “the path ofgreed for possession. This is always the devil’s insidious logic: He begins from the natural and legitimate need for nourishment, life, fulfilment, happiness, in order to encourage us to believe that all this is possible without God, or rather, even despite Him.” Lent is the time Christ calls us all to resist that temptation and to seek first this heavenly food and live by it, trusting that, as he promised, everything else will be given to us besides (Mt 6:33). Lent is the time in which we grow in our trust for God’s providing, of his loving us more than the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, so that the devil is not able to tempt us by our tummies.
In the second temptation, the devil presented Jesus with a vision of all the kingdoms of the world and said to him “To you I will give their glory and all this authority … if you … will worship me.” Jesus was about to announce that his kingdom was at hand, but that kingdom was going to come about through humility and the Cross. The “father of lies” (Jn 8:44) was proposing a short cut, another way, an easier way. “I’ll give it all to you if you fall down and worship me.” Pope Francis in 2019 summarized this temptation as the “path of human vainglory” and warns that “one can lose all personal dignity if one allows oneself to be corrupted by the idols of money, success and power, in order to achieve one’s own self-affirmation.” The devil had gotten the Israelites in the desert to succumb to this temptation to worship him in a golden calf, rather than to trust in the God with whom Moses was speaking on the mountain. But he failed with Jesus, who said to him, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve him alone. The devil likewise tempts us to compromise our relationship with God, with the truth, with the principles that flow from God, in order to get ahead or to get what we want. Often the devil disguises these temptations in terms of the pursuit of power, privilege, prestige or profit. He’ll get students in school to cheat on exams to get a better grade. He’ll get those who are gifted with the ability to speak well to use their eloquence and charm to manipulate and fleece people. He’ll tempt those who have a job to put working and the money one can earn ahead of worshipping the Lord on the Lord’s Day and building up a treasure in heaven. It is a perennial temptation to seek to achieve something worldly by compromising our relationship with God and his moral law, to serve the “ruler of this world” rather than the one, true God. Jesus told his disciples about this second struggle he faced so that we could learn from him that and how we are called to worship the Lord our God and serve him alone. And God in his mercy gives us the grace of conversion so that we might recognize our idols and turn away from them in order to love the true God, serving him with all our mind, heart, soul and strength.
In the third temptation, the devil tried to tempt Jesus to test God the Father. He even misused today’s Responsorial Psalm to do so: “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from [this pinnacle], for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone’ (cf. Ps 91).” Pope Francis summarized this temptation as one of “exploiting God to one’s own advantage” (2019). He stated in 2022, “Twice the devil addresses [Jesus], saying: ‘If you are the Son of God….” He is thus proposing to [Jesus] to exploit his position: first to satisfy the material needs he feels, hunger, then to increase his power, and, finally, to have a prodigious sign from God. … It is as if he were saying, ‘If you are the Son of God, take advantage of it!.’ … This is the “core of the temptations,” which he says is “the poison of the passions,” to turn our gifts away from God and others and to use them solely for ourselves (2022). He likewise said that this is the “most subtle temptation” (2019), to try to “pull God to our side, asking him for graces that in reality serve and sill serve to satisfy our pride.” This is what the devil had tempted the Israelites to do in the desert. He got them to complain that Moses had brought them out into the desert to kill them and their children of thirst, and they were about ready to kill Moses. They said, “Is the Lord among us or not?” (Ex 17:1-7).
Jesus didn’t succumb to the same temptation. He replied, “It is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” This is the temptation to be presumptuous with God, to do things that will try to force God’s hand. We try to coerce the Father into protecting us no matter what. By this seduction, the devil tries to get us to re-create our relationship with God on our terms rather than His terms; then, when God doesn’t seem to respond to that situation because such behavior harms us, the devil uses it to divide us even further from God. Some of us can smoke a pack of cigarettes a day for several decades and then expect God to cure us of lung cancer simply because we ask him nicely in prayer. Some students can blow off their studies all semester and then expect God to help them get a good grade on their exams. We can all put ourselves repeatedly in a near occasion of sin and then expect God to save us from the consequences of the slippery slope into serious sin that results. Again and again the devil tries to tempt us to do something reckless and make us expect God to rescue us from it every time. Jesus passed onto his disciples his response to the devil’s temptation, so that we could make it our own: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” Rather than dig a hole and expect God to get us out of it, Jesus says, don’t dig the hole. Rather than risk physical or spiritual injury and expect God to prevent the harm, Jesus says, don’t take those reckless risks. Pope Francis stated, “Jesus opposes the attractions of evil in a victorious way … by responding to temptations with the Word of God, which says not to take advantage, not to use God, others and things for oneself, not to take advantage of one’s own position to obtain privileges. Because true happiness and true freedom are not found in possessing, but in sharing; not in taking advantage of others, but in loving them; not in the obsession of power, but in the joy of service.” Lent is a time in which we open ourselves up to God’s mercy that prevents us from being presumptuous with him. It’s a time for us to recognize that, if we haven’t sinned, it’s not because we’ve been personally stronger than the devil’s temptations, but because God’s mercy has made us withstand them or not even be confronted by them. Rather than presumptuously throwing ourselves down from precipices, Lent is a time in which we trustingly throw ourselves up into God’s outstretched merciful arms. That’s what Jesus shows us in his use of the Word of God. Pope Francis urges us to learn from Jesus’ example: “Brothers and sisters, never enter into dialogue with the devil: he is more cunning than we are. … Cling to the Word of God like Jesus, and at most answer always with the Word of God. And on this path, we will never go wrong” (2022).
The last line of today’s Gospel says that the Devil subjected Jesus to “every test” (v. 13), but Jesus never succumbed. In the letter to the Hebrews, we learn that “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet never sinned” (Heb 4:15). But Jesus is more than sympathetic. He went into the desert for 40 days to be tempted to show us the way to overcome temptations, by imitating him and his responses. Those 40 days were not just a time of tempting, but a time of mercy, so that through his sharing with his disciples what he underwent we could learn from him.
But we have to get practical. How do we imitate and live Jesus’ responses to the devil? How do we grow in strength against temptation? Jesus tells us in St. Mark’s Gospel, that some devils are expunged “only by prayer and fasting” (Mk 9:29). That is why, every Lent, the Church, to strengthen us, presents before us the need for us to pray, to fast and to give of ourselves and what we have toward others. The devil seeks to trick us to disorder our relationship ourselves, to others, and to God and fasting, almsgiving, and prayer are the respective antidotes. The more we fast and place spiritual nourishment over material food, the less vulnerable we will be to be tempted by bread and other earthly pleasures. The more we sacrifice ourselves and our belongings for the good of others, the less prone we will be to giving in to the devil’s seductions to give us power or control over others. The more we pray to God and seek to know and do his will in our lives the less assailable we will be to the devil’s traps presumptuously to force God’s hand. These three traditional practices of Lent are a great remedy, a merciful medicine, to the temptations of the Evil One, which is why the Church proposes them to us each year. And that’s why we need to make bold resolutions in Lent with regard to all three.
Paul in his letter to the Ephesians, wrote, “In order to be able to stand against the wiles of the devil, put on the whole armor of God.” Prayer, fasting and almsgiving help us to do just that, because they help us to “put on Christ” (Rom 13:14), who himself prayed unceasingly, who fasted for 40 days, who gave himself until his last drop of blood. The discipline that Lent requires of us helps to keep us vigilant against the devil, by conforming us to Christ in faith. St. Peter instructed us, “Discipline yourselves and keep alert. The devil is prowling like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith.” The devil exists and he is real. He seeks to devour us. But Christ has overcome him and we will, too, provided that we put on God’s armor, discipline ourselves as a disciple should, and remain vigilant. Lent is an annual spiritual desert boot camp the Church gives us so that we might train, yet again, to be victorious in this most important battle we’ll ever fight.
“Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Jesus refused to change a stone into bread for the devil; but for us, his beloved flock, he is about to change bread into his own flesh and blood. He is the word that comes from the mouth of God and now that God wants to put that Word-made-flesh in our mouths. As we prepare to receive Jesus today, we ask him for the graces to live this 40 day calling us to “come with him apart from the crowds to a deserted place” in the most bold and holy way possible, so that we can experience the joy that comes from repentance, faith, and overflowing of his mercy, and become signs with him to the whole world that this is the time of fulfillment and the kingdom of God is at hand. As he comes into our presence today, let us ask him for the grace to “worship Him, the Lord our God, and serve Him alone.”

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading I
Deuteronomy 26:4-10
Moses spoke to the people, saying:
“The priest shall receive the basket from you
and shall set it in front of the altar of the LORD, your God.
Then you shall declare before the Lord, your God,
‘My father was a wandering Aramean
who went down to Egypt with a small household
and lived there as an alien.
But there he became a nation
great, strong, and numerous.
When the Egyptians maltreated and oppressed us,
imposing hard labor upon us,
we cried to the LORD, the God of our fathers,
and he heard our cry
and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression.
He brought us out of Egypt
with his strong hand and outstretched arm,
with terrifying power, with signs and wonders;
and bringing us into this country,
he gave us this land flowing with milk and honey.
Therefore, I have now brought you the firstfruits
of the products of the soil
which you, O LORD, have given me.’
And having set them before the LORD, your God,
you shall bow down in his presence.”
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 91:1-2, 10-11, 12-13, 14-15
R. (cf. 15b) Be with me, Lord, when I am in trouble.
You who dwell in the shelter of the Most High,
who abide in the shadow of the Almighty,
say to the LORD, “My refuge and fortress,
my God in whom I trust.”
R. Be with me, Lord, when I am in trouble.
No evil shall befall you,
nor shall affliction come near your tent,
For to his angels he has given command about you,
that they guard you in all your ways.
R. Be with me, Lord, when I am in trouble.
Upon their hands they shall bear you up,
lest you dash your foot against a stone.
You shall tread upon the asp and the viper;
you shall trample down the lion and the dragon.
R. Be with me, Lord, when I am in trouble.
Because he clings to me, I will deliver him;
I will set him on high because he acknowledges my name.
He shall call upon me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in distress;
I will deliver him and glorify him.
R. Be with me, Lord, when I am in trouble.
Reading II
Romans 10:8-13
Brothers and sisters:
What does Scripture say?
The word is near you,
in your mouth and in your heart
—that is, the word of faith that we preach—,
for, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord
and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead,
you will be saved.
For one believes with the heart and so is justified,
and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved.
For the Scripture says,
No one who believes in him will be put to shame.
For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek;
the same Lord is Lord of all,
enriching all who call upon him.
For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
Verse Before the Gospel
Matthew 4:4b
One does not live on bread alone,
but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.
Gospel
Luke 4:1-13
Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan
and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days,
to be tempted by the devil.
He ate nothing during those days,
and when they were over he was hungry.
The devil said to him,
“If you are the Son of God,
command this stone to become bread.”
Jesus answered him,
“It is written, One does not live on bread alone.”
Then he took him up and showed him
all the kingdoms of the world in a single instant.
The devil said to him,
“I shall give to you all this power and glory;
for it has been handed over to me,
and I may give it to whomever I wish.
All this will be yours, if you worship me.”
Jesus said to him in reply,
“It is written
You shall worship the Lord, your God,
and him alone shall you serve.”
Then he led him to Jerusalem,
made him stand on the parapet of the temple, and said to him,
“If you are the Son of God,
throw yourself down from here, for it is written:
He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you,
and:
With their hands they will support you,
lest you dash your foot against a stone.”
Jesus said to him in reply,
“It also says,
You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.”
When the devil had finished every temptation,
he departed from him for a time.
The post Following Jesus into the Lenten Desert, First Sunday of Lent (C), March 9, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
24 min
March 08, 2025 Fasting: Learning to Hunger for What God Hungers, NYC Leonine Forum Lenten Day of Recollection, March 8, 2025
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Saint Agnes Church, Manhattan
Lenten Day of Recollection for the Leonine Forum and Columbia Catholic Ministry
March 8, 2025
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.8.25_Fasting_Hungering_for_What_God_Hungers_1.mp3
The post Fasting: Learning to Hunger for What God Hungers, NYC Leonine Forum Lenten Day of Recollection, March 8, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
51 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.