Catholic Preaching

Catholic Preaching

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  • Becoming Fitting Helpers, Fifth Thursday in Ordinary Time (I), February 13, 2025

    Fr. Roger J. Landry

    Chapel of IESE Business School, Manhattan
    Thursday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
    Memorial of Blessed James Miller, Martyr
    February 13, 2025
    Gen 2:18-25, Ps 128, Mk 7:24-30

     

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

    https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.13.25_Homily_1.mp3

     

    The following points were attempted in the homily: 

    • On this night on which we will consider together Catholic Social Teaching on integral ecology, we’re fortunate to have as our first reading the passage about the pinnacle of creation, the human person. To care for the gift of creation never means focusing on the environment in isolation but to remember that God created everything good ultimately for the human person made in his image and likeness. Proper stewardship of our common home must always prioritize taking care of our roommates and family members in that common home. The passage from today’s first reading come in the Genesis account after God says, throughout creation, “It is good,”  “It is good,”  “It is good,”  “It is good,”  “It is good,” and with the creation of the human person,  “It is very good.” Finally God exclaims,  “It is not good for the man to be alone.” He waited to make this judgment, we can say, until man himself had had this awareness. Even though man was in relation with God and with the animals he had named, there was still something missing. He needed a “suitable partner,” a “fitting helper.” And that’s what God gave in the creation of Eve. God created such a fitting helper, so that the two of them could help people live as the image of God, live in true communion, and grow more and more into God’s loving image as a communion of persons. This points to two existential realities: first, each of us needs help and it’s not good for us to be without this help; second, we are created as a helper for others. We are created as fitting helpers likewise always in need of suitable help. This is bedrock to Catholic social teaching.
    • What we also see in the passage is the basic complementarity at work in this helping and being helped. God didn’t create for Adam merely someone to kill time with, or even a generic helper, but rather a “suitable helper,” a “partner,” someone who makes up for our weaknesses with strength and someone who draws from us our strength to remedy his or her weaknesses. God created Eve out of Adam’s side, to show that they stand side-by-side, equal, before God. The rib symbolizes what covers the heart (the loving center of the person) and the lungs (what is necessary to breathe and survive). Adam exclaims, “Finally this one is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,” a Hebrew expression meaning “strength of my strength and weakness of my weakness,” that they are like each other in strengths and weaknesses and need to help each other. The type of help that is needed is not just a “hand” for the ordinary things of life, but to live as as a loving communion of persons in the image and likeness of God. They can’t grow in love without each other. Without the analogy of human love, Adam had already discovered that he couldn’t really receive and reciprocate (however asymmetrically) divine love. The most suitable help given is with regard to their living in a fully human way according to the divine image.
    • That’s what human marriage, par excellence, is supposed to be, when a man and a woman, like Adam and Eve, fittingly help each other to become who they are. That’s why Christ raised marriage to the dignity of a Sacrament, to give his help so that they might resemble the love in the heart of the Trinity, which Christ came as Bridegroom to make possible anew. But it extends to more than marriage. It’s not good for any of us to be alone, we all need fitting helpers, and we all need, to some degree, the complementarity between man and woman to remedy the ways in which, by original differentiation, we are not fully human. John Paul II talked about the “archetypical masculine” and the “archetypical feminine” and the way that men receive love by giving love and women give love by receiving love and how man’s relative strengths in complementarity to woman’s relative weaknesses, and woman’s relative strengths to man’s relative weaknesses, provide the support we need to grow as God’s image. This applies to agape (Christ-like sacrificial love) and philia (love of true friendship) just as much as to eros (romantic love). Man’s courage confronting fears and the unknown, for example, can encourage women to similar boldness and women’s receptivity to the person can complement man’s task-oriented personality. This type of normal, healthy interaction takes place among brothers and sisters in the family, among dads and daughters, moms and sons, among friends of opposite sexes and in ordinary daily interactions.
    •  We see an aspect of this complementarity in the beautiful interaction in today’s Gospel. At first glance it seems a little harsh, but Jesus in an almost brutally masculine way was helping the Syro-Phoenician woman to grow in faith and trust, and she, with her beautiful femininity, not only drew forth the Lord’s loving and miraculous generosity, but his extraordinary compliment for her receptive faith. St. Matthew’s account of this scene gives us many more details than St. Mark does today. When this Canaanite woman first approaches Jesus asking her for a miracle for her daughter, the Lord ignores her. When she harasses the apostles begging for their intervention and they ask Jesus on her behalf, Jesus stresses he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, not to pagan women in Phoenicia. When she continues to pursue and falls down begging, “Please, Lord!,” he replies by saying, “It’s not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” But she still doesn’t give up. She reminded him that he was the Good Shepherd even of puppies and retorts, “But even the little dogs eat the scraps that comes from their master’s table.” At this, Jesus replies, “Woman, great is your faith” and performs an immediate exorcism on her daughter at a distance. Jesus behaved in this way precisely because he loved the woman and was helping her to grow in the type of persevering faith and prayer that God wants to develop and see in all of us. Her feminine, maternal persistence led to one of the greatest compliments Jesus is ever recorded giving. And that woman’s great feminine faith was a means to draw greater faith from the apostles. We are all called to be fitting helpers to each other in drawing forth greater faith, hope and love.
    • Today we’re celebrating in the Church for the sixth time the feast of a new American blessed who shows us not just how to persevere in faith but how to draw forth, in a masculine way, the faith of the Church. LaSallian Brother James Alfred Miller, a native of Stevens Point, Wisconsin, was martyred for the faith in Guatemala in 1982. Pope Francis, in his 2018 exhortation on holiness, Gaudete et Exsultate, wrote about the “saints next door,” and in many ways Blessed James is an all-American holy neighbor. He was born in 1944 and grew up working hard on his family’s dairy and chicken farm in Custer, Wisconsin, praying at home, and wanting to be priest. He was fascinated by other countries, reading an encyclopedia from cover to cover to get to know foreign countries and regions where he hoped to bring the faith. When he entered Pacelli High School and met the Brothers of the Christian Schools, he quickly discerned he had a vocation to share in their educational apostolate. He entered the juniorate of the community at 15 (much like boys at that time could enter high school seminaries at 14), became a postulant and novice at 18, professed first vows at 21 and final vows at 26. He was sent by the Christian Brothers to St. Mary’s University in Winona, Minnesota, where, hoping to share in their missionary apostolates, he got Bachelors’ and Master’s degrees in Spanish. He was described by those who knew him as likeable, sociable, simple, humble, generous, honest, kind, intelligent, ordered, courageous, prayerful, zealous, and hardworking. His fellow Christian Brothers dubbed him a “common, good guy,” “very human,” “a man of union and communion,” who had the “gift of gab,” a perpetual smile, a “deep faith and love for his religious vocation,” and a contagious, boisterous guffaw. He also, they noted, was perpetually “late to class and community prayers,” something that Cardinal José Luis Lacunza of Panama, presiding over his 2019 beatification, joked had prepared him very well for service in Latin America, “where punctuality is not numbered among our virtues!” His first assignment was to teach Spanish, English and religion for a few years at Cretin High School in St. Paul, Minnesota. While there, he supervised the maintenance of the school, earning the nickname “Brother Fix-It.” He also coached football, a sport at which, at 6’2” and 220 pounds, he was prone to excel. In 1969, after a fellow Christian Brother got sick at the Brothers’ school in Bluefield, Nicaragua, “Hermano Santiago” was sent to replace him. For four-plus years, he taught sixth grade, then high school, while also repairing the residence, running a bookstore and starting a soccer team. In 1974, Brother James was transferred to Puerto Cabezas where, as director of the school, he catalyzed an increase of enrollment from 300 to 800 students, helped build an industrial arts complex, offices, an auditorium and science center, taught, founded a volunteer fire department and served as janitor, fixing the plumbing, cleaning the bathrooms and sweeping the floor. His practical know-how won the attention of the Somoza Government, who contracted him to build ten more schools in the rural region so that the children of the area would have a chance at an education. When the Sandinistas took over the country, because of his having erected schools for the Somoza government and his general work of education and care for the human dignity of people long neglected, he was put on a list of those to be “dealt with.” His superiors therefore decided to summon him back to Cretin High School in Minnesota. He feared that the people of Puerto Cabezas would see his departure as an act of cowardice and so he wrote them telling them he would return, but he never got his wish. After two years of trying to return to Latin America, his superiors sent him to their Mission in Huehuetenango, Guatemala, to teach at the Indigenous House School and work at the Indian Center, training indigenous Mayans in agricultural techniques, leadership skills and basic educational subjects. St. Jean Baptiste de la Salle had told his spiritual sons, “Your zeal must go so far that you are ready to give your life, so dear to you are the children entrusted to you,” and Hermano Santiago took his founder’s instruction to heart. His new assignment was as dangerous as the one in Nicaragua. The Guatemalan government regularly conscripted indigenous students, even though they were exempt by law, into service. The government resented the Christian Brothers’ constantly appearing to present documentation to liberate their students. Word quickly spread that members of the G-2 death squad were looking for the “sub-director,” Brother James’ office at the school. He well knew the danger, but responded with humor, realism and faith. When asked if he were afraid, he replied, “Are you kidding? I never thought I could pray with such fervor when I go to bed!” He wrote his sister a month before he died, “One of two frightening things could happen to me in Guatemala: I could be kidnapped, tortured and killed or I could simply be gunned down.” He added, however, “You don’t think about that, that’s not why you’re there. There’s too much to be done. You can’t waste your energies worrying about what might happen. If it happens, it happens.” He insisted, “I pray to God for the grace and strength to serve Him faithfully among the poor and oppressed in Guatemala. I place my life in His Providence. I place my trust in Him.” On Saturday, February 13, 1982, after returning with students from a picnic, Brother Fix-It mounted a ladder to repair a broken lamp on the outer wall of the school. At 4:15 pm, four hooded men, whom the government would later call “subversive criminal elements,” sped past in a car with windows down and submachine guns loaded. They shot Hermano Santiago seven times in the neck and chest, as shocked children looked on from a window in the school. He fell from the ladder, dead. His funeral was held first in Huehuetenango and then in St. Paul, Minnesota, before he was buried in Ellis, Wisconsin, at a cemetery just outside the family farm. At his beatification on the Huehuetenango soccer field, Cardinal Lacunza called him a “martyr, an excellent educator and an evangelical defender of the poor and oppressed” who “made himself one of us and for us gave his life.” He suggested that Hermano Santiago died in witness of Christ’s great commission to teach all nations and was an icon of Christ the Teacher who died to give witness to the truth. “There is nothing that bothers totalitarianisms … more than education,” Lacunza said, since the greatest way to ensure that people remain docile to manipulation is by keeping them “ignorant, without criteria or values.” If education is subversive to tyrants, the Gospel is even more of a threat. One of the Christian brothers who had known Blessed James throughout his religious life said he loved to do things “very quietly, behind the scenes,” and “never asked for recognition.” Now, all he did has come to the foreground, with his having received the most important acknowledgment a human being can. His beatification shows that the Lord continues to exalt the humble. It also shows that the greatest in the kingdom of heaven remain those who keep the faith and teach others to do the same. He persevered until the end, fought the good fight, finished the race and kept the faith — and he trained not only his students but the whole Church to do the same. He was a person for others, a suitable helper, willing and able to give his life. He was a man of great faith that led him to do everything he can for those whom he was sent to serve. He shows us Catholic Social teaching in action and the heroism of a man made in the image of Christ, the image of the eternal Father.
    • “It is not good for man to be alone.” And the suitable help God made for Adam was not just Eve. God made himself a suitable helper, entering into the human race, in order by his humanity to restore us to the divine image and make us partakers in his divinity. And where he carries that out each day most is at the altar. We know that Jesus in the Gospel quoted the words of the Book of Genesis after Adam rejoiced at the creation of his wife, “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one flesh.” St. Paul, after citing that phrase, tells us in the fifth chapter of his letter to the Ephesians “This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church.” Human marriage is based on Christ’s marriage to his Bride the Church; because Christ will never abandon us, sacramental marriage is indissoluble; because Christ is faithful, human marriage is faithful; because Christ’s marriage with us is fruitful, generating newborn Christians in the baptismal womb of the Church, so human marriage increases and multiplies. To understand what happens in the Eucharist, we need to look at it in this spousal key. The early Christians used to illustrate this reality between marriage and the Eucharist in their architecture, covering the altars with a baldachin just like ancient beds were covered, to communicate that the altar is the marriage bed of the union between Christ the Bridegroom and his Bride, the Church. It’s on this altar that we, Christ’s bride, in the supreme of love, receive within ourselves the body, the blood, of the divine Bridegroom, becoming one-flesh with him and made capable of bearing fruit with him in acts of love. This is the means by which we enter into one flesh union with Christ. This is the way by which we receive within Christ’s love for us and become more capable of sharing that type of love with each other. Here at this marriage bed, Jesus will give us, his bride and fitting helper, something far greater than what he gave the Canaanite woman Today Jesus is going to let us have far more than crumbs, he’s about to give his whole body, blood, soul and divinity. This is the means by which we will be able to grow into the types of persons like Blessed James, Hermano Santiago, who today, tomorrow and increasingly each day, Jesus will be able to say to us, O Woman, O Man, “great is your faith!”

      •  

      The readings for today’s Mass were:

      Reading 1 Gn 2:18-25
      The LORD God said:
      “It is not good for the man to be alone.
      I will make a suitable partner for him.”
      So the LORD God formed out of the ground
      various wild animals and various birds of the air,
      and he brought them to the man to see what he would call them;
      whatever the man called each of them would be its name.
      The man gave names to all the cattle,
      all the birds of the air, and all the wild animals;
      but none proved to be the suitable partner for the man.
      So the LORD God cast a deep sleep on the man,
      and while he was asleep, he took out one of his ribs
      and closed up its place with flesh.
      The LORD God then built up into a woman
      the rib that he had taken from the man.
      When he brought her to the man, the man said:
      “This one, at last, is bone of my bones
      and flesh of my flesh;
      this one shall be called ‘woman,’
      for out of ‘her man’ this one has been taken.
      ”That is why a man leaves his father and mother
      and clings to his wife,
      and the two of them become one flesh.
      The man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt no shame.
      Responsorial Psalm Ps 128:1-2, 3, 4-5
      R. (see 1a) Blessed are those who fear the Lord.
      Blessed are you who fear the LORD,
      who walk in his ways!
      For you shall eat the fruit of your handiwork;
      blessed shall you be, and favored.
      R. Blessed are those who fear the Lord.
      Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine
      in the recesses of your home;
      Your children like olive plants
      around your table.
      R. Blessed are those who fear the Lord.
      Behold, thus is the man blessed
      who fears the LORD.
      The LORD bless you from Zion:
      may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem
      all the days of your life.
      R. Blessed are those who fear the Lord.

      Alleluia Jas 1:21bc

      R. Alleluia, alleluia.

      Humbly welcome the word that has been planted in you
      and is able to save your souls.
      R. Alleluia, alleluia.

      Gospel Mk 7:24-30
      Jesus went to the district of Tyre.
      He entered a house and wanted no one to know about it,
      but he could not escape notice.
      Soon a woman whose daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him.
      She came and fell at his feet.
      The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth,
      and she begged him to drive the demon out of her daughter.
      He said to her, “Let the children be fed first.
      For it is not right to take the food of the children
      and throw it to the dogs.”
      She replied and said to him,
      “Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.”
      Then he said to her, “For saying this, you may go.
      The demon has gone out of your daughter.”
      When the woman went home, she found the child lying in bed
      and the demon gone.

      The post Becoming Fitting Helpers, Fifth Thursday in Ordinary Time (I), February 13, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

      20 min
    • Our Vocation and Mission Trustingly To Put Into the Deep, Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), February 9, 2025

      Msgr. Roger J. Landry

      Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
      Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
      February 9, 2025
      Is 6:1-8, Ps 138, 1 Cor 15:1-11, Lk 5:1-11

       

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

      https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.9.25_MCs_Homily_1.mp3

       

      The following text guided the homily:

      • Today in the Liturgy of the Word we have three vocation stories — Simon Peter’s, Isaiah’s and Paul’s — each of which teaches us something about our own vocation and mission and provide us a chance to to renew our commitment to our calling to be faithful disciples and task to be ardent charitable apostles.
      • Early one morning, Jesus was at the shore of the Sea of Galilee, teaching. As more people began to awaken and come down to the shore, the crowd listening to Jesus grew. As Jesus was being crushed by the crowds, he asked Simon Peter to borrow his boat so that he might sit a little bit away from the shore to teach. With the wind coming over his shoulder as a natural amplifier, Jesus nourished the famished crowd with his words. But it was no coincidence that Jesus was there that morning. It wasn’t serendipitous that he asked to borrow Simon’s boat. Jesus had come to do more than teach the crowd. He had come to catch a big fish, namely a fisherman. He had come to convert, call and commission Simon.
      • After Jesus had finished speaking, he said to Simon Peter, “Put out into the deep water and lower your nets for a catch!” Few statements could have sounded more ridiculous to a Galilean fisherman. Simon must have had to control himself from saying something unkind. He was a professional on the Sea of Gennesaret, and like all the other fishermen, he knew that fish were successfully caught in shallow water at night, not in deep water in broad daylight. It would have sounded as if a fisherman had told Jesus, a carpenter, to drive in nails by holding the head of the hammer and striking the nail with the handle. It was contrary to all practical wisdom. Moreover, Simon Peter was exhausted after a long night and frustrated that he had nothing to show for hours of hard work. He had just gone through the laborious process of cleaning his equipment to put everything away for the day. So in what was probably the nicest way he could, he replied, “Master, we have worked all night but have caught nothing.” He likely looked silently into Jesus’ eyes for understanding. But Jesus didn’t flinch. He looked at Peter intensely without saying a word. What was going on in Peter’s mind? “No one had ever spoken like this one,” Peter might have been whispering to himself: “Is it possible that he might know something I don’t about fishing? That’s highly unlikely, but how can I refuse what he asks for and embarrass him and myself in front of this entire crowd?” Peter finally gave in. “At your word,” he told Jesus with heroic courtesy, “I will let down the nets.” He and his tired team got into the boat again and paddled far away from shore to the deep water. Probably many of those who had listened to Jesus were watching to witness how the drama would unfold.
      • Luke tells us what happened. Peter and his companions won the fisherman’s equivalent of the megabucks, catching so many fish that their nets were about to break and two boats were about to sink. Simon Peter couldn’t help but grasp, however, how unworthy he was of such a gift from God. Upon disembarking, rather than running to Jesus, hugging him and thanking him, he fell down at Jesus’ knees and begged, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” He was afraid of what this blessing to a sinner like him might mean. Jesus spoke right to Peter’s heart and said, “Do not be afraid!” Then he gave Peter his vocation: “From now on, you will be catching men!” When they had brought their haul to shore, Peter and Andrew, James and John, left everything behind — their boats, their nets, the treasure they had just caught — and followed Jesus. And they went out on a worldwide fishing expedition. As we would see after the Resurrection, when the Lord would renew Peter in his mission by recapitulating a wondrous draught of fish, Peter would catch 3,000 on Pentecost, putting out into the deep at the Lord’s command and continuing to do so until he would proclaim it by his crucifixion three decades later in Rome.
      • Back in 2001, at the conclusion of the last ordinary Jubilee, John Paul II proposed Jesus’ imperative “Put out into the deep water,” Duc in altum!, as the motto for our life in the Church in this third millennium because so often we today can feel that we’re in Peter’s sandals. In many areas of life, but particularly in spiritual concerns, we can work so hard and seem to have so little to show for it. In our prayer life, we can sometimes think that we’re getting nothing out of our efforts. With our call to spread the Gospel, we can strive diligently to share our faith with family members and friends and others with whom we interact, and believe that we’ve made no progress. With regard to the culture that surrounds us, it is not uncommon for people to become exasperated, not knowing even where to begin to help our society become more moral. In some parts of the highly secularized world like western Europe, in Muslim territories in the Middle East, in communist areas like China, and in Protestantizing areas like various parts of Latin America, many can lose hope at the power of the Gospel lived by those in the Church to draw people to Christ in Peter’s boat. To all of those in these situations, Jesus says, like he said to Peter, “Put out into the deep water.… Trust in me!” We might think that from a human point of view what Jesus asks us to do makes little or no sense, or won’t work, or is a waste of time. We can deem the odds infinitesimally slim. Jesus, after all, says so many things, that fly in the face of the common human way of looking at things: “Blessed are you when they persecute you, mock you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely. … Unless you pick up your Cross daily and follow me… Turn the other cheek … Forgive 70 times 7 times. … Heaven rejoices more for one repentant sinner… Unless you gnaw on my flesh and drink my blood.” But to each of these, like Peter, we’re called to say, “Lord, at your word, I will lower the nets,” leave behind the security of the shore and of human wisdom and put out into the deep trusting that all things are possible with God.
      • John Paul II was convinced that these words — “Put out into the deep!” — aptly describe the Church’s situation today and what needs to be our response. The reason is because they point to a trust in the Lord’s words above every other factor, that even if we were to have all the expert consultants in the world on one side, and Jesus alone on the other, we should trust Jesus. But that’s not the only reason the Pope selected it. In it, as well, we find very clearly spelled out what our Christian vocation and mission is today. The Lord Jesus calls each Christian, as he called Peter and Andrew, James and John, to be a fisher of men, to go out to try to bring other fish into the salvation of Peter’s boat, the Church, in which Christ is still sitting and teaching. Being a fisher of men is not the job only of priests, bishops and religious, of catechists and Catholic schoolteachers, but each of the baptized. It’s our mission as a Christian, flowing from our baptismal vocation. It’s not enough for us merely to pray each day. It’s not enough for us faithfully to live by Christ’s commandments, work hard, and then mind our business. Christ calls us to love our neighbor. And the greatest act of love we can do for our neighbor is to bring the neighbor to Christ and bring Christ to our neighbor. We are all called to be missionaries of charity in this way. Each of us, as Pope Francis wrote in his 2014 exhortation on The Joy of the Gospel, is called to say not just that the Church, that each of us, has a mission but is a mission. Each of us is called to grasp, “I am a mission on this earth. This is the reason why I am here in this world.” Each of us is called to hear Christ saying to us, “Just as the Father sent me, so I send you,” to hear him tell us, “Go and make disciples of all nations” and “Go to the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.” And just like in the Gospel, Peter, James, John and Andrew — the soon-to-be apostles — “called to their friends in the other boat to come and help them,” so the successors of St. Peter and the apostles are calling to us, their friends, to come to help them bring more and more fish into Peter’s boat, to share in the task of the mission to those places that have never received the Gospel and of the new evangelization to those where the Gospel needs to be heard and lived anew. That’s why St. John Paul II told us back in 2001, “At the beginning of the new millennium, and at the close of the Great Jubilee during which we celebrated the two thousandth anniversary of the birth of Jesus and a new stage of the Church’s journey begins, our hearts ring out with the words of Jesus when … he invited the Apostle to ‘put out into the deep’ for a catch: ‘Duc in altum’(Lk 5:4). Peter and his first companions trusted Christ’s words and cast the nets. … Duc in altum! These words ring out for us today. … We must look ahead, we must ‘put out into the deep,’ trusting in Christ’s words. … As this millennium begins, allow the Successor of Peter to invite the whole Church to make this act of faith.”
      • Many of us might think we’re unworthy for such a task, that the Lord couldn’t possibly be calling us. But the readings today are a very strong rejection of that line of thought. In the first reading, Isaiah was awed at God’s majesty and holiness, as he beheld in a vision of seraphs singing “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” Isaiah was well aware of his sinfulness and thought he was unfit to be in the presence of such holiness. “Woe is me! I’m lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.” But God fixed that problem, sending a seraph with a burning charcoal to cleanse his mouth, take away his guilt and blot out his sin so that he could use that mouth to spread God’s word. In the Gospel, faced with the Lord Jesus’ majesty in the working of the miracle, Peter exclaimed, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man,” but the Lord told him not to be afraid, because the Lord had come to the seashore precisely to call that sinful man to himself and then to send him out to call other sinners to repentance. The story of St. Paul from the second reading is perhaps the most powerful — not just of the readings today but of all time. He used to hunt down, torture and kill Christians for a living. If anyone was unworthy to carry out the task of preaching the Good News, it was this man, who had tried to extinguish it. But the Lord met him on the road to Damascus and purified him so that he might be his chosen vessel to take the Gospel to the nations. St. Paul says today, “Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God, I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain.” As he writes, he passed on to us as of the first importance the Gospel he himself received and even used his past sinfulness as a motivation: “I worked harder than any of them,” because he had been forgiven even more. His whole life became a commentary on what he wrote earlier to the Christians in Corinth, “Woe to me if I do not proclaim the Gospel!”
      • Faced with their callings, all of us should find great hope and inspiration. Today, as in the time of Isaiah, and Peter and Paul, the Lord says, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Each of us is summoned, like Isaiah, to say, “Here I am, Lord!” We cannot pass the buck to the next Christian in line, the sister sitting next to us in the chapel, the priest at the pulpit, the missionary in the remote village, the Catholic school teacher or catechist, or those who speak at Catholic megaconferences, or minister on Catholic television or radio. Each is us is called — without exception — to answer personally, “Send me.” We’re summoned, like Peter, Andrew, James and John, to leave behind whatever might keep us from the Lord and follow him, being sent out into the deep water of the world to fish for men and women, boys and girls. We’re called, like St. Paul, to “work harder than any” of the rest in passing on to others as of first importance the Gospel we have received, because of the Lord’s great mercy, love and trust in calling us and sending us by our Baptism and Confirmation. We’re called, as we prayed in the Psalm, to sing God’s praises even in the sight of angels, not to mention the saints and our fellow human beings, giving thanks to him with all our heart and proclaiming his praises.
      • Saint Teresa of Calcutta’s whole life is a witness to how to put this Gospel into practice. Who would have thought a young girl from Skopje, not to mention even a successful teaching Sister of Our Loreto and headmistress in Entally, would have changed the history of the world and become a pivotal figure in Church and salvation history? But when the Lord spoke to her on a train to Darjeeling, when the Lord asked her to come be his light, to satiate his infinite thirst for souls, to go out a mission of charity throughout the globe, with trust in his words, she launched out into the deep and inspired several of her former students and so many future daughters to say with her, “Here I am, Lord. Send me.” That worldwide fishing expedition spreading Christ’s love continues here, even in the snow, from 145th Street in the Bronx.
      • Today, at this Mass, Jesus has gotten into Peter’s boat, a symbol of the Church, again. Like he taught the crowds, he has taught us from this humble pulpit. He knows how hard we’ve been working, but he tells us to trust in him as he sends us out again, when we least expect it, to where we least expect it. To strengthen us for this mission, he is about to feed us with his body and blood. What Isaiah witnessed in his vision is about to be fulfilled, when all the seraphim, cherubim and angels will surround this altar as we join in their unending hymn to the King, “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty. Heaven and Earth are full of your glory.” God will send us not a seraphim with a burning ember to cleanse our unclean mouths; but as so many fathers of the Church saw as an application of this passage, he will awesomely come himself to feed us with the incarnate purifying fire of his Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity. The Lord whom we’re about to receive is thrice holy and wants to make us holy so that he can send us out with the instructions — Duc in Altum! — to fish not just in the East and Hudson Rivers, not just in Long Island Sound, but even on the streets of the Bronx, Manhattan and the missions of the world. The only fitting response is to make Isaiah’s words our own, “Here I am, Lord. Send me!,” and like Peter say, as sinners loved by and trusting in God, “At your word, Lord, I will lower the nets for a catch!”

        •  

        The readings for today’s Mass were: 

        Reading I
        Is 6:1-2a, 3-8

        In the year King Uzziah died,

        I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne,
        with the train of his garment filling the temple.
        Seraphim were stationed above.
        They cried one to the other,
        “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts!
        All the earth is filled with his glory!”
        At the sound of that cry, the frame of the door shook
        and the house was filled with smoke.
        Then I said, “Woe is me, I am doomed!
        For I am a man of unclean lips,
        living among a people of unclean lips;
        yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”
        Then one of the seraphim flew to me,
        holding an ember that he had taken with tongs from the altar.
        He touched my mouth with it, and said,
        “See, now that this has touched your lips,
        your wickedness is removed, your sin purged.”
        Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying,
        “Whom shall I send?  Who will go for us?”
        “Here I am,” I said; “send me!”

        Responsorial Psalm
        Ps 138:1-2, 2-3, 4-5, 7-8

        R. (1c) In the sight of the angels I will sing your praises, Lord.

        I will give thanks to you, O LORD, with all my heart,
        for you have heard the words of my mouth;
        in the presence of the angels I will sing your praise;
        I will worship at your holy temple
        and give thanks to your name.
        R. In the sight of the angels I will sing your praises, Lord.
        Because of your kindness and your truth;
        for you have made great above all things
        your name and your promise.
        When I called, you answered me;
        you built up strength within me.
        R. In the sight of the angels I will sing your praises, Lord.
        All the kings of the earth shall give thanks to you, O LORD,
        when they hear the words of your mouth;
        and they shall sing of the ways of the LORD:
        “Great is the glory of the LORD.”
        R. In the sight of the angels I will sing your praises, Lord.
        Your right hand saves me.
        The LORD will complete what he has done for me;
        your kindness, O LORD, endures forever;
        forsake not the work of your hands.
        R. In the sight of the angels I will sing your praises, Lord.

        Reading II
        1 Cor 15:1-11

        I am reminding you, brothers and sisters,

        of the gospel I preached to you,
        which you indeed received and in which you also stand.
        Through it you are also being saved,
        if you hold fast to the word I preached to you,
        unless you believed in vain.
        For I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received:
        that Christ died for our sins
        in accordance with the Scriptures;
        that he was buried;
        that he was raised on the third day
        in accordance with the Scriptures;
        that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve.
        After that, Christ appeared to more
        than five hundred brothers at once,
        most of whom are still living,
        though some have fallen asleep.
        After that he appeared to James,
        then to all the apostles.
        Last of all, as to one born abnormally,
        he appeared to me.
        For I am the least of the apostles,
        not fit to be called an apostle,
        because I persecuted the church of God.
        But by the grace of God I am what I am,
        and his grace to me has not been ineffective.
        Indeed, I have toiled harder than all of them;
        not I, however, but the grace of God that is with me.
        Therefore, whether it be I or they,
        so we preach and so you believed.

        Alleluia
        Mt 4:19

        R. Alleluia, alleluia.

        Come after me
        and I will make you fishers of men.
        R. Alleluia, alleluia.

        Gospel
        Lk 5:1-11

        While the crowd was pressing in on Jesus and listening to the word of God,

        he was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret.
        He saw two boats there alongside the lake;
        the fishermen had disembarked and were washing their nets.
        Getting into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon,
        he asked him to put out a short distance from the shore.
        Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.
        After he had finished speaking, he said to Simon,
        “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.”
        Simon said in reply,
        “Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing,
        but at your command I will lower the nets.”
        When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish
        and their nets were tearing.
        They signaled to their partners in the other boat
        to come to help them.
        They came and filled both boats
        so that the boats were in danger of sinking.
        When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at the knees of Jesus and said,
        “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”
        For astonishment at the catch of fish they had made seized him
        and all those with him,
        and likewise James and John, the sons of Zebedee,
        who were partners of Simon.
        Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid;
        from now on you will be catching men.”
        When they brought their boats to the shore,
        they left everything and followed him.

        The post Our Vocation and Mission Trustingly To Put Into the Deep, Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), February 9, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

        22 min
      • The Merciful Care of the Good Shepherd, Fourth Saturday in Ordinary Time (I), February 8, 2025
        Msgr. Roger J. Landry
        Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
        Saturday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
        Memorial of St. Josephine Bakhita
        February 8, 2025
        Heb 13:15-17.20-21, Ps 23, Mk 6:30-34

        To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
        https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.8.25_Homily_1.mp3

         

        The following points were attempted in the homily: 

        • We have been pondering the Letter to the Hebrews for the past four weeks. The climax of it happened four days ago on Tuesday when the sacred author told us, “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith.” The point of the Letter, the point of the Christian life, is to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, to learn from him, to follow him, to see where his eyes and heart turn. It’s to keep our eyes fixed on him who was tempted in every way we are but never sinned. It’s to keep our eyes fixed on him who is our high priest piercing the veil so that he can lead us all of the way home.
        • Today as we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, we zero in on his heart. The Gospel tells us that Jesus’ “heart was moved with pity for the crowds for they were like sheep without a shepherd.” Jesus’ viscera exploded with compassion on the crowds. And today as we look at him, we see how he addresses our most fundamental needs as Good Shepherd. Receiving and responding to that help is what will make us good sheep. Imitating Jesus in caring for others as he does will be the way that we can in him become good shepherds. Today in the readings are highlighted five ways he seeks to shepherd us.
        • We see, first, that he takes us apart to be with him. “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while,” he says to the apostles after they had returned from a journey. The Good Shepherd knows that we need time of prayer. Jesus wants us to have rest, but a particular type of rest. In the Psalm we pray, “In verdant pastures he gives me repose. Beside restful waters he leads me; he refreshes my soul.” Jesus does this in prayer and he’s always, every day, seeking to lead us apart from the crowds for a while to refresh us in this way. He says elsewhere, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for yourselves.” Prayer is a time to yoke ourselves and all we do to him, because it’s by taking upon his yoke that we will find that rest.
        • Second, he teaches us, just like he “began to teach them many things.” We pray in the Psalm, “He guides me in right paths for his name’s sake.” Jesus has come to teach us about God, about ourselves and about how to become like God. That work of teaching never ends. Teaching is a great act of mercy.
        • Third, yoking us to himself on the inside, he wants to teach and help us to do the Father’s will as a result of this communion. In today’s first reading from the conclusion of the Letter to the Hebrews, we read that God the Father “who brought up from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep” seeks to “furnish [us] with all that is good, that you may do his will.” And he does this by “carry[ing] out in you what is pleasing to him through Jesus Christ.” Jesus wants to help us to do the Father’s will from within, uniting ourselves to him whose whole life was a loving adhesion to the will of his Father. This is why the Letter says to us about prayer, “Through Jesus, let us continually offer God a sacrifice of praise, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name.” The praise we offer is through lips confessing his name, not silently, not merely in prayer, but among others, especially through the work we do, which is, for most of us, at least a third of our existence. Jesus precisely helps us to do this. He also transforms us on the inside to help us love others with the love with which he loves us to overflowing. That’s why the Letter says, “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have; God is pleased by sacrifices of that kind.” The sacrifice of praise that is not just of our lips but of our charity.
        • Fourth, he seeks to lead us, including through suffering and death, as we’ve been pondering the last month throughout the Letter to the Hebrews. The Psalm says, “Even though I walk in the dark valley I fear no evil; for you are at my side with your rod and your staff that give me courage.” Jesus is the Good Shepherd who makes sure we lack for nothing, even when he’s guiding us through dark valleys where we can see very little because of our fear. But these dark valleys are opportunities for us to enlarge our eyes and our ears in faith. As we keep our eyes fixed our him our ears can become more attentive. The Gospel verse says, “My sheep hear my voice, says the Lord; I know them, and they follow me.” When we’re in dark valleys we’re much more dependent on the Lord’s voice and guidance and that’s why he allows them. He perfects our faith through them. One of the ways he leads us is through obedience. The Letter to the Hebrews talks about the importance of loving obedience. “Obey your leaders and defer to them, for they keep watch over you and will have to give an account, that they may fulfill their task with joy and not with sorrow, for that would be of no advantage to you.” The more we fill them with joy by our openness and response, the more we’ll be able to receive from God through them.
        • Finally, the Good Shepherd feeds us. His concern for the apostles was because they “had no opportunity even to eat” because of the great numbers coming to them. We see in the Gospel his care for the crowds that led to the multiplication of loaves and fish. In the Psalm we see the Good Shepherd’s aim, “You spread the table before me.” The Lord wants to nourish us in body and soul.
        • Someone who discovered Jesus as her merciful Good Shepherd, who allowed him to transform her through prayer, the teaching of the truth, doing his will within especially in work, through guidance day to day, and through the nourishment of holy communion, is the great and lovable saint we celebrate today, Saint Josephine Bakhita. She had suffered tremendously as a slave, but eventually she rejoiced in her sufferings because they allowed her to come to discover Jesus Christ, who had suffered so much for her. When Pope Benedict wrote his beautiful encyclical on Christian hope, Spe Salvi, he featured her. She was born in the Darfur region of Sudan about 1869 (there were no records and no one knew for sure). When she was 9, she was kidnapped by Arab Muslim bandits, forced to convert to Islam, and then sold into slavery on five different occasions to six different owners. As was the custom with Sudanese slaveowners at the time, she was repeatedly beaten as a little girl, even when she was prompt in doing what was commanded. On one occasion, one or her masters showed up with flour, salt and razor blades to brand her. With the flour, the owner sketched on her breasts, belly and arms 114 intricate designs and then with the razor blades cut into her skin according to those patterns. While she was bleeding and in enormous pain, the master then poured salt into the wounds so that they would never heal and she would always be branded. To those wounds were added another 30 indelible scars over the course of her enslavement. She was eventually sold to the Italian consul in Khartoum. This was the first time she wasn’t beaten when she was told to do things. When the political situation destabilized, the consul needed to leave the country and he took along with him Bakhita — a name that means “fortunate,” given to her by one of her owners, because she couldn’t remember the name her parents had given her, so great was the trauma of her capture and her beatings. He gave her to the service of friends when he arrived back in Italy, where she helped to raise a baby as a nanny. When the owners were preparing to return to the Sudan after the political situation had improved, they temporarily entrusted Bakhita and the little girl to the care of the Canossian Sisters in town. It was there that Bakhita was really exposed to Christianity for the first time. Her reaction to seeing a bloody Italian crucifix was unforgettable. She recognized that the one whom Christians adored as Lord and Master must be able to understand her pain, since he had been lacerated in his scourging just as severely as she had been repeatedly whipped and then sliced up with razor blades. When the family returned from the Sudan to take Bakhita and their daughter with them to Africa, Bakhita refused. A lawsuit followed that under Italian law in general and under a law freeing Sudanese slaves in particular, the tribunal declared her to be free. Insofar as she was now over 18, she could stay. She was baptized with the name Josephine Margaret and confirmed, made her first Communion from the hands of the future St. Pius X, and was eventually accepted as a Canossian Sister, where she served for the next 44 years as a cook, sacristan and portress. She was always so grateful for the teaching of her new true Parón or “Master” — not a slave master but a Magister, or teacher, a Good Shepherd teaching her the wisdom of how to live, love and die so as to live forever —  and she always sought not only to live according to that wisdom but to pass it on to others. Even though she had never received much education, the school girls used to line up at the door of the school just for her to pat them on the head, because she was able to teach them the wisdom of life, love and trust. The greatest lesson she taught, however, is the treasure we have in the Redeemer and his love. She was asked by one of the students what she would say to her slave masters if she were to encounter them. She replied unhesitatingly, “If I were to meet the slave-traders who kidnapped me and even those who tortured me, I would kneel and kiss their hands, for if that did not happen, I would not be a Christian and religious today.” She looked at everything through the eyes of the wondrous treasure of faith, and the gift we receive is so great that it justified, she implied, many years in brutal slavery. As Pope Benedict wrote about her in Spe Salvi, “She came to know that this Lord even knew her, that he had created her—that he actually loved her. She too was loved, and by none other than the supreme ‘Paron,’ before whom all other masters are themselves no more than lowly servants. She was known and loved and she was awaited. … The hope born in her which had ‘redeemed’ her she could not keep to herself; this hope had to reach many, to reach everybody.” Her experience of the Good Shepherd’s merciful triumph and the desire to share it with others became the great desire of her pure heart.
        • Today we have begun this day by coming away from the crowds to be with Jesus, so that we might pray and fix our eyes on him, so that the Good Shepherd can teach us, feed us, lead us through whatever dark valleys we may be in, and enter into us through Holy Communion. Together with the Blessed Virgin, the Mother of the Good Shepherd, who shows us how to orient our entire existence to God and let our life develop as sheep hearing his voice, and through the intercession of St. Josephine, we pray that Jesus, our Good Shepherd and Parón, may help us in life to give his Father a continual sacrifice of praise and use our lips, after we receive Holy Communion, to confess his name by proclaiming the Good News to all we meet today.

          •  

          The readings for today’s Mass were: 
          Reading 1 Heb 13:15-17, 20-21
          Brothers and sisters:
          Through Jesus, let us continually offer God a sacrifice of praise,
          that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name.
          Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have;
          God is pleased by sacrifices of that kind.
          Obey your leaders and defer to them,
          for they keep watch over you and will have to give an account,
          that they may fulfill their task with joy and not with sorrow,
          for that would be of no advantage to you.
          May the God of peace, who brought up from the dead
          the great shepherd of the sheep
          by the Blood of the eternal covenant,
          furnish you with all that is good, that you may do his will.
          May he carry out in you what is pleasing to him through Jesus Christ,
          to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
          Responsorial Psalm Ps 23:1-3a, 3b-4, 5, 6

          R. (1) The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
          The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
          In verdant pastures he gives me repose.
          Beside restful waters he leads me;
          he refreshes my soul.
          R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
          He guides me in right paths
          for his name’s sake.
          Even though I walk in the dark valley
          I fear no evil; for you are at my side
          With your rod and your staff
          that give me courage.
          R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
          You spread the table before me
          in the sight of my foes;
          You anoint my head with oil;
          my cup overflows.
          R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
          Only goodness and kindness follow me
          all the days of my life;
          And I shall dwell in the house of the LORD
          for years to come.
          R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.

          Alleluia Jn 10:27
          R. Alleluia, alleluia.
          My sheep hear my voice, says the Lord;
          I know them, and they follow me.
          R. Alleluia, alleluia.
          Gospel Mk 6:30-34
          The Apostles gathered together with Jesus
          and reported all they had done and taught.
          He said to them,
          “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.”
          People were coming and going in great numbers,
          and they had no opportunity even to eat.
          So they went off in the boat by themselves to a deserted place.
          People saw them leaving and many came to know about it.
          They hastened there on foot from all the towns
          and arrived at the place before them.
          When Jesus disembarked and saw the vast crowd,
          his heart was moved with pity for them,
          for they were like sheep without a shepherd;
          and he began to teach them many things.

          The post The Merciful Care of the Good Shepherd, Fourth Saturday in Ordinary Time (I), February 8, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

          14 min
        • The Missionary Dimension of the Priesthood, Shepherds Circle National Conference, February 5, 2025

          Msgr. Roger J. Landry

          Shepherds Circle National Conference
          Napa Institute, Napa California
          February 5, 2025

           

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

          https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.5.25_Missionary_Dimension_of_the_Priesthood_Part_Complete.mp3

           

          To download a PDF of the slides of this presentation, please click below: 

          The Missionary Dimension of Priestly Life

           

          The post The Missionary Dimension of the Priesthood, Shepherds Circle National Conference, February 5, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

          1 hr
        • Encountering and Consecrating Ourselves to Jesus Our Light and Glory, Feast of the Presentation, February 2, 2025

          Msgr. Roger J. Landry

          Chapel of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx
          Feast of the Presentation of the Lord
          February 2, 2025
          Mal 3:1-4, Ps 24, Heb 2:14-18, Lk 2:22-40

           

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

          https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.2.25_MCs_Homily_1.mp3

          The following text guided the homily: 

          • Today we celebrate a great feast, one that is 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, none 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. For those of us who pray the Rosary, we meditate upon it at least twice a week in the fourth Joyful Mystery, but it’s great to have a chance to celebrate this feast together on Sunday and to try to encourage each other to obtain in its fullness what this mystery contains.
          • The point of this feast was summarized in the beautiful instructions and prayers that the Church prays at the beginning of Mass just before the procession, which describe the Presentation fundamentally as an encounter. “Today is the blessed day when Jesus was presented in the Temple by Mary and Joseph,” the priest declares. “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.” This awareness of the Presentation as an encounter with Christ continues throughout the Mass. In the Eucharistic Preface, we will pray that “we, too, [will] go forth rejoicing to encounter your salvation.” In the Prayer after Communion, we will ask the Lord that “we, going forth to meet the Lord, [may] obtain the gift of eternal life.” All of these instructions and prayers 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 candles we bless today are supposed to symbolize our burning love for Jesus. We ask God the Father to bless them precisely “so that, treading the path of virtue, we may reach that light that never fails.” Our encounter with the Lord here on this feast day and then on the mutual encounter of a virtuous Christian life is meant to lead to an eternal encounter in the heavenly Temple.
          • So that’s what celebrating the Feast of the Presentation well intends to bring about in us. Concretely, however, this celebration also contains many practical applications to help us keep that ongoing meeting with Christ throughout our life. I’d like to focus on five elements we can learn from this feast about that encounter with the Lord and how it’s meant to change us.
          • The first thing we can ponder is the nature of consecration, which is at the heart of the Christian life and the religious life. St. Luke quotes the Mosaic Law in today’s Gospel, saying, “Every male who opens the womb shall be consecrated to the Lord.” The Lord told the Israelites through Moses “Every first-born son you must redeem,” adding, “If your son should ask you later on, ‘What does this mean?’ you shall tell him, ‘With a strong hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, that place of slavery. … That is why I sacrifice to the Lord everything of the male sex that opens the womb, and why I redeem every first-born of my sons.’” (Ex 13:13-15). This right of “redemption” of the first-born Son was a way to relive the Passover, to make it present, to allow every generation to enter into God’s saving action. How much more beautiful still is it that in the mystery of the Presentation Christ, the Redeemer, the New and Eternal Passover Incarnate, was himself being redeemed! He had come into our world precisely to lead us all through the true Passover in his blood from death to life, from sin to holiness, from this world to the new and eternal Jerusalem.
          • In today’s first reading, the Prophet Malachi tells us, “And suddenly there will come to the temple the Lord whom you seek. … He is like the refiner’s fire or like the fuller’s lye. … He will purify the sons of Levi, refining them like gold or like silver that they may offer due sacrifice to the Lord.” Christ comes to purify us so that we might offer fitting sacrifice to the Lord. Today’s Feast is traditionally referred to as well as the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary according to the ancient purification rites on the 40th day after a woman had given birth. But we know a deeper significance to this feast: She had already been purified at the first moment of her existence in St. Anne’s womb by the graces of the One whom she would later gestate and give to the world. And that same Refiner wants to purify us, by incorporating us into his redemptive self-offering to the Father in the new and eternal Passover. This is the way we offer our logike latreia, the only sacrifice that makes sense, which means to offer ourselves whole and entire to God as a holy and acceptable sacrifice (Rom 12:1-2). We enter into Jesus’ priesthood, what the Letter to the Hebrews in today’s second reading describes as the work of the “merciful and faithful high priest before God to expiate the sins of the people.” That expiatory offering for us takes place first in the consecration of our baptism, when we are presented in the Temple by our parents and godparents or, if we’re baptized later in life, by the whole Church community. To be consecrated means to be totally given to the Lord, to belong to God, to transfer the title of ownership of one’s life over to God, to be cut off (sacer) from worldly things to be with (con) God. Jesus is the supreme consecrated one. He would say during the Last Supper that he consecrates himself for us so that we might be consecrated in truth (Jn 17:19). This is what happens to us on the feast of our presentation in baptism.
          • This reality of Jesus’ consecration and ours that we mark on this day is the reason why, since 1997, the Church has observed on this feast the World Day of Prayer for Consecrated Life. St. John Paul II decided to have this world day of prayer for religious men and women, for consecrated hermits, virgins and widows, for members of secular institutes and societies of apostolic life and other forms of living publicly by the evangelical counsels on the Feast of the Lord’s Presentation because, he said, “the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple is an eloquent icon of the total offering of one’s life,” something we see in those who lived in the consecrated state.  St. John Paul II wrote in Vita Consecratathat the consecrated life “is not something isolated and marginal, but a reality that affects the whole Church.” Rather, “The consecrated life is at the very heart of the Church as a decisive element for her mission, since it manifests the inner nature of the Christian calling and the striving of the whole Church as Bride towards union with her one Spouse.” The whole Church is able to learn through greater focus on consecrated men and women — to learn from your vocation, sisters — about the inner nature of our Christian vocation, how to live out our baptismal consecration, and how to strive for the eternal wedding banquet. Today we give God thanks for those graces and we ask him to bless in a special way all those across the world who likewise seek to live out this special form of belonging, that we may truly be consecrated in the truth of God’s word and work.
          • The second aspect of today’s feast on which we can meditate is the whole meaning of light. The Feast of the Presentation is traditionally called Candlemas. We begin Mass with a procession with lit and blessed candles. This is a quasi-sacramental manifestation of what Simeon says about the 40-day old baby Jesus in today’s Gospel, that he is a “light of revelation to the Gentiles.” We receive that light from him and are meant to burn with it. On the day of our baptismal consecration, the day we were presented in the Temple of the Church, our Godfathers went to the Paschal (Easter) Candle and lit from it our baptismal candle; the priest instructed us to receive the Light of Christ; and our parents and godparents were commanded to help us to keep that flame of faith alive in our hearts so that when Christ comes we may go out to meet him with all the saints in his heavenly kingdom. That was an image of Jesus’ parable about the five wise bridesmaids (Mt 25:1-13) who had plenty of oil in their lamp to keep their flame ignited for the Bridegroom’s return. Today is a day in which we are renewed in our vocation to burn for Jesus, our light and our salvation, to let his light in us shine before all so that seeing our good deeds of faith, hope and love, they may glorify our Father in Heaven.
          • The third characteristic of the Feast of the Presentation is what we can glimpse in this great mystery about the evangelical counsels that distinguish the consecrated life. We see all three evangelical counsels on display. We see poverty in Mary’s and Joseph’s presenting a pair of pigeons. Normally if a family were of means, it would redeem a newborn male with a lamb, but Joseph and Mary were too poor to purchase a Lamb with which to redeem or “buy back” the infant Lamb of God. We also clearly see featured Joseph’s and Mary’s holy obedience. Three times St. Luke describes it, that they were dutifully and lovingly obeying what “is written in the law of the Lord,” doing so “in accordance with the dictate in the law of the Lord,” and seeking to “fulfill all the prescriptions of the law of the Lord.” This was the fulfillment of a lifetime in which Mary consistently said, “Let it be done to me according to your Word” and Joseph was so docile that he would promptly obey what the Lord said even in dreams. We also see a beautiful witness of chastity not just in the lives of the Virgin Castissima and in her “most chaste spouse” but in the example of Anna who, since she was widowed very early in life — probably in her very early 20s, since Jewish women normally married in their young teens —  spent the next five or six decades, until we meet her at 84, never leaving the temple but worshipping God day and night with fasting and prayer. After the death of her husband, God became the focus of all her love, and she served him more faithfully than any wife a man. In professing the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience, consecrated men and women show the world what true wealth, true freedom and true love are all about, and encourage us all, no matter our state of life, to imitate Mary and Joseph, Simeon and Anna.
          • The fourth aspect of today’s Feast concerns Simeon’s prophecy that Jesus was “destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted … so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” Jesus would be a cause literally of “ruin” or “resurrection” for many, provoking by his own life and words the manifestation of what was truly in their hearts. Even though Jesus came as Light, many preferred darkness; even though he came as Savior, many didn’t wish to be rescued; even though he came as the refulgence of God’s glory, many preferred to seek their own glory. And the great sign of Jesus’ contradiction is the Cross, where the vertical bar of divine worship contradicted the horizontal bar of worldliness. Every Christian, as a little Christ, is meant similarly to be a contradiction of the things of the world, to proclaim something radically different from the world’s values, namely Christ’s values: the values of poverty, chastity and obedience against the materialism, hedonism and individualism of the age, of the Beatitudes against the worldly path to happiness, of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy as opposed to the egocentrism and selfishness that often dominates.
          • The final aspect we learn from today’s readings is about how this encounter with the Lord is meant to be dynamic, to transform us, ultimately to guide us. Pope Francis preached several years ago that the Blessed Mother “enters the Temple holding the Child in her arms. The Mother walks, yet it is the Child who goes before her. She carries him, yet he is leading heralong the path of the God who comes to us so that we might go to him.” Later about Simeon, he states, “As with Mary, the elderly man holds the Child, but in fact it is the Child who guides the elderly man. The liturgy of First Vespers of today’s feast puts this clearly and beautifully: ‘senex puerum portabat, puer autem senecem regebat.’ Mary, the young mother, and Simeon, the kindly old man, hold the Child in their arms, yet it is the Child himself who guides them ” And he concluded, “Today we, too, like Mary and Simeon, want to take Jesus into our arms, to bring him to his people. Surely we will be able to do so if we enter into the mystery in which Jesus himself is our guide. Let us bring others to Jesus, but let us also allow ourselves to be led by him. This is what we should be: guides who themselves are guided.” That’s the essence of the Christian life and the consecrated life within the consecration of baptism: allowing ourselves to be guided by him who is the Way, by the Good Shepherd who leads us even in the valleys, by the Holy Spirit whom he sends to be our helper and guide, showing us the path into all truth and helping us to walk by the Spirit.
          • Today as we come to this temple to present ourselves anew to God on the Feast of the Presentation, God is going to give us something far greater than what Simeon and Anna received in the temple. Simeon was able to hold Jesus in his arms as he praised God and prophesied that the Child was destined to be the ruin and the resurrection of many in Israel and a sign to be contradicted. Today we have a chance to do far more than hold Jesus in our arms. We have a chance to receive him within and become one with Him in an encounter of loving Communion as Jesus seeks to unite us to him as a sign of contradiction to the ways of the world. Today we consecrate ourselves to him once again within his own consecration during the Last Supper made present for us on the holy altar. We ask him to fill us with his holy light as we receive him in Holy Communion so that we may take the warmth of his Eucharistic love and the light of his truth out to illumine those who walk in darkness and the shadow of death. As the Eucharistic Revival continues, we ask him to help us always to recognize in him in the Eucharist our treasure, our liberating truth, our great love, and the help we need to proclaim his Gospel in and out of season, especially in those areas in which it calls the world to conversion. We thank the Lord for the gift of the consecrated life and we pray for all our consecrated brothers and sisters, that on this World Day of Prayer and beyond, they may come to belong more and more to the Poor, Chaste, and Obedient Consecrated One, the purifying fire, our faithful and merciful high priest, the light of revelation to the gentiles, the glory of his people Israel, our Savior. And we ask him to let us, his servants, depart in his peace and bring that peace to the world!

            •  

            The readings for today’s Mass were: 

            Reading 1 MAL 3:1-4
            Thus says the Lord God:
            Lo, I am sending my messenger
            to prepare the way before me;
            And suddenly there will come to the temple
            the LORD whom you seek,
            And the messenger of the covenant whom you desire.
            Yes, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts.
            But who will endure the day of his coming?
            And who can stand when he appears?
            For he is like the refiner’s fire,
            or like the fuller’s lye.
            He will sit refining and purifying silver,
            and he will purify the sons of Levi,
            Refining them like gold or like silver
            that they may offer due sacrifice to the LORD.
            Then the sacrifice of Judah and Jerusalem
            will please the LORD,
            as in the days of old, as in years gone by.
            Responsorial Psalm PS 24:7, 8, 9, 10
            R. (8) Who is this king of glory? It is the Lord!
            Lift up, O gates, your lintels;
            reach up, you ancient portals,
            that the king of glory may come in!
            R. Who is this king of glory? It is the Lord!
            Who is this king of glory?
            The LORD, strong and mighty,
            the LORD, mighty in battle.
            R. Who is this king of glory? It is the Lord!
            Lift up, O gates, your lintels;
            reach up, you ancient portals,
            that the king of glory may come in!
            R. Who is this king of glory? It is the Lord!
            Who is this king of glory?
            The LORD of hosts; he is the king of glory.
            R. Who is this king of glory? It is the Lord!
            Reading 2 HEB 2:14-18
            Since the children share in blood and flesh,
            Jesus likewise shared in them,
            that through death he might destroy the one
            who has the power of death, that is, the Devil,
            and free those who through fear of death
            had been subject to slavery all their life.
            Surely he did not help angels
            but rather the descendants of Abraham;
            therefore, he had to become like his brothers and sisters
            in every way,
            that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest before God
            to expiate the sins of the people.
            Because he himself was tested through what he suffered,
            he is able to help those who are being tested. 

            Alleluia LK 2:32

            R. Alleluia, alleluia.

            A light of revelation to the Gentiles,
            and glory for your people Israel.
            R. Alleluia, alleluia.

            Gospel LK 2:22-40

            When the days were completed for their purification

            according to the law of Moses,
            Mary and Joseph took Jesus up to Jerusalem
            to present him to the Lord,
            just as it is written in the law of the Lord,
            Every male that opens the womb shall be consecrated to the Lord,
            and to offer the sacrifice of
            a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons,
            in accordance with the dictate in the law of the Lord.

            Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon.

            This man was righteous and devout,
            awaiting the consolation of Israel,
            and the Holy Spirit was upon him.
            It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit
            that he should not see death
            before he had seen the Christ of the Lord.
            He came in the Spirit into the temple;
            and when the parents brought in the child Jesus
            to perform the custom of the law in regard to him,
            he took him into his arms and blessed God, saying:

            “Now, Master, you may let your servant go

            in peace, according to your word,
            for my eyes have seen your salvation,
            which you prepared in the sight of all the peoples:
            a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
            and glory for your people Israel.”

            The child’s father and mother were amazed at what was said about him;

            and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother,
            “Behold, this child is destined
            for the fall and rise of many in Israel,
            and to be a sign that will be contradicted
            —and you yourself a sword will pierce—
            so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”
            There was also a prophetess, Anna,
            the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher.
            She was advanced in years,
            having lived seven years with her husband after her marriage,
            and then as a widow until she was eighty-four.
            She never left the temple,
            but worshiped night and day with fasting and prayer.
            And coming forward at that very time,
            she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child
            to all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem.

            When they had fulfilled all the prescriptions

            of the law of the Lord,
            they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth.
            The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom;
            and the favor of God was upon him.

            The post Encountering and Consecrating Ourselves to Jesus Our Light and Glory, Feast of the Presentation, February 2, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

            22 min
          • Presentation of the Lord, Conversations with Consequences Podcast, February 1, 2025

            Msgr. Roger J. Landry

            Conversations with Consequences Podcast
            Homily for the Feast of the Presentation, Vigil
            February 1, 2025

             

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

            https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.1.25_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

             

            The following text guided the homily: 

            • This is Msgr. Roger Landry, National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies, and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as together we enter into the consequential conversation Jesus wants to have with us this Sunday, when we will celebrate a great feast, one that is fixed 40 days after Christmas, so it can fall on any day of the week. It’s rare, then, that the Presentation of the Lord falls on a Sunday, which is a pity, because, ordinarily, only daily Mass-goers have a chance to celebrate this feast and all that it means in Jesus’ life and is supposed to mean in ours. Those who pray the Rosary meditate upon it at least twice a week in the fourth Joyful Mystery, but it’s great for the whole Church to celebrate this feast together and encourage each other to obtain in its fullness what this holy mystery contains.
            • The point of this feast is summarized in the beautiful instructions and prayers that are said just before the beautiful procession that begins the Mass. They frame the Presentation fundamentally as an encounter. “Today,” the priest says, “is the blessed day when Jesus was presented in the Temple by Mary and Joseph. 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, he continues. “So let us also, gathered together by the Holy Spirit, proceed to the house of God to encounter Christ. There we shall find himand recognize him in the breaking of the Bread until he comes again, revealed in glory.” This awareness of the Presentation as an encounter with Christ continues throughout the Mass. In the Eucharistic Preface, we pray that “we, too, [will] go forth rejoicing to encounter your salvation.” At the end of Mass, we ask for the grace that “we, going forth to meet the Lord, [may] obtain the gift of eternal life.” All of these prayers 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 candles we bless at the beginning of the Mass are supposed to symbolize our burning love for Jesus. We ask God the Father to bless them precisely “so that, treading the path of virtue, we may reach that light that never fails.” Our encounter with the Lord on the feast of the Presentation and then in the mutual encounter of a virtuous Christian life is meant to lead to an eternal encounter in the heavenly Temple. So that’s what celebrating the Feast of the Presentation well intends to bring about in us. Concretely, however, this celebration also contains many practical applications to help us keep that ongoing meeting with Christ throughout our life, as children, as young parents, and as those advanced in years. Let’s ponder those applications.
            • We begin with seniors. How was it that Simeon and Anna, the two seniors in this Sunday’s Gospel, recognized Jesus when he was brought to the temple? Among all the scores of babies brought to be presented in the Temple that day according to the law of Moses, how were they able to discern that the child wrapped in swaddling clothes in Mary’s arms was the long-awaited Messiah? It’s because they were present in the temple differently from everyone else. They were waitingfor the Lord in the temple. They were longing for him. They were expecting him in holiness and in prayer, having allowed the Lord to open their eyes to realities that can only be seen with faith-vision goggles. St. Luke describes them: Simeon was “righteous and devout,” guided by the Holy Spirit, and anxiously awaiting Israel’s consolation in the coming of the Messiah; Anna was a prophetess, who, once she became a widow at 27, essentially married herself to God, never leaving the temple, worshipping God there by prayer and fasting night and day — something she had been doing by that point for 57 years. Both lived looking toward God, waiting for his coming. They both 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 were both advanced in years but full of life because they were animated by the Holy Spirit and responsive to his action.
            • Seniors or Christians of any age who likewise want to be full of life have much to learn from them. Some can look at old age as a sad time, especially if one is a widow or widower. Others can regard it as a time just to have fun, to play as much golf as possible, to spend time on games, television and inconsequential hobbies. The best use of our later years is shown by Simeon and Anna. They used them to grow closer to the Lord, by encountering him in prayer, in time spent worshipping the Lord in his holy temple. They used them to reflect on their death, as Simeon did, and to live a life in loving expectation of the Lord’s coming. Simeon’s words, “Now, O Lord, let your servant depart in peace, … for my eyes have seen your salvation!,” each of us should want to say at the end of our life when the Lord Jesus comes for us. The vespers of our life are also a time to speak of God to others, to pass on real wisdom, to present the Lord to those who don’t see his presence, to show how he is the light shining in the midst of darkness, to manifest that loving and serving him is our greatest glory. I would encourage those who are retired who wish to be “full of life” in this world and the next to do all they can to imitate Simeon’s and Anna’s example, seeking to intensify their encounter with the Lord, responding to the Holy Spirit’s promptings drawing people to the temple perhaps by starting to come each day for daily Mass or for regular adoration.
            • Next we turn to what this feast teaches young adults and couples, especially those with young children. Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the temple to present him to God. In the law of Moses, every first-born child had to be given over to God and placed in the Lord’s service. This was to show that every gift comes from God and needs to be offered back to him, if he wills it, for his glory. Every first-born animal was actually sacrificed in the temple; first-born children obviously would never be killed, but a lamb, or for poor families (like the Holy Family) a pair of pigeons or turtledoves, would be offered vicariously. Mary and Joseph, fulfilling perfectly the law of Moses, came to offer the Son of God in the flesh back to God the Father, thereby showing that fulfilling the law of the Lord and consecrating our loved ones to him is a path of life! For Christian couples, this starts when they bring their newly born child to be baptized. The child is, in a certain sense, sacrificed: the child dies in Christ in the Sacrament of Baptism and Christ rises within to new life; the old Adam, with original sin, dies, and the New Adam, Christ, who is full of grace, rises. In baptism a child is not merely presentedin the temple, but marvelously becomes a temple of the Holy Spirit, spotless and immaculate on the inside, like a tabernacle holding the presence of God within. Parents are called to help the child become aware of this beautiful reality and structure his or her life in accordance with this blessing, helping their son or daughter view his or her life within God’s light, discovering the vocation God has given, and saying yes to it. At the end of the Gospel passage, we read that Mary and Joseph, when they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth, where Jesus grew in wisdom and strength in the favor of the Lord. Couples are called to take their children with them from the temple back home to their domestic church and there help their offspring to grow in wisdom, strength and the favor of the Lord, assisting them to live according to their consecration. That’s what Mary and Joseph are interceding for all parents to do for their children.
            • Finally, we turn to what all of us can learn from this feast today. Each of us has been presented in the temple of God by our parents and godparents, and we were consecrated. We’re called to renew that consecration regularly. We’re called to do it first and foremost in our encounters with God in prayer and the Sacraments. When we enter the Church, as we dip our fingers into the holy water font, we renew our baptism and the consecration of our lives to God. When we pray the Mass, we encounter the Lord anew, unite ourselves to him, and present ourselves together with him, as body and head, Bride and Bridegroom, to the Father in joint consecration.
            • This Sunday, we give thanks to God for the feast of the Presentation as we come to a culmination so much greater than what Simeon and Anna received that day in the temple. Simeon was able to hold Jesus in his arms as he praised God and prophesied that the Child was destined to be the ruin and the resurrection of many in Israel and a sign to be contradicted. Sunday we will have a chance to do far more than hold Jesus in our arms. We have a chance to receive him within and become one with Him in an encounter of loving Communion as Jesus seeks to unite us to him as a sign of contradiction to the ways of the world. He is the glory of Israel and the light of revelation to all peoples, and he seeks to make us, in communion with him, that light and glory, symbolized by the candles we will bless and carry at the beginning of the Mass. The Mass is the place where Jesus works that transformation. It’s at Mass he also gives us a foretaste of the eternal Temple where we, with Simeon, Anna, and all the saints, seek to behold and encounter him forever. Let us ask the Holy Spirit to move each of us, as he moved Simeon and Anna, to come to the temple on Sunday, to recognize Jesus, to rejoice in Jesus, to receive Jesus, and, transformed, to leave to reveal his light and his love to all people!

              •  

              The Gospel passages on which the homily was based was: 

              Gospel
              Luke 2:22-40 or 2:22-32

              When the days were completed for their purification

              according to the law of Moses,
              Mary and Joseph took Jesus up to Jerusalem
              to present him to the Lord,
              just as it is written in the law of the Lord,
              Every male that opens the womb shall be consecrated to the Lord,
              and to offer the sacrifice of
              a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons,
              in accordance with the dictate in the law of the Lord.

              Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon.

              This man was righteous and devout,
              awaiting the consolation of Israel,
              and the Holy Spirit was upon him.
              It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit
              that he should not see death
              before he had seen the Christ of the Lord.
              He came in the Spirit into the temple;
              and when the parents brought in the child Jesus
              to perform the custom of the law in regard to him,
              he took him into his arms and blessed God, saying:

              “Now, Master, you may let your servant go

              in peace, according to your word,
              for my eyes have seen your salvation,
              which you prepared in the sight of all the peoples:
              a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
              and glory for your people Israel.”

              The child’s father and mother were amazed at what was said about him;

              and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother,
              “Behold, this child is destined
              for the fall and rise of many in Israel,
              and to be a sign that will be contradicted
              -and you yourself a sword will pierce-
              so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”
              There was also a prophetess, Anna,
              the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher.
              She was advanced in years,
              having lived seven years with her husband after her marriage,
              and then as a widow until she was eighty-four.
              She never left the temple,
              but worshiped night and day with fasting and prayer.
              And coming forward at that very time,
              she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child
              to all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem.

              When they had fulfilled all the prescriptions

              of the law of the Lord,
              they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth.
              The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom;
              and the favor of God was upon him.

              OR:

              When the days were completed for their purification

              according to the law of Moses,
              Mary and Joseph took Jesus up to Jerusalem
              to present him to the Lord,
              just as it is written in the law of the Lord,
              Every male that opens the womb shall be consecrated to the Lord,
              and to offer the sacrifice of
              a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons,
              in accordance with the dictate in the law of the Lord.

              Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon.

              This man was righteous and devout,
              awaiting the consolation of Israel,
              and the Holy Spirit was upon him.
              It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit
              that he should not see death
              before he had seen the Christ of the Lord.
              He came in the Spirit into the temple;
              and when the parents brought in the child Jesus
              to perform the custom of the law in regard to him,
              he took him into his arms and blessed God, saying:

              “Now, Master, you may let your servant go

              in peace, according to your word,
              for my eyes have seen your salvation,
              which you prepared in the sight of all the peoples:
              a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
              and glory for your people Israel.”

              The post Presentation of the Lord, Conversations with Consequences Podcast, February 1, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

              10 min
            • Measuring Out by Christ’s Own Measure, Third Thursday in Ordinary Time (I), January 30, 2025

              Msgr. Roger J. Landry

              Chapel of the Eternal Word Television Network, Irondale, Alabama
              Thursday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time, Year I
              Memorial of St. Hyacinthe Marescotti, Virgin
              January 30, 2025
              Heb 10:19-25, Ps 24, Mk 4:21-25

               

              To watch the homily, as well as the Mass in which it was preached, please click below:

               

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

              https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.30.25_EWTN_Homily_1.mp3

               

              The following text guided the homily: 

              • Today in the Gospel Jesus gives us a principle that should govern every Christian life. “The measure with which you measure,” he states, “will be measured out to you, and still more will be given to you. To the one who has, more will be given; from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”
              • At a human, natural level, this is basically the law of “use or it or lose it,” which every student, every athlete, every musician knows. The more we learn, the more we can learn. The more we work out, the greater our stamina and strength and the tougher the exercises we can do. The more we practice the piano, the more our talent develops; the less we practice, the more our skills atrophy. If we develop a gift, it grows; if we neglect a gift, it diminishes.
              • At a spiritual level, the principle is also true. Jesus says in St. Luke’s Gospel, “Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap.” He instructs us to “give to everyone who asks,” to “forgive and we will be forgiven,” to “do to others as you would have them do to you” (Lk 6:30-38). The law of the Christian life is one of love and total generosity. Jesus Christ has taken on our nature and given it for our salvation down to the last drop of his Precious Blood. He has bestowed on us every spiritual blessing in the heavens. And now he calls us to love one another as he has loved us first. He wants us to measure out to others the lavish love he has measured to us. And that is meant to lead to a virtuous spiral. Having been loved totally by him, and seeking to love others to that same total Christ-like degree, we become capable of receiving even greater gifts from him.
              • That’s why Saint John of the Cross, one of the greatest doctors of the interior life in the history of the Church, has told us that if we don’t find love, put love, and we will find love. The more we pay forward by the Lord’s standard, the more we create a culture in which others live by that standard, and we receive more not just because we have a greater openness to the love that comes from God and others, but also because we have raised the bar for others and at least some will seek to live by that Christian standard we set.
              • The specific context of the Lord’s challenge and command in today’s Gospel is the way we respond to the gift of his holy word. He tells us, “Take care what you hear.” That’s because immediately before today’s passage, as we heard in yesterday’s Gospel, is the Parable of the Sower and the Seed, which describes not just how we receive the seed of the Word of God but even more generously how generously we allow the Lord to act on our life. Jesus describes that there are four types of soil with which we receive his Word and work. The first is hardened, stubborn, almost impenetrable, and the Word he generously seeks to sow is totally wasted. The second is rocky, or superficial, in which we seem to bear fruit initially, but then it gets scorched by the heat of the noonday sun. In the Holy Land, there is a thick layer of limestone 3-5 inches under the soil in many parts of the country. The seed penetrates, but the roots can’t go very far, which is why when the sun rises, it dessicates the soil and kills the new growth. People with this soil are prone to give in too much to their preferences, to their likes and dislikes, and don’t allow God’s word to go very deeply in their life. The third soil is thorny, and thorns, Jesus describes, are not sins, but worldly cares and anxieties and the lure of riches and pleasure. These worries or these human desires can often exhaust our attention and distract us from what God wants to do. But the type of soil Jesus wants is good and rich soil, which he says bears fruit 30, 60, or 100 fold, which changes our life in 30, 60 or 100 ways over time. Jesus tells us to “take care what you hear.”
              • First, he wants us to pay attention, to listen well to what he’s saying, to receive on good soil the seeds he sows as he speaks. He wants us to be at the edge of our seats when Jesus speaks, attentive to his every word, remembering it, pondering it in our hearts, placing it together with what he’s taught us before and letting it become a foundation for what he wishes to teach us later in our prayer, in our listening to Sacred Scripture, in what he reveals to us in day-to-day events.
              • The second way he wants us to take care of what we hear is to treasure what he reveals, to nourish it, to water it so that it may grow.
              • And the third way is to teach it, to pass it on, to measure it out as generously as he has sought to sow it in his. Any teacher will tell you that if you really want to learn something, try to teach it to others. That’s why Jesus begins today’s Gospel asking, “Is a lamp brought in to be placed under a bushel basket or under a bed, and not to be placed on a lampstand?” Jesus has lit the lamp of our minds and hearts with his holy word and he doesn’t want us to place it under a bushel basket or a bed but on a lamp stand. He doesn’t want us to keep what he teaches us secret but to make it visible, to bring it to the light of day so that others might similarly be illuminated. The word should take on our own flesh and we should become living commentaries of it in the midst of others, who should be able to “see” it in us even before they “hear” the word through us.
              • I am honored to be the National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies, four papal societies that are all directed toward sharing our faith until the ends of the earth: the Society of the Propagation of the Faith, which most know of because Archbishop Fulton Sheen led it for 16 years; the Missionary Childhood Association, formerly Holy Childhood, which asks children to help their peers grow in faith throughout the world; the Society of Saint Peter the Apostle, which helps young men and young women follow vocations to the priesthood and religious life in missionary territories where they, and their local churches, are too poor to fund their studies; and the Missionary Union, which links cloistered sisters and religious men, the homebound, and so many others in a union to pray for the missions just like the co-patroness of the missions, St. Therese Lisieux, did from a Carmel in France.
              • Before Jesus ascended, he gave us all the command to go to the whole world, to all nations, and proclaim the Gospel to every creature, baptizing them and bringing them into a sacramental life, teaching them everything he has taught us so that they might be faithful disciples and apostles, remembering that he is with us always until the end of time. He gave as the Father’s first missionary to give us everything we needed — his Word, himself in the Sacraments, his trust in this great commission, his presence in the Eucharist until the end of time — and on the night he rose from the dead told us, “Just as the Father has sent me, so I send you.” He wants us to measure out to others the Word he has without measure given to us. How faithful have we been to that summons? Do we share the faith with our family members and friends and colleagues at work or school? Do we pray and sacrifice for those missionaries across the globe who are generously giving their whole life so that others may come to know, love and serve Christ in this world so as to be happy with them in the next? Do we hide our faith like a light under a lampstand or do we live our faith, as the light of the world reflecting Christ’s own risen light, so that others in seeing our good works may glorify God the Father in heaven together with Jesus and with us? Today is a day in which Jesus once again gives us himself in his Word and the Word made flesh so that we may generously measure out the power of that word to others, so that we may say, “This is my body, this is my blood, this is my sweat, my tears, all I am and have given out of love for you.
              • The Letter to the Hebrews today focuses on the radiance of faith that should flow from all Jesus has done for us. It describes how Jesus has entered the eternal sanctuary of heaven that he has opened for us through the veil of his flesh. The sacred author tells us that Jesus’ actions should give us a “sincere heart” and absolute trust,” a pure conscience and soul so that we can “hold unwaveringly to our confession that gives us hope,” “encourage one another” and “rouse one another to love and good works” with undiminished light. As the Letter has been telling us over the last two and half weeks, Jesus has entered heaven to intercede for us, still generously obtaining for us all that he knows we need in order to be able to fulfill our mission on earth, to fill others with the hope that he gives us, and to help them, in turn, shine as light in the world and bear fruit 30, 60 or 100 fold.
              • Today the Church gives us the example of someone who eventually lived by this standard. We celebrate today the Third Order Franciscan holy one Saint Hyacintha Mariscotti (1585-1640). She was a pious child, but eventually gave in to the thorns of worldly cares and anxieties. She wanted to marry a Marchese, but he spurned her for her younger sister, and she made such a passive-aggressive fuss about it that her father sent her to enter the convent of the sisters who had taught her. But if she were going to go, she wanted to live as a noble, rather than according to the virtue and vow of poverty. She kept a private stock of food and her own kitchen, wore a habit made of the finest fabrics, and hosted all types of visitors for 15 years. She still had some faith, like devotion to Our Lady, to the baby Jesus, and to the Holy Eucharist, but she was barely lukewarm and self-centered. Eventually she got sick and the priest who brought her the sacraments in her room, seeing all of her luxuries, admonished her, and told us that it appeared the only reason she was in the convent was to help the devil. She was stunned by his words and resolved to amend her life. From that point forward, she allowed the measure of poor, obedient, chaste and self-giving Christ to become her own. She lived with great asceticism, wearing an old tunic, going barefoot, fasting on bread and water, keeping all night vigils, nursing the sick during the plague, gathering alms for the convalescent and prisoners, and helping to build homes for the aged. She founded two societies of Oblates of Mary to help her in these works of mercy. They were called Sacconi, because they were those who carried big sacks of food to help the indigent. After she died, the people were tearing so many pieces of her habit that she needed to be dressed anew three separate times. She needed three habits after her death. Her life is a sign to us that, no matter what we’ve measured until now, we, too, have time to change. We, too, can start living by Christ light. We do can start bearing abundant fruit from the word he sows in us. We too can measure out the measure we receive.
              • Today at Mass Christ tells us “Take care what you hear.” He wants us to put what he teaches on a lampstand, to preach it from the roof tops, to pour out what he is pouring in. He has pierced the veil of the sanctuary to make it possible for us to bear as much fruit in our life, by his grace, as St. Hyacintha did in hers. May we up to this mission in which Jesus reconstitutes today so that one day, with St. Hyacintha, he may measure back to us eternal life.

                •  

                The readings for today’s Mass were: 

                Reading 1
                Hebrews 10:19-25

                Brothers and sisters:

                Since through the Blood of Jesus
                we have confidence of entrance into the sanctuary
                by the new and living way he opened for us through the veil,
                that is, his flesh,
                and since we have “a great priest over the house of God,”
                let us approach with a sincere heart and in absolute trust,
                with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience
                and our bodies washed in pure water.
                Let us hold unwaveringly to our confession that gives us hope,
                for he who made the promise is trustworthy.
                We must consider how to rouse one another to love and good works.
                We should not stay away from our assembly,
                as is the custom of some, but encourage one another,
                and this all the more as you see the day drawing near.

                Responsorial Psalm
                Psalm 24:1-2, 3-4ab, 5-6

                R. (see 6) Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face.

                The LORD’s are the earth and its fullness;
                the world and those who dwell in it.
                For he founded it upon the seas
                and established it upon the rivers.
                R. Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face.
                Who can ascend the mountain of the LORD?
                or who may stand in his holy place?
                He whose hands are sinless, whose heart is clean,
                who desires not what is vain.
                R. Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face.
                He shall receive a blessing from the LORD,
                a reward from God his savior.
                Such is the race that seeks for him,
                that seeks the face of the God of Jacob.
                R. Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face.

                Alleluia
                Psalm 119:105

                R. Alleluia, alleluia.

                A lamp to my feet is your word,
                a light to my path.
                R. Alleluia, alleluia.

                Gospel
                Mark 4:21-25

                Jesus said to his disciples,

                “Is a lamp brought in to be placed under a bushel basket
                or under a bed,
                and not to be placed on a lampstand?
                For there is nothing hidden except to be made visible;
                nothing is secret except to come to light.
                Anyone who has ears to hear ought to hear.”
                He also told them, “Take care what you hear.
                The measure with which you measure will be measured out to you,
                and still more will be given to you.
                To the one who has, more will be given;
                from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”

                The post Measuring Out by Christ’s Own Measure, Third Thursday in Ordinary Time (I), January 30, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                28 min
              • The Theology and Art of Preaching, Clergy Days for the Diocese of Tulsa, January 28, 2025

                Msgr. Roger J. Landry

                Diocese of Tulsa, Continuing Education for the Clergy
                January 28, 2025

                 

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

                https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.28.25_The_Theology_and_Art_of_Preaching_1.mp3

                 

                To download a PDF of the slides of the talk, please click below:

                The Theology and Art of Preaching

                The post The Theology and Art of Preaching, Clergy Days for the Diocese of Tulsa, January 28, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                1 hr 4 min
              • The Hope the Lord Gives Us Through His Word, Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), Word of God Sunday, January 26, 2025

                Msgr. Roger J. Landry

                Corpus Christi Monastery, Bronx, NY
                Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
                January 26, 2025
                Neh 8:2-6.8-10, Ps 19, 1 Cor 12:12-30, Lk 1:1-4.4:14-21

                 

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

                https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.26.25_OPs_Homily_1.mp3

                 

                The following points were attempted in the homily: 

                • This Sunday we celebrate for the sixth time a new and important annual feast, the Sunday of the Word of God, which Pope Francis established to accentuate the importance that Sacred Scripture is meant to have in the faith, prayer and lives of believers. He announced it intentionally on September 30, 2019; September 30 is the annual liturgical feast of St. Jerome, the famous translator of the Bible from the Greek and Hebrew into Latin, then the common language of the people; and he did so in 2019 leading up to the 160realize the certainty of the teachings
                  • you have received.0th anniversary of St. Jerome’s death and birth into eternal life the following year. As many of you will recall, St. Jerome is famous for emphasizing, “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ”: that unless we are familiar with what Jesus said and did in the Gospel, how he fulfilled all the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament in peoples’ hearing, and how the apostles proclaimed him, we really do not know him. Saint Jerome learned that lesson the hard way. As a brilliant young student traveling to study from the great masters of his day, he got deathly ill with an influenza that took the life of his companions. He had been up until that point a lukewarm Christian, far more passionate about Greco-Roman literature than the faith. During his sickness he had a dream in which he appeared before the judgment seat of Christ. When he professed he was a Christian, Jesus replied that he was, rather, a Ciceronian, because he knew far more about Cicero and his writings than he did about Christ and his teachings. It rocked Jerome to the core. He didn’t know Christ because he didn’t know the Scriptures! After he awoke and recovered, he resolved to pour his mind, heart and time into the study and diffusion of the Word of God. In establishing the feast, Pope Francis expressed a desire that St. Jerome’s example of converted zeal would be contagious, that each of us would “grow,” he said, “in religious and intimate familiarity with the sacred Scriptures,” “appreciate the inexhaustible riches contained in that constant dialogue between the Lord and his people,” “experience anew how the risen Lord opens up for us the treasury of his word enabling us to proclaim its unfathomable riches before the world,” and “marked by this decisive relationship with the living word…, grow in love and faithful witness.” The theme of today’s sixth celebration of the Sunday of the Word of God is “I hope in your word,” taken from Psalm 119 (119:74). God through his Word wants to fill us with hope. The word “hope” appears about 150 times in Sacred Scripture. We draw hope from God’s revelation, which manifests his committed love to us. We place our hope in the fulfillment of all God’s promises that we hear and read and allow to take on our own flesh. We seek, having heard and been transformed by the Word of God, to bring that hope to others!
                • We see the hope that comes from God’s word and from the fulfillment of his promises in today’s Liturgy of the Word. In the Gospel, we encounter Jesus preaching in his hometown synagogue, just as St. Luke tells us in what he calls his “orderly sequence” that Jesus was doing in all the synagogues of the region of Galilee, leaving the people astonished. He was handed the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah and read, from Isaiah 61, the passage describing the work of the eventual Messiah: he would be filled with the Spirit of the Lord, anointed to preach the Good News to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to the oppressed, to help the blind see, and to announce a Jubilee Year (Is 61:1-2). After reading that passage, which enfleshed and expressed the longing of the Jewish people for centuries, Jesus very dramatically handed the scroll back to the Chazzan, the synagogue attendant, and sat down, as all the eyes in the room were locked on him. And he gave a shocking, one-sentence homily: “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” Today, in other words, the Messiah has come and he is speaking to you now! Today, the long awaited one, whom you have been eagerly anticipating for more than a millennium, is here! Today the Word of God that filled you with hope is now seeing that hope actualized!
                • The words of Isaiah’s prophecy were being unveiled before their eyes and decoded to their ears. The Spirit of the Lord, who had come down upon Jesus in a visible way at his Baptism in the Jordan, as we celebrated two weeks ago, was very much still upon him. Jesus was proclaiming the Gospel to the poor and lowly, to those who were humble enough to receive it, all throughout Galilee and making them lavishly rich with the treasure of God’s holy revelation. He was restoring sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, vigor to cripples, health to the moribund and would soon even be restoring life to the dead. He was proclaiming liberty to those in the bondage of sin through his merciful forgiveness and was letting those oppressed by the devil go free through exorcisms. In all of this, he was proclaiming a “year acceptable to the Lord,” a Jubilee Year, which was a reset button that God wanted the Jews to press every 50 years to reestablish their bonds with him and through charity with each other. All of the aspects of this Messianic prophecy — and all the others — Jesus was realizing live in their midst.
                • Jesus wants continuously to fulfill Sacred Scripture in our hearing, before our eyes, in our minds, hearts and lives. He wants us to experience the completion of the hope we have placed in his Word. He wants to preach the Good News to us and desires that we be sufficiently poor in spirit to receive it, recognizing how much we need that gift. He has come to set us free from captivity and oppression, especially to our slavery to addictions and sins. He has come to help us recognize our blind spots and recover our sight, so that we might first see him in prayer and the Sacraments and then learn how to see all things in his light. He wants to proclaim not just a year acceptable to the Lord, not just one year of Jubilee like the Jubilee of Hope now one month old, but a lifetime and eternity pleasing to God and joyous to us. He wants to engage us in a daily consequential conversation of love and life that knows no end, planting the seed of the Word of God within us and helping us to bear great fruit, letting his word become fulfilled in and through us. He wants us ultimately — like Saint Luke and like those who he calls “ministers of the Word” who transmitted the Gospel to his own generation — in turn to pass on to others the reasons for the hope we bear within through “realizing the certainty of the teachings [we] have received.”
                • The same Jesus who entered his hometown Synagogue on the Sabbath enters this Convent in the Bronx today. He speaks to us live as the Gospel is read. He comes to teach us, to heal us, to console us, to be with us, to strengthen us and to send us out. But for that transformation to occur, we first must accept him, let his word enter, take on our flesh, and dwell within us. He wants us to receive him and his word on good soil and bear abundant fruit. He wants us to respond not like the majority of Nazarenes, but as Mary of Nazareth, saying, “Let it be done to me according to your word.” He wants to help us realize that his words are our “spirit and life,” that he speaks the “words of eternal life,” and that, as we prayed in the Psalm, his teaching is perfect, refreshing, trustworthy, wise, right, joyful, enlightening, pure, enduring, true, and just.
                • We see how to receive the Word of God aright, how to respond to it, and how to rejoice in it as the fulfillment of the deepest longings for which God has placed in our hearts, in today’s first reading. The setting was after the exile when, rummaging through the ruins of the Temple, they found the “Book of the Law of Moses,” what the Jews would call the Torah. They rediscovered with incredible joy and gratitude God’s holy Word. During their 70 years in Babylon, the exiles had recognized that they had been brought into captivity ultimately because they had failed to live by God’s word. They were determined not only not to let that happen again but to make up for 70 years of lost time. Ezra the Scribe brought the book of the law before the men, women and children old enough to understand (basically five and above) and proceeded to read from the Torah from dawn to midday — basically six or seven hours — and then “all the people listened attentively.” When he opened the scroll, all the people stood out of reverence. Ezra blessed and thanked God for his word and all raised their hands high and answered, “Amen! Amen!,” a Hebrew word that means “to uphold,” showing that they were intending to build their lives on it. After that, they knelt and bowed before the Lord who was speaking to them as his holy word was announced. We find in this passage seven things that should characterize our interaction with Jesus’ word as we hear it together, seven ways that show us how to pray what we hear, to assimilate what God speaks, what is typically called Lectio Divina, or “divine reading” or meditation.
                  • The first was reading. Ezra and the scribes read plainly from God’s word in discrete passages, like points of meditation. The word “read” in Hebrew means to “proclaim” since reading Sacred Scripture was always done aloud. It also means, “translate,” because many of the post-exilic Jews were at best rusty in Hebrew. It points to the connection between reading and proclaiming, making it intelligible to the minds and lives of those hearing. The first step is to let God speak.
                  • The second aspect was interpreting, or explaining the word of God. As the scribes read, they helped the people to grasp some of the applications. There are often many meanings to God’s word. The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes three different types of spiritual meanings, one linked to Jesus (typological), another to ourselves and our response in faith (moral), and a third to heaven and to our vocation to be saints (anagogical). When we ponder and proclaim the word of God, when we listen to and read it, this aspect of explaining it is very important if we’re ever going to reach the third stage.
                  • The third stage was understanding the Word of God. This is far more than an intellectual grasp of the material, but the Hebrew word means that there’s a knowledge at the level of one’s entire personality and that it impacts us at the level of our whole being. The Latin translation for this understanding is sapientia, which is normally understood as “wisdom,” but its literal translation is to “taste.” When we understand the Word of God, we taste it, it delights us, it becomes part of us as we become what we eat, although, as Ezekiel experienced when God had him eat the scroll of the Word of God, sometimes this digestion of God’s word can seem bitter because it leads to the crucifixion of our old way of being.
                  • These three stages are all basically the first movement of the Word of God as we seek to grasp at the level of our being what God is saying to us, what he wants fulfilled in our hearing. It’s like the liturgy of the Word when God’s word is proclaimed through the readings and then interpreted and helped to be comprehended in the homily.
                  • The next four stages involve our response to what has been announced, explained and comprehended.
                    • The fourth stage is listening to or literally obeying  the Word of God. Nehemiah tells us, “All the people listened attentively to the book of the law.” Listening is far more than just hearing what was read. The Jewish people are basically formed out of the command to listen. The famous Shema they pray each day reminds them of Moses’ words, “Hear, O Israel, that the Lord your God is God alone.” To listen means something different than merely absorbing the Word through our ears, as if it were just a form of auditory reading. Rather, in Hebrew there’s no distinction between hearing and It’s the same word. To listen to the Word of God is to listen to it as a word to be done, as an imperative once understood. In Latin, we keep the connection between hearing (audire) and obeying (ob-audire), which means a listening so attentive that we’re hanging on every word. St. James calls us not to be merely idle listeners but “doers” of the Word. We’re called to say like Mary, who was praised by Jesus for hearing the Word of God and doing it, “Let it be done to me according to your Word.” To be a member of Jesus’ family, Jesus said elsewhere, we must do the will of the Father in heaven. This is the type of attentive listening to the Word that is being described here. Listening in order to act.
                    • The fifth stage is converting. “Do not be sad, and do not weep,” the people are told, because they were all weeping as they heard the words of the law. St. James says the Word of God is like a mirror, and when they looked at the Mirror of God’s word, they saw who they were supposed to be and who they in fact were and it brought them to tears. They bowed down and prostrated themselves before the Lord, their faces to the ground. Likewise, the Word of God is meant to bring us to conversion, to change our ways, so that we may conform ourselves to what God is telling us through his Word. The ultimate goal of the Church’s proclaiming the Word of God, as the Second Vatican Council taught in its decree for priests, is conversion and holiness.
                    • The sixth stage is responding to the word of God with acts of charity. The text tells us that “all the people raised their hands high, saying ‘Amen. Amen’” and immediately began to allot portions of food and drink to those who didn’t have any “because they understood the words that had been expounded to them.” The real impact of the Word of God is that it’s supposed to help us to love others as God has loved us. The conversion it brings about is meant to help us love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength and love our neighbor. Hearing the word of God must change our life and make it more loving. That’s what we see happened with the Jews who “understood” the words of the Lord: it spurred them to charity. That’s what happened in the life of St. Marianne Cope, a fellow New Yorker born in Germany who grew up in Syracuse, whose feast the Church celebrated on Thursday, leading her to enter the Sisters of St. Francis in order to teach and care for the sick and ultimately to respond to St. Damian of Molokai’s plea for help to go to Hawaii and teach and care for the lepers. That’s what happened in the life of St. Teresa of Calcutta, who when she heard Jesus speak to her summoning her to be a religious and later, on the train to Darjeeling, calling her within her call to quench his infinite thirst for souls, later to be his light, and always to care for him in the distressing disguise of the poor, that’s what she did. The same thing is supposed to happen in us, that hearing the Word of God is meant to transform us to learn how to proclaim it above all in body language, in deeds of love.
                    • The seventh and last stage is celebrating. There was a great feast. “Go, eat rich foods and drink sweet drinks,” they were told, “for today is holy to our Lord. Do not be saddened this day, for rejoicing in the Lord must be your strength!” The Word of God is meant to fill us with joy and lead us to celebrate that joy with others, sharing our joy, our food, our drink, our lives with others. Rejoicing is supposed to be our strength as believers and is meant to flow from the total transformation the Word of God does in us. “The precepts of the Lord give joy to the heart,” as we prayed in the Responsorial Psalm. There’s obviously an allusion to the Eucharistic feast here, when, after having heard the Word of God, we eat the most unbelievable food ever and drink the choicest beverage of all time. The Liturgy of the Word is interconnected with and leads to the Liturgy of the Eucharist. And the Liturgy of the Eucharist is meant to lead to the Liturgy of Life. It’s supposed to lead to an overflowing, loving, joyful communion, as we “do this in memory of Christ” and seek to give ourselves and our lives to save others and lift them up.
                    • We hope in God’s word, which is meant to lead us to conversion, holiness, charity and joy. No matter what part of the Mystical Body of Christ we are — whether, to use St. Paul’s metaphor from today’s passage to the Corinthians, we’re a foot or a hand, an eye or an ear, whether we’ve been given the charism of apostles, prophets, teachers, miracle workers, priests or Dominican nuns — all of us in Jesus’ Mystical Body are called to help each other hear the Word, look with love on God and others, use our feet to go to them and our hands to care for them. The Bible is not a dead document but a “living word,” since the Word of God is not principally a book or a series of books but a Person, an incarnate Word, whom we encounter through the Bible’s sacred words. He’s the one who has come into this Chapel like he entered the Synagogue of Nazareth. He’s the one whose words are Spirit and life. He’s the one who continually fulfills Scripture in our hearing! And he’s the one who through that fulfillment seeks to bring us to the fullness of life.
                    • We know that Jesus’ words are not merely informative, but They change us and change reality. When he said, “Let there be light,” there was light. When he said “Quiet!” to demons, they shut their traps. When he calmed a storm, there was immediately tranquility on the sea. And today Jesus speaks for us the same performative words he did in the Upper Room on Holy Thursday, saying over simple bread and wine through a priest through whom he is acting, “This is my body” and “This is the chalice of my blood!” The power of his words totally change bread and wine into Himself. This is the fulfillment of the hope of God’s word found in the Tree of Life in Genesis, in the sacrifice of Abel, Melchizedek, and Isaac, in the Passover feast, in the manna in the desert, of the multiplication of loaves and fish, and of so many other foretellings in which God had stoked the appetite of his people for the perfection of their hope. Let us receive the double fulfillment of these words in our hearing and allow that perfect, refreshing, trustworthy, wise, right, joyful, enlightening, pure, enduring, true, and just, and life-giving Word to enter in, change us and through us change the world!

                      •  

                      The readings for today’s Mass were: 

                      Neh 8:2-4a, 5-6, 8-10

                      Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly,

                      which consisted of men, women,
                      and those children old enough to understand.
                      Standing at one end of the open place that was before the Water Gate,
                      he read out of the book from daybreak till midday,
                      in the presence of the men, the women,
                      and those children old enough to understand;
                      and all the people listened attentively to the book of the law.
                      Ezra the scribe stood on a wooden platform
                      that had been made for the occasion.
                      He opened the scroll
                      so that all the people might see it
                      — for he was standing higher up than any of the people —;
                      and, as he opened it, all the people rose.
                      Ezra blessed the LORD, the great God,
                      and all the people, their hands raised high, answered,
                      “Amen, amen!”
                      Then they bowed down and prostrated themselves before the LORD,
                      their faces to the ground.
                      Ezra read plainly from the book of the law of God,
                      interpreting it so that all could understand what was read.
                      Then Nehemiah, that is, His Excellency, and Ezra the priest-scribe
                      and the Levites who were instructing the people
                      said to all the people:
                      “Today is holy to the LORD your God.
                      Do not be sad, and do not weep”—
                      for all the people were weeping as they heard the words of the law.
                      He said further: “Go, eat rich foods and drink sweet drinks,
                      and allot portions to those who had nothing prepared;
                      for today is holy to our LORD.
                      Do not be saddened this day,
                      for rejoicing in the LORD must be your strength!”

                      Responsorial Psalm
                      Ps 19:8, 9, 10, 15

                      R. (cf John 6:63c) Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life.

                      The law of the LORD is perfect,
                      refreshing the soul;
                      The decree of the LORD is trustworthy,
                      giving wisdom to the simple.
                      R. Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life.
                      The precepts of the LORD are right,
                      rejoicing the heart;
                      The command of the LORD is clear,
                      enlightening the eye.
                      R. Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life.
                      The fear of the LORD is pure,
                      enduring forever;
                      The ordinances of the LORD are true,
                      all of them just.
                      R. Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life.
                      Let the words of my mouth and the thought of my heart
                      find favor before you,
                      O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.
                      R. Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life.

                      Reading II
                      1 Cor 12:12-30

                      Brothers and sisters:

                      As a body is one though it has many parts,
                      and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body,
                      so also Christ.
                      For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body,
                      whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons,
                      and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.

                      Now the body is not a single part, but many.

                      If a foot should say,
                      “Because I am not a hand I do not belong to the body, “
                      it does not for this reason belong any less to the body.
                      Or if an ear should say,
                      “Because I am not an eye I do not belong to the body, “
                      it does not for this reason belong any less to the body.
                      If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be?
                      If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?
                      But as it is, God placed the parts,
                      each one of them, in the body as he intended.
                      If they were all one part, where would the body be?
                      But as it is, there are many parts, yet one body.
                      The eye cannot say to the hand, “I do not need you, “
                      nor again the head to the feet, “I do not need you.”
                      Indeed, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker
                      are all the more necessary,
                      and those parts of the body that we consider less honorable
                      we surround with greater honor,
                      and our less presentable parts are treated with greater propriety,
                      whereas our more presentable parts do not need this.
                      But God has so constructed the body
                      as to give greater honor to a part that is without it,
                      so that there may be no division in the body,
                      but that the parts may have the same concern for one another.
                      If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it;
                      if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy.

                      Now you are Christ’s body, and individually parts of it.

                      Some people God has designated in the church
                      to be, first, apostles; second, prophets; third, teachers;
                      then, mighty deeds;
                      then gifts of healing, assistance, administration,
                      and varieties of tongues.
                      Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers?
                      Do all work mighty deeds? Do all have gifts of healing?
                      Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret?

                      Alleluia
                      Cf. Lk 4:18

                      R. Alleluia, alleluia.

                      The Lord sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor,
                      and to proclaim liberty to captives.
                      R. Alleluia, alleluia.

                      Gospel
                      Lk 1:1-4; 4:14-21

                      Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events

                      that have been fulfilled among us,
                      just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning
                      and ministers of the word have handed them down to us,
                      I too have decided,
                      after investigating everything accurately anew,
                      to write it down in an orderly sequence for you,
                      most excellent Theophilus,
                      so that you may realize the certainty of the teachings
                      you have received.

                      Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit,

                      and news of him spread throughout the whole region.
                      He taught in their synagogues and was praised by all.

                      He came to Nazareth, where he had grown up,

                      and went according to his custom
                      into the synagogue on the sabbath day.
                      He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah.
                      He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written:
                      The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
                      because he has anointed me 
                      to bring glad tidings to the poor.
                      He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives
                      and recovery of sight to the blind,
                      to let the oppressed go free,
                      and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.
                      Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down,
                      and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him.
                      He said to them,
                      “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”

                      The post The Hope the Lord Gives Us Through His Word, Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), Word of God Sunday, January 26, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                      29 min
                    • Rejoicing in the Word Fulfilled, Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), January 26, 2025

                      Msgr. Roger J. Landry

                      Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
                      Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
                      January 26, 2025
                      Neh 8:2-6.8-10, Ps 19, 1 Cor 12:12-30, Lk 1:1-4.4:14-21

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

                      https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.26.25_MCs_Homily_1.mp3

                       

                      The following points were attempted in the homily: 

                      • This Sunday we celebrate for the sixth time a new and important annual feast, the Sunday of the Word of God, which Pope Francis established to accentuate the importance that Sacred Scripture is meant to have in the faith, prayer and lives of believers. He announced it intentionally on September 30, 2019; September 30 is the annual liturgical feast of St. Jerome, the famous translator of the Bible from the Greek and Hebrew into Latin, then the common language of the people; and he did so in 2019 leading up to the 1600th anniversary of St. Jerome’s death and birth into eternal life the following year. As many of you will recall, St. Jerome is famous for emphasizing, “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ”: that unless we are familiar with what Jesus said and did in the Gospel, how he fulfilled all the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament in peoples’ hearing, and how the apostles proclaimed him, we really do not know him. Saint Jerome learned that lesson the hard way. As a brilliant young student traveling to study from the great masters of his day, he got deathly ill with an influenza that took the life of his companions. He had been up until that point a lukewarm Christian, far more passionate about Greco-Roman literature than the faith. During his sickness he had a dream in which he appeared before the judgment seat of Christ. When he professed he was a Christian, Jesus replied that he was, rather, a Ciceronian, because he knew far more about Cicero and his writings than he did about Christ and his teachings. It rocked Jerome to the core. He didn’t know Christ because he didn’t know the Scriptures! After he awoke and recovered, he resolved to pour his mind, heart and time into the study and diffusion of the Word of God. In establishing the feast, Pope Francis expressed a desire that St. Jerome’s example of converted zeal would be contagious, that each of us would “grow,” he said, “in religious and intimate familiarity with the sacred Scriptures,” “appreciate the inexhaustible riches contained in that constant dialogue between the Lord and his people,” “experience anew how the risen Lord opens up for us the treasury of his word enabling us to proclaim its unfathomable riches before the world,” and “marked by this decisive relationship with the living word…, grow in love and faithful witness.” The theme of today’s sixth celebration of the Sunday of the Word of God is “I hope in your word,” taken from Psalm 119 (119:74). God through his Word wants to fill us with hope. The word “hope” appears about 150 times in Sacred Scripture. We draw hope from God’s revelation, which manifests his committed love to us. We place our hope in the fulfillment of all God’s promises that we hear and read and allow to take on our own flesh.
                      • We see the hope that comes from God’s word and from the fulfillment of his promises in today’s Liturgy of the Word. In the Gospel, we encounter Jesus preaching in his hometown synagogue, just as St. Luke tells us in what he calls his “orderly sequence” that Jesus was doing in all the synagogues of the region of Galilee, leaving the people astonished. He was handed the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah and read, from Isaiah 61, the passage describing the work of the eventual Messiah: he would be filled with the Spirit of the Lord, anointed to preach the Good News to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to the oppressed, to help the blind see, and to announce a Jubilee Year (Is 61:1-2). After reading that passage, which enfleshed and expressed the longing of the Jewish people for centuries, Jesus very dramatically handed the scroll back to the Chazzan, the synagogue attendant, and sat down, as all the eyes in the room were locked on him. And he gave a shocking, one-sentence homily: “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” Today, in other words, the Messiah has come and he is speaking to you now! Today, the long awaited one, whom you have been eagerly anticipating for more than a millennium, is here! Today the Word of God that filled you with hope is now seeing that hope actualized!
                      • The words of Isaiah’s prophecy were being unveiled before their eyes and decoded to their ears. The Spirit of the Lord, who had come down upon Jesus in a visible way at his Baptism in the Jordan, as we celebrated two weeks ago, was very much still upon him. Jesus was proclaiming the Gospel to the poor and lowly, to those who were humble enough to receive it, all throughout Galilee and making them lavishly rich with the treasure of God’s holy revelation. He was restoring sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, vigor to cripples, health to the moribund and would soon even be restoring life to the dead. He was proclaiming liberty to those in the bondage of sin through his merciful forgiveness and was letting those oppressed by the devil go free through exorcisms. In all of this, he was proclaiming a “year acceptable to the Lord,” a Jubilee Year, which was a reset button that God wanted the Jews to press every 50 years to reestablish their bonds with him and through charity with each other. All of the aspects of this Messianic prophecy — and all the others — Jesus was realizing live in their midst.
                      • Jesus wants continuously to fulfill Sacred Scripture in our hearing, before our eyes, in our minds, hearts and lives. He wants us to experience the completion of the hope we have placed in his Word. He wants to preach the Good News to us and desires that we be sufficiently poor in spirit to receive it, recognizing how much we need that gift. He has come to set us free from captivity and oppression, especially to our slavery to addictions and sins. He has come to help us recognize our blind spots and recover our sight, so that we might first see him in prayer and the Sacraments and then learn how to see all things in his light. He wants to proclaim not just a year acceptable to the Lord, not just one year of Jubilee like the Jubilee of Hope now one month old, but a lifetime and eternity pleasing to God and joyous to us. He wants to engage us in a daily consequential conversation of love and life that knows no end, planting the seed of the Word of God within us and helping us to bear great fruit, letting his word become fulfilled in and through us.
                      • The same Jesus who entered his hometown Synagogue on the Sabbath enters this Convent in the Bronx today. He speaks to us live as the Gospel is read. He comes to teach us, to heal us, to console us, to be with us, to strengthen us and to send us out. But for that transformation to occur, we first must accept him, let his word enter, take on our flesh, and dwell within us. He wants us to receive him and his word on good soil and bear abundant fruit. He wants us to respond not like the majority of Nazarenes, but as Mary of Nazareth, saying, “Let it be done to me according to your word.” He wants to help us realize that his words are our “spirit and life,” that he speaks the “words of eternal life,” and that, as we prayed in the Psalm, his teaching is perfect, refreshing, trustworthy, wise, right, joyful, enlightening, pure, enduring, true, and just.
                      • We see how to receive the Word of God aright, how to respond to it, and how to rejoice in it as the fulfillment of the deepest longings for which God has placed in our hearts, in today’s first reading. The setting was after the exile when, rummaging through the ruins of the Temple, they found the “Book of the Law of Moses,” what the Jews would call the Torah. They rediscovered with incredible joy and gratitude God’s holy Word. During their 70 years in Babylon, the exiles had recognized that they had been brought into captivity ultimately because they had failed to live by God’s word. They were determined not only not to let that happen again but to make up for 70 years of lost time. Ezra the Scribe brought the book of the law before the men, women and children old enough to understand (basically five and above) and proceeded to read from the Torah from dawn to midday — basically six or seven hours — and then “all the people listened attentively.” When he opened the scroll, all the people stood out of reverence. Ezra blessed and thanked God for his word and all raised their hands high and answered, “Amen! Amen!,” a Hebrew word that means “to uphold,” showing that they were intending to build their lives on it. After that, they knelt and bowed before the Lord who was speaking to them as his holy word was announced. We find in this passage seven things that should characterize our interaction with Jesus’ word as we hear it together, seven ways that show us how to pray what we hear, to assimilate what God speaks, what is typically called Lectio Divina, or “divine reading” or meditation.
                        • The first was reading. Ezra and the scribes read plainly from God’s word in discrete passages, like points of meditation. The word “read” in Hebrew means to “proclaim” since reading Sacred Scripture was always done aloud. It also means, “translate,” because many of the post-exilic Jews were at best rusty in Hebrew. It points to the connection between reading and proclaiming, making it intelligible to the minds and lives of those hearing. The first step is to let God speak.
                        • The second aspect was interpreting, or explaining the word of God. As the scribes read, they helped the people to grasp some of the applications. There are often many meanings to God’s word. The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes three different types of spiritual meanings, one linked to Jesus (typological), another to ourselves and our response in faith (moral), and a third to heaven and to our vocation to be saints (anagogical). When we ponder and proclaim the word of God, when we listen to and read it, this aspect of explaining it is very important if we’re ever going to reach the third stage.
                        • The third stage was understanding the Word of God. This is far more than an intellectual grasp of the material, but the Hebrew word means that there’s a knowledge at the level of one’s entire personality and that it impacts us at the level of our whole being. The Latin translation for this understanding is sapientia, which is normally understood as “wisdom,” but its literal translation is to “taste.” When we understand the Word of God, we taste it, it delights us, it becomes part of us as we become what we eat, although, as Ezekiel experienced when God had him eat the scroll of the Word of God, sometimes this digestion of God’s word can seem bitter because it leads to the crucifixion of our old way of being.
                        • These three stages are all basically the first movement of the Word of God as we seek to grasp at the level of our being what God is saying to us, what he wants fulfilled in our hearing. It’s like the liturgy of the Word when God’s word is proclaimed through the readings and then interpreted and helped to be comprehended in the homily.
                        • The next four stages involve our response to what has been announced, explained and comprehended.
                          • The fourth stage is listening to or literally obeying  the Word of God. Nehemiah tells us, “All the people listened attentively to the book of the law.” Listening is far more than just hearing what was read. The Jewish people are basically formed out of the command to listen. The famous Shema they pray each day reminds them of Moses’ words, “Hear, O Israel, that the Lord your God is God alone.” To listen means something different than merely absorbing the Word through our ears, as if it were just a form of auditory reading. Rather, in Hebrew there’s no distinction between hearing and It’s the same word. To listen to the Word of God is to listen to it as a word to be done, as an imperative once understood. In Latin, we keep the connection between hearing (audire) and obeying (ob-audire), which means a listening so attentive that we’re hanging on every word. St. James calls us not to be merely idle listeners but “doers” of the Word. We’re called to say like Mary, who was praised by Jesus for hearing the Word of God and doing it, “Let it be done to me according to your Word.” To be a member of Jesus’ family, Jesus said elsewhere, we must do the will of the Father in heaven. This is the type of attentive listening to the Word that is being described here. Listening in order to act.
                          • The fifth stage is converting. “Do not be sad, and do not weep,” the people are told, because they were all weeping as they heard the words of the law. St. James says the Word of God is like a mirror, and when they looked at the Mirror of God’s word, they saw who they were supposed to be and who they in fact were and it brought them to tears. They bowed down and prostrated themselves before the Lord, their faces to the ground. Likewise, the Word of God is meant to bring us to conversion, to change our ways, so that we may conform ourselves to what God is telling us through his Word. The ultimate goal of the Church’s proclaiming the Word of God, as the Second Vatican Council taught in its decree for priests, is conversion and holiness.
                          • The sixth stage is responding to the word of God with acts of charity. The text tells us that “all the people raised their hands high, saying ‘Amen. Amen’” and immediately began to allot portions of food and drink to those who didn’t have any “because they understood the words that had been expounded to them.” The real impact of the Word of God is that it’s supposed to help us to love others as God has loved us. The conversion it brings about is meant to help us love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength and love our neighbor. Hearing the word of God must change our life and make it more loving. That’s what we see happened with the Jews who “understood” the words of the Lord: it spurred them to charity. That’s what happened in the life of St. Marianne Cope, a fellow New Yorker born in Germany who grew up in Syracuse, whose feast the Church celebrated on Thursday, leading her to enter the Sisters of St. Francis in order to teach and care for the sick and ultimately to respond to St. Damian of Molokai’s plea for help to go to Hawaii and teach and care for the lepers. That’s what happened in the life of St. Teresa of Calcutta, who when she heard Jesus speak to her summoning her to be a religious and later, on the train to Darjeeling, calling her within her call to quench his infinite thirst for souls, later to be his light, and always to care for him in the distressing disguise of the poor, that’s what she did. The same thing is supposed to happen in us, that hearing the Word of God is meant to transform us to learn how to proclaim it above all in body language, in deeds of love.
                          • The seventh and last stage is celebrating. There was a great feast. “Go, eat rich foods and drink sweet drinks,” they were told, “for today is holy to our Lord. Do not be saddened this day, for rejoicing in the Lord must be your strength!” The Word of God is meant to fill us with joy and lead us to celebrate that joy with others, sharing our joy, our food, our drink, our lives with others. Rejoicing is supposed to be our strength as believers and is meant to flow from the total transformation the Word of God does in us. “The precepts of the Lord give joy to the heart,” as we prayed in the Responsorial Psalm. There’s obviously an allusion to the Eucharistic feast here, when, after having heard the Word of God, we eat the most unbelievable food ever and drink the choicest beverage of all time. The Liturgy of the Word is interconnected with and leads to the Liturgy of the Eucharist. And the Liturgy of the Eucharist is meant to lead to the Liturgy of Life. It’s supposed to lead to an overflowing, loving, joyful communion, as we “do this in memory of Christ” and seek to give ourselves and our lives to save others and lift them up.
                          • We hope in God’s word, which is meant to lead us to conversion, holiness, charity and joy. No matter what part of the Mystical Body of Christ we are — whether, to use St. Paul’s metaphor from today’s passage to the Corinthians, we’re a foot or a hand, an eye or an ear, whether we’ve been given the charism of apostles, prophets, teachers, miracle workers, priests or Missionaries of Charity — all of us in Jesus’ Mystical Body are called to help each other hear the Word, look with love on God and others, use our feet to go to them and our hands to care for them. The Bible is not a dead document but a “living word,” since the Word of God is not principally a book or a series of books but a Person, an incarnate Word, whom we encounter through the Bible’s sacred words. He’s the one who has come into this Chapel like he entered the Synagogue of Nazareth. He’s the one whose words are Spirit and life. He’s the one who continually fulfills Scripture in our hearing! And he’s the one who through that fulfillment seeks to bring us to the fullness of life.
                          • We know that Jesus’ words are not merely informative, but They change us and change reality. When he said, “Let there be light,” there was light. When he said “Quiet!” to demons, they shut their traps. When he calmed a storm, there was immediately tranquility on the sea. And today Jesus speaks for us the same performative words he did in the Upper Room on Holy Thursday, saying over simple bread and wine through a priest through whom he is acting, “This is my body” and “This is the chalice of my blood!” The power of his words totally change bread and wine into Himself. This is the fulfillment of the hope of God’s word found in the Tree of Life in Genesis, in the sacrifice of Abel, Melchizedek, and Isaac, in the Passover feast, in the manna in the desert, of the multiplication of loaves and fish, and of so many other foretellings in which God had stoked the appetite of his people for the perfection of their hope. Let us receive the double fulfillment of these words in our hearing and allow that perfect, refreshing, trustworthy, wise, right, joyful, enlightening, pure, enduring, true, and just, and life-giving Word to enter in, change us and through us change the world!

                            •  

                            The readings for today’s Mass were: 

                            Neh 8:2-4a, 5-6, 8-10

                            Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly,

                            which consisted of men, women,
                            and those children old enough to understand.
                            Standing at one end of the open place that was before the Water Gate,
                            he read out of the book from daybreak till midday,
                            in the presence of the men, the women,
                            and those children old enough to understand;
                            and all the people listened attentively to the book of the law.
                            Ezra the scribe stood on a wooden platform
                            that had been made for the occasion.
                            He opened the scroll
                            so that all the people might see it
                            — for he was standing higher up than any of the people —;
                            and, as he opened it, all the people rose.
                            Ezra blessed the LORD, the great God,
                            and all the people, their hands raised high, answered,
                            “Amen, amen!”
                            Then they bowed down and prostrated themselves before the LORD,
                            their faces to the ground.
                            Ezra read plainly from the book of the law of God,
                            interpreting it so that all could understand what was read.
                            Then Nehemiah, that is, His Excellency, and Ezra the priest-scribe
                            and the Levites who were instructing the people
                            said to all the people:
                            “Today is holy to the LORD your God.
                            Do not be sad, and do not weep”—
                            for all the people were weeping as they heard the words of the law.
                            He said further: “Go, eat rich foods and drink sweet drinks,
                            and allot portions to those who had nothing prepared;
                            for today is holy to our LORD.
                            Do not be saddened this day,
                            for rejoicing in the LORD must be your strength!”

                            Responsorial Psalm
                            Ps 19:8, 9, 10, 15

                            R. (cf John 6:63c) Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life.

                            The law of the LORD is perfect,
                            refreshing the soul;
                            The decree of the LORD is trustworthy,
                            giving wisdom to the simple.
                            R. Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life.
                            The precepts of the LORD are right,
                            rejoicing the heart;
                            The command of the LORD is clear,
                            enlightening the eye.
                            R. Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life.
                            The fear of the LORD is pure,
                            enduring forever;
                            The ordinances of the LORD are true,
                            all of them just.
                            R. Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life.
                            Let the words of my mouth and the thought of my heart
                            find favor before you,
                            O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.
                            R. Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life.

                            Reading II
                            1 Cor 12:12-30

                            Brothers and sisters:

                            As a body is one though it has many parts,
                            and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body,
                            so also Christ.
                            For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body,
                            whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons,
                            and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.

                            Now the body is not a single part, but many.

                            If a foot should say,
                            “Because I am not a hand I do not belong to the body, “
                            it does not for this reason belong any less to the body.
                            Or if an ear should say,
                            “Because I am not an eye I do not belong to the body, “
                            it does not for this reason belong any less to the body.
                            If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be?
                            If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?
                            But as it is, God placed the parts,
                            each one of them, in the body as he intended.
                            If they were all one part, where would the body be?
                            But as it is, there are many parts, yet one body.
                            The eye cannot say to the hand, “I do not need you, “
                            nor again the head to the feet, “I do not need you.”
                            Indeed, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker
                            are all the more necessary,
                            and those parts of the body that we consider less honorable
                            we surround with greater honor,
                            and our less presentable parts are treated with greater propriety,
                            whereas our more presentable parts do not need this.
                            But God has so constructed the body
                            as to give greater honor to a part that is without it,
                            so that there may be no division in the body,
                            but that the parts may have the same concern for one another.
                            If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it;
                            if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy.

                            Now you are Christ’s body, and individually parts of it.

                            Some people God has designated in the church
                            to be, first, apostles; second, prophets; third, teachers;
                            then, mighty deeds;
                            then gifts of healing, assistance, administration,
                            and varieties of tongues.
                            Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers?
                            Do all work mighty deeds? Do all have gifts of healing?
                            Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret?

                            Alleluia
                            Cf. Lk 4:18

                            R. Alleluia, alleluia.

                            The Lord sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor,
                            and to proclaim liberty to captives.
                            R. Alleluia, alleluia.

                            Gospel
                            Lk 1:1-4; 4:14-21

                            Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events

                            that have been fulfilled among us,
                            just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning
                            and ministers of the word have handed them down to us,
                            I too have decided,
                            after investigating everything accurately anew,
                            to write it down in an orderly sequence for you,
                            most excellent Theophilus,
                            so that you may realize the certainty of the teachings
                            you have received.

                            Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit,

                            and news of him spread throughout the whole region.
                            He taught in their synagogues and was praised by all.

                            He came to Nazareth, where he had grown up,

                            and went according to his custom
                            into the synagogue on the sabbath day.
                            He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah.
                            He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written:
                            The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
                            because he has anointed me 
                            to bring glad tidings to the poor.
                            He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives
                            and recovery of sight to the blind,
                            to let the oppressed go free,
                            and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.
                            Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down,
                            and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him.
                            He said to them,
                            “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”

                            The post Rejoicing in the Word Fulfilled, Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), January 26, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                            30 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.

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