Catholic Preaching

Catholic Preaching

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Catholic Preaching episodes

  • Epiphany (C), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, January 4, 2025

    Msgr. Roger J. Landry

    Conversations with Consequences Podcast
    Homily for the Solemnity of the Epiphany, C, Vigil
    January 4, 2025

     

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

    https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.4.25_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

     

    The following text guided the homily: 

    • Happy New Year! This is Msgr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us this Sunday, as the Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord, his “manifestation” to all the nations represented by the wise men coming from afar.
    • There are many angles by which we can approach this great encounter. We can focus on the meaning of the homage or adoration the Magi give Jesus when they arrive. We can meditate on the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. We can ponder the significance of the star.
    • But insofar as I have just begun full-time my new work as National Director of The Pontifical Mission Societies, I’d like to look at it from the perspective of how Christ is the light Isaiah prophesies in Sunday’s first reading who would shine over all peoples, so that all nations might walk by his light and kings of various peoples by his shining radiance. Jesus is that Light from Light who came into the world to illumine not just the Jewish people, not just those who would eventually hear the Gospel and become Christians, but all peoples everywhere.
    • Over the course of the centuries, this focus on the wise men coming from afar as representatives of all the non-Jewish peoples of every nation and all time is the most traditional way by which Christians have looked at the Solemnity of the Epiphany. The prophets Isaiah, Daniel, Jeremiah and Ezekiel had all announced God’s intention to be a savior of all peoples, but the visit of these non-Jewish magi was understood by the early Christians as the beginning of the fulfillment of that plan. They were the first but certainly not the last in a great procession prophesied that has taken place over the centuries as non-Jews from the east and the west, the north and the south, have come to Bethlehem to find in the newborn Jesus their light, salvation and Savior.
    • The wise men were, first, those who were seeking God arduously through God’s first epiphany, which is the manifestation of God in creation. They were seeking him in the stars God had made. Following that light with a small-L, they were longing for the Light with a capital-L. Theirs is an extraordinary witness. Perhaps moved by the ancient Sybilline prophecies that Michelangelo depicted in the Sistine Chapel, or even by Balaam’s prophecy from the Book of Numbers, “A star shall come forth out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel” (Nm 24: 17), when they saw the star at its rising, they not only interpreted that God was trying to communicate something to them in general, but that God was specifically heralding the birth of the newborn King in the east, who would be a universal king. 2000 years ago, in the deserts of the Middle East and on the seas, people, we know, were highly dependent on the fixed stars in the sky as references for their direction. They firmly believed that God had made them this way for that reason. Whenever anything happened in the sky that was new — like the appearance of a comet, or meteor shower, or a planet’s or star’s shining more brightly — the ancients thought that it had to bear some message from the creator of the heavens. When they saw the star of Bethlehem at its rising, they didn’t respond just as curious astrologers but as those who hungered to find what they had long through their studies sought. Led by the star, and their simple trust in its supposed meaning, the wise men went on a journey toward the Holy Land. Pope Francis said (2017) that they reflect the image of all those who long for God, but also asked (2018), why they alone saw it. He answered: because they hadn’t ceased raising their eyes to heaven. Many, he stated, can keep their gaze fixed on earthly realities and creature comforts. Many, likewise, he conjectured, only go for what’s flashing, and perhaps the star was not that eye-catching or that much brighter than other stars and worldly lights. As a fourth-century bishop (Chomatius of Aquileia) quipped, “The star was seen by everyone but not everyone understood its meaning. Likewise, our Lord and Savior was born for everyone, but not everyone has welcomed him.”
    • Unlike many of their contemporaries, the wise men, seeing the star, were willing to make the decision to take up the journey. They overcame every sense of self-sufficiency, the anaesthetization of their heart, the refusal not to seek more out of life, or the fears they might have had of taking risks. They were willing — in fact, eager — to be changed. And they set out tirelessly on a journey. We don’t know their itinerary, but the Gospel gives us indications that their pilgrimage was long in time and distance. Herod asked them the exact time of the appearance of the star, and then, a short time later, after they did not return to him, he proceeded to kill every boy in Bethlehem under two years of age. Thus, it seems that the time of their preparation and the journey to get to Bethlehem probably took 18-24 months. And then there was the journey back! Whether they walked or had the help of animals we don’t know, but we do know that they made the journey of great time and distance because they believed God was speaking to them through the star. They were seeking the truth, and they were willing to make the sacrifices that seeking and trying to live the truth entails. They showed by their journey that they had placed God, however they understood him at the beginning of their journey, at the center of their life. When they arrive in Bethlehem, we see that worship was the end and goal of their journey. To worship means to center one’s life on God rather than oneself. It means to sacrifice what is non-essential for the one thing necessary. God for them was that unum necessarium!
    • Here we come to the role of the Church and the summons to mission. When St. John Paul II would preach on the Epiphany, he would say that the “Church’s missionary activity … finds it starting point and universal scope in the feast of the Epiphany” (1998). “The journey of the Magi from the East,” he stated in 1995, “is like a great symbol of all those roads on which men, from near and far, from the extreme ends of the earth, walk over the centuries towards the light of Christ. He who now, Newborn, allows himself to be found and worshiped by the Magi, one day, at the end of his earthly mission, will say to the Apostles: ‘Go all over the world and preach the Gospel to every creature’ (Mk 16:15), and with these words he will imprint a precise direction to the history of the Church. … Those who have succeeded the Apostles in the mission to bring light to all nations, to preach to all nations, have indicated to men the same way saying: Go to Bethlehem, there Christ is born; go to Nazareth, there he spent the thirty years of his hidden life; stop on the shores of Lake Galilee and in many places of the Holy Land, where He taught and worked miracles, giving signs of his divine power; and above all go to Jerusalem, where he was crucified to take away the sins of the world and reveal himself as the Redeemer of man; go to Jerusalem, where he is Risen on the third day manifesting the power of life that is in Him, life stronger than physical and spiritual death.”
    • During his first celebration of this feast as the successor of St. Peter he said, the Magi are “the beginning and the prefiguration of all those who, from beyond the frontiers of the Chosen People of the Old Covenant, have reached and still reach Christ by means of faith. … The Epiphany is the feast of the vitality of the Church. The Church lives her awareness of God’s mission, which is carried out through her.… ‘Mission’ is the proper name of the Church, and in a certain sense defines her. The Church becomes herself when she carries out her mission. The Church is herself, when men—such as the shepherds and the Magi Kings from the East—reach Jesus Christ by means of faith.” He said that the Church is meant to “more aware of the vastness of her mission every year” as a result of this feast, to realize “how many men it is still necessary to bring to faith! How many men must be won back to the faith, which they have lost, and that is sometimes more difficult than the first conversion to faith! But the Church, aware of that great gift, the gift of the incarnation of God, can never stop, can never tire. She must continually seek access to Bethlehem for every man and for every period. The Epiphany is the feast of God’s challenge” (1979).
    • The Epiphany is the feast of God’s great missionary challenge to you, to me, to the whole Church. It’s a challenge to become true evangelizers, reflecting the light of Christ, radiant like stars, leading people to Bethlehem, Nazareth, Calvary, and ultimately to the eternal Jerusalem. As we are transformed by our own encounter with Christ, we, like the Magi, are meant to leave by “another route,” sent out as modern Melchiors, Balthasars, and Kaspars, as wise men, who are able to lead others to the Source of wisdom, so that all those searching for God — in the stars, in the sciences, or even in other religions — may come to discover with us in Jesus the glory of God in the highest and the road to peace on earth. And so, as we prepare for Sunday, let us resolve like the Magi to make the journey to Bethlehem, to center our life on Jesus in worship, and to receive from him the grace we need to live up to God’s great missionary challenge to us to help bring all the nations, indeed every creature, to Christ with us.

      •  

      The Gospel passage on which the homily was based was: 

      Gospel
      Matthew 2:1-12

      When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea,

      in the days of King Herod,
      behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying,
      “Where is the newborn king of the Jews?
      We saw his star at its rising
      and have come to do him homage.”
      When King Herod heard this,
      he was greatly troubled,
      and all Jerusalem with him.
      Assembling all the chief priests and the scribes of the people,
      he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born.
      They said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea,
      for thus it has been written through the prophet:
      And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah,
      are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
      since from you shall come a ruler,
      who is to shepherd my people Israel.”
      Then Herod called the magi secretly
      and ascertained from them the time of the star’s appearance.
      He sent them to Bethlehem and said,
      “Go and search diligently for the child.
      When you have found him, bring me word,
      that I too may go and do him homage.”
      After their audience with the king they set out.
      And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them,
      until it came and stopped over the place where the child was.
      They were overjoyed at seeing the star,
      and on entering the house
      they saw the child with Mary his mother.
      They prostrated themselves and did him homage.
      Then they opened their treasures
      and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
      And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod,
      they departed for their country by another way.

      The post Epiphany (C), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, January 4, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

      10 min
    • The Rib of Adam, The Rock of Peter: Family and Church as the Building Blocks of Society, 2025 Leonine Forum National Conference, January 3, 2025

      Msgr. Roger J. Landry

      2025 Leonine Forum National Conference: “A Time To Build”
      JW Marriott, Orlando, Florida
      January 3, 2025

      To listen to an audio recording of this morning’s conference, please click below: 

      https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.3.25_Rib_of_Adam_Rock_of_Peter_1.mp3

       

      The Outline of the talk was:

      • Introduction on the theme of the conference, “A Time to Build.” Following the Tekton of Nazareth
      • Introduction on the title given to me: “The Rib of Adam, the Rock of Peter”
      • Leo XIII and the Three Necessary Societies of Family, the Church, and Civil Society. The Response of the Church to the French Revolution.
      • Responding to two Revolutions of the last 60 years: the cultural revolution in the West and the techno-economic revolution worldwide
      • Building and Strengthening the Family and the Church: the interdependence of both societies.
      • How do we strengthen the family?
        • Buttress the families we have
        • Help young people enter marriage well prepared
        • Confront the things undermining marriage and the family, both the perennial problems as well as the new things
        • Create a culture of marital vocations, including in the Leonine Forum.
        • The help of the Eucharist in building, uniting, and orienting the family through the Word of God and through making one’s approach to marriage Eucharistic.
        • How do we strengthen the Church?
          • Helping appreciate the Church as a building block
          • Overcoming the scandals of sex abuse, of the response of the Church to COVID and other obstacles
          • Getting involved at the level of the mustard seed and helping the Church grow
          • Strengthening the Church’s kerygma/martyria (passing on of the faith by word and action)
          • Strengthening the Church’s leitourgia (helping people to worship and prioritize God)
          • Strengthening the Church’s koinoia (helping people find real community in an age of isolation and individualism)
          • Strengthening the Church’s diakonia (caring for others as Good Samaritans)
          • We know the impact of the early Church (Acts of the Apostles), but also know the way our parishes used to serve as salt, light and leaven as the most impactful institutions in neighborhoods. Clergy and lay people both need to renew such commitments
          • Conclusion on the Jubilee of Hope
            • Hope means living with God in the world. He has made us in his image with a social or interpersonal nature. The work in front of us during this Time to Build is full of hope because God with us will be doing the heaviest lifting.

              •  

              The post The Rib of Adam, The Rock of Peter: Family and Church as the Building Blocks of Society, 2025 Leonine Forum National Conference, January 3, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

              31 min
            • A Time to Build Ourselves on the Name of Jesus, Memorial of Jesus’ Holy Name, January 3, 2025

              Msgr. Roger J. Landry

              2025 Leonine Forum National Conference: “A Time To Build”
              JW Marriott, Orlando, Florida
              Memorial of the Holy Name of Jesus
              January 3, 2025
              1 Jn 2:29-3:6, Ps 98, Jn 1:29-34

               

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

              https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.3.25_Homily_1.mp3

               

              The following text guided the homily: 

              • During this national conference focused on a Time to Build, today’s Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus gives us the opportunity to focus on erecting our lives on the name, meaning ultimately our relationship with the person, of Jesus. It’s basically a continuation of the ancient feast of Jesus’ circumcision when the infant Lord, like every Jewish male, formally received his name. St. Luke tells us, as we read two days ago at the end of the Gospel for the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, “When eight days were completed for his circumcision, he was named Jesus, the name given him by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.” That name, Jesus, means “God saves,” and in the readings today for January 3, we see precisely how God saves and how we’re supposed to respond to and remain in — in other words build our life and help others build their lives — this gift.
              • In the Gospel, John the Baptist points out Jesus and calls him by a phrase that periphrastically expresses his name: “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Three decades earlier, the Angel Gabriel for God had told St. Joseph to name him Jesus, “for he will save his people from their sins.” John had been baptizing bodies with water as a sign of repentance and the need for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus would come after him and institute the Sacrament of Baptism, which would bring about what John’s baptism could only symbolize. He would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire, a baptism that would reach and cleanse the soul. In baptism, Jesus relates to us precisely as Savior. To live our Baptism, to ground our existence on the divine filiation, incorporation into the Church, and indwelling of God that baptism makes possible, is, in other words, to build our life on the Holy Name of Jesus and its meaning. In the Jewish mentality, as we know, names are super significant. God famously changed the names of Abram to Abraham, Sarai to Sarah, Jacob to Israel and Simon to Peter to describe the realities he wanted those names to signify. Likewise, God told Hosea what to name his children to show his relationship with the people of Israel and through Gabriel commanded Zechariah to name his son John, to show, literally, God’s graciousness. When we hear, say or use the name of Jesus, we celebrate the incarnation of God’s saving will. God doesn’t just have a name, but because of his divine simplicity, he is his name. To pray, for example, in the name of Jesus means to try to pray in the person of Jesus, to ask for what Jesus himself would ask and is asking. To celebrate the name of Jesus means to celebrate the reality that Jesus is our saving God. That’s exactly what Jesus came to do, to save us, to save us from sin and from sin’s worst consequence death. There is, in fact, no other name under heaven and earth by which we can be saved (Acts 4:12). Today is a special day, in other words, on which we celebrate Jesus as our Savior and respond to his salvation. To invoke Jesus’ name well is to relate to him as Savior and to allow him to save us! It’s to build our life on his saving love: to recognize that we need to be rescued, that he comes to our rescue, and to reach out and grab his hand as he engages in that ongoing life-saving and sanctifying work.
              • This gift and mystery of the name of Jesus receives even greater depth with the readings today. Jesus’ name, Jesus’ saving work, is one he wants us to remain in and share. St. John tells us in today’s first reading, in one of the most important passages in Sacred Scripture: “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God.” It’s a mind-blowing reality that we are even able to be called God’s sons and daughters. We’ve heard the expression so many times that we’re children of God that what it means can escape us. Imagine for a minute if a billionaire adopted us and made us heirs to all his wealth, or a King adopted us as members of the royal family; neither comes close to how exhilarating St. John the Evangelist’s words would have sounded to his first listeners to say that they were now the children of the Creator of the Universe and King of Kings. We know from our own life how names and associations can change people. For the last few years, I have seen what happened when young people, especially the first of their families to go to college, began to associate with their new identity as Columbia University students; they’d immediately start getting and wearing sweatshirts, t-shirts, hats and other gear to show and joyfully grow into their new identity. A recent bride told me how much of a sweet adjustment it’s been for her since her wedding to get used to people calling her by a new last name, publicly identifying with the man she loves and to whom she’s committed the rest of her life. For the last few weeks, I, too, been adjusting to people calling me by a new ecclesiastical name. Even though it’s just an honorific, it’s almost as if everyone I know has gone from speaking to me with the “tu” form and the intimate address of “father” to using the far more formal “usted,” or “lei,” or “vous” or “vôce” form, which has forced me to focus on whether I’m living up fully to the dignity of the priesthood and humbly giving all the honor to God, who is the one true Signore. How much more should our life change by our being called sons and daughters of God! We are labeled Christians, or little Jesus Christs. If every knee in heaven and on earth and under the earth should bow at the name that is above every other name, imagine our dignity being associated with that name in whom we have been both saved (Jesus) and anointed (Christ).
              • But, as St. John indicates, this honor doesn’t stop merely with our being called children of God. St. John says, “Yet that is what we are!” God has chosen us to become his sons and daughters through the wondrous reality of spiritual adoption in Baptism. In today’s Gospel, St. John the Baptist points to the reality of the One coming after him — Jesus, God saves — who will “baptize with the Holy Spirit.” This is the Spirit who changes us within so that we may cry out “Abba, Father! (Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6), so that we may relate to God as a beloved “Dad.” Through God’s own work, we have actually become sons and daughters in the Son of God. That’s the ultimate meaning of salvation. That’s the purpose of the incarnation of the Word: Jesus took on our humanity, as we prayed on Christmas day, so that we might become sharers in his divinity, partakers in his own divine life. St. John tells us that this mind-blowing reality won’t be acknowledged by the world, any more than Jesus’ incarnation was acknowledged, for “the reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.” But that is nevertheless the truth of who we are! And St. John goes on to say that we’ve got an even greater destiny still in store: “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall later be has not yet been revealed, but we know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” We were made in God’s image and likeness and God wants to bring that to fulfillment when we look upon him face-to-face in heaven. Jesus really does want to make us sharers in his divine filiation, in his divinity, and that is what will happen provided that we remain in, we build our life, on his name!
              • John, however, then makes our response to this gift more precise. We who bear the name Christian not only have a tremendous privilege, but also a serious responsibility: to give authentic witness to the saving power of Jesus’ name! He says, “Everyone who has this hope based on Him makes himself pure as He is pure.” If we hope to see God face to face, then we need to be pure, because, Jesus tells us in the Beatitudes, only the pure of heart see him. If we have this hope to become holy as God as holy, to become truly like God, then we will strive here on earth to do everything we can to be like him, to behave like him, to forgive like him, to love like him, to take on his virtues, to live according to the Holy Spirit. With Christian hope, we will start to align our choices here on earth to what God wants and expects, to how children of God ought to live, to how God would want to love through and together with us. One of the reasons why so many Christians do not live yet as saints is because they do not actively nourish what St. John calls “this hope based on him.” We forget that God wants to help us to become like him as true children of God. We forget that God-saves is with us always until the end of time precisely to help us remain united to him. We forget the depth and power of their Christian dignity.
              • On Christmas Day, St. Leo the Great reminded Christians throughout the world in the Liturgy of the Hours not to forget who we are, to remember the salvation we’ve received, and to make ourselves pure as God is pure: “Christian,” he wrote, “remember your dignity, and now that you share in God’s own nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition. Bear in mind who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Do not forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of God’s kingdom. Through the Sacrament of Baptism you have become a temple of the Holy Spirit.” This summons to purity of life, to live up to our Christian dignity and the holiness of Jesus Christ’s name that we share, is something for which we need constantly to implore God. The gnostics to whom St. John was writing thought that, because spirit is good and matter is evil, then it really doesn’t matter what you do in the body. So many of them lived lasciviously. True Christians, on the other hand, John insisted, allow the Lamb of God to take away their sins, allow him to fill them with himself and his grace upon grace so that we may become sharers in the divinity of him who humbled himself to share our humanity. To remain pure is not the result fundamentally of our will-power. It’s the gift of the power of Jesus’ name. Jesus himself promised us that if we asked the Father for the gift of living coherently with our exalted dignity and title, he would grant it. During the celebration of the first Mass, Jesus promised the apostles and through them us, “Anything you ask the Father in my name, he will give you!” There’s no greater guarantee. And so today we ask for that grace, to build our life on Jesus’ name and to live with the incandescent purity we see in Jesus, in Mary and Joseph, in John the Baptist and John the Evangelist, in the saints in general.
              • Today on this great Feast of the sweet name of our Savior, we remember how God the Father wishes to give us this gift and to help us live according to this saving hope and summons. On the back of my vestment there are the letters IHS, which are the three consonants in Greek for the holy name of Jesus — Iota, Eta and Sigma — and they also constitute a Latin abbreviation, Iesus Hominum Salvator, which means “Jesus, Savior of Human Beings.” It’s a forceful reminder for us that at Mass we encounter Jesus who comes to us as our Savior, as we prepare to receive his salvation in the flesh and be made capable of living truly saved lives. It’s through Holy Communion with Jesus that we enter more profoundly into his divine filiation and are strengthened from within to live as sons and daughters in the Son, keeping ourselves pure so that we might receive him here in all his purity. That’s why the Mass is the prayer that most distinguishes us as Christians, that makes us little Christs not just in name but in fact, and that strengthens us to live in such a way that people are reminded us the One whose holy name we are so privileged to bear. The Mass is the place in which, in response to the Church’s perpetual cry, “Come, Lord Jesus!,” our Savior does come to transform us and sends us out, with the power of his name, to transform the world. It’s time to build our whole life on this reality and this ineffable gift!

                •  

                The readings for today’s Mass were: 

                Reading 1
                1 John 2:29–3:6

                If you consider that God is righteous,

                you also know that everyone who acts in righteousness
                is begotten by him.
                See what love the Father has bestowed on us
                that we may be called the children of God.
                Yet so we are.
                The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
                Beloved, we are God’s children now;
                what we shall be has not yet been revealed.
                We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him,
                for we shall see him as he is.
                Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure,
                as he is pure.
                Everyone who commits sin commits lawlessness,
                for sin is lawlessness.
                You know that he was revealed to take away sins,
                and in him there is no sin.
                No one who remains in him sins;
                no one who sins has seen him or known him.

                Responsorial Psalm
                Psalm 98:1, 3cd-4, 5-6

                R. (3cd) All the ends of the earth have seen the saving power of God.

                Sing to the LORD a new song,
                for he has done wondrous deeds;
                His right hand has won victory for him,
                his holy arm.
                R. All the ends of the earth have seen the saving power of God.
                All the ends of the earth have seen
                the salvation by our God.
                Sing joyfully to the LORD, all you lands;
                break into song; sing praise.
                R. All the ends of the earth have seen the saving power of God.
                Sing praise to the LORD with the harp,
                with the harp and melodious song.
                With trumpets and the sound of the horn
                sing joyfully before the King, the LORD.
                R. All the ends of the earth have seen the saving power of God.

                Alleluia
                John 1:14a, 12a

                R. Alleluia, alleluia.

                The Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us.
                To those who accepted him
                he gave power to become the children of God.
                R. Alleluia, alleluia.

                Gospel
                John 1:29-34

                John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him and said,

                “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.
                He is the one of whom I said,
                ‘A man is coming after me who ranks ahead of me
                because he existed before me.’
                I did not know him,
                but the reason why I came baptizing with water
                was that he might be made known to Israel.”
                John testified further, saying,
                “I saw the Spirit come down like a dove from the sky
                and remain upon him.
                I did not know him,
                but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me,
                ‘On whomever you see the Spirit come down and remain,
                he is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’
                Now I have seen and testified that he is the Son of God.”

                The post A Time to Build Ourselves on the Name of Jesus, Memorial of Jesus’ Holy Name, January 3, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                17 min
              • The Family and Realizing the Hope Jesus Came To Give, Holy Family (C), December 29, 2024

                Msgr. Roger J. Landry

                Basilica of Saint Stephen, New Orleans, Louisiana
                Feast of the Holy Family, Year C
                December 29, 2024
                1 Sam 2:20-22.24-28, Ps 84, 1 John 3:1-2.21-24, Lk 2:41-52

                 

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

                https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.29.24_Homily_1.mp3

                 

                The following text guided today’s homily: 

                • We celebrate today the Feast of the Holy Family of Mary, Joseph and the child Jesus. We mark the fundamental fact that when the Son of God became man, when the Word became flesh, he became flesh as a little child within a family. That was a divine choice, for Jesus did not have to come into our world in that way. He could have come as a 33-year-old adult and immediately begun his public ministry of preaching, teaching, healing and saving. He could have come as an 80-year-old sage or at least at the age of 12 dazzling the scribes and priests in the Temple like we see in today’s Gospel. But he was conceived and began his existence as a one-celled human zygote in Mary’s womb, progressed to a blastocyst, then an embryo, then a fetus until finally he was born as a baby in a family, where he was nourished according to his human nature and grew, as we see in today’s Gospel, in “wisdom and favor before God and man.” Why did he do this? He didn’t tell us the reason, but you don’t need to be a great theologian to see why it made sense: He wanted to redeem all of human life in its totality, from its very beginning, which meant redeeming the family from its very beginning.
                • All of existence is meant to be familial. Saint John Paul II used to call the Blessed Trinity a family, because it is a structured communion of persons in love, with a Father, a Son and the love between them. The human person was made in the image and likeness of God as a communion of persons, “male and female he made them” (Gen 1:27-28), and hence the image of God is familial: a husband and a wife can love each so much that, like the Trinity, their love can generate a third person. They can literally “make love” and then name, raise and live in joyful communion with the love they make.
                • But man, woman and children didn’t live up to their being in the image of God. Right from the beginning, sin invaded the family. It began with Adam and Eve and the first sin, in which Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent, with neither taking responsibility and with both hiding the most vulnerable aspects of their humanity from each other and God. The sinfulness quickly harmed their children. Cain killed his brother Abel. There was jealousy between Abraham’s sons Isaac and Ishmael, enmity between Isaac’s sons Jacob and Esau, envy between Jacob’s 12 sons, ten of whom ganged up to try to kill their brother Joseph. There was deadly jealousy in King David’s family. Jesus’ family tree is a chronicle of generations of infidelity to each other and to God. Polygamy and concubinage became rampant. Divorce was introduced because of the hardness of people’s hearts to keeping their promises of life. God would sum up the relationship with his people through the Prophet Hosea under the idea of adultery, because adultery, rather than fidelity, had almost become the rule in the relationships between spouses and family members and between individual families and the family of Israel with God. Simply put, the family had become a mess. As the human family “increased and multiplied,” so did sin.
                • Jesus was born of a family in order to redeem the family, to reconcile all of family life to God, because the family has a crucial role in the world God created. The family based on marriage is the primordial sacrament because it is meant to be an efficacious sign of the love of God in the world, of the loving communion of persons who God is. When the family is thriving as God intended, everything else can find its proper order. But when the family becomes a den of sin instead of a school of sanctification, the wounds cut the deepest. That’s why the devil always goes after the family, from Adam’s and Eve’s, to the families we grew up in, to religious families and to the family Jesus himself founded with his Bride and Body the Church.
                • Jesus’ whole work can be looked at as restoring the family to its proper place “in the beginning” by helping it to become a crucial part of redemption and a house of holiness. We see that restoration in the Holy Family of Nazareth, where their life was centered on God in prayer, where they sacrificed for each other out of love, where they helped and strengthened each other to fulfill the vocations God had given them, even at great personal cost. When Jesus inaugurated his public ministry, he continued to give great witness to the importance of the family in God’s plan of redemption. He began the public manifestation of his work with the miracle at the wedding feast of Cana, changing the “water” of the good of marriage from the beginning with Adam and Eve to the “wine” of a Sacrament that communicates his own divine life. Jesus taught about marriage in God’s original plan and sought to purify people’s hardened hearts to accept that God would make fruitful, faithful, indissoluble love, modeled on divine love, possible. He shared in the moments of familial life with Lazarus, Martha and Mary, and even in the family of Peter with his mother-in-law. He responded with haste to the cries of parents for their children, as he did with the Centurion whose son was dying, the Synagogue official whose little girl was moribund, the widow in Nain whose only Son had breathed his last, and Martha and Mary after the brother Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days. Throughout his public ministry he also tried to reconcile people to God’s plans for marital and familial love. He tenderly told the adulterous woman that she wasn’t condemned but called her to go and sin no more. He compassionately exposed for the Samaritan woman that the man she was with was not her husband. He praised St. John the Baptist, who was in prison because he had reminded Herod that it was not right for him to marry his brother Philip’s wife.
                • This year’s celebration of the Feast of the Holy Family is particularly special because it is taking place as part of the long-awaited Jubilee of Hope, which Pope Francis inaugurated on Christmas Eve at St. Peter’s in the Vatican. In a wheelchair, the Holy Father movingly opened the Jubilee Door and invited the whole Church to make a pilgrimage through that door, leaving behind a world in which there are so many signs of desperation and entering through the door who is Christ our hope. But that was just the start of the Jubilee. Today, on the Feast of the Holy Family, two things are happening. First, in Rome, Pope Francis will open the Holy Door at his Cathedral, the Archbasilica of Saint John in the Lateran. Second, he decreed that in every cathedral and co-cathedral of the world, bishops are to celebrate Holy Mass as the solemn opening of the Jubilee year. So in the mother church of every diocese in the world, including Saint Louis Cathedral here in New Orleans, there will be a special Mass with particular prayers for the occasion. And the Jubilee will continue in each diocese of the world until the Feast of the Holy Family next year. This shows us that the Jubilee is meant to be marked not just in Rome, and not just in every Diocese, but in every family, seeking to help every family model itself on the Holy Family and become a beacon of hope for the world, as Christian families individually and collectively give a reason for the hope we bear within us (1 Pet 3:15).
                • If we’re going to live out this Jubilee Year well, it’s essential for us to grasp the true meaning of Christian hope. If you look at the Catechism of the Catholic Church, it says that hope is the “theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (CCC 1817). Hope is, therefore, a gift of God by which we ground our life trustingly in Christ’s words and promises and avail ourselves of God’s aid to seek to live in his kingdom, in but not of the world, with our hearts set on God and the great hope of eternal loving communion with him. That’s a very beautiful, rich definition. And at Christmas time we can think about all of the promises God made that were fulfilled with the birth of Jesus the Messiah of a virgin in Bethlehem of Ephrathah, and all of the other promises that would be fulfilled in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. But I’ve always loved the definition suggested to us by Pope Benedict in his 2007 encyclical on Christian hope called Spe Salvi, or “Saved by Hope.” Relying on St. Paul’s words to the Ephesians, the Holy Father said that to live “without hope” is to live “without God in the world” (Eph 2:12). That’s kind of like a photographic negative through which we can shine light to discover the true meaning of hope: that hope is to live with God in the world. We know this to be true. No matter what challenges we’re facing, what mountains we need to climb, if we try to tackle them on our own, they can often prove overwhelming. If we face the problems, however, conscious that God is with us, helping us and sustaining us, we see that nothing is impossible. That’s the hope Christ sought to bring into the world. Isaiah prophesied that the Messiah would be “Emmanuel,” literally God-is-with-us. Jesus, the God-man, is indeed with us in the world. He is with us in the dark valleys and on the beautiful summits. He is with us on rainy and sunny days. He is with us always, as he promised at his Ascension, until the end of the world. And because he is with us, we are never without hope, because we know that he is not just “there,” but he’s with us loving us. As we heard in today’s second reading from St. John’s first letter, “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. And so we are.” God has loved us that he didn’t even spare his own Son but sent him into our world to take on our humanity so that we would not perish but have eternal life. And that Son is still at our side in the Eucharist. That Son even enters into us. If God loves us so much that he would go to such lengths to save us, how can we not be filled with hope to overflowing?
                • But we have to remain with the God with grounds our hope. In today’s Gospel, we discover what happens when we’re not with the God who has come to be God-with-us. We see it in the lives of the two greatest saints of all time, Mary and Joseph, when they lose the third member of the Holy Family, Jesus. The scene of losing Jesus for three days and then finding him in the Temple constitutes both one of the seven sorrows of Mary as well as the fifth Joyful Mystery. It’s an episode in the life of the Holy Family that, unless we regularly meditate on the mysteries of the Holy Rosary, we may not ponder enough, since it comes up at Mass only every third year on today’s feast and on the optional Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It’s a scene, however, from which we can learn so much. Within the context of the Jubilee, we can focus on what it teaches us about hope and hopelessness.
                • The Holy Family of Bethlehem and Nazareth was holy first and foremost because it was centered on God, who literally dwelled among them, whom they held in their arms, nursed, clothed, taught, and helped grow according to his humanity. But we see in today’s Gospel that there was a time in which Mary and Joseph took their eyes off Jesus. After one of their three annual 60-mile pilgrimages from Nazareth to Jerusalem, as they were heading home, Mary thought Jesus was with Joseph and Joseph thought he was with Mary, but neither of them had Jesus in the forefront of their attention. After a day’s journey, they saw they were both wrong when they discovered that Jesus was with neither of them nor any of the others traveling back with them in the caravan toward Galilee. Both were distracted. Both had taken their eyes off Jesus. This wasn’t a sin, but it clearly was an imperfection; they just presumed the other was taking care of him. So they began to look for him, with ever greater anxiety, in the camp, but didn’t find him. It is every parent’s nightmare to lose a child, and they had not just lost a 12-year-old, but also the Son of God who had been entrusted to them. So they journeyed all the way back straight up the hill to Jerusalem and began to look for him there, at the places where they had stayed, eaten, visited, and so on. They searched a whole second day without finding him, either, as doubtless their dread began to grow. Finally, on the third day, they found Jesus in the precincts of the Temple area, sitting in the midst of the teachers, astounding them with his understanding, questions and answers. When they confessed that they had been looking for him for three days with great anxiety, the not-even-yet-teenage Jesus asked why they hadn’t realized that he would have had to have been in God his Father’s house, busy about his Father’s work. He wasn’t anxious for them because he probably anticipated they would have known where to find him, that he was in the temple much like Samuel in today’s first reading had been left as a boy in the temple by his parents. While Mary and Joseph had taken their eyes off him, Jesus had not taken his eyes off his Father. Losing Jesus for three days is not just something that points to his eventual three days in the tomb, when the whole human race would, in some sense, lose his presence for that period. It also points to the anxiety, the hopelessness, even the despair that comes when we really lose the presence of Jesus in our life. We can become like Mary Magdalene the morning of resurrection asking everyone where they have taken the body of the Lord. The remedy is to keep our eyes focused on Jesus, to be with him in seeking the will of the Father, to stay with him even for a while in the Father’s house, the Church, so that we, like him, can be about God the Father’s business, seeking to accomplish the Father’s will just like we see Jesus doing. To be with Jesus in this way is something that will always ground our hope. This scene of the anxiety of Mary and Joseph puts into relief that the Holy Family otherwise was totally focused on Jesus, on helping him and each other to do the will of God. Our families, as well as the Church as the family of God, is meant to help us to center our life on Jesus in a similar way.
                • And so, as we celebrate today the Feast of the Holy Family and the inauguration of the Jubilee of Hope in the Archdiocese of New Orleans and beyond, let us ask God-with-us to convince us in a particular way of his holy presence so that we can be filled with hope. The Eucharist is the greatest familial Sacrament of all and the greatest source of hope. It’s here that Emmanuel comes to be with us. The Jesus we receive in Holy Communion is the same Jesus who dwelled in Mary’s womb for nine months, the same Jesus whom St. Joseph held in his strong, manly arms, the same Jesus who gave his life for us on Calvary, rose from the dead, and ascended to the Father’s right side. It’s the same Jesus, he just looks differently, so humbly dwelling for us under the appearances of simple human food. But he is hear for us, our Good Shepherd, our Savior, our Way, Truth, Resurrection and Life. He wants to bring us into communion with him and with each other, in our families and in his family the Church. He wants us always to live conscious of his presence, keeping our eyes on him, knowing that he can’t take his loving eyes off us. When we live this way, conscious of God’s abiding Eucharistic presence, then we will become ambassadors of hope in a world that so much needs hope. When we live this way, we will fulfill Pope Francis’ prayer for the Church as we begin this special holy year. “Through our witness,” he wrote at the end of the letter inaugurating the Jubilee, “may hope spread to all those who anxiously seek it. May the way we live our lives say to them in so many words: ‘Hope in the Lord! Hold firm, take heart and hope in the Lord! (Ps27:14).” This is what the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph are praying that others will be able to find in us, just as we find so much hope in them!

                  •  

                  The readings for today’s Mass were: 

                  Reading 1 SM 1:20-22, 24-28
                  In those days Hannah conceived, and at the end of her term bore a son
                  whom she called Samuel, since she had asked the LORD for him.
                  The next time her husband Elkanah was going up
                  with the rest of his household
                  to offer the customary sacrifice to the LORD and to fulfill his vows,
                  Hannah did not go, explaining to her husband,
                  “Once the child is weaned,
                  I will take him to appear before the LORD
                  and to remain there forever;
                  I will offer him as a perpetual nazirite.”
                  Once Samuel was weaned, Hannah brought him up with her,
                  along with a three-year-old bull,
                  an ephah of flour, and a skin of wine,
                  and presented him at the temple of the LORD in Shiloh.
                  After the boy’s father had sacrificed the young bull,
                  Hannah, his mother, approached Eli and said:
                  “Pardon, my lord!
                  As you live, my lord,
                  I am the woman who stood near you here, praying to the LORD.
                  I prayed for this child, and the LORD granted my request.
                  Now I, in turn, give him to the LORD;
                  as long as he lives, he shall be dedicated to the LORD.”
                  Hannah left Samuel there.
                  Responsorial Psalm  PS 84:2-3, 5-6, 9-10
                  R. (cf. 5a) Blessed are they who dwell in your house, O Lord.
                  How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD of hosts!
                  My soul yearns and pines for the courts of the LORD.
                  My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.
                  R. Blessed are they who dwell in your house, O Lord.
                  Happy they who dwell in your house!
                  Continually they praise you.
                  Happy the men whose strength you are!
                  Their hearts are set upon the pilgrimage.
                  R. Blessed are they who dwell in your house, O Lord.
                  O LORD of hosts, hear our prayer;
                  hearken, O God of Jacob!
                  O God, behold our shield,
                  and look upon the face of your anointed.
                  R. Blessed are they who dwell in your house, O Lord.
                  Reading 2  1 JN 3:1-2, 21-24
                  Beloved:
                  See what love the Father has bestowed on us
                  that we may be called the children of God.
                  And so we are.
                  The reason the world does not know us
                  is that it did not know him.
                  Beloved, we are God’s children now;
                  what we shall be has not yet been revealed.
                  We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him,
                  for we shall see him as he is.Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us,
                  we have confidence in God and receive from him whatever we ask,
                  because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.
                  And his commandment is this:
                  we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ,
                  and love one another just as he commanded us.
                  Those who keep his commandments remain in him, and he in them,
                  and the way we know that he remains in us
                  is from the Spirit he gave us.
                  Alleluia ACTS 16:14B

                  R. Alleluia, alleluia.

                  Open our hearts, O Lord,
                  to listen to the words of your Son.
                  R. Alleluia, alleluia.

                  Gospel LK 2:41-52

                  Each year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the feast

                  of Passover,
                  and when he was twelve years old,
                  they went up according to festival custom.
                  After they had completed its days, as they were returning,
                  the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem,
                  but his parents did not know it.
                  Thinking that he was in the caravan,
                  they journeyed for a day
                  and looked for him among their relatives and acquaintances,
                  but not finding him,
                  they returned to Jerusalem to look for him.
                  After three days they found him in the temple,
                  sitting in the midst of the teachers,
                  listening to them and asking them questions,
                  and all who heard him were astounded
                  at his understanding and his answers.
                  When his parents saw him,
                  they were astonished,
                  and his mother said to him,
                  “Son, why have you done this to us?
                  Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.”
                  And he said to them,
                  “Why were you looking for me?
                  Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”
                  But they did not understand what he said to them.
                  He went down with them and came to Nazareth,
                  and was obedient to them;
                  and his mother kept all these things in her heart.
                  And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and favor
                  before God and man.

                  The post The Family and Realizing the Hope Jesus Came To Give, Holy Family (C), December 29, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                  24 min
                • The Holy Family In God’s Plan To Espouse Us To Him Forever, Nuptial Mass of Kevin William Fischer and Keri Nicole Landeche, December 28, 2024

                  Msgr. Roger J. Landry

                  St. Patrick’s Church, New Orleans, Louisiana
                  Nuptial Mass of Kevin William Fischer and Keri Nicole Landeche
                  December 28, 2024
                  Gen 2:18-24, Ps 34, Rev 19:1.5-9, Mk 10:6-9

                   

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

                  https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.28.24_Kevin_and_Keri_Fischer.mp3

                   

                  The following text guided the homily: 

                  When a couple chooses to get married during the Christmas Octave, it’s almost impossible not to situate what’s happening within the much larger picture of God’s love for the human race manifested to us in Jesus’ nativity. That’s not just because the couple is married enveloped by poinsettias in a sanctuary containing an exquisite manger scene. It’s not just because during this time of year we are obviously far more focused on the Holy Family, and necessarily ponder how when Jesus, the eternal Son of God, entered the human race, he did so as a little child, entering the world the same way all of us do, in the family, so that his redeeming work would begin in the same place where originally sin had entered, and so that he could help make every family a holy family; that is something the Church universal will ponder in depth tomorrow on the Feast of the Holy Family. The spousal and familial context of a Catholic marriage celebrated during the Christmas octave is actually far bigger than that.

                  We get a glimpse of it at the Christmas Vigil, when the Church ponders Isaiah’s words about God’s love that would take flesh in Jesus, the Word-of-God-made-man. God through Isaiah told us, “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” (Is 62:5). Hosea echoed that same prophecy, when through him the Lord proclaimed, “I will espouse you to me forever. I will espouse you in right and in justice, in love and in mercy; I will espouse you in fidelity, and you shall know the Lord (Hos 2:21-22). The whole mystery of Christmas not only can be read but has been read from the earliest ages of the Church in a spousal key. The marriage of Christians, your marriage Kevin and Keri, is meant to share in and reflect this great loving covenant between God and his people. That’s why St. Paul wrote in his Letter to the Ephesians that the marriage of Christians participates in and flows from Christ’s spousal covenant. Commenting on the words you chose for today’s first reading from the Book of Genesis that Jesus himself would cite in the Gospel you wanted us to hear, “For this reason a man shall leave [his] father and [his] mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh,” St. Paul said, “This is a great mystery, and I speak in reference to Christ and the church” (Eph 5:31-32). In other words, the marriage between Christians is an icon, a true image, of Christ’s marriage to the Church, to us, and not the other way around. Everything the Church understands about the Sacrament of Marriage flows from Christ’s and the Church’s sacred bond. Because Christ is faithful to the Church, husbands and wives are called to be faithful to each other. Because Christ will never abandon us, Christian marriage is indissoluble, and therefore what God joins, not even all of the divorce courts on earth can separate. Because Christ’s love for the Church is fruitful, Christian spouses are called to be open to life, to be fruitful and multiply. Christian marriage is the setting where a husband and life learn how to love each just as Christ has loved them. That’s what makes marriage a sacrament, a sign and means of intimate communion with God, something that brings a particular man and woman not just into a one-flesh communion with each other, but as a couple into a holy, indeed one-flesh Eucharistic communion with Christ the Bridegroom.

                  Ultimately this profound Christocentric reality of the Sacrament of Marriage is meant to lead to what we witnessed in the passage from the Book of Revelation you wanted all of us today to ponder. It’s a scene from heaven, which Jesus’ whole salvific life, beginning with his virginal conception and birth, made possible. St. John heard a great cry: “The wedding day of the Lamb has come, his bride has made herself ready,” and the angel said to him, “Blessed are those who have been called to the wedding feast of the Lamb.” Heaven is depicted as an eternal wedding banquet. The Lamb, Jesus himself, the Bridegroom, has invited us all to his wedding feast. But he’s called us not as guests, not even as cherished members of the wedding party, but as his eternal Bride. This is the fulfillment of what Christ was born to do. Our Builder wants to marry us, to espouse us faithfully to him, forever! And that loving plan, which begins in this world, will be perfected in eternity. That’s the much larger context of your wedding today, Kevin and Keri. That’s what we’re all called to see, realize and affirm in a particular way in every wedding celebrated during Christmas!

                  I’d like to return, however, from these inspiring thoughts about the end of the Christian journey in the heavenly Jerusalem to the earthly Bethlehem and Nazareth and the means God gives us to get there. Specifically, I’d like to turn to the Holy Family and the role Jesus has given them to prepare us for those eternal nuptials. Just as Mary and Joseph were essential to helping Jesus fulfill his mission as Bridegroom of the Church, so they have been likewise at work helping you fulfill your vocation to enter into Jesus’ spousal, redeeming work.

                  When Kevin talks about how his and Keri’s relationship began, he name drops and says, “We were introduced to each other by Our Lady of Guadalupe!” Even though they were admitted to the same 2022-23 class of the Leonine Forum in New York — a special program also in Washington, DC, Chicago and Los Angeles to form young adults in Catholic social teaching — they actually, because of rare circumstances, didn’t meet each other in person during the first three classes. They were both inspired, however, to go on the Leonine Forum pilgrimage in January 2023 to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico. Keri’s mom, Toni, had been praying to Our Lady of Guadalupe for years for Keri’s future spouse and now it was going to become clear how attentively Keri’s other mother, and Toni’s, and ours, was listening.

                  Kevin and Keri were by God’s providence the only two Leonine Fellows from New York on the pilgrimage, so Keri sent Kevin a WhatsApp message out of the blue to ask if he knew flight options. Even though Kevin hadn’t met Keri yet in person, he did remember her name: she was, he told himself, the “cute girl” from the biography and photo sheet the program gives all fellows. He shared his flight information with her and they met for the first time at JFK Airport, where Kevin treated her for breakfast at the Centurion Lounge, which they insist was not their first date. In Mexico, they got to know each other better. Kevin kept trying to spend time with her, saying he was drawn to the cute girl and her childlike joy at learning new things. They eventually discovered that they only lived ten minutes away from each other. Before leaving the Shrine, Keri wrote a note to herself saying that, even though she barely knew Kevin, she thought he was a gift from Our Lady to her many prayers for a husband and that one day she was going to marry Kevin. On the return flight from Mexico City to JFK, Kevin saw that the seat next to him in the comfort-plus section on Delta was unoccupied, and so he asked the stewardess, before anyone else was upgraded, whether, he states, “I could offer the seat to the girl I had a crush on in the back of the plane.” The stewardess smiled and gave Keri the upgrade. They talked nonstop throughout the nonstop flight back. Before they landed, Kevin was similarly convinced Keri was the one for whom he had been longing. Our Lady of Guadalupe had not only brought them together but was helping them, as the fruits of their pilgrimage to her Shrine, to desire to continue to journey together on the pilgrimage of life.

                  That’s when St. Joseph began to take the lead. Upon arriving back in New York, Kevin and Keri spent several weeks texting, talking, and giving each other rides for errands or back from Leonine meetings. During this time, Keri with her roommate Gerard Ona was praying a 30-day novena to St. Joseph for their future husbands and Keri was hoping and praying that Kevin would officially ask her out. He did, suggesting they meet on March 19, the Solemnity of St. Joseph, beginning with Mass, in Bronxville, at the Church of St. Joseph. After Mass, they went for another meal, brunch, at a local restaurant. They hit it off so well that many other dates soon followed. It became increasingly clear, not just to them but to everyone else, that they were the fitting helper God had intended for each of them since before he had said “Let there be light!”

                  The proposal fittingly happened, by Kevin’s foresight and the help of Keri’s family, at the Healing Chapel of Our Lady of Guadalupe, 32 miles from here, in Keri’s hometown of Luling, right next to the Church of St. Anthony where Keri’s parents, Harold and Toni, were married 37 years ago. They had visited the Chapel, which opened just over three years ago, once before and Kevin found it stunning and holy. They were praying a novena together at the time and Kevin suggested that they pray that day’s novena prayers there. And so, before the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe who had introduced them and who had been interceding for them over the previous 445 days, Kevin reverentially dropped to a knee to propose. Keri replied, “Of course!,” and even though a photographer was there hiding and wanted to take some official shots of the newly engaged couple, she faithfully insisted they do the novena prayers before taking the snapshots. And so the first moments of their engagement likewise featured praying to God through Our Lady of Guadalupe’s intercession for their future. Those prayers have sustained them to this day. And today they and we add to them.

                  Thus, it’s fitting, because of the influence of Our Lady of Guadalupe and St. Joseph in their relationship up until now, and particularly in view of the consecration of their marriage they will make to Mary after receiving the blessed Fruit of her womb in Holy Communion later, to focus a little bit on how Our Lady, especially through what she said in Guadalupe nearly five centuries ago, wants to help not just all of us as individuals but in particular married couples to live out their life on earth in view of the spousal mission of her Son. I’d like to focus on three lessons Nuestra Señora, la Morenita, teaches us in particular.

                  The first is about building a temple. When Mary appeared as a pregnant mestizo Aztec princess to St. Juan Diego on December 9, 1531, she sent him on a mission to Bishop Juan de Zumárraga of Mexico City to have him build a teocalli, a temple, at the spot where she was speaking, so that she could manifest Jesus, her Son, in the Eucharist to everyone and so that she could hear their prayers and intercede for them before him like she did for the young couple in Cana of Galilee. That temple was built and later another much larger one was constructed, and now twenty million pilgrims visit the Shrine each year. Our Lady similarly wants every married couple to build a sanctuary for her the blessed Fruit of her womb in their marriage, where he can be better known, loved, adored, served and shared. From the earliest centuries of Christianity, the marriage of Christians has been called a domestic Church, an ecclesiola or Church-in-miniature. The Christian home is meant to be a house of prayer, where the Word of God resonates, where the love of Christ is received, reciprocated and paid forward, where the faith is transmitted and grows. As she does in Guadalupe, as she did there for both of you, so nuestra Virgencita wants to hear your prayers in your new home in Eastchester. Let her help you together build a teocalli for her Son and let her assist and accompany you, especially through Mass together and the recitation of the Rosary as a family, to enter far more deeply into, and to symbolize for others, the marriage between her Son and the Church.

                  The second great lesson Our Lady teaches us in Guadalupe is about enfleshing the mysteries of our faith. I’ve always been amazed by the great miracle that took place on December 12, 1531, which had been secretly asked for by Bishop Zumárraga, for roses from his native Castilla in Spain. Those roses had not yet been planted in Mexico, but on December 12, on the top of Tepeyac Hill in wintry Mexico City, they were wondrously found in full bloom. Those roses were just the beginning of the miracle. When St. Juan Diego at Our Lady’s instruction cut many of them and took them in his tilma to the bishop as the secret sign he had requested in confirmation of her message, he opened them before the bishop. Some fell to the floor, but the others melted into his tilma and formed the identical image of the woman who had been addressing Juan Diego on the mountain. Our Lady, in essence, had come into the Bishop’s presence through Juan Diego’s clothing, through his very life, through his humble, persevering obedience to her wishes. His maguey-fiber cloak has since become the most famous piece of clothing of all time, something that should have disintegrated in about 20 years, but has persevered with this miraculous image for nearly five centuries. We learn from this lesson that Our Lady wishes to have us receive her into our life, into our hearts and minds, indeed into our very clothing. St. John the Evangelist, whose feast the Church celebrated yesterday, after Jesus from the Cross had said to him, “Behold your mother!,” took Mary, he says, “into his home” (Jn 19:27). Mary desires to become just as much a part of a couple’s life as she was part of Jesus’ life, St. Joseph’s life, St. John’s life, and St. Juan Diego’s life. Kevin and Keri, she wants your whole way of being, especially as Catholic spouses, to emulate her own relationship to Jesus, as you let your life, like hers, develop according to the Lord’s word. She wants to help you, like her, become handmaids, servants, of the Lord, to have you imitate her faith, hope and love, to model your own discipleship on hers, your parenthood on hers, your intercession on hers, and your apostolate on hers. She desires to assist you to live in such a way that others in seeing you and in getting to know you might see something of her in you, just as everyone could see something of her in Juan Diego’s winter cloak. This is the second gift she wants to give you, to help your married and familial life become truly Marian so that it can be truly Christian.

                  The third lesson is about mission. In Tepeyac, Our Lady gave St. Juan Diego a mission, to go to the bishop to ask him to build a house of worship. After his first failed attempt, Juan Diego, this simple 57-year-old widower who shuffled 15-miles each day to Mass on Saturdays and Sundays, begged her to send someone of prominence so that the Bishop would listen. Our Lady said that she had many people she could send, but she wanted to send him. Little did he know at the time that she would accompany him on his third attempt in his very clothing! He would wear her not on his sleeve but on his coat! And with her help he fulfilled his mission. Sometimes it’s tempting for Christians, like St. Juan Diego, to try to pass the buck of the mission of sharing the faith to others, to think that it’s the job of priests, or religious, or full-time lay evangelists, to share the Gospel, whereas the “average Catholic’s job” is only to support the Church quietly by fidelity, prayer, and sacrifice. But the vocation of marriage has a built in mission: it’s to convince the world of God’s love. St. John Paul II called marriage the primordial sacrament, the external sign of the loving communion of persons who is the Blessed Trinity. It’s also, as St. Paul tells us, meant to be the efficacious sign of loving spousal communion between Jesus and the Church. Catholic couples and Catholic families are supposed to radiate faith in and the love of God. They’re supposed to live differently than the rest, in respect to their priorities, in terms of their prayer, in respect to their openness to life, in terms of taking responsibility as salt, light and leaven, and in terms of passing on the faith, to each other, to children, grandchildren, God-children and others. As Keri said to me in marriage preparation, “Marriage entails a God-given mission, a lifelong public commitment before God and the Church.” Our Lady wants to help you in that mission, just like she helped Juan Diego. If you do, who can say what impact it will make in the Church? Perhaps like in Guadalupe in the 1530s, ten million can become Catholic in just a decade! Perhaps what happens in your marriage can be remembered in 493 years and beyond.

                  We all rejoice, Kevin and Keri, that you are already showing the influence of Our Lady in your relationship with each other, that you are desirous of making of your family a domestic Church, that you are trying to enflesh Mary’s virtues, that you are taking seriously your mission to help the other grow in faith and resolving to try together to pass that faith on to any children with whom God will bless you as well as to many others.

                  Kevin, you told me about about the type of impact Keri has already had in your life and how she’s helping you to live these Marian lessons. You said, “I know that I am a good talker, conversationalist and storyteller, but when it comes to Keri, I am not able to find the words that describe her or what she means to me. Sure, there are the easy things to say, like I love her because she is kind and caring and so very pretty. But it’s deeper than that. Keri is more than just the answer to my prayers. It’s like there was a part of me missing that left me incomplete, and she is that part. Keri is a gift I know I don’t deserve. I have never felt so loved as I know I am by Keri; it’s a love that encompasses my entire being. From the smallest gestures of kindness to the grandest displays of affection, she has a way of making me feel cherished, valued and deeply loved. Her love has filled a void in my life that I never knew existed. In short, I love everything about Keri… the way she loves God, the way she embraces life with curiosity and wonder, and the way she loves me with a depth and intensity that surpasses all understanding. She is a gift, a blessing, and the love of my life, and I am endlessly thankful to have her by my side.”

                  Keri, you told me Kevin has a similar impact on you, and that he, for you, is a rock like Saint Joseph. “Kevin,” you wrote to me during marriage preparation, “has all the qualities and more than I was looking for in a future husband. He is strong and tough but also at the same time sweet, thoughtful, and selfless. He is handsome, smart, kind, courageous, generous, virtuous and humble. From the very beginning, I have felt protected and provided for by him. He eases my anxieties about life’s demands, and I know he will be an amazing husband, father, and leader of our future family. Kevin makes me feel like the luckiest girl in the world. Chivalry is not dead with him. He is such a gentleman and goes above and beyond to make sure my needs are met before his own. He is always striving to be better in his spiritual, personal, and professional life. His gestures did not end in the courting phase, he continues to hold every door for me and pursue me as if we just met. He is the most courageous person I know and not just because he fought in a combat zone. He stands up for his faith when it is not the popular thing to do. He knows who he is and does not shy away from being Catholic in his professional life. His selflessness inspires me daily. He puts himself last and expects nothing in return. He has taught me not to worry about things that are out of my control. Having been in situations where his life has been in danger, he understands that God is in control of everything, and that every day is a gift. He has taught me to be more present and not rush through life. He accepts his crosses and brings them to God. When we have faced difficult situations in our relationship, he reminds us to bring these things before God first and prioritize praying together as a couple. Kevin’s character, discipline, and selflessness have inspired me to become a more virtuous woman.” We rejoice that, through our Lady’s and St. Joseph’s prayers, God has brought you together to help inspire each other in the ways you have, and, by the way you love each other, to inspire all of us.

                  One last point. True devotion to Our Lady and to St. Joseph always inexorably leads us to Jesus. The same Jesus whom Mary gestated in her immaculate womb for nine months, the same Jesus whom St. Joseph held in his strong arms, the same Jesus whom the shepherds and wise men, angels and animals, adored in Bethlehem is about to come from heaven to this altar and enter into us. He just looks different. The eternal Son of God did not stop at emptying himself to take on our humanity to be born as a baby in a borrowed cave; he went so far as to become our very food, so that he could make us, like he made our Lady, his teocalli, his holy tabernacle. That’s why there’s great meaning to the fact that Catholic couples get married in the context of the Mass, because there’s a profound and intrinsic connection between the Sacrament of Marriage and the Sacrament of the Mass. In many of the most historic Churches in Christianity, like St. Peter’s in the Vatican, there is over the altar an exquisite baldachin. The early Christians used to illustrate the reality between marriage and the Eucharist in their architecture, covering the altars with a baldachin just like ancient Jewish beds were covered with the chuppah or canopy underneath which they previously exchanged their consent. The early Christians did this to communicate that the altar is the marriage bed of the union between Christ the Bridegroom and his Bride, the Church; that it’s here on this altar that we, the Bride of Christ, in the supreme act of love, receive within ourselves the body and blood of Jesus, the divine Bridegroom, becoming one-flesh with him and being made capable of bearing fruit with him in acts of love.

                  Today around this marriage bed of Christ’s union with the Church and with you, your family, friends, the Blessed Mother, St. Joseph, St. Pio, St. Therese, the Holy Innocents, and all the angels and saints join me in praying that the Lord who has begun this good work in you and brought you here to this altar will nourish your sacred vocation and mission and bring it to completion in the eternal nuptial feast of heaven. Indeed, as we heard the angel say at the end of today’s second reading, “Blessed are those who have been called to the wedding feast of the Lamb,” before adding, “These words are true. They come from God.” These words are indeed true! Blessed are you, blessed are all of us, to be called to the wedding feast of the Lamb! Blessed are you to be called to enter into that nuptial banquet! Every time you come to Mass together, Christ the Bridegroom seeks to fill you with his spousal love to overflowing, so that you may love each other with the love he has for you, and so that that love may overflow to, we pray, children, to the Church, and to the whole world. We ask the Divine Bridegroom who comes here to join you as one flesh for the rest of your life never to stop blessing you both with his holy, spousal, cruciform love, to bring you together to the eternal wedding feast, and through the way that you share his spousal love, never to stop blessing us all!

                   

                  The readings for today’s Mass were: 

                  A Reading from the Book of Genesis

                  The LORD God said: “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a suitable partner for him.” So the LORD God formed out of the ground various wild animals and various birds of the air, and he brought them to the man to see what he would call them; whatever the man called each of them would be its name. The man gave names to all the cattle, all the birds of the air, and all the wild animals; but none proved to be the suitable partner for the man. So the LORD God cast a deep sleep on the man, and while he was asleep, he took out one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. The LORD God then built up into a woman the rib that he had taken from the man. When he brought her to the man, the man said: “This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; This one shall be called ‘woman,’ for out of ‘her man’ this one has been taken.” That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body.

                  Psalm 34 — 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 Book of Revelation

                  I, John, heard what sounded like the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying: “Alleluia! Salvation, glory, and might belong to our God.” A voice coming from the throne said: “Praise our God, all you his servants, [and] you who revere him, small and great.” Then I heard something like the sound of a great multitude or the sound of rushing water or mighty peals of thunder, as they said: “Alleluia! The Lord has established his reign, [our] God, the almighty. Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory. For the wedding day of the Lamb has come, his bride has made herself ready. She was allowed to wear a bright, clean linen garment.” (The linen represents the righteous deeds of the holy ones.) Then the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who have been called to the wedding feast of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These words are true; they come from God.”

                  A Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Mark

                  Jesus said, “From the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother [and be joined to his wife], and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.”

                  The post The Holy Family In God’s Plan To Espouse Us To Him Forever, Nuptial Mass of Kevin William Fischer and Keri Nicole Landeche, December 28, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                  33 min
                • Holy Family (C), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, December 28, 2024

                  Msgr. Roger J. Landry

                  Conversations with Consequences Podcast
                  Homily for the Feast of the Holy Family, C, Vigil
                  December 28, 2024

                   

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

                  https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.28.24_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 wants to have with each of us, as together we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. We celebrate this feast on the Sunday between Christmas and the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, on January 1. It is an opportunity for us to focus on how when, the Word of God took on our humanity and dwelled among us in order to save us, he chose to enter the human race in a family, just as each of us does, so that he could redeem the family that the devil had attacked from the beginning with Adam and Eve, and so that he could in fact make the Church a family. The Church is the extension of the Holy Family of Bethlehem and Nazareth, comprised of those who, like the Blessed Mother and Saint Joseph, hear the Word of God and observe it, and who seek to live their life centered on God-with-us, Emmanuel.
                  • This year’s celebration of the Feast of the Holy Family is particularly special because it is taking place as part of the long-awaited Jubilee of Hope, which Pope Francis inaugurated during Christmas Mass-During-the-Night on Christmas Eve at St. Peter’s in the Vatican. In a wheelchair, the Holy Father movingly opened the Jubilee Door and invited the whole Church to make a pilgrimage through that door, leaving behind a world in which there are so many signs of desperation and entering through the door who is Christ our hope. But that was just the start of the Jubilee. On the Feast of the Holy Family, two things are happening. First, in Rome, Pope Francis will open the Holy Door at his Cathedral, the Archbasilica of Saint John in the Lateran. Second, he decreed that in every cathedral and co-cathedral of the world, bishops are to celebrate Holy Mass as the solemn opening of the Jubilee year. So in the mother church of every diocese in the world, including your own diocesan Cathedral, there will be a special Mass with particular prayers for the occasion. I would urge you to try to go to your Cathedral this Sunday to celebrate in a particular way this Jubilee along with the successor of apostles sent to shepherd you in your part of Christ’s worldwide vineyard. And the Jubilee will continue in each diocese of the world until the Feast of the Holy Family next year. This shows us that the Jubilee is meant to be marked not just in Rome, and not just in every Diocese, but in every family, seeking to help every family model itself on the Holy Family and become a beacon of hope for the world, as Christian families individually and collectively give a reason for the hope we bear within us (1 Pet 3:15).
                  • The Feast of the Holy Family this year will take place on the fifth day of Christmas and it’s key, if we’re going to understand and live out the Jubilee well, for us to grasp the true meaning of hope. If you look at the Catechism of the Catholic Church, it says that hope is the “theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (CCC 1817). Hope is, therefore, a gift of God by which we ground our life trustingly in Christ’s words and promises and avail ourselves of the help of God to seek to live in his kingdom, in but not of the world, with our hearts set on God and the great hope of eternal loving communion with him. That’s a very beautiful, rich definition. And at Christmas time we can think about all of the promises God made that were fulfilled with the birth of Jesus the Messiah of a virgin in Bethlehem of Ephrathah, and all of the other promises that would be fulfilled in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. But I’ve always loved the definition suggested to us by Pope Benedict in his 2007 encyclical on Christian hope called Spe Salvi, or “Saved by Hope.” In it, relying on St. Paul’s words to the Ephesians, the Holy Father said that to live “without hope” is to live “without God in the world” (Eph 2:12). That’s kind of like a photographic negative. The virtue of hope, therefore, is to live with God in the world. We know this to be true. No matter what challenge we’re facing, what mountain we need to climb, if we seek to do it on our own, it can often prove overwhelming. If we face the problem conscious that God is with us, helping us and sustaining us, we see that nothing is impossible. That’s the hope Christ sought to bring into the world. Isaiah prophesied that he would be “Emmanuel,” which means God-is-with-us. He is indeed with us in the world. He is with us in the dark valleys and the beautiful summits. He is with us on rainy and sunny days. He is with us always, as he promised at his Ascension, until the end of the world. And because he is with us, we are never without hope.
                  • In this Sunday’s Gospel, we discover what happens when we’re not with the God who has come to be God-with-us. We see it in the lives of the two greatest saints of all time, Mary and Joseph, when they lose the third member of the Holy Family, Jesus. The scene of losing Jesus for three days and then finding him in the Temple constitutes both one of the seven sorrows of Mary as well as the fifth Joyful Mystery. It’s an episode in the life of the Holy Family that, unless we regularly meditate on the mysteries of the Holy Rosary, we may not ponder enough, since it comes up at Mass only every third year on the Feast of the Holy Family and then only on the optional Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. But it’s a scene from which we can learn so much. Within the context of the Jubilee, I want to focus on what it teaches us about hope and hopelessness.
                  • The Holy Family of Bethlehem and Nazareth was holy first and foremost because it was centered on God, who literally dwelled among them, whom they held in their arms, nursed, clothed, taught, and helped grow according to his humanity. But we see in this Sunday’s Gospel that there was a time in which Mary and Joseph took their eyes off Jesus. After one of their three 60-mile pilgrimages each year from Nazareth to Jerusalem, as they were heading home, Mary thought Jesus was with Joseph and Joseph thought he was with Mary, but neither of them had Jesus in the forefront of their attention. After a day’s journey, they saw they were both wrong when they discovered that Jesus was with neither of them nor any of the others traveling back with them in the caravan toward Galilee. Both were distracted. Both had taken their eyes off Jesus. This wasn’t a sin, but it clearly was an imperfection; they took his presence for granted and that the other was taking care of him. So they began to look for him, with ever greater anxiety, in the camp, but didn’t find him. It is of course every parent’s nightmare to lose a child. They had not just lost a child, but also the Son of God who had been entrusted to them. So they journeyed all the way straight up the hill to Jerusalem and began to look for him there, at the places where they had stayed, eaten, visited, and so on. They searched a whole second day without finding him, as doubtless their dread began to grow. Finally, on the third day, they found him in the precincts of the Temple area, sitting in the midst of the teachers, astounding them with his understanding, questions and answers. When they confessed that they had been looking for him for three days with great anxiety, the twelve-year-old Jesus asked why they hadn’t realized that he would have had to have been in God his Father’s house, busy about his Father’s work. While they had taken their eyes off him, he had not taken his eyes off his Father. Losing Jesus for three days is not just something that points to his eventual three days in the tomb, when the whole human race would, in some sense, lose his presence for that period. It also points to the anxiety, the hopelessness, even the despair that comes when we really lose the presence of Jesus in our life. We can become like Mary Magdalene the morning of resurrection asking everyone where they have taken the body of the Lord. The remedy is to keep our eyes focused on Jesus, to be with him in seeking the will of the Father, to stay with him even for a while in the Father’s house, the Church, so that we, like him, can be about God the Father’s business, seeking to accomplish the Father’s will just like we see Jesus doing. To be with Jesus in this way is something that will ground our hope always. This scene of the anxiety of Mary and Joseph puts into relief that the Holy Family otherwise was totally focused on Jesus, on helping him and each other to do the will of God. Our families, as well as the Church as the family of God, is meant to help us to center our life on Jesus in a similar way.
                  • There’s another aspect of the Jubilee and the family that Pope Francis brings up in his letter proclaiming the Jubilee. It’s about openness to life, which is a manifestation of hope in every age. The Holy Father writes, “Looking to the future with hope also entails having enthusiasm for life and a readiness to share it. Sadly, in many situations this is lacking. A first effect of this is the loss of the desire to transmit life. A number of countries are experiencing an alarming decline in the birthrateas a result of today’s frenetic pace, fears about the future, the lack of job security and adequate social policies, and social models whose agenda is dictated by the quest for profit rather than concern for relationships.” We see that almost a third of young people today say they don’t want to marry and have a family for the sake of preserving the planet from more carbon dioxide emitters. Pope Francis says, however, that “openness to life and responsible parenthood is … a mission that the Lord has entrusted to spouses and to their love. … For the desire of young people to give birth to new sons and daughters as a sign of the fruitfulness of their love ensures a future for every society. This is a matter of hope: it is born of hope and it generates hope. Consequently, the Christian community should be at the forefront in pointing out the need for a social covenant to support and foster hope, … working for a future filled with the laughter of babies and children, in order to fill the empty cradles in so many parts of our world.” Love, St. Paul says, hopes all things. If we’re hopeful toward the future, we want to bring children into the world; if we’re fearful, we don’t. Openness to life is a sign that the married couple recognizes that Jesus the Bridegroom, the Good Shepherd, is with them, and gives them the courage to look to the future with hope rather than fear. Children are a concrete sign of the hope that Christians bear in the world and those children are meant to become agents of hope, as the saints of the future. Openness to life as members of a family trying to become holy is one of the important ways that Catholics can give our contemporaries a convincing account of the hope that inspires us, as we, in our own families, recapitulate a little bit of the hope of the child in Bethlehem. It’s one way that we show how those who have hope live differently.
                  • As we celebrate on Sunday the Feast of the Holy Family and the inauguration of the Jubilee in our various dioceses, let us ask God-with-us to convince us in a particular way of his holy presence so that we may fulfill Pope Francis’ prayer for the Church as we begin this special holy year. “Through our witness,” he wrote at the end of his inaugural letter, “may hope spread to all those who anxiously seek it. May the way we live our lives say to them in so many words: ‘Hope in the Lord! Hold firm, take heart and hope in the Lord! (Ps27:14).” Jesus, Mary and Joseph, pray for us to become witnesses of hope for others as you are for us!

                    •  

                    The Gospel passages on which the homily was based was: 

                    Gospel
                    Lk 2:41-52

                    Each year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the feast

                    of Passover,
                    and when he was twelve years old,
                    they went up according to festival custom.
                    After they had completed its days, as they were returning,
                    the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem,
                    but his parents did not know it.
                    Thinking that he was in the caravan,
                    they journeyed for a day
                    and looked for him among their relatives and acquaintances,
                    but not finding him,
                    they returned to Jerusalem to look for him.
                    After three days they found him in the temple,
                    sitting in the midst of the teachers,
                    listening to them and asking them questions,
                    and all who heard him were astounded
                    at his understanding and his answers.
                    When his parents saw him,
                    they were astonished,
                    and his mother said to him,
                    “Son, why have you done this to us?
                    Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.”
                    And he said to them,
                    “Why were you looking for me?
                    Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”
                    But they did not understand what he said to them.
                    He went down with them and came to Nazareth,
                    and was obedient to them;
                    and his mother kept all these things in her heart.
                    And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and favor
                    before God and man.

                    The post Holy Family (C), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, December 28, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                    11 min
                  • Learning From Mary, Advent Personified, How To Prepare For Her Son’s Birth, Fourth Sunday of Advent (C), December 22, 2024

                    Msgr. Roger J. Landry

                    Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Parish, Manhattan
                    Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year C
                    December 22, 2024
                    Mic 5:1-4, Ps 80, Heb 10:5-10, Lk 1:39-45

                     

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

                    https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.22.24_CCM_Homily_1.mp3

                     

                    The following text guided today’s homily:

                    • As the last students on campus make plans to return home or to travel to nearby family and friends to celebrate Christmas, we have a chance today to learn from the Word of God how we should be approaching these last days of Advent and preparing for the celebration of Christmas. Christmas always has a mission. And the great teacher the Church gives us to prepare for that mission is the Blessed Virgin Mary. Every year on the fourth Sunday of Advent, the Church has us focus on the Mary, not just because she has an obviously unforgettable role in the birth and life of Jesus. The real reason that the Church places her before us as Christmas nears is because she is the model of how we should be living Advent well. Mary is, in some sense, advent personified. God the Father had prepared her from the first moment of her life to be a worthy mother of his Son. Like a faithful daughter of Israel, she had prayed throughout her youth for the coming of the Messiah. When she was a young girl, she discovered that she was part of God’s answer to that prayer, but in a way that would far have exceeded any Hebrew maiden’s petitions: not only would the Messiah be her son, but her son would also be Creator, Savior and God. Her “yes!” to the Archangel Gabriel launched the proximate preparation for the birth of the Messiah, who would be God’s eternal only begotten Son and, in the greatest of all mysteries, also hers. On this fourth Sunday of Advent each year, we explicitly follow the footsteps Mary traced on that first Advent. In doing so, we’re doing more than traversing the physiological and historical events that preceded the Lord’s birth. We’re entering into Mary’s response of faith that is a guide for us along our own pilgrimage of faith. And so with the Lord, let us climb within Mary’s womb and listen to the beat of her contemplative heart, which was treasuring within this greatest of all mysteries, so that our Christmas may be as fruitful as that first Christmas.
                    • Today we travel with Mary to Ein Karim, the birthplace of St. John the Baptist, to the home of Zechariah and Elizabeth. During the Annunciation, after the Archangel Gabriel had told Mary that the power of the Most High would overshadow her and she would conceive in her womb a Son whom she would call Jesus, Gabriel told her as well that her cousin, Elizabeth, had also conceived a son in her old age. As soon as the Archangel departed from Nazareth, Mary, too, made plans to leave. Although she was still a young teenage girl, probably only 14 at the time, she “went with haste” to take care of her elderly kinswoman who was pregnant for the first time. We know, today, that if a woman is pregnant in her 40s, there are many health risks. It is likely that Elizabeth was much older than that and ancient middle eastern health care was nothing to brag about. Without question, Elizabeth would have needed some help. But notice that the Angel didn’t command Mary to go to help her. He didn’t even suggest that it would be a good thing for her to go. He just stated the fact that Elizabeth was pregnant and that was enough for Mary to spring into action. Mary’s love spawned in her the desire to help out. And so, this young girl who had just become the Mother of God, set out on a great adventure.
                    • Ein Karim was located 4.5 miles outside of Jerusalem, which was 60 miles from Nazareth. For Mary to get there, first she would have had to walk about 40 miles downhill into the plains of Jericho, then very steeply uphill for about 20 miles to the Holy City of Jerusalem, before crossing the Holy City and descending to Zechariah’s house. None of that apparently scared her. We don’t know if she traveled alone in the typical caravan of pilgrims. There’s no evidence that St. Joseph accompanied her, or her parents Saints Joachim and Anne. While we don’t know with whom she traveled, we do know that she journeyed with incredible faith. During her trek, there was no way she could have known humanly that she was pregnant. Jesus would still have been the tiniest embryo in her womb, probably eight or sixteen cells according to his human nature by the time she left, well before an infant had legs to kick. She could only have known she was pregnant by faith in Gabriel’s words. Doubtless along the journey, she was meditating on what the Angel had said to her and how all of the prophecies of the Old Testament were being fulfilled in her. She was adoring within the One who would eventually be born, as today’s first reading from the Prophet Micah foretold, in Bethlehem-Ephrathah, whose origin was from of old, from ancient times and who would be peace incarnate, rule in Israel and shepherd his flock by the strength of the Lord and his majestic name; the One who, as we prayed in the Psalm, would make us turn to God, allow us to see his face literally and be saved; the One who, as the Letter to the Hebrews states in the second reading, had from her taken on a body, who had assumed our humanity, in order to do his Father’s will and offer that humanity in order to make salvation possible. All of this together would lead, after hearing St. Elizabeth’s greeting, to her soul’s proclaiming the greatness of the Lord and Savior growing within her, the Mighty One who had done great things for her, who had looked upon her humility and exalted her, who had remembered his mercy and had come to help not only Israel his servant but the whole human race.
                    • In going to Ein Karim, Mary became the first missionary, the first bearer of the Good News that would change all of human history, forming Jesus to be the itinerant preacher he would become even before he had developed the tiniest of feet. Mary was able to bring incredible joy to Elizabeth and to the fetal John the Baptist, because she was bringing Christ. And Mary was able to burst out with joy in her famous hymn of praise, the Magnificat, during this scene for precisely the same reason. This brings us to the first of three lessons we can learn on this fourth Sunday of Advent: to bring joy to others this Christmas, we really have to bring them Christ. Jesus is the greatest gift that we can ever give to someone we love. This is something all of us need to remember especially at Christmas. We can buy others all types of clothes, gadgets, experiences, things and toys, but if we aren’t trying to give them the Lord Jesus, then we’re really giving them little more than monopoly money. We can send out hundreds of cards and letters, but if we’re not praying for those we write that they come to the Lord, and if we’re not trying to help them to encounter Jesus with our meager words, then, to a large degree, what we’re sending is not much better than junk mail. Unless we try to bring Christ to them, we’re really not giving them anything of lasting value. Mary didn’t bring Elizabeth ancient Hebrew pregnancy textbooks; she wasn’t bringing John the Baptist a cute little circumcision outfit; she was bringing Christ and, hence, she was bringing them everything!
                    • Today Mary wants to bring us Christ here at Columbia in the same way she brought him to Ein Karim. She wants us to learn from her example and to inspire us to bring her Son to others with great haste and joy this week as we prepare for Christmas on Wednesday. We all know people who need Jesus in their lives, who need his mercy, who hunger for his love and his presence, perhaps without even being conscious of it. But many of us can behave like spiritual Ebenezer Scrooges, selfishly keeping our relationship with Jesus to ourselves, and not sharing the greatest Gift we’ve ever received with anyone. Mary’s example shows us the way to live Advent well, and explicitly challenges and calls us to bring Jesus to those we will meet during these days. Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta used to say that her entire life was a constant Visitation, going with haste to bring Christ and his love to others. All of us as Christians are called to make of our life a Visitation, too. That’s the adventure the Lord wants to live as we go on mission to our homes, to our friends who will be hosting us, and to everyone we encounter.
                    • To bring Christ, we need to learn a second key lesson. We see in the Gospel this Sunday that as soon as Elizabeth heard the sound of Mary’s greeting, John the Baptist leaped in her womb, Elizabeth herself was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she burst out saying: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. How has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? … Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” The Holy Spirit inspired Elizabeth to bless Mary among all women because of two things: the blessed fruit of her womb and her faith that the Lord’s words to her would be fulfilled. In other words, she was blessed because of her embryonic Savior and Son and because of her faith in him. That’s the second key lesson we can grasp about this Advent pilgrimage with Mary: that the greatest blessings in this world are Jesusand our faith in him. These are the gifts we should be longing for this Christmas, because these are the ones that will truly make us happy. Even if we were to receive for Christmas the entire inventory of multiple Amazon warehouses, that would not be as valuable to us as the gift of God and the gift of increased faith in him. It is important for us to grasp how much God wants to be able to praise and bless us for our firm faith that all that he has promised us will be fulfilled. Mary cried out in her hymn of praise later in this scene, “All generations will call me blessed.” And that prophecy came true. We still call her blessed today, for the same reasons, because “the Lord — the blessed fruit of her womb — is with her,” and because of her faith, which is the model for every disciple’s. As we prepare for Christmas, the Lord is calling us to make these our priorities. The Father who gave us the gift of his Son that first nativity wants to give us that Son anew this Christmas, to be God-with-us, Emmanuel — but he wants us to ask for him in faith and respond to him in faith, by making the time to be with God in prayer, by saying “let it be done to me according to your word,” and by allowing the Lord’s words to be fulfilled in us in all the decisions we make. These last days before Christmas are days in which we should be begging God the Father to increase our faith so that we may make his Son the fundamental reality of our life, so that his birth might impact us just as much as his birth impacted the life of Mary and Joseph, who gave their lives to him full-time within their vocations as a construction worker and home maker. Sometimes we can celebrate the birth of Jesus like we celebrate the baptism of a cousin or the child of friends. It’s a moment of great joy but then we leave. The birth of Jesus, however, is supposed to impact us the way a baptism impacts the lives of the baby’s parents! But for that to happen, we need the faith to recognize that God-with-us has come into the world and remains in the world to be our full-time, 24/7 God.
                    • For that transformation to occur, we need the third and last lesson we’re called to learn and emulate from Mary during that first Advent. As soon as Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, blessed her, Mary’s contemplative heart exploded in prayer: “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior!” Mary’s response to the blessing of God’s love in coming into this world, into her heart and into her womb, was not just faith but prayer, which was once called by Pope Benedict faith-in-action. If God doesn’t just exist but is really God-with-us, then our response in faith should be prayer, to be-with-God. The Advent Preface every priest in the world prays this Sunday stresses the irreplaceable importance of prayer in preparation for Christmas. The Church prays: “It is by his gift that already we rejoice at the mystery of his Nativity, so that he may find us watchful in prayer and exultant in his praise.” Mary’s heart was filled with this wonder and praise. Her soul magnified the Lord and her spirit rejoiced in God. Our soul and spirit are called to do the same. God wants to help us to magnify him, to rejoice in his love and to thank him for all his blessings. Only the soul that does not magnify itself, as St. John Paul II once said, can magnify the Lord, and that can only happen when we center our lives on God and not on ourselves, or on material possessions, or anything or anyone else. If we were to ask Mary our Mother for the best way to prepare for the celebration of her son’s birth at Christmas, she would doubtless say that the most important is going to her Son in prayer, to live concretely in our life what we will sing in a few days and come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord. That’s the gift he most wants from each of us for the celebration of his birthday. That’s what Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, the Magi, the angels, and even the animals gave him. That’s where the adventure of Advent, personified by Mary, is ultimately meant to lead, in this world and forever.
                    • Please permit me one last thought about the Visitation. I mentioned earlier that St. Teresa of Calcutta said that her life was a constant development of the second Joyful Mystery of the Holy Rosary and how each of us in our own way is called to live out that mystery, bringing Christ to others and doing so with haste, in a rush, with great urgency and zeal. As I celebrate with you my last Mass as the Catholic chaplain at Columbia, I look back over these last five semesters as an unfolding of that mystery, as I sought, with a certain impatience, to bring to you Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, his mercy in the Sacrament of Confession, his Word and teachings in homilies and various lectures, his counsel in spiritual direction, his friendship and affection in day-to-day interactions, his accompaniment during dark valleys and his joy in celebratory verdant pastures. I’ve tried, in short, to incorporate Columbia’s motto, to bring you the light of Christ and to help you see all things in his light, so that, transformed and illumined, you may become in him a light on this campus and, with him, the Light of the World. Whether this work has borne any fruit is the Lord’s to determine and the result of his grace. But that’s been my intention. I thank you for having received me like Zechariah and Elizabeth received Mary! And as I leave to take on full-time the role of National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies, I will be striving to help the whole Church in the U.S. live out the Mystery of the Visitation, seeking to take Christ to 1,150 mission territories throughout the globe. Please pray for these efforts, that the same Christ whom Mary brought to Ein Karim I can help the Church bring to everywhere Christ still waits to be known, loved and served.
                    • We come now to the climax of the Christian life and the source and the summit of every university chaplain’s work, the celebration of the Sacred Liturgy. The same Holy Spirit who overshadowed Mary in Nazareth will soon overshadow me and overshadow this altar. The same Jesus whom Mary carried in utero to her cousin Elizabeth comes to us today in Holy Communion. Through Mary’s intercession, may we do what she did after the Annunciation — after what St. Teresa of Calcutta called her “first Holy Communion” when she received her Savior within — and live out well the noble adventure of the Christian life no matter how young we are, bringing Jesus out to others this Christmas and beyond, so that the incarnate Joy to the World can make them, and us, leap again!

                      •  

                      The readings for today’s Mass were: 

                      Reading I
                      Mi 5:1-4a

                          Thus says the LORD:

                      You, Bethlehem-Ephrathah
                      too small to be among the clans of Judah,
                      from you shall come forth for me
                      one who is to be ruler in Israel;
                      whose origin is from of old,
                      from ancient times.
                      Therefore the Lord will give them up, until the time
                      when she who is to give birth has borne,
                      and the rest of his kindred shall return
                      to the children of Israel.
                      He shall stand firm and shepherd his flock
                      by the strength of the LORD,
                      in the majestic name of the LORD, his God;
                      and they shall remain, for now his greatness
                      shall reach to the ends of the earth;
                      he shall be peace.

                      Responsorial Psalm
                      Ps 80:2-3, 15-16, 18-19.

                      R. (4)  Lord, make us turn to you; let us see your face and we shall be saved.

                      O shepherd of Israel, hearken,
                      from your throne upon the cherubim, shine forth.
                      Rouse your power,
                      and come to save us.
                      R. Lord, make us turn to you; let us see your face and we shall be saved.
                      Once again, O LORD of hosts,
                      look down from heaven, and see;
                      take care of this vine,
                      and protect what your right hand has planted
                      the son of man whom you yourself made strong.
                      R. Lord, make us turn to you; let us see your face and we shall be saved.
                      May your help be with the man of your right hand,
                      with the son of man whom you yourself made strong.
                      Then we will no more withdraw from you;
                      give us new life, and we will call upon your name.
                      R. Lord, make us turn to you; let us see your face and we shall be saved.

                      Reading II
                      Heb 10:5-10

                      Brothers and sisters:

                      When Christ came into the world, he said:
                      “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,
                      but a body you prepared for me;
                      in holocausts and sin offerings you took no delight.
                      Then I said, ‘As is written of me in the scroll,
                      behold, I come to do your will, O God.’“

                      First he says, “Sacrifices and offerings,

                      holocausts and sin offerings,
                      you neither desired nor delighted in.”
                      These are offered according to the law.
                      Then he says, :Behold, I come to do your will.”
                      He takes away the first to establish the second.
                      By this “will,”  we have been consecrated
                      through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

                      Alleluia
                      Lk 1:38

                      R. Alleluia, alleluia.

                      Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord.
                      May it be done to me according to your word.
                      R. Alleluia, alleluia.

                      Gospel
                      Lk 1:39-45

                      Mary set out

                      and traveled to the hill country in haste
                      to a town of Judah,
                      where she entered the house of Zechariah
                      and greeted Elizabeth.
                      When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting,
                      the infant leaped in her womb,
                      and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit,
                      cried out in a loud voice and said,
                      “Blessed are you among women,
                      and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
                      And how does this happen to me,
                      that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
                      For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears,
                      the infant in my womb leaped for joy.
                      Blessed are you who believed
                      that what was spoken to you by the Lord
                      would be fulfilled.”

                      The post Learning From Mary, Advent Personified, How To Prepare For Her Son’s Birth, Fourth Sunday of Advent (C), December 22, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                      26 min
                    • Following Mary, A Missionary of Charity, Toward Christmas, Fourth Sunday of Advent (C), December 22, 2024

                      Msgr. Roger J. Landry

                      Chapel of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
                      Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year C
                      December 22, 2024
                      Mic 5:1-4, Ps 80, Heb 10:5-10, Lk 1:39-45

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

                      https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.22.24_MCs_Homily_1.mp3

                       

                      The following text guided the homily: 

                      • Each year, on the fourth Sunday of Advent, the Church has us focus on the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Church does this not merely because Mary has an obviously unforgettable role in the birth and life of Jesus. The real reason that the Church proposes Mary to us as Christmas nears is because she is the model of how we should be living our Advent. Mary is, in some sense, advent personified. God the Father had prepared her from the first moment of her life to be a worthy mother of his Son. Like a faithful daughter of Israel, she had prayed throughout her youth for the coming of the Messiah. When she was a young girl, she discovered that she was part of God’s answer to that prayer, but in a way that would far have exceeded any Hebrew maiden’s prayers: not only would the Messiah be her son, but her son would also be God. Her “yes!” to the Archangel Gabriel launched the proximate preparation for the birth of Jesus the Messiah. Each year, on this fourth Sunday of Advent, we explicitly follow the footsteps Mary traced on that first Advent. In doing so, we’re doing more than traversing the physiological and historical events that preceded the birth of the Lord. We’re entering into Mary’s response of faith that is a guide for us along our own pilgrimage of faith. And so with the Lord, let us climb within Mary’s womb and listen to the beat of her contemplative heart, which was treasuring within this greatest of all mysteries, so that our Christmas may be as fruitful as that first Christmas.
                      • Today we travel with Mary to Ein Karim, the birthplace of St. John the Baptist. During the Annunciation, after the Archangel Gabriel had told Mary that the power of the Most High would overshadow her and she would conceive in her womb a Son whom she would call Jesus, Gabriel told her as well that her cousin, Elizabeth, had also conceived a son in her old age. As soon as the Archangel departed from Nazareth, Mary, too, made plans to leave. Although she was still a young teenage girl, she “went with haste” to take care of her elderly kinswoman who was pregnant for the first time. We know, today, that if a woman is pregnant in her 40s, there are many health risks. It is likely that Elizabeth was much older than that and ancient middle eastern health care was nothing to brag about. Without question, Elizabeth would have needed some help. But notice that the Angel didn’t command Mary to go to help her. He didn’t even suggest that it would be a good thing for her to go. He just stated the fact that Elizabeth was pregnant and that was enough for Mary to spring into action. Mary’s love spawned in her the desire to help out.
                      • Ein Karim was located 4.5 miles outside of Jerusalem, which was 60 miles from Nazareth. For Mary to get there, first she would have had to walk about 40 miles downhill into the plains of Jericho, then very steeply uphill for about 20 miles to the Holy City of Jerusalem, before crossing the Holy City and descending to Zechariah’s house. None of that apparently scared her. We don’t know if she traveled alone in the typical caravan of pilgrims. There’s no evidence that St. Joseph accompanied her, or her parents Saints Joachim and Anne. While we don’t know with whom she traveled, we do know that she journeyed with incredible faith. During her trek, there was no way she could have known humanly that she was pregnant. Jesus would still have been the tiniest embryo in her womb, probably eight or sixteen cells according to his human nature by the time she left, well before an infant had legs to kick. She could only have known she was pregnant by faith in Gabriel’s words. Doubtless along the journey, she was meditating on what the Angel said to her and how all of the prophecies of the Old Testament were being fulfilled in her. She was adoring within the One who would eventually be born, as today’s first reading from the Prophet Micah foretold, in Bethlehem-Ephrathah, whose origin is from of old, from ancient times and who would be peace incarnate, rule in Israel and shepherd his flock by the strength of the Lord and his majestic name; the One who, as we prayed in the Psalm, would make us turn to God, allow us to see his face and be saved; the One who, as the Letter to the Hebrews states, had from her taken on a body, who had assumed our humanity, in order to do his Father’s will and offer that humanity in order to make salvation possible. All of this together would lead to her explosive Magnificat, as her soul proclaimed the greatness of the Lord and Savior growing within her, the Mighty One who had done great things for her, who had looked upon her humility and exalted her, who had remembered his mercy and had come to help not only Israel his servant but the whole human race.
                      • In going to Ein Karim, Mary became the first missionary, the first bearer of the Good News that would change all of human history, forming Jesus to be the itinerant preacher he would become even before he had developed the tiniest of feet. Mary was able to bring incredible joy to Elizabeth and to the fetal John the Baptist, because she was bringing Christ. And Mary was able to burst out with joy in her famous hymn of praise, the Magnificat, during this scene for precisely the same reason.
                      • This brings us to the first of three lessons we can learn on this fourth Sunday of Advent: to bring joy to others this Christmas, we really have to bring them Christ. Jesus is the greatest gift that we can ever give to someone we love. This is something all of us need to remember especially at Christmas. We can buy kids all types of clothes and toys, but if we aren’t trying to give them the Lord Jesus, then we’re really giving them little more than monopoly money. We can send out a thousand cards and letters, but if we’re not praying for those we write that they come to the Lord, and if we’re not trying to help them to encounter Jesus with our meager words, then, to a large degree, what we’re sending is not much better than junk mail. Unless we try to bring Christ to them, we’re really not giving them anything of lasting value. Mary didn’t bring Elizabeth ancient Hebrew pregnancy textbooks; she wasn’t bringing John the Baptist a cute little circumcision outfit; she was bringing Christ and, hence, she was bringing them everything!
                      • Today Mary wants to bring us Christ here in the Bronx in the same way she brought him to Ein Karim. She wants us to learn from her example and to inspire us to bring her Son to others with great haste and joy this week as we prepare for Christmas on Wednesday. We all know people who need Jesus in their lives, who need his mercy, who hunger for his love and his presence, perhaps without even being conscious of it. But many of us can behave like spiritual Ebenezer Scrooges, selfishly keeping our relationship with Jesus to ourselves, and not sharing the greatest Gift we’ve every received with anyone. Mary’s example shows us the way to live Advent well, and explicitly challenges and calls us to bring Jesus to those we will meet during these days and to those we know who are in need, as well as to pray for and support the Church’s missionary work, which tries to bring Jesus to every creature, even to the ends of the earth. St. Teresa of Calcutta lived her whole life as a constant Visitation, going with haste to bring Christ and his charity to others. All of us as Christians, like Mary, like Teresa, are called to make of our life a Visitation, too.
                      • We see in the Gospel this Sunday that as soon as Elizabeth heard the sound of Mary’s greeting, John the Baptist leaped in her womb, Elizabeth herself was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she burst out saying: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? … And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” The Holy Spirit inspired Elizabeth to bless Mary among all women because of two things: the blessed fruit of her womb and her faith that the Lord’s words to her would be fulfilled. In other words, she was blessed because of her embryonic Savior and Son and because of her faith in him.
                      • That’s the second lesson we can grasp on this Advent pilgrimage with Mary: that the greatest blessings in this world are Jesus and our faith in him. These are the gifts we should be longing for this Christmas, because these are the ones that will truly make us happy. Even if we were to receive for Christmas the entire inventory of multiple Amazon warehouses, that would not be as valuable to us as the gift of God and the gift of increased faith in him. It is important for us to grasp how much God wants to be able to praise and bless us for our firm faith that all that he has promised us will be fulfilled. Mary cried out in her hymn of praise later in this scene, “All generations will call me blessed.” And that prophecy came true. We still call her blessed today, for the same reasons, because “the Lord — the blessed fruit of her womb — is with her,” and because of her faith, which is the model for every disciple’s. As we prepare for Christmas, the Lord is calling us to make these our priorities. The Father who gave us the gift of his Son that first nativity wants to give us that Son anew this Christmas, to be God-with-us, Emmanuel — but he wants us to ask for him in faith and respond to him in faith, by making the time to be with God in prayer, by saying “let it be done to me according to your word,” and by allowing the Lord’s words to be fulfilled in us in all the decisions we make.
                      • The last lesson that we’re called to emulate from that first Advent Mary lived is what she did at the end of the scene. As soon as Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, blessed her, Mary’s contemplative heart exploded in prayer: “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior!” Mary’s response to the blessing of God’s love in coming into this world, into her heart and into her womb, was not just faith but prayer, which is properly called faith-in-action. If God doesn’t just exist but is really God-with-us, then our response in faith should be prayer, to be-with-God. The Advent preface every priest in the world prays this Sunday stresses the irreplaceable importance of prayer in preparation for Christmas: “It is by his gift that already we rejoice at the mystery of his Nativity, so that he may find us watchful in prayer and exultant in his praise.” Mary’s heart was filled with this wonder and praise. Her soul magnified the Lord and her spirit rejoiced in God. Our soul and spirit are called to do the same. God wants to help us to magnify him, to rejoice in his love and thank him for all his blessings. Only the soul that does not magnify itself can magnify the Lord, and that can only happen when we center our lives on God and not on ourselves, or on material possessions, or anything else. If we were to ask Mary our Mother for the best way to prepare for the celebration of her son’s birth at Christmas, she would doubtless say that the most important is going to her Son in prayer.
                      • The same Holy Spirit who overshadowed Mary in Nazareth will soon overshadow me and overshadow this altar. The same Jesus whom Mary carried in utero to her cousin Elizabeth comes to us today in Holy Communion. Through Mary’s intercession, may we do what she did after the Annunciation — after what St. Teresa of Calcutta called her first Holy Communion — and bring that Jesus out to others who so need him this Christmas, so that the incarnate Joy to the World can make them and us leap again!

                        •  

                        The readings for today’s Mass were: 

                        Reading I
                        Mi 5:1-4a

                            Thus says the LORD:

                        You, Bethlehem-Ephrathah
                        too small to be among the clans of Judah,
                        from you shall come forth for me
                        one who is to be ruler in Israel;
                        whose origin is from of old,
                        from ancient times.
                        Therefore the Lord will give them up, until the time
                        when she who is to give birth has borne,
                        and the rest of his kindred shall return
                        to the children of Israel.
                        He shall stand firm and shepherd his flock
                        by the strength of the LORD,
                        in the majestic name of the LORD, his God;
                        and they shall remain, for now his greatness
                        shall reach to the ends of the earth;
                        he shall be peace.

                        Responsorial Psalm
                        Ps 80:2-3, 15-16, 18-19.

                        R. (4)  Lord, make us turn to you; let us see your face and we shall be saved.

                        O shepherd of Israel, hearken,
                        from your throne upon the cherubim, shine forth.
                        Rouse your power,
                        and come to save us.
                        R. Lord, make us turn to you; let us see your face and we shall be saved.
                        Once again, O LORD of hosts,
                        look down from heaven, and see;
                        take care of this vine,
                        and protect what your right hand has planted
                        the son of man whom you yourself made strong.
                        R. Lord, make us turn to you; let us see your face and we shall be saved.
                        May your help be with the man of your right hand,
                        with the son of man whom you yourself made strong.
                        Then we will no more withdraw from you;
                        give us new life, and we will call upon your name.
                        R. Lord, make us turn to you; let us see your face and we shall be saved.

                        Reading II
                        Heb 10:5-10

                        Brothers and sisters:

                        When Christ came into the world, he said:
                        “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,
                        but a body you prepared for me;
                        in holocausts and sin offerings you took no delight.
                        Then I said, ‘As is written of me in the scroll,
                        behold, I come to do your will, O God.’“

                        First he says, “Sacrifices and offerings,

                        holocausts and sin offerings,
                        you neither desired nor delighted in.”
                        These are offered according to the law.
                        Then he says, :Behold, I come to do your will.”
                        He takes away the first to establish the second.
                        By this “will,”  we have been consecrated
                        through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

                        Alleluia
                        Lk 1:38

                        R. Alleluia, alleluia.

                        Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord.
                        May it be done to me according to your word.
                        R. Alleluia, alleluia.

                        Gospel
                        Lk 1:39-45

                        Mary set out

                        and traveled to the hill country in haste
                        to a town of Judah,
                        where she entered the house of Zechariah
                        and greeted Elizabeth.
                        When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting,
                        the infant leaped in her womb,
                        and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit,
                        cried out in a loud voice and said,
                        “Blessed are you among women,
                        and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
                        And how does this happen to me,
                        that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
                        For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears,
                        the infant in my womb leaped for joy.
                        Blessed are you who believed
                        that what was spoken to you by the Lord
                        would be fulfilled.”

                        The post Following Mary, A Missionary of Charity, Toward Christmas, Fourth Sunday of Advent (C), December 22, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                        19 min
                      • Fourth Sunday of Advent (C), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, December 21, 2024

                        Msgr. Roger J. Landry

                        Conversations with Consequences Podcast
                        Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, C, Vigil
                        December 21, 2024

                         

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

                        https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.21.24_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

                         

                        The following text guided the homily: 

                        • This is Msgr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be back with you at the end of the program as we together try to enter into the consequential conversation God wants to have with each of us this Sunday, as we begin our proximate preparation for Christmas. On the Fourth Sunday of Advent each year, the Church always has us focus on the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Church does this not merely because Mary has an obviously unforgettable role in the birth and life of Jesus. The real reason is because the Blessed Mother is the model of how we should be living our advent. Mary is, we could say, the personification of Advent. God the Father, through her Immaculate Conception, had prepared her from the first moment of her life to be a worthy mother of his Son. Like a faithful daughter of Israel, she had prayed throughout her youth for the coming of the Messiah. When she was a young girl, she discovered that she was part of God’s answer to that prayer, but in a way that would far have exceeded any Hebrew maiden’s prayers: not only would the Messiah be her son, but her Son would also be God. Her “yes!” to the Archangel Gabriel launched the immediate preparation for the birth of Jesus the Messiah. Each year on the fourth Sunday of Advent, we explicitly follow the footsteps Mary traced on that first Advent. In doing so, we’re doing more than traversing the physiological and historical events that preceded the birth of the Lord. We’re entering into Mary’s response of faith, which is a guide for us along our own pilgrimage of faith. And so with the Lord, let us climb within Mary’s womb, so to speak, and listen to the beat of her contemplative heart, which was treasuring within this greatest of all mysteries, so that our Christmas may be fruitful like that first Christmas.
                        • Today we travel with Mary to Ein Karim, the birthplace of St. John the Baptist. During the Annunciation, after the Archangel Gabriel had told Mary that the power of the Most High would overshadow her and she would conceive in her womb a Son whom she would call Jesus, Gabriel told her as well that her cousin, Elizabeth, had also conceived a son in her old age. As soon as the Archangel departed from Nazareth, Mary, too, made plans to leave. Although she was still a young teenager, she “went with haste” to take care of her elderly kinswoman who was pregnant for the first time. We know, today, that if a woman is pregnant in her 40s, there are many health risks. It is possible that Elizabeth was considerably older than that, and we know that ancient Middle Eastern healthcare was nothing to brag about. Without question, Elizabeth would have needed some assistance. But the Angel didn’t command Mary to go to help her. He didn’t even suggest that it would be a good thing for her to go. He just stated the fact that Elizabeth was pregnant. That was enough for Mary to spring into action. Mary’s love spawned in her the desire to help out. Mary’s example of care for those in need is an example for us all.
                        • Ein Karim was located 4.5 miles outside of Jerusalem, which was 60 miles from Nazareth. For Mary to get there, first she would have had to walk about 40 miles downhill into the plains of Jericho, then very steeply uphill for about 20 miles to the Holy City of Jerusalem, before crossing the Holy City and descending to Zechariah’s house. None of that apparently scared her. We don’t know if she traveled alone in the typical caravan of pilgrims. There’s no evidence that St. Joseph accompanied her, or her parents Saints Joachim and Anne. While we don’t know with whom she traveled, we do know that she journeyed with incredible faith. During her trek, there was no way she could have known humanly that she was pregnant. Jesus would still have been the tiniest embryo in her womb, probably eight or sixteen cells according to his human nature by the time she left, well before an infant had legs to kick. She could only have known she was pregnant by faith in Gabriel’s words. Doubtless along the journey, she was meditating on what the Angel said to her and how all of the prophecies of the Old Testament were being fulfilled in her. In going to Ein Karim, Mary became the first missionary, the first bearer of the Good News that would change all of human history, forming Jesus to be the itinerant preacher he would become even before he had developed the tiniest of feet. Mary was able to bring incredible joy to Elizabeth and to the fetal John the Baptist, because she was bringing Christ. And Mary was able to burst out with joy in her famous hymn of praise, the Magnificat, during this scene for precisely the same reason.
                        • This brings us to the first of three lessons we can learn on this fourth Sunday of Advent: to bring joy to others this Christmas, we really have to bring them Christ. Jesus is the greatest gift that we can ever give to someone we love. This is something all of us need to remember especially at Christmas. We can buy kids all types of clothes and toys, but if we aren’t trying to give them the Lord Jesus, then we’re really giving them little more than monopoly money. We can send out a thousand cards and letters, but if we’re not praying for those we write that they come to the Lord, and if we’re not trying to help them to encounter Jesus with our meager words, then, to a large degree, what we’re sending is not much better than junk mail. Unless we try to bring Christ to them, we’re really not giving them anything of lasting value. Mary didn’t bring Elizabeth ancient Hebrew pregnancy textbooks; she wasn’t bringing John the Baptist a cute little circumcision outfit; she was bringing Christ and, hence, she was bringing them everything!
                        • As we prepare for Mass this Sunday, Mary wants to bring us Christ in the same way she brought him to Ein Karim. She wants us to learn from her example and to inspire us to bring her Son to others with great haste and joy this week as we prepare for Christmas on Wednesday. We all know people who need Jesus in their lives, who need his mercy, who hunger for his love and his presence, perhaps without even being conscious of it. But many of us can behave like spiritual Ebenezer Scrooges, selfishly keeping our relationship with Jesus to ourselves, and not sharing the greatest Gift we’ve every received with anyone. Mary’s example shows us the way to live Advent well, and explicitly challenges and calls us to bring Jesus to our relatives and to those we know who are in need, as well as to support the Church’s missionary work, which tries to bring Jesus to every creature, even to the ends of the earth.
                        • We see in the Gospel this Sunday that as soon as Elizabeth heard the sound of Mary’s greeting, John the Baptist leaped in her womb, Elizabeth herself was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she burst out saying: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? … And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” The Holy Spirit inspired Elizabeth to bless Mary among all women because of two things: the blessed fruit of her womb and her faith that the Lord’s words to her would be fulfilled. In other words, she was blessed because of her embryonic Savior and Son and because of her faith in him.
                        • That’s the second lesson we can grasp on this Advent pilgrimage with Mary: that the greatest blessings in this world are Jesus and our faith in him. These are the gifts we should be longing for this Christmas, because these are the ones that will truly make us happy. Even if we were to receive for Christmas the entire inventory of multiple Amazon warehouses, that would not be as valuable to us as the gift of God and the gift of increased faith in him. It is important for us to grasp how much God wants to be able to praise and bless us for our firm faith that all that he has promised us will be fulfilled. Mary cried out in her hymn of praise later in this scene, “All generations will call me blessed.” And that prophecy came true. We still call her blessed today, for the same reasons, because “the Lord — the blessed fruit of her womb — is with her,” and because of her faith, which is the model for every disciple’s. As we prepare for Christmas, the Lord is calling us to make these our priorities. The Father who gave us the gift of his Son that first nativity wants to give us that Son anew this Christmas, to be God-with-us, Emmanuel — but he wants us to ask for him in faith and respond to him in faith, by making the time to be with God in prayer, by saying “let it be done to me according to your word,” and by allowing the Lord’s words to be fulfilled in us in all the decisions we make.
                        • The last lesson that we’re called to emulate from that first Advent Mary lived is what she did at the end of the scene. As soon as Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, blessed her, Mary’s contemplative heart exploded in prayer: “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior!” Mary’s response to the blessing of God’s love in coming into this world, into her heart and into her womb, was not just faith but prayer, which is properly called faith-in-action. If God doesn’t just exist but is really God-with-us, then our response in faith should be prayer, to be-with-God. The Advent preface every priest in the world prays this Sunday stresses the irreplaceable importance of prayer in preparation for Christmas: “It is by his gift that already we rejoice at the mystery of his Nativity, so that he may find us watchful in prayer and exultant in his praise.” Mary’s heart was filled with this wonder and praise. Her soul magnified the Lord and her spirit rejoiced in God. Our soul and spirit are called to do the same. God wants to help us to magnify him, to rejoice in his love and thank him for all his blessings. Only the soul that does not magnify itself can magnify the Lord, and that can only happen when we center our lives on God and not on ourselves, or on material possessions, or anything else. If we were to ask Mary our Mother for the best way to prepare for the celebration of her son’s birth at Christmas, she would doubtless say that the most important is going to her Son in prayer.
                        • The same Holy Spirit who overshadowed Mary in Nazareth will this Sunday overshadow the altar. The same Jesus whom Mary carried in utero to her cousin Elizabeth will come to us in Holy Communion. Through Mary’s intercession, may we do what she did after the Annunciation and bring that Jesus out to others who so need him this Christmas, so that he can make them and us leap again!

                          •  

                          The Gospel passage on which the homily was dedicated was: 

                          Gospel
                          Lk 1:39-45

                          Mary set out

                          and traveled to the hill country in haste
                          to a town of Judah,
                          where she entered the house of Zechariah
                          and greeted Elizabeth.
                          When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting,
                          the infant leaped in her womb,
                          and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit,
                          cried out in a loud voice and said,
                          “Blessed are you among women,
                          and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
                          And how does this happen to me,
                          that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
                          For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears,
                          the infant in my womb leaped for joy.
                          Blessed are you who believed
                          that what was spoken to you by the Lord
                          would be fulfilled.”

                          The post Fourth Sunday of Advent (C), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, December 21, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                          10 min
                        • Hastening With Mary in Darkness to Bring Christ the Light, December 21, 2024

                          Msgr. Roger J. Landry

                          Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
                          Mass for December 21
                          Rorate Caeli Mass
                          December 21, 2024
                          Song 2:8-14, Ps 33, Lk 1:39-45

                           

                          To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click here: 

                          https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.21.24_Homily_1.mp3

                           

                          The following points were attempted in the homily: 

                          • There’s a great irony of proclaiming in today’s first reading from the Song of Songs, “The winter is past,” on the day winter begins, with the winter solstice occurring at 4:21 am on the East Coast. But the connection will make far greater sense if we understand these words of the Song of Songs from the perspective of today’s O Antiphon* (see explanation below): O Oriens, splendor lucis aeternae et sol iustitiae: veni et illumina sedentes in tenebris et umbra mortis. “O Rising Sun in the East, splendor of eternal light and sun of justice, come, illumine those sitting in darkness and the shadow of death.” Jesus is the Rising Sun and his light — his eternal “Light from Light” — shines in the midst of the greatest darkness and makes the darkest day of the year radiant. Even when we’re walking through the dark valley of the shadow of death, Jesus comes to bring us into the kingdom of light.
                          • We see this happen in the Gospel. Even though John the Baptist is in the darkness of Elizabeth’s womb, Jesus comes within the womb of Mary and irradiates that darkness with his light and joy. This is something she likewise seeks to do for us today in this Rorate Caeli Mass as we celebrate Mass only in candlelight in this Church as we await the rising of the Sun of Justice whom we know is the Son of the Eternal Father and the Son of Mary. We see the same dynamism from darkness to light in the first reading, the Song of Songs, which is an allegory of the dramatic loving dialogue that’s supposed to happen between God and each one of our souls. Much more than a husband and wife who have been apart for a year run across airports to embrace each other, so our longing is meant to be even greater for God because his longing is greater for us. There’s darkness in separation, but the hope of reunion shines in the midst of that darkness, and when the encounter happens, the long night is forgotten.
                          • Throughout Advent our desire is supposed to be growing like we see in the Song of Songs. The main purpose of the Advent wreath is to indicate what’s supposed to be happening within us: that week by week, the flame of our intense desire is meant to be doubling, tripling and quadrupling. And that’s what we see in the relationship between Bridegroom and Bride in this passage, which has inspired so many mystics, like St. Bernard, St. John of the Cross and St. Therese, to use it as a paradigm for the loving relationship we’re supposed to have with God. Jesus is coming as a Lover “springing across the mountains, leaping across the hills, … like a gazelle or a young stag.” He was doing that in the Gospel within Mary’s womb before he had even the tiniest of feet. He speaks, continually saying, “Arise, my beloved, my dove, my beautiful one and come!” He wants to raise us from sitting in darkness and the shadow of death, and come to him who loves us, who finds us beautiful and pure. He wants to see us, to hear our voice, to have us “sing a new song” (today’s Responsorial Psalm, literally the “song of the dove,” the song inspired by the Holy Spirit that we’re called to sing to our Emmanuel). This is the whole essence of Advent. Jesus is coming out of love for us because he seeks to espouse us to him forever. He’s coming because he loves us, because he finds us beautiful, and wants, by water and the word,  to make us like a dove, “pure and immaculate in his sight” (Eph 5:25-27).
                          • In our world, in our souls, the darkness that Christ wants to heal is wherever Christ doesn’t shine. St. John tells us in his Gospel about Jesus, “The light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil” (Jn 3:19). Jesus is coming into the world precisely to bring us into the light. That’s what Zechariah — in his famous Benedictus that the Church proclaims each morning and normally ponders especially on Christmas eve morning — will say about the One whose way his son will prepare: “Because of the tender mercy of our God by which the Daybreak (Oriens) from on high will visit us to shine on those who sit in darkness and death’s shadow, to guide our feet into the path of peace.” Jesus is coming to take those of us who are sitting in darkness and the shadow of death into the path of peace, joy and light. But he does so not by force but by engaging our freedom. He wants us to arise and come to him who is coming to us.
                          • We all need that resurrection. Many Christians don’t live with the joy that comes from the light, like children enjoy a sunny day. The O Antiphon uses the expression “sitting in the darkness and in the shadow of death,” pointing to the fact that there’s no dynamism, there’s no movement, there’s no action, just inertia. People are staying put. John the Baptist comes to get us moving inwardly toward conversion, to recognize our darkness and our need for light. Christ comes to deliver that light. But how does Christ illumine the shadow of death? He does so from the inside, by his own rising. He’s coming into the world so that just as the light of the sun rises every morning so we can rise with him. Just as Mary proclaims in her Magnificat that he exalts the humble, so he even raises the dead. Rather than looking like we’ve always come from a funeral, we Christians should look as if we’re perpetually come from a resurrection — and not just Jesus’, but our own. We all need to hear Jesus say, “Arise, my beloved, my pure one, my beautiful one, and come.”
                          • Mary shows us how to live this type of life, to arise and go out to meet Christ in such a way that we begin to journey with him to bring his joy to others as he continues to bound over obstacles for the sake of his lost sheep. Mary is given to us as a special gift to help us to learn how to meet Christ in this way. I’ve always been moved, in pondering the mystery of the Visitation, by how the Holy Spirit fills St. Elizabeth and gets her to cry out, not “Who am I that my Lord, my Messiah, the eternal Son of God comes to me?,” but “Who am I that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?” Her awareness of the presence of her Lord was mediated through the one bringing Him to her. That same Mother seeks to bring to us that same Son to lead us to a similar joy in rising. And she prays for us to be transformed by that encounter so that when we go to others, they may be able to recognize the presence of the Lord within us, too, and get a glimpse of his light.
                          • The way Jesus tries to help us to enter in this mystery this every day is in the Mass, when we enter into his death so that together with him we can rise from the dead. The ancient Christian Churches were always built to the East with the cruciform or basilical churches built literally ad orientem (to the East), toward where the Sun rises, to symbolize how Christ rises from the dead and takes us with him. When the priest and people faced the East together, the people were able to experience Christ’s rising like the Sun in a very poignant way, when after the words of consecration, the priest would elevate the host above his head. The people would see him from behind lifting Jesus upward and holding him above so that the light of his presence might illumine our life. Today the same reality applies. After the consecration, as I have the humble but awesome privilege to raise Christ, the Radiant Dawn, to the highest point of which I’m capable, see the Sun at “high noon,” and recognize that this is a response to our prayer, “O Rising Sun in the East, splendor of eternal light and sun of justice, come, illumine those sitting in darkness and the shadow of death!.” and arise, as beloved, and come to him! Amen!

                            • * (There is a lack of alignment among the O Antiphons between what is used as the Gospel verse and what is used for Magnificat antiphon during Vespers. Vespers preserves the original order of the seven O Antiphons: O Sapientia (Wisdom, Dec 17), O Adonai (Lord and leader of the house of Israel, Dec 18), O Radix Iesse (Root of Jesse, Dec 19), O Clavis David (O Key of David, Dec 20), O Oriens (O Rising Sun, Dec 21), O Rex Gentium (O King of the Nations, Dec 22), O Emmanuel (O God-with-us, Dec 23). There is no O Antiphon for Vespers on December 24, because it is first Vespers of the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord. In the Gospel verses, however, while the first four days are the same (Dec 17-20), the Mass liturgies change the order of the others: O Rex Gentium is not only said on Dec 22 but repeated on Dec 23, O Emmanuel is moved from Dec 23 to Dec 21, and O Oriens is moved from Dec 21 to Dec 24, so that the words “illumine those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death” will correspond to the words of Zechariah’s canticle in the Gospel. I write this explanation because, as far as I have been able to find through internet searches, there is no other explanation of the disparity between the O Antiphons at Mass and at Vespers.)

                            The readings for today’s Mass were: 

                            Reading 1
                            SG 2:8-14
                            Hark! my lover–here he comes
                            springing across the mountains,
                            leaping across the hills.
                            My lover is like a gazelle
                            or a young stag.
                            Here he stands behind our wall,
                            gazing through the windows,
                            peering through the lattices.
                            My lover speaks; he says to me,
                            “Arise, my beloved, my dove, my beautiful one,
                            and come!
                            “For see, the winter is past,
                            the rains are over and gone.
                            The flowers appear on the earth,
                            the time of pruning the vines has come,
                            and the song of the dove is heard in our land.
                            The fig tree puts forth its figs,
                            and the vines, in bloom, give forth fragrance.
                            Arise, my beloved, my beautiful one,
                            and come!
                            “O my dove in the clefts of the rock,
                            in the secret recesses of the cliff,
                            Let me see you,
                            let me hear your voice,
                            For your voice is sweet,
                            and you are lovely.”

                            Responsorial Psalm
                            PS 33:2-3, 11-12, 20-21
                            R. (1a; 3a) Exult, you just, in the Lord! Sing to him a new song.
                            Give thanks to the LORD on the harp;
                            with the ten-stringed lyre chant his praises.
                            Sing to him a new song;
                            pluck the strings skillfully, with shouts of gladness.
                            R. Exult, you just, in the Lord! Sing to him a new song.
                            But the plan of the LORD stands forever;
                            the design of his heart, through all generations.
                            Blessed the nation whose God is the LORD,
                            the people he has chosen for his own inheritance.
                            R. Exult, you just, in the Lord! Sing to him a new song.
                            Our soul waits for the LORD,
                            who is our help and our shield,
                            For in him our hearts rejoice;
                            in his holy name we trust.
                            R. Exult, you just, in the Lord! Sing to him a new song.
                            Gospel
                            LK 1:39-45
                            Mary set out in those days
                            and traveled to the hill country in haste
                            to a town of Judah,
                            where she entered the house of Zechariah
                            and greeted Elizabeth.
                            When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting,
                            the infant leaped in her womb,
                            and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit,
                            cried out in a loud voice and said,
                            “Most blessed are you among women,
                            and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
                            And how does this happen to me,
                            that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
                            For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears,
                            the infant in my womb leaped for joy.
                            Blessed are you who believed
                            that what was spoken to you by the Lord
                            would be fulfilled.”

                            The post Hastening With Mary in Darkness to Bring Christ the Light, December 21, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                            13 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.

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