Catholic Preaching

Catholic Preaching

By Father Roger LandryReligion & SpiritualityChristianity
Download on the App Store

Catholic Preaching episodes

  • Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, January 25, 2025

    Msgr. Roger J. Landry

    Conversations with Consequences Podcast
    Homily for the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, C, Vigil
    January 25, 2025

     

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

    https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.25.25_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 we enter into the consequential conversation Jesus wants to have with us in this Sunday’s Gospel, when we will encounter Jesus preaching in his hometown synagogue. He was handed the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah and he 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, Jesus very dramatically handed the scroll back to 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!
    • The words of Isaiah’s prophecy were being unveiled before their eyes. The Spirit of the Lord, that 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. He 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 captive to 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 particularly with each other through charity. All of the aspects of this Messianic prophecy — and all the others — Jesus was actualizing before their eyes.
    • Jesus wants continuously to fulfill Sacred Scripture in our hearing, before our eyes, in our minds, hearts and lives. 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 on which we have just embarked, 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, to let his word take on our flesh and be fulfilled in and by us.
    • This Sunday we are celebrating for the sixth time a new and important annual feast, the Sunday of the Word of God, which Pope Francis established on September 30, 2019 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 in anticipation of the 1600th anniversary of St. Jerome’s death and birth into eternal life in 2020. 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 something 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 struck 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 hope 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 and enables 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.” To live the Jubilee of Hope well, we should turn over and again to Sacred Scripture where the word hope appears about 150 times, because we draw hope from God’s revelation and place our hope in the fulfillment of his promises.
    • As we approach Sunday, I would like to underline two points. The first is about celebrating the Word of God as the great treasure it is. Back in 2008, Pope Benedict hosted in the Vatican a Synod of Bishops on the Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church. Bishop Anton Justs from Jelgava, Latvia, gave an intervention I’ve never forgotten. He described a priest, Fr. Viktors, who in the first days of the Communist occupation had been arrested for possessing the Bible and commanded to step on it. Instead, he knelt and kissed it, for which he was condemned to ten years of hard labor in Siberia. When he returned a decade later as an emaciated witness to Scripture’s inestimable value, he celebrated Mass with his people. After proclaiming the Gospel, he lifted the text, pronounced Verbum Domini and kissed once more the Word of God. He and the people cried profusely with gratitude to God. Fr. Viktors wasn’t alone in his testimony. “In Latvia, during the Soviet era,” Bishop Justs continued, “no religious books, no Holy Scriptures, no catechisms were allowed to be printed. The reasoning was: if there is no printed Word of God, there will be no religion. So our Latvian people did what the first century Christians did: they learnt the passages of the Holy Scriptures by heart.” And specifically with regard to celebration, he recounted, “Still today in Latvia there is an oral tradition alive. We stand on the shoulders of our martyrs to proclaim the Word of God. Our grandchildren remember their grandfathers and grandmothers, who died for their faith; they want to be, in their turn, heroes of faith. In Latvia we proclaim the living Word of God! We go in the processions and on the pilgrimages, we sing songs and we pray and say: ‘This is the Word of God, for which our grandparents died.’” A people learning Sacred Scripture by heart, taking the Bible on pilgrimages, proudly proclaiming the Word of God, and seeking to be heroes in witness to it — this is what the Catholic Church is meant to be. This is the type of faith and celebration Pope Francis, by establishing the Sunday of the Word of God, is trying to catalyze. This is one way by which the whole Church would give hope to the world!
    • The second point is about learning Sacred Scripture. About 15 years ago, I happened to meet a priest from Cleveland at Green Airport in Providence, Rhode Island. I invited him to lunch. When the cashier asked if there would be one check or two, I said one and gave my credit card. Fr. Bob immediately interjected, “Sirach says we should go Dutch!” I stared at him quizzically, but retorted, “Jesus calls us to love one another as he loves us and the Last Supper wasn’t Dutch. I’m paying!” When we got to the table, immediately after grace, I asked whether he had invented the quotation from Sirach. “Not at all!,” he enthusiastically replied, as he pulled a worn Bible from his backpack and amazingly opened it to the exact page in the Book of Sirach where it says not to be ashamed to “share the expenses of a business or journey” (Sir 42:3). Blown away, and frankly filled with holy envy by his command of Scripture, I asked how he had come to know the Word of God so well. He told me he had made a promise on the day of his diaconal ordination to read the entire Bible once a year and that he had been faithful to that promise. “After 24 years,” he said with a smile, “You get to know what Sirach says about restaurant bills!” I asked him how long it took to read the whole Bible in a year. He replied that it takes cumulatively only 75 hours, or 12-15 minutes a day. Since that encounter, I’ve tried to emulate Fr. Bob’s commitment to reading the Bible each year and have encouraged many others to join us. 12-15 minutes a day can change your life. There are so many books and smart phone applications that make reading the Bible in a year easier, intelligently varying the passages to help one understand it better than if one just read from cover to cover. And Fr. Mike Schmitz has a very helpful and popular podcast Bible in a Year, which has helped hundreds of thousands enter more deeply into the treasure of the Word of God. I’d encourage you to find and use one of these great means to get to enrich yourself each day more and more with the treasure of the Word of God.
    • The same Jesus who entered his hometown Synagogue on the Sabbath will enter our Churches this Sunday. He will speak to us live as the Gospel is read. He will come to teach us, to heal us, to console us, to be with us, to strengthen us and to send us out. As Fr. Viktors and the faithful Latvians under Communism heroically demonstrated, 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 continually fulfills Scripture in our hearing! He’s the one with the words of eternal life! He’s the one who fills us with hope. As we celebrate the Sunday of the Word of God, let us respond to that word with love, enthusiasm, hope and gratitude, “Thanks be to God!” and “Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ!”

      •  

      The Gospel passage on which the homily was based was: 

      Gospel
      Luke 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 Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, January 25, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

      10 min
    • Is It Lawful to Save Life Rather Than To Destroy It?, Second Wednesday in Ordinary Time (I), January 22, 2025

      Msgr. Roger J. Landry

      Chapel of the Pontifical Mission Societies, Manhattan
      Wednesday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
      Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children
      January 22, 2025
      Heb 7:1-3.15-17, Ps 110, Mk 3:1-6

       

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

      https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.22.25_Homily_1.mp3

       

       

      The following points were attempted in the homily: 

      • Today as the Church in the United States prays for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children on this 52nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, conscious that even though that execrable decision was overturned by Dobbs v. Jackson the lives of so many unborn children are still threatened in various states through surgical and chemical abortions, the readings help us to focus on the life Christ gives us and has come to save. In the Gospel, Jesus asks the question, “Is it lawful to save life rather than to destroy it” and “to do good … rather than evil?” He came to show us that it is not just permitted to do so but that God summons us to do so by creating us, as we hear in today’s first reading, “to resemble the Son of God” who has a “life that cannot be destroyed.” Let’s delve together into the powerful message the Word of God gives us today on this Day of Prayer.
      • In the first reading, we make a shift in our three-week study of the beautiful Letter to the Hebrews. Until now, the sacred author has introduced us to Christ’s priesthood as God the Father’s ultimate word, who through compassionate obedience in suffering and death, seeks to lead us through our suffering and death to perfection, if only we respond with eagerness and allow his living and effective word to profit us as it ought. Today we begin to look more deeply at Jesus’ high priesthood and its characteristics, a priesthood in which he offers himself as the Victim and seeks to transform us to make of our lives a loving sacrifice for God and others. The Letter to the Hebrews does so by focusing on the mysterious figure of Melchizedek. The Letter to the Hebrews tells us — a sentence of striking importance! —  that he was “made to resemble the Son of God.” When we say of Jesus, as we did at the end of the first reading and during today’s Responsorial Psalm, “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek,” we need to understand that, yes, Jesus is a priest like Melchizedek and not like the Aaronic and levitical cohens, but that Melchizedek was made to be a particular type of priest in anticipation of Jesus. And so what are the qualities of Melchizedek’s priesthood that were made to resemble the priesthood of the Son of God? The first is in his name, which means “King of Righteousness.” Righteousness means being right with God and with others. The second is “King of Salem,” which means “King of Peace.” When we are right with God and others, peace comes as a fruit; when we’re not right with God and others, there will be no real, lasting peace. The third is that he is a “priest of God Most High,” who finds his lineage in God, since he is “without father, mother, ancestry.” This is in contrast to the Jewish priesthood that is based on blood descent from Aaron. Fourth, he was superior to Abraham, shown in the fact that Abraham tithed to him and he blessed Abraham. Christ would say later, “Before Abraham was, I am” (Jn 8:58). Fifth, he was “without beginning of days or end of life,” meaning that his priesthood, resembling that of Christ, was eternal. Based on all of these criteria, the Letter to the Hebrews says, referring to Jesus, that he is “another priest… raised up after the likeness of Melchizedek, who has become so, not by a law expressed in a commandment concerning physical descent but by the power of a life that cannot be destroyed. For it is testified: ‘You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.’” Jesus’ priesthood is one of righteousness, peace, God, superior to Abraham and eternal life. We could also add one other detail that is not in today’s passage: that Melchizedek offered a sacrifice of bread and wine, not animals, which is a clear allusion to Christ’s making his own definitive sacrifice under the appearance of bread and wine during the Last Supper — the “living Bread come down from heaven” — and taking us from sign to signified the following afternoon on Calvary.
      • We see Jesus the High Priest carrying out his priesthood of righteousness, peace and eternal life in the Gospel. He returned to the Synagogue as a controversial figure because he had healed the paralyzed man’s sins (a divine action that was considered blasphemous by those unwilling to consider that he might be divine), ate with tax collectors and sinners, allowed his apostles to pluck heads of grain on the sabbath and more. In the synagogue, there was a man with a crushed hand who probably couldn’t work and support himself and his family. Jesus called him forward and asked what would on the surface seem to be a silly question, but one that was key to understanding the righteousness with God and others that Jesus had come to reestablish. “Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath rather than to do evil,” Jesus asked, “to save life rather than to destroy it?” Jesus was asking if it was possible to love someone in deeds on the Lord’s day. He was querying whether it was possible to save or redeem. Jesus’ opponents didn’t respond because they knew how ridiculous their response would seem, but after Jesus was gone, the Pharisees went out on the Sabbath, on the Lord’s day, and began to conspire with the Herodians (with whom they would ordinarily not interact at all because of the Herodians’ licentiousness and relations with the Romans) about how to put Jesus to death. They apparently thought nothing was wrong in using the sabbath to “do evil” and to “destroy” life, but they homicidally objected to Jesus’ trying to do good and save life. Even though the Pharisees were distinguished by their trying to live the Law in all its minutiae, many of them had ceased to be “righteous,” because they were no longer living the Law as a Covenant of Love. They were so obsessed about smaller details that they failed to live the main point of it. Rather than forming them to be God-like, they thought that the law required murdering Jesus. It’s key for us to grasp what was happening behind the scenes. If the devil can’t get us to reject God’s law, he’s going to try to get us to misunderstand it and live according to a distorted notion of it. That’s what had happened with so many of the Pharisees, Scribes and others. Jesus had come to reestablish God’s people in righteousness and in the peace that flows from it. He had come to save us. He had come to give us life to the full. But not everyone would accept this priestly work and they would become participants in his priestly sacrifice not through their cooperation but through their conspiratorial plotting. What happened to them is a warning to us and to people of every generation. Sin draws us, consciously or unconsciously, to destroy not just our lives but the lives of others. And it can lead us — like in so many states and countries today — to make laws that promote the destruction of life and laws against those who seek to protect life. That’s why we pray today. We ask God for the grace not just to protect those whose lives are in danger, especially in the sanctuary of their mothers’ wombs, but to make us truly resemble Jesus the Son of God in his desire to save life even at the risk or gift of our own.
      • The question for us at Mass this morning is whether we have sincerely come to Church today to meet Christ and allow him to incorporate us into his priesthood more deeply, the common priesthood we received on the day of our baptism, the priesthood that offers not just sacrifices for sin but ourselves together with him in expiation for our sins and those of the world. It’s whether we, unlike the Pharisees in the Capernaum synagogue, have come to receive our life from him and to commit ourselves to doing “this” in memory of him. Today we want Christ from the Holy Eucharist not to look at us with “anger” or “grief” at our hardness of heart — like he looked at those in the synagogue — but with love, consolation and gratitude for our desire and commitment to pray and work for the protection of every little boy or girl made in his image and likeness, made to resemble him. As we prepare now to receive the fulfillment of Melchizedek’s sacrifice, we ask Jesus to fill us with his life and life so that today and every day the Lord has made we might do good and with him save life!

        •  

        The readings for today’s Mass were: 

        Reading 1 Heb 7:1-3, 15-17
        “Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of God Most High,
        met Abraham as he returned from his defeat of the kings
        and blessed him.”
        And Abraham apportioned to him a tenth of everything.
        His name first means righteous king,
        and he was also “king of Salem,” that is, king of peace.
        Without father, mother, or ancestry,
        without beginning of days or end of life,
        thus made to resemble the Son of God, he remains a priest forever.
        It is even more obvious if another priest is raised up
        after the likeness of Melchizedek, who has become so,
        not by a law expressed in a commandment concerning physical descent
        but by the power of a life that cannot be destroyed.
        For it is testified: “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”
        Responsorial Psalm Ps 110:1, 2, 3, 4
        R. (4b) You are a priest for ever, in the line of Melchizedek.
        The LORD said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand
        till I make your enemies your footstool.”
        R. You are a priest for ever, in the line of Melchizedek.
        The scepter of your power the LORD will stretch forth from Zion:
        “Rule in the midst of your enemies.”
        R. You are a priest for ever, in the line of Melchizedek.
        “Yours is princely power in the day of your birth, in holy splendor;
        before the daystar, like the dew, I have begotten you.”
        R. You are a priest for ever, in the line of Melchizedek.
        The LORD has sworn, and he will not repent:
        “You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.”
        R. You are a priest for ever, in the line of Melchizedek.

        Alleluia See Mt 4:23

        R. Alleluia, alleluia.

        Jesus preached the Gospel of the Kingdom
        and cured every disease among the people.
        R. Alleluia, alleluia.

        Gospel Mk 3:1-6
        Jesus entered the synagogue.
        There was a man there who had a withered hand.
        They watched Jesus closely
        to see if he would cure him on the sabbath
        so that they might accuse him.
        He said to the man with the withered hand,
        “Come up here before us.”
        Then he said to the Pharisees,
        “Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath rather than to do evil,
        to save life rather than to destroy it?”
        But they remained silent.
        Looking around at them with anger
        and grieved at their hardness of heart,
        Jesus said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.”
        He stretched it out and his hand was restored.
        The Pharisees went out and immediately took counsel
        with the Herodians against him to put him to death.

        The post Is It Lawful to Save Life Rather Than To Destroy It?, Second Wednesday in Ordinary Time (I), January 22, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

        11 min
      • The Path to Spiritual Perfection through Obedience and Suffering, Second Monday in Ordinary Time (I), January 20, 2025

        Fr. Roger J. Landry

        Chapel of the Pontifical Mission Societies, Manhattan
        Monday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
        Memorial of SS. Fabian and Sebastian, Martyrs
        January 20, 2025
        Heb 5:1-10, Ps 110, Mk 2:18-22

         

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

        https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.20.25_Homily_1.mp3

         

        The following points were attempted in today’s homily: 

        • At the beginning of Ordinary Time, the Church wants to help us to relate to what God is seeking to do with renewed, fresh receptivity. The Church has us focus four times a year at daily Mass on Jesus’ words about feasting and fasting and the parables of the patch and of the wineskins (the 2nd Monday of Ordinary Time, the Friday after Ash Wednesday, the 13th Saturday, and the 22nd Friday). It is one of the most common themes we have, because it’s central to our life as believers. But today we can focus on the fresh receptivity we’re called to give. Jesus, with regard to fasting, said that his disciples needed to learn how to fast differently than the disciples of John the Baptist and the Pharisees, who fasted in reparation, petition and for self-discipline. Jesus wanted his disciples to fast for union with God, to hunger for what God hungers, and to feast when they are in union like “sons of the wedding chamber” do when the Bridegroom is with them and the wedding reception is on-going. Jesus uses two homespun images to illustrate the point. He says he’s not trying to place a small patch on the Old Covenant garments, to improve it in a slight way; rather he’s giving a totally new garment, namely our baptismal garment. Similarly the “new wine” he is pouring out cannot be received by tough, un-expansive old wineskins but they need to be received with fresh wineskins that can expand as the new wine expands. He’s constantly giving us those new wineskins to receive his ever recreative love.
        • Ultimately, Jesus says we will fast when the “Bridegroom is taken away from them.” The verb “taken away” in Greek actually means “ripped away.” It’s the same verb that’s used when Jesus was taken out of the Garden of Gethsemane at his arrest by the soldiers of the high priest. This is an indication that we’re called too fast to be united with his passion. That’s what leads us to today’s very important passage from the Letter to the Hebrews. Throughout the Letter until now, we have learned that God the Father’s definitive Word, his Son, has come to lead us to perfection, to eternal salvation, through his suffering and through helping us suffer with him. The Letter has urged us not to harden our hearts to this message but to let the Word profit us by approaching God’s throne to receive mercy and grace whenever we need it. Today the Letter continues to show us the type of high priest we have, the one who is able to sympathize with us in our weaknesses, because he himself has been tested (tempted) in every way we have been and faithfully passed those tests. Like the old covenant high priests, Jesus has been chosen from among men — hence the incarnation, where God the Father said “You are my Son” and made him a priest not according to the order of Levi but the order of Melchizedek — to represent us before God and to offer sacrifices not of bulls and goats and other animals but to offer himself. He is able to deal patiently with others because he has his own human physical weaknesses. Hence he prayed with “loud cries and tears” and “learned obedience from what he suffered” and was perfected by what he suffered. Jesus wants us, through our baptismal and — in my case — ministerial priesthood to receive the gift of his priesthood with freshness and through our fasting seek to unite ourselves totally to that work, recognizing that we too have been chosen in him to offer ourselves as the holy and acceptable sacrifice, our spiritual worship (Rom 12:1-2), so that we might receive salvation and in Christ be a minister of eternal salvation to others. He wants us to come to spiritual perfection through uniting ourselves to his obedience and his suffering. That’s what our common priesthood through baptism is about. Just like there needed to be a new fasting, there likewise needed to be a new conception of the high priesthood and what Jesus is trying to do in us through making us a kingdom of priests in him. An important part of that priesthood is learning obedience through what we suffer, doing the will of God even when it’s hard — like we learn through fasting from good things of the body — so that he may bring us to perfection, to fulfillment according to how he’s made us.
        • The saints we celebrate are models of this path of obedience to the perfection of charity that is sanctity. St. Fabian was a Christian layman who came to Rome to see what would happen after the death of Pope Anteros in 236. The electors were deadlocked. They looked for divine inspiration and saw a white dove flying, which helped them to open themselves up to who the Holy Spirit would want. The dove descended, passed over the heads of various of the leading candidates and then settled on this spectator, Fabian. They took it as a sign that this good man, from a noble family, was the one God wanted, and they chose him, ordained him a deacon, priest and bishop and he served through 250. At the beginning of his pontificate, he had decent relations with the Roman authorities and was even able to arrange with them for the return of the relics of Saints Pontus and Hippolytus. It was peaceful enough to build an organization to care for the poor and he was the one who arranged the sections of the city into diakonia, to care for the poor in an organized way, adapting to what the Lord wanted even though obviously there had been no such structures before him. In the year 250, however, the emperor Decius turned on the Christians and Fabian was the first one martyred. The lesson he teaches us is how to obey the Lord always in changing circumstances, a lesson he taught to help guide the Christians of his time along that same path of spiritual perfection through obedience even to death on the Cross with Christ, even to martyrdom.
        • We see a similar lesson of perfection in the life of St. Sebastian. He was a guard very much in the favor of the emperor Diocletian who was able to remain faithful to the Lord while serving in the Roman army. He used his office as the head of the guards in order to support Christians who were being rounded up as martyrs and to console and, on some occasions, convert their pagan parents, friends and family members who had come to try to talk them out of “wasting” their lives in martyrdom. But when word eventually got to Diocletian about what Sebastian was doing for the Christians — and that he himself was a Christian too — Diocletian responded by rage as if Sebastian had betrayed him. And, as the early Christians said, he was martyred twice. The first time he was shot seemingly to death with arrows and they brought him for burial, but there they recognized he wasn’t dead and nursed him back to health. Having recovered, he went back to try to talk sense into Diocletian surprising him on a staircase and preaching to him almost as a man returned from the dead. Diocletian would have none of it and had him beaten to death by clubs. In every circumstance, Sebastian sought to obey what the Lord was asking of him, he sought to receive the new wine of each day, as he purified his baptismal garment in the blood of Christ to which he joined his own blood.
        • Today as we come to this Mass to meet Christ our High Priest, we have fasted not only from food but from our old ways, so that as he makes supplications and prayers to the Father for us and gets ready to offer himself up as the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him and “do this in memory of him,” we may fully receive this gift and as not just “sons of the wedding chamber” but as the Bride rejoice in such a way that others may even be positively scandalized! We ask him for the grace to unite all of our own sufferings to his self-offering on the Cross, so that he can perfect us as a kingdom of priests and so that we can make up for what is lacking in us of his sufferings for the sake of his beloved Bride and Body the Church!

          •  

          The readings for today’s Mass were:

          Reading 1 HEB5:1-10

          Brothers and sisters:

          Every high priest is taken from among men
          and made their representative before God,
          to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.
          He is able to deal patiently with the ignorant and erring,
          for he himself is beset by weakness
          and so, for this reason, must make sin offerings for himself
          as well as for the people.
          No one takes this honor upon himself
          but only when called by God,
          just as Aaron was.
          In the same way,
          it was not Christ who glorified himself in becoming high priest,
          but rather the one who said to him:
          You are my Son:
          this day I have begotten you;
          just as he says in another place,
          You are a priest forever
          according to the order of Melchizedek.
          In the days when he was in the Flesh,
          he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears
          to the one who was able to save him from death,
          and he was heard because of his reverence.
          Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered;
          and when he was made perfect,
          he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.

          Responsorial Psalm PS 110:1, 2, 3, 4

          R. (4b) You are a priest for ever, in the line of Melchizedek.

          The LORD said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand
          till I make your enemies your footstool.”
          R. You are a priest for ever, in the line of Melchizedek.
          The scepter of your power the LORD will stretch forth from Zion:
          “Rule in the midst of your enemies.”
          R. You are a priest for ever, in the line of Melchizedek.
          “Yours is princely power in the day of your birth, in holy splendor;
          before the daystar, like the dew, I have begotten you.”
          R. You are a priest for ever, in the line of Melchizedek.
          The LORD has sworn, and he will not repent:
          “You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.”
          R. You are a priest for ever, in the line of Melchizedek.

          Alleluia HEB 4:12

          R. Alleluia, alleluia.

          The word of God is living and effective,
          able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.
          R. Alleluia, alleluia.

          Gospel MK 2:18-22

          The disciples of John and of the Pharisees were accustomed to fast.

          People came to Jesus and objected,
          “Why do the disciples of John and the disciples of the Pharisees fast,
          but your disciples do not fast?”
          Jesus answered them,
          “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?
          As long as they have the bridegroom with them they cannot fast.
          But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them,
          and then they will fast on that day.
          No one sews a piece of unshrunken cloth on an old cloak.
          If he does, its fullness pulls away,
          the new from the old, and the tear gets worse.
          Likewise, no one pours new wine into old wineskins.
          Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins,
          and both the wine and the skins are ruined.
          Rather, new wine is poured into fresh wineskins.”

          The post The Path to Spiritual Perfection through Obedience and Suffering, Second Monday in Ordinary Time (I), January 20, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

          15 min
        • Second Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, January 18, 2025

          Msgr. Roger J. Landry

          Conversations with Consequences Podcast
          Homily for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, C, Vigil
          January 18, 2025

           

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

          https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.18.25_Landry_ConCon_for_the_Second_Sunday_of_OT_C_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 we enter into the consequential conversation Jesus wants to have with us in this Sunday’s Gospel, when we will participate liturgically in the most famous wedding of all time, because of who was on the guest list. We meditate on the Wedding Feast of Cana every Thursday as we pray the second Luminous Mystery of the Holy Rosary. Often we pray about what it reveals about the Sacrament of Marriage and how Jesus takes the “water” of the institution of marriage from the beginning with Adam and Eve and raises it to the “wine” of a sacramental encounter with him: how Christ brings the marriage between a Christian man and woman into the marriage between Christ and the Church in fulfillment of what Isaiah prophesied with words we ponder every Christmas: “As a young man marries a virgin, your Builder shall marry you, and as a Bridegroom rejoices in his bride, so shall your God rejoice in you.” The wedding feast of Cana is an implicit revelation not just of Jesus’ miraculous power, but of his spousal love, the nuptial intention of his incarnation, even though no one, except Mary, would have had any clue about it at the time.
          • I would like to examine the scene under three different angles: what we learn about Mary’s intercession, what we learn about the way Jesus generously exercises his merciful power, and what we learn about the servants’ zealous cooperation. Each of these has much to say to us about our Christian faith and life.
          • Let’s begin with what the scene reveals about the Blessed Mother. Ancient Jewish wedding celebrations, like the one taking place in Cana, would last eight days, with three sumptuous meals a day. Wine was served throughout the octave. It was the generally the happiest celebration in the life of Jews, which is why Jesus often returned to the image of a wedding banquet to describe the joys of heaven. Rather than leaving on a honeymoon, the couple would remain, reigning so to speak as king and queen over the celebrations. We can only imagine how embarrassing it would be today if, at a wedding reception, the banquet hall ran out of food or beverages early in the celebration. Even though most people would sympathize with the couple and blame the banquet facility, it would still be terribly embarrassing for the family. In the ancient world, it would have been incalculably more so, because the family itself threw the reception. If they ran out of supplies, especially with days to go during the reception, it would have been an embarrassment that likely would never have been forgotten. Mary was at the wedding and noticed the impending catastrophe. Before the wine steward caught on to the predicament, before the couple did, before even their parents did, Mary saw the problem. The reason why there was no wine left was probably because the others were drinking so much that they just weren’t paying attention. Mary’s love made her notice the details that others were missing. To remedy the problem, she went to her Son. She didn’t twist His arm. She didn’t try to persuade Him that he should act. She simply said, “They have no wine!,” confident that her Son, even though it wasn’t His “hour” for working public miracles (because that would inexorably precipitate the Cross), would out of merciful love miraculously intervene. She knew he loved that couple even more than she did.
          • The episode reveals two things about Mary’s merciful intercession. First, Mary seeks to solve problems by bringing them to her divine Son. Some of our Protestant brothers and sisters say that Catholics shouldn’t pray to Mary because, as St. Paul writes, Christ is our sole mediator between God and man (1 Tim 2:5). They charge we should eliminate the “middle woman” and bring all our needs directly to the blessed Fruit of her womb. Well, there’s obviously nothing wrong with praying directly to Jesus, but at the same time, Mary’s intercession is no threat to Christ’s power; in fact, it reveals Christ’s power, because it depends entirely on Christ’s power. When we pray to Mary, we ask her to bring our needs to her Son, just like she brought the need of the couple in Cana. We also learn that Mary often acts, like she did in Cana, before we even know we have a problem. She recognizes that one of us may have a really tough weekend in store and she’s already interceding for the help we’ll need to cope. She foresees that some of us will have severe temptations and she has already sprung into action. She sees that some of us are in financial or health difficulties and she’s getting involved before we even ask her. She grasps that several of us will need a good confession, and she’s intervening for a priest to be there. Her maternal love looks out and acts out of love before we’re often aware that we are in need.
          • The second thing the miracle at the wedding of Cana also reveals something stunning about the way Christ exercises his merciful power. Christ was and is the creator of the Universe. He formed the oceans with just a word. He could have easily filled those six thirty-gallon water jugs with wine by just a thought, or a syllable, or an Arthur Fonzarelli-like snap of his finger. In an instant he could have created thousands of such jugs filled with cognac or champagne or anything he wanted. But he didn’t act that way, however. Instead, he turned to the servants there and said, “Fill the jars with water.” He wanted to involve the servants in his miracle. He wants to include us, too, in his saving work. He who created us without our consent, as St. Augustine once said, doesn’t want to save us without our consent, and he doesn’t want to save others without our cooperation either.
          • That brings us to the third thing this episode teaches us: how we’re called to respond to Jesus’ inclusion of us in his saving work. St. John tells us simply that when the servants had received Mary’s instruction to do whatever Jesus told them and when they had heard Jesus’ imperative to fill the jars with water, “They filled them to the brim.” Those five words conceal an awful lot of effort. In the ancient world, there was no faucets tied to internal plumbing or no hoses tied to water pipes to fill jars. The only place they could get water to fill them was the central well in Cana. Because the jars were made of stone, they would have been extremely heaven to carry tothe well; filled with 30 gallons of water, which would weigh another 250 pounds (one gallon = 8.35 lbs), they would have been impossible to carry back. The only way the jars could have been filled would have been by taking little leather or ceramic water containers back and forth to the well. If we imagine that there were five servants, each with a hefty two-gallon container in each hand, it would have meant that they would have had to have made nine trips back and forth to the Cana well to get enough water. That would have been grueling exercise even for those who were fit and strong. Yet they filled the 30-gallon water jars not to 80 percent or 90, but to the point of overflowing. They zealously did their part and Jesus used their efforts as the raw material for his incredible miracle. And what a miracle it was! Jesus converted all 180 gallons of water into wine in a way that made the wine steward himself take notice. How much wine are we talking about? When I have the privilege to take pilgrimage groups to Cana, I always explain that we’re used to looking at wine in 750 milliliter bottles. There are 3.8 liters to a gallon. 180 gallons times 3.8 liters per gallon is 684 liters; poured in 750 milliliter bottles, that would be 912 bottles! Think about that for a moment. That’s the equivalent of 76, 12-bottle cases of wine! No wedding, even for eight days, could ever consume that much. But just like Jesus worked the miracle of the multiplication of five loaves and two fish and left 12 wicker baskets full of fragments, one for each of the apostles, so Jesus worked this miracle as a sign of what he himself does when we cooperate: in response to the servants’ generosity, his generosity is even greater. That’s something that should inspire us to be just as enthusiastic and zealous in our correspondence to the Lord’s including us in his saving plan as they were in Cana.
          • As we prepare for Sunday Mass, we know that Mary is praying for us and advising each of us to do whatever her Son tells us. The world lacks in so many places the “new wine” of faith that Jesus gives, and true joy is often being sucked out of life. So many rituals and ceremonies ring hollow. Jesus wants to incorporate us in his mission to help people to see that there is something far greater than even their greatest human pleasures, a better wine that they await and for which he’s made us to thirst. That mission is the reason why the Church exists, and the reason why you and I exist. And it’s at Mass that Jesus seeks to strengthen us for that mission not by turning water into great wine for an eight-day feast, but turning bread and wine into his own Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, to strengthen us, and through us others, to come to the eternal Banquet. The miracle at the wedding feast of Cana was a prelude to this greatest miracle of all. We follow Mary’s command to do whatever Christ tells us by doing this in memory of him. And we go to Mass seeking to allow Jesus to fill us to the brim with his grace and love, so that being so transformed by this spousal union with him, we made go out on mission to bring everyone to the feast that will last into eternity.

            •  

            The Gospel reading on which the homily was based was: 

            Gospel
            John 2:1-11

            There was a wedding at Cana in Galilee,

            and the mother of Jesus was there.
            Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the wedding.
            When the wine ran short,
            the mother of Jesus said to him,
            “They have no wine.”
            And Jesus said to her,
            “Woman, how does your concern affect me?
            My hour has not yet come.”
            His mother said to the servers,
            “Do whatever he tells you.”
            Now there were six stone water jars there for Jewish ceremonial washings,
            each holding twenty to thirty gallons.
            Jesus told them,
            “Fill the jars with water.”
            So they filled them to the brim.
            Then he told them,
            “Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter.”
            So they took it.
            And when the headwaiter tasted the water that had become wine,
            without knowing where it came from
            — although the servers who had drawn the water knew —,
            the headwaiter called the bridegroom and said to him,
            “Everyone serves good wine first,
            and then when people have drunk freely, an inferior one;
            but you have kept the good wine until now.”
            Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs at Cana in Galilee
            and so revealed his glory,
            and his disciples began to believe in him.

            The post Second Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, January 18, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

            10 min
          • How Jesus, The Great Missionary of the Father, Teaches Us How to Pray in and for the Missions, Recollection for the Staff of The Pontifical Mission Societies, January 14, 2025

            Msgr. Roger J. Landry

            Morning of Recollection,
            The Pontifical Mission Societies Winter Staff Gathering
            St. Mary, Our Lady of Grace Church, St. Petersburg, Florida
            January 14, 2025

             

            https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.14.25_TPMS_How_Jesus_Teaches_Us_to_Pray_1.mp3

            The post How Jesus, The Great Missionary of the Father, Teaches Us How to Pray in and for the Missions, Recollection for the Staff of The Pontifical Mission Societies, January 14, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

            55 min
          • The Necessity of Prayer in the Work of the Missions, Recollection for the Staff of The Pontifical Mission Societies, January 14, 2025

            Msgr. Roger J. Landry

            Morning of Recollection,
            The Pontifical Mission Societies Winter Staff Gathering
            St. Mary, Our Lady of Grace Church, St. Petersburg, Florida
            January 14, 2025

             

            https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.14.25_TPMS_Necessity_of_Prayer_1.mp3

            The post The Necessity of Prayer in the Work of the Missions, Recollection for the Staff of The Pontifical Mission Societies, January 14, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

            42 min
          • Astonished and Amazed by Jesus’ Preaching and Mission, First Tuesday in Ordinary Time (I), January 14, 2025

            Msgr. Roger J. Landry

            TPMS Morning of Recollection, Winter Staff Gathering
            St. Mary, Our Lady of Grace Church, St. Petersburg, Florida
            Tuesday of the First Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
            January 14, 2025
            Heb 2:5-12, Ps 8, Mk 1:21-28

             

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

            https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.14.25_Homily_1.mp3

             

            The following text guided today’s homily: 

            • Yesterday we began a new liturgical season, what we call Ordinary Time, which every year commences with the Gospel of St. Mark and in, alternate years, either the Letter to the Hebrews, like we do this year, or the First Book of Samuel, which we will hear next January. Yesterday the Church pondered the beginning of Mark and Hebrews and the double message the Church gives us to set our spiritual table for the year: that Jesus is the Word who summarizes in himself all that God wants to communicate to us, that he took on our nature precisely to communicate to us by his words and witness in a way most fitting for us as human beings, and that that Word-made-flesh inaugurated his public ministry in the fullness of time with the eruption of his kingdom telling us to do four things: repent, believe, follow him and fish for men and women. The Mission of the Church begins with conversion, faith, and personal discipleship, so that we may effectively be able to be sent out by Christ.
            • Today the Word of God build on those foundations.
            • This morning’s passage from the Letter to the Hebrews says that this Son who says it all, even though he was higher than the angels and the angels were created through him, was made “for a little while lower than the angels,” taking on our nature so that he could “suffer death … that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” This was so, being made “perfect through suffering,” he might lead “many children to glory” precisely through suffering. Jesus humbled himself in this way not simply to speak to us about this glory to which we’re called by the Lord, who is mindful of us and cares for us; he came to show us the path of salvific suffering and lead us through this suffering to glory. The Word speaks to us through his body language so that he might say to us both “this is my body given for you” and “do this in memory of me.” This is the nature of Jesus’ consecration in coming into the world. He did all that he did so that we might be sanctified. This is the summit of evangelization, what we spoke about in October during our last all Staff Get-Together. That’s why the Letter to the Hebrews says significantly: “He who consecrates and those who are being consecrated all have one origin,” namely God the Father and the depth of his fatherly love. Because of this origin, because of this consecration, because of this love, the Letter to the Hebrews says that Jesus “is not ashamed to call them ‘brothers’ saying: ‘I will proclaim your name to my brethren, in the midst of the assembly I will praise you.’” Jesus has come to proclaim the Father’s name and praise to us so that we can join him in the Father’s home. That’s who Jesus is and that’s what he’s about at the general level.
            • We see how Jesus goes about accomplishing that mission of announcing to us God’s message, of communicating to us the name and praise of God, of leading us to perfection through suffering, in the Gospel. Right after Jesus began his public ministry and called his first disciples to follow him, he entered the Capernaum synagogue and began to announce and incarnate God’s word through preaching and teaching with words and with deeds. He came as the first Missionary. He came to proclaim the Gospel to the poor, to bear witness to the truth. St. Mark tells us what the reaction was: “The people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.” The Scribes would teach by citing Moses, or Scriptural texts, or rabbinical commentaries. Jesus taught in a different way. He spoke with authority because he is the Author of the world. As we’ll see throughout his public ministry, he’ll say things like, “You heard that it was said… but I say to you.” He would say that he himself is the Good Shepherd, the Light of the World, the Resurrection and the Life, the Way, the Truth and the Life. Jesus communicated with a directness and power that came from the fact that he was the origin of what he was speaking about. And the reaction of the crowds was astonishment. They were amazed and said, “What is this? A new teaching with authority.”
            • Jesus showed his authority and the power of his words by the exorcism of a possessed man who happened to be in the synagogue at the time. The very presence of Jesus, his holiness, irritated the demon beyond belief. It convulsed the man and cried out from within him, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are — the Holy One of God!” And Jesus rebuked the spirit, told him to be quiet and finally to “come out of him!” — and the spirit obeyed, an unforgettable sign of the authority with which Jesus speaks.
            • The question and the challenge for us is to ask and answer honestly whether we are amazed and astonished at Jesus’ message, at Jesus’ healing work, at Jesus himself as he speaks to us. If we are amazed and astonished at Jesus’ teaching, if we recognize he speaks with an authority unlike any other, than we will do what people do when they’re amazed: we’ll behave as if we can’t possibly get enough of his teaching. We’ll devour the Gospels. We’ll seek to enter much more deeply into his words through Bible Study and prayerful lectio divina. We’ll long to meet those who can open up the Word of God to us and help us to experience anew Jesus’ amazing and astonishing authority. It’s key for us at the beginning of the year to rediscover this sense of Jesus’ amazing and astonishing authority and come to Mass hanging on Jesus’ words, words that are meant to change our life each day forever.
            • Today at this Mass we come into the presence of the same Jesus who taught and healed in the Capernaum Synagogue. His word is so powerful that someone ordained to act in his person can take mere bread and wine and transform it into the Creator of the Heavens and the earth and the Redeemer of the world.  That’s the greatest ordinary example of the performative power of Jesus’ word that happens any day in the world when Jesus takes on a priest’s accent and says, “This is my body… given for you,” and “This the chalice of my blood… poured out for you and for the many for the forgiveness of sins.” May God give us the grace always to be astonished and amazed when Jesus speaks, so astonished that we prayerfully meditate on his words as the one of the most exciting of all activities, so amazed that we overcome all obstacles to hear him change simple foodstuffs into himself so that we can enter into a holy communion with him meant to last forever, and so transformed that we are capable of being living echoes of his word to others in the midst of the world and those who will be able to give our lives for them and for God. May we say with joy to Jesus whom we meet in the Eucharist what the demons in today’s Gospel proclaimed about him with dread in the Synagogue: “I know who you are: the Holy One of God!” and commit ourselves anew to bringing others to share our amazement!

              •  

              The readings for today’s Mass were: 

              Reading 1 HEB 2:5-12
              It was not to angels that God subjected the world to come,
              of which we are speaking.
              Instead, someone has testified somewhere:
              What is man that you are mindful of him,
              or the son of man that you care for him?
              You made him for a little while lower than the angels;
              you crowned him with glory and honor,
              subjecting all things under his feet.In “subjecting” all things to him,
              he left nothing not “subject to him.”
              Yet at present we do not see “all things subject to him,”
              but we do see Jesus “crowned with glory and honor”
              because he suffered death,
              he who “for a little while” was made “lower than the angels,”
              that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.For it was fitting that he,
              for whom and through whom all things exist,
              in bringing many children to glory,
              should make the leader to their salvation perfect through suffering.
              He who consecrates
              and those who are being consecrated all have one origin.
              Therefore, he is not ashamed to call them “brothers” saying:

              I will proclaim your name to my brethren,

              in the midst of the assembly I will praise you.

              Responsorial Psalm PS 8:2AB AND 5, 6-7, 8-9
              R. (see 7) You have given your Son rule over the works of your hands.
              O LORD, our Lord,
              how glorious is your name over all the earth!
              What is man that you should be mindful of him,
              or the son of man that you should care for him?
              R. You have given your Son rule over the works of your hands.
              You have made him little less than the angels,
              and crowned him with glory and honor.
              You have given him rule over the works of your hands,
              putting all things under his feet.
              R. You have given your Son rule over the works of your hands.
              All sheep and oxen,
              yes, and the beasts of the field,
              The birds of the air, the fishes of the sea,
              and whatever swims the paths of the seas.
              R. You have given your Son rule over the works of your hands.

              Alleluia SEE 1 THES 2:13

              R. Alleluia, alleluia.

              Receive the word of God, not as the word of men,
              but as it truly is, the word of God.
              R. Alleluia, alleluia.

              Gospel MK 1:21-28
              Jesus came to Capernaum with his followers,
              and on the sabbath he entered the synagogue and taught.
              The people were astonished at his teaching,
              for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.
              In their synagogue was a man with an unclean spirit;
              he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?
              Have you come to destroy us?
              I know who you are–the Holy One of God!”
              Jesus rebuked him and said, “Quiet! Come out of him!”
              The unclean spirit convulsed him and with a loud cry came out of him.
              All were amazed and asked one another,
              “What is this?
              A new teaching with authority.
              He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him.”
              His fame spread everywhere throughout the whole region of Galilee.

              The post Astonished and Amazed by Jesus’ Preaching and Mission, First Tuesday in Ordinary Time (I), January 14, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

              14 min
            • The Hope That Flows from Christ’s Baptism and Ours, Feast of the Baptism of the Lord (C), January 12, 2025

              Fr. Roger J. Landry

              Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx
              Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, Year C
              January 12, 2025
              Is 40:1-5.9-11, Ps 104, Tit 2:11-14;3:4-7, Lk 3:15-16.21-22

               

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

              https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.12.25_Homily_1.mp3

               

              The following text guided today’s homily: 

              • Today’s celebration of the baptism of the Lord Jesus culminates the celebration of the Christmas season. It symbolically finishes Jesus’ three decades of hidden life as God the Father announces at the Jordan what was concealed from the beginning from almost everyone except from Mary and Joseph, a few shepherds, the wise men, Simeon and Anna and a handful of others: that Jesus is God’s own beloved Son in whom he is well pleased.
              • The celebration of Jesus’ baptism culminates the Christmas season in another way as well, because it points to our baptism, which is the means by which we enter into the saving work Jesus was born into our world to effectuate. We’ve been singing in Hark! The Herald Angels Sing since Christmas day, “Mild He lays His glory by, born that man no more may die, born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth.” Christ through his incarnation has made it possible for us through baptism to enter into the mystery and meaning of Christmas and the second birth, immortality, and resurrection that that baptism promises in this world and forever. Jesus entered the waters of the Jordan precisely in order to bless those waters so that they could bring about this second birth, so that what John’s baptism pointed to could actually be accomplished: John’s baptism indicated our and others’ need for spiritual cleansing, for the forgiveness of sin, for the triumph over the death to which sins lead us, but John’s baptism couldn’t actually take those sins away. This is the truth to which John the Baptist pointed in today’s Gospel when he contrasted his baptism with the one Jesus and the Church Jesus founded would carry out: “I am baptizing you with water,” John said, “but one mightier than I is coming. … He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” When Jesus entered the water to be baptized, he sanctified the water so that the sign of washing could actually bring about the interior purification it signified.
              • But the baptism Jesus would inaugurate would do far more than that. It would enable the sons of earth to enter into the very life of God. When Jesus was baptized, three things happened, as we see in today’s Gospel. First, heaven was opened. Second, the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus. Third, a voice came from heaven saying, “You are my beloved Son; with whom I am well pleased.” The event of Jesus’ baptism gave us a glimpse into heaven, into the very life of God. God the Father and God the Holy Spirit manifested in this world their relationship with God the Son that has existed in heaven since the beginning. God the Father pronounced Jesus his much loved and all pleasing Son. Great Trinitarian theologians and saints, like St. Augustine, have explained the Trinity as love. God the Father is the eternal lover, God the Son as the eternal beloved, and the Holy Spirit as the eternal love between the Father and the Son so strong as to take on personality. When God the Father spoke at the Jordan pronouncing Jesus his beloved Son in whom he is well-pleased, he was merely making explicit what has always been and will always be within the Blessed Trinity. Similarly, when the Holy Spirit came down from the heavenly Father upon the Son whose assumed humanity was wet in the Jordan, it was just a manifestation of the love between Father and Son whom the Holy Spirit has been since before the foundation of the world. Therefore, at the Baptism of Jesus, we are able to eavesdrop on the conversation that takes place between the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity. St. John refers to God in his prologue as the Logos, “In the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was before God and the Logos was God.” We normally translate Logos as “Word,” but as the future Pope Benedict XVI wrote in a 1980s work called Feast of Faith, logos can also be translated as “conversation,” as an interpersonal tri-alogue between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We hear, and see, an echo of that eternal three-person dialogue at Jesus’ baptism.
              • What happens in our Baptism is that we are able — incredibly — to enter that conversation between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. All three things that happened in the baptism of Jesus occur in our Baptism. First, heaven is opened; we’re not just purified of sin but made heirs of heaven and eternal life. In entering the Jordan, Jesus converted it into what he would later call, in his dialogue with the woman at the well in Samaria, “Living Water,” that would well up within us to eternal life, because as our bodies are sprinkled or immersed on the outside, on the inside we are filled with Jesus that Living Water. Second, the Holy Spirit comes down upon us to dwell within us and make us his temple. The cleansing that happens in Baptism “of the Holy Spirit and of fire” is precisely to make us an abode of God, so that he might dwell in us and we in him, not just here in this world but forever. The Holy Spirit incorporates us into the Mystical Body of Christ and we are mysteriously inducted into the interpersonal conversation who is the Holy Trinity. And third, God the Father turns toward us, incorporated through baptism into Jesus his Son in his humanity, and says, “This is my beloved Son, this is my much-loved daughter, in whom I am well-pleased.” In Baptism, full as we are with Jesus the Living Water and the Holy Spirit the purifying fire, we are filled with the love of God the Father by our communion with God the Son and receiving of the Holy Spirit who is love. Saint John would exclaim to the Christians of the early Church, “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are.” In Baptism, we become God the Father’s much-loved sons and daughters who takes pleasure in us just as anyone in the presence of a beloved is filled with joy. And the work of God the Son and God the Holy Spirit in us as a result of Baptism is meant to help us always be pleasing to him. This is what we asked God the Father to give us in the Opening Prayer of today’s Mass. We prayed, “When Christ had been baptized in the River Jordan and as the Holy Spirit descended upon him, solemnly declared him your beloved Son, grant that your children by adoption, reborn of water and the Holy Spirit, may always be well-pleasing to you.” We will be always well-pleasing to God the Father by living out the reality of our baptism, the reality of our incorporation into Christ his Son, the reality of being filled with the Holy Spirit and with fire and zeal, the reality of being set free from sin so that we might live a new, holy life and pass through the open portal of heaven.
              • That’s why the Solemnity of the Baptism of the Lord is always meant to be a time for us to reflect on the awesome reality of our own Baptism. On the Day of our Baptism, we could say we won the greatest lottery of all time. Not by any merit of our own, but by God’s grace and, for those of us baptized as infants, the faith of our parents, we were brought to the baptismal font, changed inwardly, and made joint heirs with Christ of the Kingdom of Heaven. We became members of the divine royal family. We were given God’s own immortal life inside of us and made capable of living in a holy communion with him. That’s why the day of our Baptism is by far the most important day of our life and why Pope Francis never ceases to beg us to know and celebrate the day of our baptism, thank God for the gift he has given, pray for the person who baptized us as well as for our parents and Godparents. For those who are parents and godparents, it’s key for us to celebrate the baptismal anniversaries of those entrusted to us. For those in the priesthood and religious life, these feasts should be celebrated with just as great joy as the anniversaries of our ordination or profession. We need to create a culture in the Church in which we celebrate not only our birthdays and saints’ feast days, or anniversaries of other sacraments or sacred moments, but what is the truly most important day of our life! Pope Francis never ceases to challenge us to be protagonists in the formation of this culture.
              • Because the day of our baptism is so important, we should never cease to ponder the reality of what occurred on that awesome day. Paul describes it in today’s second reading to St. Titus and all of us: “When the kindness and generous love of God our savior appeared, not because of any righteous deeds we had done but because of his mercy, he saved us through the bath of rebirth and renewal by the holy Spirit, whom he richly poured out on us through Jesus Christ our savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life.”In baptism we are reborn, made just with God by his grace, filled with the Holy Spirit, and become heirs to eternal life. In the first reading we hear the prophetic words of the Prophet Isaiah that we hear every Advent, “Comfort, give comfort to my people. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and proclaim to her [that] her guilt is expiated,” which are fulfilled when God we, through baptism, enter into the atonement Christ won for us by his Baptism in blood and are strengthened by him on the inside. What a great comfort indeed! Psalm 104, which we prayed together, reminds us that God has constructed his palace “upon the waters” and sends forth his spirit, to recreate us and thereby “renew the face of the earth.” God makes us his dwelling place upon the waters of baptism and the Holy Spirit seeks to renew the world by renewing one baptized Christian at a time.
              • As we enter more deeply into the Jubilee of Hope, it’s important for us to see how much hope flows from Baptism. In Jubilee Years, there’s a lot of focus on the Holy Doors at St. Peter’s Basilica and the other papal basilicas in Rome, which symbolize a passage from one reality into another, from life as it is more deeply into Christ who identifies himself as the “door” or gate. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, basing itself on the Council of Florence, refers to Baptism as vitae spiritualis ianua, or door of the spiritual life, what gives access to God and to all of the other sacraments. In the baptismal rite, as the priest blesses the child’s mother at the end of the ceremony, the priest describes the joy of all Christian mothers “as the hope of eternal life shines upon their children.” Baptism is indeed a sign of hope. Through Baptism we are not just called but become children of God as a foretaste of the great hope, how later we will be like God for we shall see him as he is. Baptism makes us temples of the Holy Spirit who reminds us of, and helps us to trust in, all Jesus’ promises. Baptism, as we proclaim in the Creed, forgives us our sins and helps us to grasp God’s plan for us to be free from sin and full of grace, a tremendous source of hope. Baptism likewise incorporates us into the Church, Christ’s bride and body, conscious that Jesus has laid down his life to cleanse us by water and the water, and so how can we not be hopeful since Jesus has demonstrated there is nothing he won’t do for us.
              • It’s helpful prayerfully to pray about what happened to us on the day of our baptism if we want to grow in hope. On that day, we renounced Satan, all his empty promises and evil works, and professed our faith and trust in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit in the holy Catholic Church in communion with all of the saints. We proclaimed our hope in a life free from sin and alive in Christ Jesus. The sacred minister prayed over our ears and lips so that we might hear God’s word and proclaim his faith in a way well-pleasing to God. The Word of God we receive and share, the word that not only announces salvation history but helps us enter into it, is such a source of hope. We were covered with a white garment, an external sign of what happens to our soul in baptism, and were instructed to take that white garment unstained to the eternal life of heaven, as our vesture for the heavenly wedding feast. We’re given, in other words, exactly what we need for heaven as a sign of our supreme vocation. Our baptismal candle was lit from the Easter Candle, a sign that we are now burning with the light of Christ risen from the dead, and were told, with our parents and godparents to help us, to keep that light burning with the flame of faith like the wise virgins until Christ the Bridegroom returns. That light is a perpetual reminder of our hope even as we walk in a valley of darkness. And then we processed to the altar and prayed the Our Father as beloved, well-pleasing sons and daughters of God, together with Jesus and moved inwardly by the Holy Spirit who helps us to cry out “Abba, Father.” We have an intimate relation with the King of Kings and have been made members of the royal family, joint heirs with Christ our hope himself. We celebrate this reality on the Feast of the Lord’s Baptism as an anticipation of the celebration we should have every year on the anniversary of the day the heavens were opened, the Holy Spirit came down, and God the Father pronounced us his beloved child.
              • Saint Teresa of Calcutta never ceased to thank God for the gift of her Baptism, and her words and actions showed the importance that gratitude for our baptism should have in life.. She was baptized in Heart of Jesus Catholic Church in Skopje on August 27, 1910, the day after she was born and she called August 27 her “true birthday.” She said that the whole call to holiness is based on baptism, because like we see revealed in today’s Gospel, the love of God that is manifest in baptism is, she said, “the rock on which sanctity is built.” In 1997, her last year on earth, she said, “Sanctity is nothing but … Jesus intimately living in you, the same life we received at Baptism grown up and made perfect.” The life we receive in Baptism is supposed to be completed, through cooperating with the promises of baptism. And it’s because of the importance of baptism that she focused so much on making sure people die being offered the awesome privilege of Baptism and considered it one of the great joys that in the houses that care for the dying, so many have received this divine gift. Jesus’ valedictory command included baptism: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, knowing that I am with you always until the end of the earth.” To be a missionary at all, not to mention a Missionary of Charity, is to be a missionary of baptism, of the love of God we receive there. Today we ask the great missionary of baptism’s intercession that we may live out the gift of baptism — the gift of being loved by God, of being filled with the Holy Spirit, of having Jesus live within us — as fully as she did and seek, as missionaries of divine love, to bring as many people as we can to receive that same gift.
              • The day of our baptism finished around the altar, a sign that the Sacrament of Baptism always is meant to lead to the Sacrament of the Eucharist, where the mystery of Jesus living in us grows toward perfection. As we approach the altar today full of hope, let us burst with gratitude to God for this awesome gift, renew our baptismal promises, make sure our white garments are clean, turn up the flame of the baptismal candle we’ve become, open our ears to hear his word and our lips to proclaim our faith as beloved sons and daughters and beg for the grace to be maximally pleasing to him in this life so that we may have the privilege of experiencing the fulfillment of our great hope, with Saint Teresa of Calcutta and all the saints, of entering heaven, which baptism opens, where we hope with them to please and praise God forever.

                •  

                The readings for today’s Mass were: 

                Reading I

                Isaiah  40:1-5, 9-11

                Comfort, give comfort to my people,

                says your God.
                Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her
                that her service is at an end,
                her guilt is expiated;
                indeed, she has received from the hand of the LORD
                double for all her sins.

                A voice cries out:

                In the desert prepare the way of the LORD!
                Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!
                Every valley shall be filled in,
                every mountain and hill shall be made low;
                the rugged land shall be made a plain,
                the rough country, a broad valley.
                Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
                and all people shall see it together;
                for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

                Go up on to a high mountain,

                Zion, herald of glad tidings;
                cry out at the top of your voice,
                Jerusalem, herald of good news!
                Fear not to cry out
                and say to the cities of Judah:
                Here is your God!
                Here comes with power
                the Lord GOD,
                who rules by a strong arm;
                here is his reward with him,
                his recompense before him.
                Like a shepherd he feeds his flock;
                in his arms he gathers the lambs,
                carrying them in his bosom,
                and leading the ewes with care.

                Responsorial Psalm

                Psalm 104:1b-2, 3-4, 24-25, 27-28, 29-30

                R. (1)  O bless the Lord, my soul.

                O LORD, my God, you are great indeed!
                you are clothed with majesty and glory,
                robed in light as with a cloak.
                You have spread out the heavens like a tent-cloth;
                R. O bless the Lord, my soul.
                You have constructed your palace upon the waters.
                You make the clouds your chariot;
                you travel on the wings of the wind.
                You make the winds your messengers,
                and flaming fire your ministers.
                R. O bless the Lord, my soul.
                How manifold are your works, O LORD!
                In wisdom you have wrought them all–
                the earth is full of your creatures;
                the sea also, great and wide,
                in which are schools without number
                of living things both small and great.
                R. O bless the Lord, my soul.
                They look to you to give them food in due time.
                When you give it to them, they gather it;
                when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
                R. O bless the Lord, my soul.
                If you take away their breath, they perish and return to the dust.
                When you send forth your spirit, they are created,
                and you renew the face of the earth.
                R. O bless the Lord, my soul.

                Reading II

                Titus 2:11-14; 3:4-7

                Beloved:

                The grace of God has appeared, saving all
                and training us to reject godless ways and worldly desires
                and to live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age,
                as we await the blessed hope,
                the appearance of the glory of our great God
                and savior Jesus Christ,
                who gave himself for us to deliver us from all lawlessness
                and to cleanse for himself a people as his own,
                eager to do what is good.

                When the kindness and generous love

                of God our savior appeared,
                not because of any righteous deeds we had done
                but because of his mercy,
                He saved us through the bath of rebirth
                and renewal by the Holy Spirit,
                whom he richly poured out on us
                through Jesus Christ our savior,
                so that we might be justified by his grace
                and become heirs in hope of eternal life.

                Alleluia

                Cf. Luke 3:16

                R. Alleluia, alleluia.
                John said: One mightier than I is coming;
                he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
                R. Alleluia, alleluia.

                Gospel
                Luke 3:15-16, 21-22

                The people were filled with expectation,

                and all were asking in their hearts
                whether John might be the Christ.
                John answered them all, saying,
                “I am baptizing you with water,
                but one mightier than I is coming.
                I am not worthy to loosen the thongs of his sandals.
                He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

                After all the people had been baptized

                and Jesus also had been baptized and was praying,
                heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon him
                in bodily form like a dove.
                And a voice came from heaven,
                “You are my beloved Son;
                with you I am well pleased.”

                The post The Hope That Flows from Christ’s Baptism and Ours, Feast of the Baptism of the Lord (C), January 12, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                19 min
              • Baptism of the Lord (C), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, January 11, 2025

                Msgr. Roger J. Landry

                Conversations with Consequences Podcast
                Homily for the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, C, Vigil
                January 11, 2025

                 

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

                https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.11.25_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

                 

                The following text guided the homily: 

                • This is Msgr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation God the Father has with God the Son in this Sunday’s Gospel, as we ponder the scene of Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River by John the Baptist and its consequences in your life and mine.
                • The liturgical celebration of the Baptism of the Lord Jesus culminates the celebration of the Christmas season. It symbolically finishes Jesus’ three decades of hidden life as God the Father announces at the Jordan what was concealed from the beginning from almost everyone except from Mary and Joseph, a few shepherds, the wise men, Simeon and Anna and a handful of others: that Jesus is God’s own beloved Son in whom he is well pleased.
                • The celebration of Jesus’ baptism culminates the Christmas season in another way as well, because it points to our baptism, which is the means by which we enter into the saving work Jesus was born into our world to accomplish. We’ve been singing in Hark! The Herald Angels Singsince Christmas day, “Mild He lays His glory by, born that man no more may die, born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth.” Christ through his incarnation has made it possible for us through baptism to enter into the mystery and meaning of Christmas and the immortality, resurrection and second birth that that baptism promises in this world and forever. Jesus entered the waters of the Jordan precisely in order to bless those waters so that they could bring about this second birth, so that what John’s baptism pointed to could actually be accomplished: John’s baptism indicated our and others’ need for spiritual cleansing, for the forgiveness of sin, for the triumph over death to which our sins lead, but John’s baptism couldn’t actually take those sins away. This is the truth to which John the Baptist pointed in Sunday’s Gospel when he contrasted his baptism with the one Jesus and the Church Jesus founded would carry out: “I am baptizing you with water,” John said, “but one mightier than I is coming. … He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” When Jesus entered the water to be baptized, he sanctified the water so that the sign of washing could actually bring about the interior purification it signified and make it possible for us to be raised and born anew.
                • But the baptism Jesus would inaugurate would do far more than that. It would enable the sons of earth to enter into the very life of God. As we see in this Sunday’s Gospel, when Jesus was baptized, three things happened. First, heaven was opened. Second, the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus. Third, a voice came from heaven saying, “You are my beloved Son; with whom I am well pleased.” The event of Jesus’ baptism gave us a glimpse into heaven, into the very life of God. God the Father and God the Holy Spirit manifest in this world their relationship with God the Son that has existed in heaven since the beginning. God the Father pronounces Jesus his much loved and all pleasing Son. Great Trinitarian theologians and saints, like St. Augustine, have explained the Trinity as love. God the Father is the eternal lover, God the Son as the eternal beloved, and the Holy Spirit as the eternal love between the Father and the Son so strong as to take on personality. When God the Father speaks at the Jordan pronouncing Jesus as his beloved Son in whom he is well-pleased, He is just making explicit what has always been and will always be within the Blessed Trinity. Similarly when the Holy Spirit comes down from the Father in heaven upon the Son whose assumed humanity was wet in the Jordan, it is just a manifestation of the love between Father and Son whom the Holy Spirit has been since before the foundation of the world. Therefore at the Baptism of Jesus, we are able to eavesdrop on the eternal consequential conversation that takes place between the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity. St. John refers to God in his prologue as the Logos, “In the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was before God and the Logos was God.” We normally translate Logos as “Word,” but as the future Pope Benedict XVI wrote in a 1980s work called Feast of Faith, logos can also be translated as “conversation,” as an interpersonal trialogue between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We hear, and see, an echo of that eternal three-person dialogue at Jesus’ baptism.
                • But what is incredible is that in Baptism, we are able to enter into that conversation between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. All three things that happened in the baptism of Jesus occur in our Baptism.
                  • First, heaven is opened; we’re not just purified of sin but made heirs of heaven and eternal life. In entering the Jordan, Jesus converted it into what he would later call, in his dialogue with the woman at the well in Samaria, “Living Water,” that would well up within us to eternal life, because as our bodies are sprinkled or immersed on the outside, on the inside we are filled with Jesus that Living Water.
                  • Second, the Holy Spirit comes down upon us to dwell within us and make us his temple. The cleansing that happens in Baptism “of the Holy Spirit and of fire” is precisely to make us an abode of God, so that he might dwell in us and us in him, not just here in this world but forever. The Holy Spirit incorporates us into the Mystical Body of Christ and we are mysteriously inducted into the interpersonal conversation who is the Holy Trinity.
                  • And third, God the Father turns toward us, incorporated through baptism into Jesus his Son in his humanity, and says, “This is my beloved Son, this is my much-loved daughter, in whom I am well-pleased.” In Baptism, full as we are with Jesus the Living Water and the Holy Spirit the purifying fire, we are filled with the love of God the Father by our communion with God the Son and by our receiving of the Holy Spirit who is the love between the Father and the Son. Saint John would exclaim to the Christians of the early Church, “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are.” In Baptism, we become God the Father’s much-loved sons and daughters who takes pleasure in us just as anyone in the presence of a beloved is filled with joy. And the work of God the Son and God the Holy Spirit in us as a result of Baptism is meant to help us always be pleasing to him. This is what we will ask God the Father in the Opening Prayer of Sunday’s Mass. We pray to him: “When Christ had been baptized in the River Jordan and as the Holy Spirit descended upon him, [you] solemnly declared him your beloved Son, grant that your children by adoption, reborn of water and the Holy Spirit, may always be well-pleasing to you.” We will be always well-pleasing to God the Father by living out the reality of our baptism, the reality of our incorporation into Christ his Son, the reality of being filled with the Holy Spirit and with fire and zeal, the reality of being set free from sin so that we might live a new, holy life and pass through the open portal of heaven.
                  • That’s why the Solemnity of the Baptism of the Lord is always meant to be a time for us to reflect on the awesome reality of our own Baptism and the great commission we’ve received from Christ to be missionaries and to go, baptize all nations. On the Day of our Baptism, we could say we won the greatest lottery of all time. Not for any merit of our own, but by God’s grace and, for those of us baptized as infants, the faith of our parents, we were brought to the baptismal font, changed inwardly, and made joint heirs with Christ of the Kingdom of Heaven. We became members of the divine royal family. We were given God’s own immortal life inside of us and made capable of living in a holy communion with him. That’s why the day of our Baptism is by far the most important day of our life. Pope Francis never ceases to beg us to know and celebrate the day of our baptism, to thank God for the gift he has given, to pray for the person who baptized us and for our parents and Godparents.
                  • That’s why we should never cease to ponder the reality of what occurred on that day, when we rejected Satan, all his empty promises and evil works, and professed our faith and trust in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit in the holy Catholic Church in communion with all of the saints. On that day, the sacred minister prayed over our ears and lips so that we might hear his word and proclaim his faith in a way well-pleasing to God. We were covered with a white garment, an external sign of what happens to our soul in baptism, and instructed to take that white garment unstained to the eternal life of heaven, as our vesture for the heavenly wedding feast. Our baptismal candle was lit from the Easter Candle, a sign that we are now burning with the light of Christ risen from the dead, and we were told, with our parents and godparents to help us, to keep that light burning with the flame of faith like the wise virgins until Christ the Bridegroom returns. And then we processed to the altar and prayed together the Our Father as beloved, well-pleasing sons and daughters of God, together with Jesus and moved inwardly by the Holy Spirit who helps us to cry out “Abba, Father.” We celebrate this reality on the Feast of the Lord’s Baptism as an anticipation of the celebration we should have every year on the anniversary of the day the heavens were opened, the Holy Spirit came down, and God the Father pronounced us his beloved child. And we commit ourselves not only to baptizing our children and grandchildren and raising them in the practice of the faith, but seeking to bring others, and whole nations, to the Christian faith that flows from baptism.
                  • That most important day of our life finished around the altar, a sign that the Sacrament of Baptism always is meant to lead to the Sacrament of the Eucharist, where God Father, Son and Holy Spirit seeks to bring us ever more into the divine consequential conversation. As we prepare for Mass this Sunday, let us with gratitude renew the promises of our baptism, clean our white garments, turn up the flame of the baptismal candle we’ve become, open our ears to hear his word and our lips to proclaim our faith as we thank God for the awesome gift of being with Jesus his beloved sons and daughters and beg for the grace to be maximally pleasing to him in this life so that we may have the privilege with all the saints to enter heaven, which baptism opens, and please and praise him forever.

                    •  

                    The Gospel passage on which the homily was based was: 

                    Gospel
                    Luke 3:15-16, 21-22

                    The people were filled with expectation,

                    and all were asking in their hearts
                    whether John might be the Christ.
                    John answered them all, saying,
                    “I am baptizing you with water,
                    but one mightier than I is coming.
                    I am not worthy to loosen the thongs of his sandals.
                    He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

                    After all the people had been baptized

                    and Jesus also had been baptized and was praying,
                    heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon him
                    in bodily form like a dove.
                    And a voice came from heaven,
                    “You are my beloved Son;
                    with you I am well pleased.”

                    The post Baptism of the Lord (C), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, January 11, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                    10 min
                  • Nearer to Each Other For Being Nearer to God, Nuptial Mass of William John Robinson and Jace Luna Araujo, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Fort Worth, Texas, January 4, 2025

                    Msgr. Roger J. Landry

                    Cathedral of St. Patrick, Fort Worth, Texas
                    Nuptial Mass of William John Robinson and Jace Luna Araujo
                    January 4, 2025
                    Prov 31:10-13.19-20.30-31, Ps 34, Rom 12:1-2.9-18, Mt 5:1-12

                     

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

                    https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.4.25_Will_and_Jace_Robinson_Nuptial_Mass_1.mp3

                     

                    The following text guided today’s homily: 

                    • There are no coincidences in God, and hence it’s anything but random that God will join you, Jace and Will, in one flesh for the rest of your life today, January 4. You chose this date because you wanted to wed at a fitting time during the Christmas break. But God likely had something else in mind. He knew that every wedding anniversary you will celebrate — your first, tenth, silver, golden and perhaps even your platinum and beyond —  will take place on January 4th, the feast of an American saint, Elizabeth Ann Seton.
                    • On all your upcoming anniversaries, besides flowers, exchanged gifts and a great meal, I hope that you will come to Mass, with the children with whom we pray God will bless you, to thank him for the gift of your marriage, to receive his blessing, and to renew before him your commitment to each other and to him. And each year as you come, except on Sundays, the Church in the United States will be celebrating the liturgical Memorial of St. Elizabeth Seton, who is not only one of presently just 11 American saints, but the only one who was married.
                    • The Church remembers St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, of course, as the first native born American to be raised to the altars, as the founder of the first Catholic school for girls in the United States, the initiator of the American Catholic school system, and the foundress of the first American religious order, the Sisters of Charity. Before she was a religious, before she was even a Catholic, she was the wife for nine years of William Magee Seton, the mother of five children and the foster mom of six of William’s younger siblings.
                    • She was a very happy wife. At the time of the American founding, most marriages took place among social classes and professions in order to strengthen the professional standing and connections of their respective families of origin. She came from a medical family — her father was the first professor of anatomy at Columbia College as well as the first New York “health officer” or commissioner — and she was expected to marry a doctor. Will, like his father, was a wealthy businessman in the import business and was similarly expected to marry someone from a mercantile family. The fact that they married — she at 19, he at 25 — was a sign that they were marrying out of love, that they loved each other more than their families of origin and social convention. Elizabeth, called Betsy by her family and Eliza by Will, regarded her husband as “my beloved treasure.” Will, who traveled extensively for work, never journeyed without her portrait. Marrying at the very beginning of George Washington’s second term, they had a happy marriage, Will’s playing the violin, including on the first Stradivarius ever in the United States, and Eliza’s playing the piano, with their music a fitting symbol of the loving marital harmony.
                    • But their marriage wasn’t easy. Because of an international financial crisis beyond Will’s control, his business lost most of its money, he eventually had to declare bankruptcy, they needed to move and dramatically downsize their home, and together they needed to try to build the livelihood anew. Elizabeth, in the midst of homeschooling the many children, helped Will to run the merchant house, assisting him with sundry types of paperwork and correspondence. Throughout the good times and bad, sickness and health, prosperity and poverty, Elizabeth found God in her marriage, saying about Will, “Where he is, is my present home, and our God is everywhere.”
                    • Seven years into their marriage, Will came down with tuberculosis and suffered terribly for two years as Elizabeth cared for him. Eventually doctors advised him to travel to Livorno, Italy, in the hopes of an easier situation for his lungs. There he was quarantined for 25 days in a damp, stone quarantine house in the harbor where his situation only worsened. Soon after he was released, he died died. Elizabeth stayed close to him until the end and, rather than assisting him to stave off death, helped him to get ready for eternal life.
                    • She was at the time an Episcopalian, the granddaughter of a Church of England priest, and far more devout than her husband. She helped him, however, to realize that the life they had lovingly made together was not his real home, and taught him to pray not for recovery but for salvation. As Will struggled with the prospect of his upcoming judgment, Elizabeth urged him to trust in God’s mercy. She wrote her sister-in-law, “My William often asked me if I felt assured that he would be accepted and pardoned. I always tried to convince him that where the soul was so humble and sincere as his, and submission to God’s will so uniform as his had been through his trial, that it became sinful to doubt one moment of his reception through the merits of his Redeemer.” She fulfilled the purpose of her marriage in his regard and helped him long for and, she prayed, enter the eternal wedding banquet, something for which she would later pray with faithful, spousal insistence. She added in the letter to her sister-in-law something that points to an important spiritual truth, for couples, for family members, for all of us: “Willy’s heart seemed to be nearer to me for being nearer to his God.” The closer we are to God, the closer we are to those we love.
                    • Elizabeth Seton’s marriage teaches us in a powerful and beautiful way that Christian matrimony is ultimately about holiness, eternal happiness and heaven. It’s about the sanctification of the spouses and the procreation, education and sanctification of children. Marriage, like every sacrament, is a gift from God to help us to enter into intimate communion with him, to submit with trust and love to his will, and to help each other grow nearer to God until, by God’s mercy, we enter into eternal communion with him.
                    • Every January 4th from this point onward, you will be able to ponder, Will and Jace, the marriage of Will and Eliza and reflect on how they helped each other to become holy. Every anniversary you will be able to meditate on how marriage is meant to help spouses and their children not just to remain faithful but to become saints. Every anniversary you will be able one year closer to eternity and have the grace to stoke your desires to help each other come to the eternal nuptial banquet!
                    • The readings you’ve chosen for today help you and all of us to focus on how the vocation to marriage is indeed a call to holiness.
                    • The Book of Proverbs reminds us that a worthy wife is far more valuable that pearls, that the husband who entrusts his heart to her has an unfailing prize, because she will bring him good all the days of her life. The worth of such a wife, the sacred author goes to describe, is not found in her charm or physical beauty, but in her “fear of the Lord,” in her faith. This was certainly true of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, but Will, you have told me how in Jace you feel you have found a treasure more valuable than all the jewelry on the planet, that her worth is not in the beauty that all of us behold with you today but in her faith, the faith that you say has helped you draw much closer to God.
                    • You’ve described during marriage preparation how she stimulates you but the way she puts that faith into action. “Jace,” you told me, “has inspired me to take my faith more seriously. Although I grew up Catholic, I was away from the Church for a while. Seeing how she put serious time, thought, and effort into strengthening her relationship with God helped me do the same – which has had a dramatic impact on my life. In addition to faith, she has inspired me to be more confident in my identity as a Catholic, a thinker, and a Robinson. An extension of this has been an inspiration to be present, to enjoy life and be fully engaged in whatever is in front of me. Jace is full of life and her faith and vivacity inspires me every day.”
                    • And, Jace, you said to me in marriage preparation that you know that the treasure Proverbs describes is not one-sided, that in Will you have found a man who is “strong, smart, handsome, funny, and God-fearing.” You told me, “I genuinely feel Will makes me better every day through the kindness and selflessness he shows me and everyone else. We pray each night [on the phone] and before meals and try to pray together as much as we can. When I’m having a bad day or an anxious moment, I know Will is likely going to ask me if I’ve prayed today. When I tell him I haven’t, he’s probably going to tell me to stop whatever I’m doing and offer it up to God. He pushes me to strengthen my relationship with God—to deepen my faith and resolve to surrender to His will. He genuinely desires a holy life for me.”
                    • Like St. Elizabeth Ann Seton before you, you are both trying to live by the advice St. Paul gives you and all Christian couples in the second reading you chose for today. The apostle told the first Christians in Rome, “Let your love be sincere.” Sincerity doesn’t just mean “from the heart,” but it means truthful, pure, unmixed and unadulterated, free from pretense and falsehood. That’s the type of love so many saw in Mr. and Mrs. Seton and that’s the type of love God wants to help everyone find in the soon-to-be Mr. and Mrs. Robinson. He gives you a list of behaviors to help you keep your love for each other as sincere as Christ’s love for you: to love sincerely, he stresses, means to hate what is evil and hold to what is good; to care each other with mutual affection; to anticipate each other in showing honor, the love and honor you will publicly profess in a few minutes you wish to give each other for the rest of your life; to help each other to be fervent and zealous in serving the Lord; to rejoice together in the hope Christ places in you even on days you might be tempted to complain; to endure in affliction, even in the midst of the sorrows and contradictions that inevitably accompany every marriage; to persevere in prayer, knowing that God is with you listening and responding; to have the same high regard for each other, never looking down on each other, but always concerned for what is noble; and to live at peace to the extent possible, never letting the sun go down on your anger, and seeking to abide together with the Prince of Peace even after quarrels. Christ wants to praise you for the sincerity of your love in speech and in your behavior.
                    • You praised the sincerity of each other’s love for you effusively during our delightful marriage preparation meetings.
                    • Jace, you told me, “I love Will’s goodness and his total self-giving. He is selfless with his time and energy in a way that amazes me. He is an amazing friend and not just to me. He is loyal and forgiving, at times mind-bogglingly so. He is immune to anger and inspires me to let things go, to assume the best in people and to forgive. He is silly and funny, and always, always, always,” — you can tell how important it is to you(!) — “fills up my water bottle if I ask, even if he doesn’t want to. He is always trying to show up more to those he loves. He never makes me feel annoying, even if I am being very annoying. He shows his love through actions. Whenever I ask anything of him, the answer is almost always ‘yes.’ He does this even if he doesn’t have the time, or doesn’t know how. He gives really good hugs when I need them —and even when I don’t — and is always trying to be more vocal and transparent. He also shows his love by how seriously he takes our discussions whenever we have a conflict. He cares about getting to the root of whatever issue we’re having and ensuring we have the systems in place not to recidivate. This means he’s not going to say sorry unless he actually believes the situation warrants it. He’s not going to lie to get out of a tough conversation.”
                    • Will, you told me you are so grateful as well for Jace’s sincere love for you and for others. “Jace,” you stated, “is as thoughtful as she is confident. She shows this through things like notes that she writes me or the things that she remembers. She shows this through sacrificing small things every day, like taking the smaller cup of coffee if they’re unequal, making the hike down to my apartment because I’ve had a long week, or being patient with me when I’m certainly annoying her after a long day at work. She has never failed to support me. She has always put thought into our relationship, doing the legwork to ensure we are communicating and remaining connected. She cares for me countless in ways. Her cooking is something that is never required but always puts warmth in my heart. Her effort to keep my life organized has saved me on countless occasions.”
                    • Paul’s summons to sincere love, however, is not the only connection between today’s second reading and the marital bond God will form in you in just a few minutes. At the beginning of today’s passage, the apostle urges you, “by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.” In Greek, the text is even clearer, when he says that the only worship that makes sense, that’s logical, is to give all, to offer your bodies, to make your life a commentary on the words of consecration. For you to be capable of such an exchange of self-gifts in love, the apostle tells you, “Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.” Today, Jesus wants to give you the graces to help transform your mind as you enter into this great sacrament of marriage. He wants to help you, in fact, put on his own mind, to look at things from his perspective, no longer viewing things the way everyone in this age does, but the way he does.
                    • That’s why it’s so inspiring that you chose the Gospel you did for your Nuptial Mass. There’s no passage in Sacred Scripture more countercultural than the way Jesus began the Sermon on the Mount. In the Beatitudes, Jesus overturns earthly expectations and reveals to us the path to happiness, holiness and heaven. This is the way St. Elizabeth Ann Seton lived and God is calling each of you to help others live.
                    • In a thanatophobic age struggling to understand the relationship of death to life, Jesus promises that those who love enough to mourn will indeed experience great comfort through the truths of faith and the fact of his own triumph. In a world that seeks after money, that places its faith, hope and love in material positions and in things that can be bought, Jesus tells us that the truly blessed are those who are poor in spirit, who treasure his kingdom above all. In an epoch that relies on force, when people and leaders often bully their way to power and try to overpower those who have made themselves enemies, Jesus tells us that real happiness comes from being meek, from making peace, from being merciful. In a world addicted to the lust of the flesh, leading to so many broken hearts, lives and families, Jesus proclaims the importance of purity of heart, which sees God in others, and reverences and loves both him and them. At a time in which a globalized indifference to others has gone viral, Jesus says that the path to happiness is compassion, through hungering and thirsting for justice and through the perfection of charity that is holiness. In an era when people crave publicity, idolize celebrities, and yearn for social media likes, influence and popularity, Jesus says we will be blessed, rather, when we’re insulted, persecuted and calumniated because of our love for and fidelity to him.
                    • These are not easy words. The reality to which they point is likewise difficult to live. But they are the path Jesus himself lived, they are the way St. Elizabeth Ann Seton lived, and they are the way he calls you to follow. They indicate how not to be conformed to this age and to be transformed by the renewal of your mind, so that you may discern what is God’s will of God, what is good, pleasing and perfect, what leads, in fact, to sincere love. In an age in which many doubt that the path Jesus indicates is the way to true and lasting happiness in this world and forever, you are called in your marriage, just like St. Elizabeth Ann Seton was in hers, to become the living validation of Jesus’ wisdom.
                    • And to help you in this Christian mission you are taking on today, Jesus wants to give you himself. This is perhaps the greatest lesson of all from Saint Elizabeth Seton. After her husband Will died in Italy, she and her daughter Anna Maria stayed for a few months in Italy. There Elizabeth became exposed to the Catholic teaching on the Holy Eucharist and she began slowly to yearn for Jesus. She wrote to her sister-in-law, “How happy would we be if we believed what these dear [Catholics] believe, that they possess God in the Sacrament and that he remains in their churches and is carried to them when they are sick.” A couple of weeks later, she wrote that when she happened upon a Eucharistic procession, “I fell on my knees without thinking when the Blessed Sacrament passed by and cried out in agony to God to bless me if he was there, that my whole Soul desired only him.” That prayer would be heard. She would come to believe what Catholics believe. She would be blessed by having her whole soul desire him.” About a year later, at St. Peter’s Church in lower Manhattan, she would become Catholic and receive him in Holy Communion. She counted down the days to her first Communion. The night before she would receive him for the first time, she could barely sleep. And when she did receive him, finally, she wrote a friend, “It seemed to me my King had come to take his throne. At last,” she emphasized, “God is mine and I am his.”
                    • She became one of the Catholic Church’s greatest Eucharistic converts and a great Eucharistic saint. Because of her Eucharistic love and witness, last summer, as you know, she was selected as the patroness of the eastern Route of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, as for 65 days six permanent pilgrims, including a friend present here at this Mass, and I accompanied Jesus through the streets so that others, like St. Elizabeth, could cry out for his blessing and, we prayed, follow her on the path of Eucharistic conversion and holiness. When we were in Manhattan, both of you joined Jesus and us on that journey. Today you continue that Eucharistic pilgrimage, as the Lord Jesus comes here to meet you, to bless you, to unite you, to possess you and you him, to renew not just your mind, but your heart, your soul, your bodily strength, your entire life, and to lead you for the rest of your days on the Eucharistic pilgrimage of Christian life.
                    • Jace, you told me, emphatically, in marriage preparation, “God put Will and me in each other’s lives and held us through each and every turn to get us to this moment.” Indeed, God has come today to fulfill what he began in you when you met in the eighth grade at Oakridge School and advanced at your high school senior prom, during your college years, your journeys in Europe, and over the last year and a half in New York City. And as God comes here to join you for the rest of your life in one flesh, Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton is doubtless praying for you, that you may experience the joys she had in her marriage and even more, as you, Will and Jace, will be able to share in what Will and Eliza were not able to do on earth, the fulfillment of Jesus’ saving will, as he gives us his body and blood in Holy Communion. It’s here at Mass, by means of his sublime self-gift in Holy Communion, that he will help you to become a worthy wife and husband. It’s here where he will regularly renew your minds and help you to conform yourself to him and not to the world. It’s here where he will strengthen you to love each other sincerely, to become a couple of the beatitudes, and to learn how, as we sang in today’s Psalm, to bless the Lord at all times. It’s here— today, every January 4 hereafter, and in fact each time you come to Mass— that you, like St. Elizabeth, will ultimately come to possess God and he you, so that, with self-mastery, you will be able to say to each other, “This is my body, this is my blood, this is my heart, my hands, my feet, my sweat, my bones, and my everything and all, given out of love for you,” conscious, as she grasped, that the nearer you are to God, the nearer you will be to each other. May God who has put you in each other’s lives and held you through each and every turn to get you to this place, this moment, bless you all the days of the Eucharistic pilgrimage of your married life, and, through you and your holy love for each other and for him, bless us all by inspiring us to join you all the way to that pilgrimage’s fulfillment at the eternal banquet!

                      •  

                      The readings for today’s Mass were: 

                      A Reading from the Book of Proverbs

                      When one finds a worthy wife, her value is far beyond pearls. Her husband, entrusting his heart to her, has an unfailing prize. She brings him good, and not evil, all the days of her life. She obtains wool and flax and makes cloth with skillful hands. She puts her hands to the distaff, and her fingers ply the spindle. She reaches out her hands to the poor, and extends her arms to the needy. Charm is deceptive and beauty fleeting; the woman who fears the LORD is to be praised. Give her a reward of her labors, and let her works praise her at the city gates.

                      “I Will Bless the Lord at All Times”

                      I will bless the LORD at all times; praise shall be always in my mouth.
                      My soul will glory in the LORD that the poor may hear and be glad.

                      Magnify the LORD with me; let us exalt his name together.

                      I sought the LORD, who answered me, delivered me from all my fears.

                      Look to God that you may be radiant with joy and your faces may not blush for shame.

                      In my misfortune I called, the LORD heard and saved me from all distress.

                      The angel of the LORD, who encamps with them, delivers all who fear God.

                      Learn to savor how good the LORD is; happy are those who take refuge in him.

                      A Reading from the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans

                      I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship. Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect. Let love be sincere; hate what is evil, hold on to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; anticipate one another in showing honor. Do not grow slack in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, endure in affliction, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the holy ones, exercise hospitality. Bless those who persecute [you], bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Have the same regard for one another; do not be haughty but associate with the lowly; do not be wise in your own estimation. Do not repay anyone evil for evil; be concerned for what is noble in the sight of all. If possible, on your part, live at peace with all.

                      A Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew

                      When he saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he had sat down, his disciples came to him. He began to teach them, saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you [falsely] because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. Thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

                      The post Nearer to Each Other For Being Nearer to God, Nuptial Mass of William John Robinson and Jace Luna Araujo, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Fort Worth, Texas, January 4, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                      30 min

                    About Catholic Preaching

                    From the publisher's feed

                    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.

                    More shows like Catholic Preaching

                    Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies by Bishop Robert Barron

                    Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

                    4,970 Listeners

                    Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz by Ascension

                    Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz

                    6,234 Listeners

                    The Word on Fire Show - Catholic Faith and Culture by Bishop Robert Barron

                    The Word on Fire Show - Catholic Faith and Culture

                    5,713 Listeners

                    The Thomistic Institute by The Thomistic Institute

                    The Thomistic Institute

                    811 Listeners

                    St. Josemaria Institute Podcast by St. Josemaria Institute

                    St. Josemaria Institute Podcast

                    597 Listeners

                    First Things Podcast by First Things

                    First Things Podcast

                    717 Listeners

                    Pints With Aquinas by Matt Fradd

                    Pints With Aquinas

                    6,745 Listeners

                    All Things Catholic with Dr. Edward Sri by Ascension

                    All Things Catholic with Dr. Edward Sri

                    1,353 Listeners

                    The Counsel of Trent by Catholic Answers

                    The Counsel of Trent

                    2,616 Listeners

                    Catholic Daily Reflections by My Catholic Life!

                    Catholic Daily Reflections

                    554 Listeners

                    Every Knee Shall Bow (Your Catholic Evangelization Podcast) by Ascension

                    Every Knee Shall Bow (Your Catholic Evangelization Podcast)

                    839 Listeners

                    Godsplaining by Dominican Friars Province of St. Joseph

                    Godsplaining

                    1,276 Listeners

                    Catholic Saints by Augustine Institute

                    Catholic Saints

                    1,214 Listeners

                    Catholic Bible Study by Augustine Institute

                    Catholic Bible Study

                    779 Listeners

                    Chris Stefanick Catholic Show by Chris Stefanick | Real Life Catholic

                    Chris Stefanick Catholic Show

                    444 Listeners