Catholic Preaching

Catholic Preaching

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  • Yoking Ourselves to Christ So That We Can Run and Not Grow Weary, Wednesday of the Second Week of Advent, December 11, 2024

    Fr. Roger J. Landry

    Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
    Wednesday of the Second Week of Advent
    Memorial of St. Pope St. Damasus
    December 11, 2024
    Is 40:25-31, Ps 103, Mt 11:28-30

     

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

    https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.11.24_Homily_1.mp3

     

    The following points were attempted in this homily: 

    • As we have been discussing non-stop over the last ten days, in Advent there is a triple dynamism: Christ comes to us in history, mystery and majesty; we run out to embrace him; and then, having encountered him, we go out united with him to complete the work he wants to do in us and through us for the salvation for the world. We ponder this triple reality in today’s readings. As Jesus is coming to us, he says, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened and I will give you rest.” Jesus calls us in the midst of our work, in the context of all our struggles and difficulties, to come to him to find the rest our bodies and souls need. But the rest Jesus offers is not what normally we would anticipate. For most of us we would anticipate that rest would mean a vacation from our labors or the elimination of, or a respite from, our burdens. Jesus offers something else. It’s a yoke: “Take my yoke upon you,” he says, “and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy and my burden light.” The yoke Jesus offers is something that will harness us to him, so that, just as a yoke binds two oxen to work together, we will do everything together with him. That yoke is his Cross, which is not so much an instrument of pain and torture but of the love that makes even the pain of crucifixion somehow bearable. To be united with the Lord who comes and calls us to come to him is to be united to that love that makes even the yoke of the Cross easy-fitting and light — and whatever burdens and labors we carry under that yoke easier and lighter.
    • Jesus calls us to yoke ourselves to him in such a way that we will learn meekness and humility directly from him. God’s great strength is not exercised in the way the strong of the world often flex their muscles. We see the way Jesus himself exercises his strength in the Gospel. Meekness is not weakness. The Greek word for “meek” means the self-discipline and power of a martial arts expert or tremendously agile athlete, or of a well-trained, docile horse, capable of action and reaction at a simple bump of the heel. Real strength is not shown in pummeling any and all adversaries, but often in resisting doing so even though one could. That’s why St. Paul will say that Christ crucified is the power and the wisdom of God. Yoking ourselves to Jesus allows us to learn this meekness from him, so that in the midst of our labors and burdens we will not be beaten down but, like a black belt in the martial arts, will use what is thrown at us to help us achieve what we want to rather than to obstruct that goal. When we are yoked to Jesus, our sufferings and work help purify us and sanctify the world. Likewise yoked to Jesus we learn how to grow in humility through offering our work and burdens for the service of others. The Season of Advent helps us to focus on humility as we prepare for Christmas and the unbelievable humility that God showed not only in taking on our human nature, but assuming great poverty, being born in a borrowed cave, placed in an animal trough, wrapped in swaddling clothes rather than regal garments, eventually working himself as a carpenter, and experiencing the normal burdens of life. In all of these humbling circumstances, Jesus was carrying out the work of our salvation, which is something each of us can and ought to learn from him, because we, too, united to him, can convert all the ordinary, humble circumstances of our day into opportunities to glorify God, love others, and grow in God’s image and likeness.
    • The consequences of being yoked to Jesus are beautifully expressed by God through the prophet Isaiah in today’s first reading. The Israelites are questioning whether they are “disregarded” by their God as they languish in exile. God first speaks about “his great might and the strength of his power” and then reminds them, “The Lord is the eternal God, creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint nor grow weary.” After God took on our nature to be yoked to us in an eternal communion, those divine properties could be gradually assimilated by us. Isaiah tells us that God “gives strength to the fainting; for the weak he makes vigor abound. Though young men faint and grow weary, and youths stagger and fall, they that hope in the Lord will renew their strength, they will soar as with eagles’ wings; they will run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint.” When we are united to the Lord, when we learn from him humility and meekness, when we yoke ourselves to his love, then our burdens and labors don’t weary us the way they weary others. We get a holy stamina to keep running without tiring, to keep walking without fainting, to keep giving and serving without counting the cost, just as Jesus did with regard to us. This doesn’t mean that a deep spiritual life takes away the physical necessities of sleep, rest, eating and normal care, but it does give us an energy, a motivation that can keep us going. The fundamental reason is because we start to do things for God and for others rather than for ourselves. We start focusing on God’s glory and others’ good more than our own comfort, and we find within not just a deeper human reserve than we were aware of, but a vastly greater spiritual reserve given by God. When we do things motivated by love, those burdens are not only lighter but sweeter. This is the source of the energy of the great saints, what made St. John Paul II vigorous and willing to continue flying across the Globe with Parkinson’s season, what led St. Mother Teresa to keep serving until her late 80s, what allows Pope Francis to keep the schedule he does, two days from the 55th anniversary of his priestly ordination and six days from his 88th birthday. This is what helps so many disciples — lay people, religious, priests — to continue teaching and caring and serving well past closing time or retirement age with an infectious joy that constantly rejuvenates. That happens because they’re yoked to Jesus in prayer, in the sacraments, in the Word, in charity and that’s where they get their energy.
    • The ones who show us most profoundly the type of life-changing Advent yoking to which we’re called are the martyrs, who even in the midst of all their sufferings bound themselves to Christ in his power and wisdom on the yoke of the Cross. St. Damasus whom we celebrate today was the pope who adorned all of their graves in the catacombs and made it possible for the hordes of pilgrims coming to Rome to visit and venerate their mortal remains. We can learn a lot from this important phase in Church history. After the legalization of Christianity by Constantine in 313, many were becoming Christians because Constantine wanted Christians in his civil service, because Christians up until that point would never lie and he wanted trustworthy people around him. Whereas prior to the legalization of Christianity, the only people who were becoming Christians were those who were willing to die for their faith, many after the legalization were getting baptized in order to get ahead. So there was a backlash among many Christians who thought that the practice of the faith was becoming diluted. There were two things they did. First, they started to go out into the desert as monks. Advent is a season in which we go out to meet St. John the Baptist in the desert, in which we have “desert days” of prayer or recollection, to make sure we’re not caught up in spiritual worldliness. The second thing they did was to venerate the martyrs, those who gave the supreme witness of the faith for him who previously died for them. We, too, need during this Advent to remember the martyrs and to imitate them, as Pope Damasus tried to inspire the whole early Church to do. St. Damasus is also known for authorizing St. Jerome to translate the Bible anew from its original languages into the common language of the people, Latin (the “Vulgate”), so that people would be able to yoke themselves to God through his word, the word we heard yesterday that will last forever. We ask for his intercession today to let God’s word become flesh in us, especially the Word proclaimed to us today.
    • Today Christ invites us to yoke ourselves to him anew. The word in Latin for yoke is jugum and the expression to be yoked with someone is conjugum. That’s where we get our term “conjugal,” or “spousal,” because husbands and wives are yoked together for the rest of their life in one flesh. It’s here at Mass, in the consummation of Jesus the Bridegroom’s spousal union with us, his Bride, that we are yoked to him. It’s here in the Eucharist that he yokes himself to us with all our labors and burdens. It’s here he gives us repose. It’s here that we ponder in a special way his incredible humility hiding under the appearances of bread and wine and his meekness in adapting his care to us just as we are today. It’s here we’re strengthened to remain bound to him even in suffering like the martyrs. It’s from here that he wishes to send us out yoked to him to do our work, to run without growing weary and to walk without fainting, all the way home to heaven!

      •  

      The readings for today’s Mass were: 

      Reading 1 IS 40:25-31
      To whom can you liken me as an equal?
      says the Holy One.
      Lift up your eyes on high
      and see who has created these things:
      He leads out their army and numbers them,
      calling them all by name.
      By his great might and the strength of his power
      not one of them is missing!
      Why, O Jacob, do you say,
      and declare, O Israel,
      “My way is hidden from the LORD,
      and my right is disregarded by my God”?
      Do you not know
      or have you not heard?
      The LORD is the eternal God,
      creator of the ends of the earth.
      He does not faint nor grow weary,
      and his knowledge is beyond scrutiny.
      He gives strength to the fainting;
      for the weak he makes vigor abound.
      Though young men faint and grow weary,
      and youths stagger and fall,
      They that hope in the LORD will renew their strength,
      they will soar as with eagles’ wings;
      They will run and not grow weary,
      walk and not grow faint.
      Responsorial Psalm PS 103:1-2, 3-4, 8 AND 10
      R. (1) O bless the Lord, my soul!
      Bless the LORD, O my soul;
      and all my being, bless his holy name.
      Bless the LORD, O my soul,
      and forget not all his benefits.
      R. O bless the Lord, my soul!
      He pardons all your iniquities,
      he heals all your ills.
      He redeems your life from destruction,
      he crowns you with kindness and compassion.
      R. O bless the Lord, my soul!
      Merciful and gracious is the LORD,
      slow to anger and abounding in kindness.
      Not according to our sins does he deal with us,
      nor does he requite us according to our crimes.
      R. O bless the Lord, my soul!

      Alleluia

      R. Alleluia, alleluia.

      Behold, the Lord comes to save his people;
      blessed are those prepared to meet him.
      R. Alleluia, alleluia.

      Gospel MT 11:28-30
      Jesus said to the crowds:
      “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
      and I will give you rest.
      Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
      for I am meek and humble of heart;
      and you will find rest for yourselves.
      For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”

      The post Yoking Ourselves to Christ So That We Can Run and Not Grow Weary, Wednesday of the Second Week of Advent, December 11, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

      22 min
    • The Comfort of Mercy the Good Shepherd Gives, Second Tuesday of Advent, December 10, 2024

      Fr. Roger J. Landry

      Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
      Tuesday of the Second Week of Advent
      Memorial of Our Lady of Loreto
      December 10, 2024
      Is 40:1-11, Ps 96, Mt 18:12-14

       

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

      https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.10.25_Homily.mp3

       

      The following points were attempted in the homily: 

      • When Handel wrote his famous Messiah in 1741 to summarize salvation history and tell the story of Jesus the Messiah, the first words in the entire oratorio, what we might call the theme of the whole work, he took from today’s passage: God is, at it were, addressing the entire heavenly court of angels saying, “Comfort, give comfort to my people,” now in exile in Babylon. Everything Jesus would do could be summarized by the comfort he was bringing. What comfort is that? It’s mercy: that Israel’s guilt has been expiated, her service of prayer and reparation is all over. Even though there would be a first fulfillment of this in the return of the exiled Jews to Jerusalem, the prophecy was pointing even more to the return from the exile from the Garden of Eden, the exile caused by sin. When we pray in the Psalm verse, “The Lord our God comes with power,” we need to remember that his power is mercy. He “com-forts” us, literally makes us “strong with” the power of his merciful love. But we need to cooperate with that compassionate strengthening.
      • The passage from the Prophet Isaiah continues today with words made even more famous by St. John the Baptist, as we heard on Sunday: “In the desert prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God! Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low; The rugged land shall be made a plain, the rough country, a broad valley.” We need to do the work to prepare for the Lord’s mercy through examining our sins, confessing them, repenting of them, repairing the damage. These are important words for us today we we have an Advent Day of Mercy with confessions being heard all day here in this Church. The Lord’s way, as Isaiah reminds us this Advent, is a highway of holiness to which the Lord himself from behind indicates to us as the path to take and on which the redeemed walk. Preparing and taking this path of mercy and repentance is what the Messiah wants from us to fulfill his work. Then what Isaiah says we will behold: “Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together. This will lead to people seeing the glory of the Lord.”
      • Part of making straight that path for the Lord to come to comfort us is to recognize the vanity of earthly things in comparison to the perennial stability of the word of God. That’s what God tells Isaiah to announce when the prophet asks, “What shall I cry out?” The Lord responds, “All flesh is grass, and all their glory like the flower of the field. …Though the grass withers and the flower wilts, the word of our God stands forever.” This is an important message for us to capture in order to live Advent well. Today a real danger in the proper living of Advent is that we get particularly children but almost everyone to focus their hearts on things that “wither,” whether material things or ephemeral celebrations, rather than for the Word of God who comes to dwell among us. Isaiah was sent to help the people of his time and at all times recognize the contrast between God’s word and everything else not associated with God. We need to heed his message and become like Isaiah for our modern commercialized age, praising the generosity of those who sacrifice to give to others, but at the same time, not sacrificing for vain things, unintentionally helping to distort others’ value structures.
      • As soon as Isaiah has helped people to appreciate the true value of the Word of God, then God instructs him to go up to Mount Zion as a herald of good news and and cry out at the top of his voice, “Here is your God! Here comes with power the Lord God.” This is the essential Advent message: God is coming! He’s coming with his power but he is also coming with tenderness: he will feed his flock like a shepherd, gather the lambs in his arms, carry them, and lead them with care. At the fulfillment of the long Advent of the Jews, that’s exactly what God himself did. Jesus would use these images to describe his own vocation as the Good Shepherd. He would do far more than just feed, gather, carry and lead. He would also die out of love for his sheep, in order precisely to envelope us in his mercy.
      • We see a glimpse of the Good Shepherd’s comfort and consolation in the Gospel. Jesus is the shepherd who leaves the 99 and goes after the one lost and ignites a celebration when he finds the sheep and brings him home. This shows how personally the Good Shepherd cares for each of us. In St. Luke’s Gospel, he would link this specifically to his mission of mercy (Lk 15), saying heaven rejoices more for the return of one lost sheep than for 99 who didn’t need to repent. John Paul II once said about the Sacrament of Penance that that’s where the love of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, where all God’s power, exist just for us as an individual. Whereas at a Mass God can feed all of us at the same time with his Word and his Body and Blood, in the Sacrament of his Mercy, everything in a sense stops as God cares for each sheep, lamb or ewe personally. The Sacrament of Mercy is where mountains are leveled and shallow valleys filled in. It’s where rough ways are made smooth and crooked ways made straight. It’s where we recognize and admit that we’ve set our hearts too often on vain things instead of treasuring God’s word. It’s God’s great “lost and found” department, where we see the glory of the Lord, his mercy, and where we are helped to become the glory of God by becoming fully alive (St. Ireneus: gloria Dei vivens homo). So this Advent it is key for all of us to receive the comfort and tender love of the Good Shepherd one-on-one in the Sacrament of Penance — as many are doing today during this all-day confession opportunity — and allow Jesus to start the celebration.
      • One of the happiest in that celebration is the Virgin without sin who prays for us sinners. Mary is the most important Advent figure of all and this week has a particularly Marian character with yesterday’s Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, Thursday’s Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and today’s Memorial of Our Lady of Loreto, all of which give us an opportunity to ponder how Mary shares in Jesus’ mission of comforting his people with his mercy. In 2019, Pope Francis, though the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, decreed that the memorial of Our Lady of Loreto, celebrated each year on December 10, be extended to the entire Church. December 10 was the day in 1294 when, according to tradition, the holy house where Mary was born, where the Archangel Gabriel visited her, and where the Word became flesh, where Mercy became incarnate, arrived in the Italian hillside town of Loreto. Eventually, a great basilica was built above it to house it. It’s Italy’s most important, and most visited, Marian shrine. It’s a place in which we can ponder the Incarnation and Mary’s response to God, to let her whole life happen according to God’s word. This feast, therefore, is an occasion for us to pray about God’s desire for us to be holy and immaculate in his sight, Jesus’ becoming one of us to make that happen, and our cooperation with his merciful action. By her fiat, Mary fully shares in that mission. In the Litany of Blessed Virgin Mary, commonly known as the Litany of Loreto because of its association with that Basilica, where it was first used in 1558 and eventually was set to music in such a way that Pope Sixtus V in 1587 decreed that all other Marian litanies should be suppressed in its favor, we turn to Mary and invoke her as “Virgin most merciful,” “Refuge of Sinners,” “Mother most pure, “Mother inviolate,” “Mother of Mercy” and “Queen conceived without original sin,” and ask her to “pray for us,” to pray that we might receive the fullness of her Son’s saving mercy.
      • Today on her feast, we thank the Lord for the gift of her intercession and example. It’s part of the way the Lord speaks tenderly not just to Jerusalem but to New York. And we ask him who like a Shepherd feeds his flock to feed us with himself as we, in imitation of Mary, gather him into our arms and mouths and carry Him within our bosom!

        •  

        The readings for today’s Mass were:

        Reading 1
        IS 40:1-11
        Comfort, give comfort to my people,
        says your God.
        Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her
        that her service is at an end,
        her guilt is expiated;
        Indeed, she has received from the hand of the LORD
        double for all her sins.
        A voice cries out:
        In the desert prepare the way of the LORD!
        Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!
        Every valley shall be filled in,
        every mountain and hill shall be made low;
        The rugged land shall be made a plain,
        the rough country, a broad valley.
        Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
        and all people shall see it together;
        for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.
        A voice says, “Cry out!”
        I answer, “What shall I cry out?”
        “All flesh is grass,
        and all their glory like the flower of the field.
        The grass withers, the flower wilts,
        when the breath of the LORD blows upon it.
        So then, the people is the grass.
        Though the grass withers and the flower wilts,
        the word of our God stands forever.”
        Go up onto a high mountain,
        Zion, herald of glad tidings;
        Cry out at the top of your voice,
        Jerusalem, herald of good news!
        Fear not to cry out
        and say to the cities of Judah:
        Here is your God!
        Here comes with power
        the Lord GOD,
        who rules by his strong arm;
        Here is his reward with him,
        his recompense before him.
        Like a shepherd he feeds his flock;
        in his arms he gathers the lambs,
        Carrying them in his bosom,
        and leading the ewes with care.
        Responsorial Psalm
        PS 96:1-2, 3 AND 10AC, 11-12, 13
        R. (see Isaiah 40:10ab) The Lord our God comes with power.
        Sing to the LORD a new song;
        sing to the LORD, all you lands.
        Sing to the LORD; bless his name;
        announce his salvation, day after day.
        R. The Lord our God comes with power.
        Tell his glory among the nations;
        among all peoples, his wondrous deeds.
        Say among the nations: The LORD is king;
        he governs the peoples with equity.
        R. The Lord our God comes with power.
        Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice;
        let the sea and what fills it resound;
        let the plains be joyful and all that is in them!
        Then let all the trees of the forest rejoice.
        R. The Lord our God comes with power.
        They shall exult before the LORD, for he comes;
        for he comes to rule the earth.
        He shall rule the world with justice
        and the peoples with his constancy.
        R. The Lord our God comes with power.
        Gospel
        MT 18:12-14
        Jesus said to his disciples:
        “What is your opinion?
        If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray,
        will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills
        and go in search of the stray?
        And if he finds it, amen, I say to you, he rejoices more over it
        than over the ninety-nine that did not stray.
        In just the same way, it is not the will of your heavenly Father
        that one of these little ones be lost.”

        The post The Comfort of Mercy the Good Shepherd Gives, Second Tuesday of Advent, December 10, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

        16 min
      • Learning From Archbishop Sheen To Love Mary Immaculate, Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, December 9, 2024

        Fr. Roger J. Landry

        Columbia Campus Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
        Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady
        December 8, 2024
        Gn 3:9-15.20, Ps 98, Eph 1:3-6.11-12, Lk 1:26-38

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

        https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.9.24_Homily_IC_1.mp3

         

        The following text guided the homily: 

        • One of the joys I have had serving as chaplain to the Catholics at Columbia has been the privilege to be able to celebrate Mass each day here at the Church of Notre Dame. It was one of the big decisions I made upon becoming chaplain, that we would move daily Mass from the transept of St. Paul’s Chapel on campus here to Notre Dame, conveniently located next to where the Merton Institute would be built in the former rectory. I did so, first, so that we would be able to offer what I called “full-menu Catholicism” in a Catholic setting, with Jesus in the Tabernacle and, therefore, the opportunity for daily Adoration, with confessionals to offer God’s mercy before Mass, with padded kneelers so that students wouldn’t have to kneel on marble floors. Another advantage was a built-in remedy to one of the dangers that can plague campus ministry at top universities: the danger of a faith that remains too intellectualized, without passing from the head to the heart to the knees, hands and feet. I had a strong hunch that celebrating Mass looking at the image of our Lady of Lourdes lifted up high in the Grotto, singing a Marian antiphon to her at the end of every liturgy, praying the Rosary before her during October and May, would help students, faculty and everyone else become truly devout. Mary shows us that what’s important in life is not to be Mary of Nazareth, Ph.D., but to emulate her as a fellow disciple and apostle of the Blessed Fruit of her womb, to invoke and imitate her intercession, and to receive her maternal love. I’m convinced that one of the biggest reasons for the growth of Columbia Catholic Ministry over the last few years has been that Mary has been interceding for us and helping us to become, through her maternal influence, ever more a true family of faith. Today I would like to thank her publicly and to ask for her continued help as Columbia Catholic Ministry prepares for a big pastoral transition.
        • Since we started celebrating daily Mass here at 12:10 during the week, a few students have come up to me gently to inquire whether my watch is fast, because they’ve noticed I’ve routinely started Mass a couple of minutes early. That’s always been intentional, not just as a sign of eagerness and an inducement to try to get people to arrive at Mass early, but because of the symbolism of starting Mass, here, at 12:08. 12:08 is an explicit link to the twelfth month and eighth day, to December 8, to the Immaculate Conception, which is not just a homage to Our Lady, but an explicit link to what is depicted in this Grotto, which is a replica of the Grotto in Lourdes where Mary appeared to St. Bernadette Soubirous in 1858. When Bernadette was asked by her pastor, Fr. Peyramale, to ask the “beautiful Lady” appearing to her what her name us, Our Lady told the 14-year-old girl, in the local patois, Que era soy a Immaculada Concepciou, or in French, as we see in the words enveloping her head in the image here, “Je suis l’Immaculée Conception.” “I am the Immaculate Conception.” Bernadette, who had never been taught to read and had received very little education, had no idea what the big words “Immaculate” and “Conception” meant. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception had just been formally defined four years before and while all Catholics in the Pyrenees believed that Mary was the sinless Virgin Mary from the beginning of her life, few had heard of the dogma. So when she told Father Peyramale how the Belle Dame had responded to her question, and carefully tried to be faithful to repronouncing the sounds of what seemed like a foreign language, im-mac-u-la-da-con-cep-ci-ou, he was stunned. He asked her if she knew what these words meant and she humbly replied no. And that was the verification Father Peyramale was looking for to help authenticate what Bernadette said was happening. When Mary was asked for her name, she didn’t respond, “I am Mary of Nazareth” or “I am the Mother of God.” She humbly bowed her head to the ground, then looked up serenely to heaven as she raised and then folded her hands and said, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” She identified fully with the grace God had given her from the first instant of her life in the womb of her mother St. Anne. And so today we commemorate far more than the beginning of the life of our spiritual mother and her spiritual greatness. We do more than rejoice at the beginning of our redemption, when God, through the merits of her Son on the Cross from 47 years later, preserved her “preveniently” from all stain of original sin from the first moment of her life. We celebrate what Mary herself believed was the core of her identity, which gives witness to the triumph of grace over sin and evil.
        • We see in the first reading what seems to be the triumph of sin and evil. Satan gets our first parents to distrust in God, saying that only reason why they couldn’t eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was because God was jealous to preserve his power. Once they distrusted God and disobeyed the one restriction he had given, everything changed and there was a three-fold rupture: a rupture with God, shown in the fact that they were trying to hide from him in the Garden; a rupture with each other, manifested by how they covered their most vulnerable parts lest the other hurt them and how neither could accept responsibility for his or her immoral decisions, with Adam’s trying to blame Eve and Eve’s blaming the serpent; and a rupture within themselves, revealed by how their body and soul would no longer easily align with what God was asking and how both work and childbirth would be done through the struggle to overcome toil, sweat and pangs.
        • But the reason why Genesis 3 is today’s first reading is because we also see in this passage the beginning of the redemption, what tradition calls the “proto-evangelium” or “first Gospel.” God promises that he will put enmity between the serpent and the woman and between her offspring and the devil’s. Enmity is scorn and hatred. It’s obvious that God didn’t have to do anything for the serpent to have enmity toward us: he already hated us and wanted to bring us down, just as he was showing with our first parents. But he put a real enmity in the new Eve, Mary, for the serpent; between her Offspring — Jesus — and the “children” of the evil one, the other demons; and, insofar as we all became adopted children of Mary on Calvary when Jesus said, “Behold your mother!,” God’s plan was also to put enmity between the devil and us — an enmity that would recognize Satan’s evil works and empty promises, an enmity that would say no to the supposed lure of sin.
        • This all comes to fruition in the Gospel, when we see Mary, having been filled with grace, says a consequential a “yes” to God in response to Eve’s “no.” By her “fiat,” her “let it be done to be according to your word,” Mary showed that it was possible for grace to triumph over sin, for God to triumph over Satan and evil in the human heart. Mary’s enmity for the serpent out of total love for God was not a one-time declaration. She would continue to reject Satan, all his empty promises, and all his evil works throughout her life into eternity, which is what her self-identification as the Immaculate Conception suggests. This is God’s calling and plan for each us, too, that we have a true enmity for evil so that we, like Mary, through the gift of the redemption we receive not at our conception but at our baptism and thereafter in the sacraments, might be full of grace, full of God, full of joy, full of life.
        • In today’s second reading, St. Paul reminds us that God the Father “has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens,” choosing us in Christ before the beginning of time “to be holy and immaculate in his sight” and to “live for the praise of his glory.” Just like Mary was chosen by God, so we have chosen. Just as by her “yes” the history of the world was changed for the better, so through our “yes” God can change the world, saving us and others into eternity. Like Mary, however, this won’t happen without our constant consent. We need to spurn the devil and all his allures not just once but continuously. We need to stomp on his head. We need to reject him, just as was said at our baptism by our parents and godparents and we renew at least every Easter. That’s what we do whenever we come to the Sacrament of Confession, when, after having fallen like Adam and Eve fell, we come to ask for forgiveness and help. And I think it’s highly significant that the confessional here rests under the statue of St. Anne, Mary’s mother, in whose womb the miracle of the Immaculate Conception happened. It suggests that through the grace of the miracle of the Sacrament of Confession, we are able to become anew “holy and immaculate” in God’s sight just like through the miracle we celebrate today Mary was conceived without sin.
        • This year we celebrate the Immaculate Conception not on December 8 but December 9, because this year December 8 fell on a Sunday and the Second Sunday of Advent takes liturgical precedence. Whenever that happens, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception is moved to December 9. That’s a providential happening this year, because today, December 9, we mark the 45th anniversary of the death of the greatest American Catholic preacher of all time, the Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen, who thundered from the pulpits of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, St. Agnes Church and elsewhere for more than 16 years as he served (as my predecessor!) as the National Director of the Society of the Propagation of the Faith. Archbishop Sheen had a towering intellect and had received an extraordinary education, but he was marked far more by his piety, which featured a deeply devout love for Our Lady. Today is a fitting occasion to profit from some of the fruits of his prayerful appreciation for Our Lady and her Immaculate Conception.
        • First, Archbishop Sheen said that in eternity God has two pictures of us: who we are by our choices and who he really intended us to be. There’s also some disproportion he said between God’s original plan to be holy and blameless in his sight and the way we by our free choices have worked it out. Mary, he said, is the one person in all humanity for whom there was a perfect conformity between God’s ideal and who she was. God thought of her before she was born, like a poet thinks of his poem before he commits it to writing. “The melody of her life,” he stated, “is played just as it was written.” God had this image of her not only in eternity but at the beginning of time, as the response to the first sin and every sin. God conceived her in His eternal mind before she was conceived in the womb of her mother, St. Ann. That was, Sheen would say, her first “immaculate conception.”
        • Second, Sheen said that God chose her with particular qualities. “If you could have preexisted your mother, would you not have made her the most perfect woman that ever lived?,” he asked. “Why, then, should we think that God would do otherwise?” He commented, “If God [the Father] labored six days in preparing a paradise for man, He would [obviously] spend a longer time preparing a paradise for His Divine Son. As no weeds grew in Eden, so no sin would arise in Mary, the paradise of the Incarnation. Most unbecoming would it be for the sinless Lord to come into the world through a woman afflicted with sin. A barn door cannot fittingly serve as an entrance to a castle.” Mary was therefore, chosen to be immaculate, holy and blameless before him. “The closer one gets to fire, the greater the heat,” he said, and therefore, “the closer one is to God, the greater the purity. Since no one was ever closer to God than the woman whose human portals He threw open to walk this earth, then no one could have been more pure than she. … This special purity of hers we call the Immaculate Conception.”
        • Third, he insisted that the Immaculate Conception “does not imply that Mary needed no redemption. She needed it as much as you and I do.” Whereas we receive the fruits of redemption in our soul at Baptism, “She was redeemed in advance, by way of prevention, in both body and soul, in the first instant of conception… as a result of the merits of Our Lord’s Cross being offered to her at the moment of her conception.” She had this privilege, he said, not for her sake but for Jesus’, because she was an image of the goodness that existed before sin took over. She was an image of the separation, the enmity, between God and sin.
        • Finally, he said, Mary is given to us as a model. While insisting that Jesus is the image of the invisible God whom we are always to follow, he added that Jesus’ divinity can sometimes intimidate. “There ought to be, on the human level,” he said, “someone who would give humans hope, someone who could lead us to Christ, someone who would mediate between us and Christ as He mediates between us and the Father.” That’s who Mary is by God’s design. “One look at her,” Sheen said, “and we know that a human who is not good can become better; one prayer to her, and we know that, because she is without sin, we can become less sinful.” He added against those who say that invoking her somehow takes us away from Christ, “Love for Mary no more derogates from Christ’s Divinity than the setting robs the jewel, or the hearth the flame, or the horizon the sun. She exists but to magnify the Lord, and that was the song of her life.”
        • As we prepare on this great Solemnity to receive within us the same Son for whom Mary was immaculately conceived in order to bear for nine months, let us ask the Immaculate Conception personified, our fellow disciple and beloved Mother, to intercede for us, that we, like her, may have the true enmity against the devil, that we may say and continue to repeat all our days a wholehearted “yes” to God, that we may respond to God’s grace to be “holy and immaculate in his sight” and that one day we may come to experience true joy with her and all the saints where the redemption begun on this day reaches its fulfillment.

          •  

          The readings for today’s Mass were: 

          Reading 1 Gn 3:9-15, 20
          After the man, Adam, had eaten of the tree,
          the LORD God called to the man and asked him, “Where are you?”
          He answered, “I heard you in the garden;
          but I was afraid, because I was naked,
          so I hid myself.”
          Then he asked, “Who told you that you were naked?
          You have eaten, then,
          from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat!”
          The man replied, “The woman whom you put here with me—
          she gave me fruit from the tree, and so I ate it.”
          The LORD God then asked the woman,
          “Why did you do such a thing?”
          The woman answered, “The serpent tricked me into it, so I ate it.”
          Then the LORD God said to the serpent:
          “Because you have done this, you shall be banned
          from all the animals
          and from all the wild creatures;
          on your belly shall you crawl,
          and dirt shall you eat
          all the days of your life.
          I will put enmity between you and the woman,
          and between your offspring and hers;
          he will strike at your head,
          while you strike at his heel.”The man called his wife Eve,
          because she became the mother of all the living.
          Responsorial Psalm PS 98:1, 2-3ab, 3cd-4
          R. (1) Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous deeds.
          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. Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous deeds.
          The LORD has made his salvation known:
          in the sight of the nations he has revealed his justice.
          He has remembered his kindness and his faithfulness
          toward the house of Israel.
          R. Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous deeds.
          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. Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous deeds.
          Reading 2 Eph 1:3-6, 11-12
          Brothers and sisters:
          Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
          who has blessed us in Christ
          with every spiritual blessing in the heavens,
          as he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world,
          to be holy and without blemish before him.
          In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ,
          in accord with the favor of his will,
          for the praise of the glory of his grace
          that he granted us in the beloved.
          In him we were also chosen,
          destined in accord with the purpose of the One
          who accomplishes all things according to the intention of his will,
          so that we might exist for the praise of his glory,
          we who first hoped in Christ.
          Alleluia See Lk 1:28

          R. Alleluia, alleluia.

          Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you;
          blessed are you among women.
          R. Alleluia, alleluia.

          Gospel Lk 1:26-38

          The angel Gabriel was sent from God

          to a town of Galilee called Nazareth,
          to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph,
          of the house of David,
          and the virgin’s name was Mary.
          And coming to her, he said,
          “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.”
          But she was greatly troubled at what was said
          and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.
          Then the angel said to her,
          “Do not be afraid, Mary,
          for you have found favor with God.
          Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son,
          and you shall name him Jesus.
          He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High,
          and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father,
          and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever,
          and of his Kingdom there will be no end.”
          But Mary said to the angel,
          “How can this be,
          since I have no relations with a man?”
          And the angel said to her in reply,
          “The Holy Spirit will come upon you,
          and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.
          Therefore the child to be born
          will be called holy, the Son of God.
          And behold, Elizabeth, your relative,
          has also conceived a son in her old age,
          and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren;
          for nothing will be impossible for God.”
          Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord.
          May it be done to me according to your word.”
          Then the angel departed from her.

          The post Learning From Archbishop Sheen To Love Mary Immaculate, Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, December 9, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

          23 min
        • Building And Traveling The Royal Road of Conversion, Forgiveness and Holiness, Second Sunday of Advent (C), December 8, 2024

          Fr. Roger J. Landry

          Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
          Second Sunday of Advent, Year C
          December 8, 2024
          Bar 5:1-9, Ps 126, Phil 1:1:4-6.8-11, Lk 3:1-6

           

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

          https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.8.24_CCM_Homily_1.mp3

           

          The following text guided the homily: 

          • College years are a period of intense growth: intellectually, for sure; physically, still for most; relationally, in terms of friendships that can last a lifetime. It’s also meant to be a time for great spiritual growth and character formation, with the formation of virtuous habits that can help us grow in the likeness of God, experience the joy that God wants to give us, and help us to become the type of persons that can lift everyone up around us. St. Paul in today’s second reading shared aloud a prayer for the growth of the new Christians in the Greek city of Philippi and presented quite clearly the criteria for what would be positive growth. It has a particular Advent significance as we prepare in this season not just to meet Christ in history in Bethlehem or in mystery in the Sacraments but in majesty at the end of time or the end of our life, whichever comes first. The apostle prayed that “the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.”
          • God began a great work in us in creating us in the womb and infusing our soul, advanced it in baptism, and has been seeking to advance that work of holiness ever since, through the sacraments we’ve received, the lessons our parents have taught us, the religious education we’ve received at home and in our parishes, even the many opportunities for growth in our prayer life, in communal life, in knowing and sharing our faith, and in various opportunities for charity here at Columbia through the offerings of Columbia Catholic Ministry and the Merton Institute. A version of St. Paul’s prayer is said pretty much at every stage as a seminarian advances toward the priesthood and as a religious makes his or her first vows, renews vows and makes final or solemn vows: “May God who has begun this good work in you bring it to completion.” St. Paul makes quite clear what God wants to perfect in us. He states, “This is my prayer: that your love may increase ever more and more in knowledge and every kind of perception, to discern what is of value, so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ.” True growth will be seen in increased love for God and for others, in knowledge of God, and in discerning what is of lasting value versus what is vain. But it will be seen most when we grow to become “pure and blameless,” and “filled with the fruit of righteousness [or holiness] that comes from Jesus Christ.” At the beginning of this new liturgical year, the Church has us precise our focus. Just as a vine can either produce juicy sweet grapes or wild and bitter ones, so human beings can grow in good or bad directions, and the Church, echoing St. Paul’s prayer for the Philippians, wants to help us grow to produce fruit that will last, growing in love, knowledge, prayerful discernment, purity and holiness.
          • That’s why the Church each year on the second Sunday of Advent each year leads us on pilgrimage to the Jordan River, so that we might enroll in the school of St. John the Baptist, hear his message summoning us to purity and blamelessness through baptism and the forgiveness of sins, and act on that summons. John’s message is urgent and clear: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” In the ancient world, the roads were a mess. Every time there was a battle, the roads would be attacked and bridges destroyed, to try to stop the advance of the enemy. The weather took its toll as well, leading to all types of serious potholes and other obstacles. Any time a dignitary would be coming, they would have either to fix the roads or build new ones so that the rolling caravan accompanying him could arrive without delay or hassle. John the Baptist is telling us that to get ready to meet the Lord who is coming for us we, too, need to prepare a way for him. We, too, need to make straight the paths. Quoting the prophet Isaiah (Is 40:4), John blares, “Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth” (Lk 3:5). We have to call those topographical formations by their proper spiritual names. We have to make low the mountains of our pride and egocentrism. We have to fill in the valleys that come from a shallow prayer life, a minimalistic way of living our faith, a superficial way of living friendship with God and others. We have to straighten out whatever crooked paths we’ve been walking: if we’ve been involved in some secret sinful behaviors, the Lord calls us through John the Baptist to end them; if we’ve been engaged in some dishonest practices, we’re called to stop them out and do restitution; if we’ve been harboring grudges or hatred, or failing to reconcile with others, now’s the time to clear away all the debris; and if we’ve been pushing God off the side of the road, if we’ve been saying to Him that we don’t really have the time for him, now’s the time to get our priorities straight.
          • To preach conversion through the forgiveness of sins is the mission of the Baptist, which is why we encounter him every Advent. His whole vocation, his whole mission, his whole life as the Lord’s precursor, was to deliver that message. Before he was conceived, the Archangel Gabriel had said to his dad, Zechariah, “He will turn the hearts of many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah, he will go before the Lord, to turn … the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (Lk 1:16-17). Nine months later at his birth, Zechariah exclaimed, “You, my child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins” (Lk 1:76-77). When the Baptist arrived at the Jordan, he fulfilled those prophecies, “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of their sins,” as we read in today’s Gospel.  His first words at the Jordan were “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Mt 3:2). Those were the identical words that Jesus himself would use to inaugurate his public ministry a little later, after his forty-day retreat in the desert (Mt 4:17). Thus, John was indeed the voice of Jesus crying out in the desert for “repentance” through the forgiveness of our sins. That voice and that word continue to echo live today, summoning us to be “pure and blameless for the day of Christ.” There’s a reason why John the Baptist preached at the Jordan River. It was more than just a source of water where he could baptize. It was the place that represented the border between the desert — where the Jews wandered aimlessly for 38 years after centuries of slavery in Egypt— and the Promised Land. By preaching his message there, John was inviting the Jews of his day to come out of the bondage of slavery, to leave their faults and wandering, sinful lives behind, and enter into the promised land full of God’s blessings. The Baptist preaches the same thing to us perpetually. He points us to a new exodus —from sin to sanctity, from death to life — and states very clearly that the path from the desert into the new promised land is conversion and the forgiveness of sins.
          • And this is not just our work, but God’s, as Baruch tells us in the first reading. Baruch, the secretary of the Prophet Jeremiah (Jer 36:4), was writing for the Jews exiled in Babylon words of consolation that they would return from the place to which their sins had led them. Speaking to Jerusalem as if it were a person, he urged, “Look to the east and see your children gathered … at the word of the Holy One, rejoicing that they are remembered by God. Led away on foot by their enemies they left you; but God will bring them back to you, borne aloft in glory as on royal thrones. For God has commanded that every lofty mountain be made low, and that the age-old depths and gorges be filled to level ground that Israel may advance secure in the glory of God.” This points to how God himself was going to clear the path for his children, that he was going to treat them as royal dignitaries and build a highway for them to come home. We might think that making straight the paths is primarily our work of straightening things out for Jesus to come to us, but Baruch helps us to see it’s primarily God’s work making possible our being able to run to him, to return to his holy city, his dwelling place. That’s why in the Psalm today, we repeat, “The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy!,” as we exclaim that the Lord has brought back the captives of Zion, restored what we lost through sin, turned our tears into joy, and converted the seeds we’ve planted into sheaves. The great Advent road-repair project is first and foremost a great work of divine mercy by which God wants to bring us from exile back home, he wants to turn our sadness to rejoicing, our sterility to fruitfulness, and our shame to glory.
          • What’s the conversion to which God is calling us? Sometimes we can think about conversion as a minor course correction in our life, the elimination of one or a few bad habits and the work to build up one or few good ones. We can imagine it involves just filling in a couple of potholes or patching a couple of cracks, but, for the most part, keeping the same roads. But often, indeed for many of us, it involves building entirely new roads. This was made clear by the future Pope Benedict in an unforgettable Advent homily he preached during the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 to catechists from around the world assembled in Rome. He said: “The fundamental content of the Old Testament is summarized in the message by John the Baptist: metanoete — Convert! There is no access to Jesus without the Baptist; there is no possibility of reaching Jesus without answering the call of the precursor. Rather, Jesus took up the message of John in the synthesis of His own preaching [repent and believe]. The Greek word for converting means: to rethink – to question one’s own and common way of living; to allow God to enter into the criteria of one’s life; to judge not merely according to the current opinions. Therefore, to convert means: not to live not as all the others live, not to do what all do, not to feel justified in dubious, ambiguous, evil actions just because others do the same; it means to begin to see one’s life through the eyes of God; thus looking for the good, even if uncomfortable; not aiming at the judgment of the majority, of men, but on the justice of God – in other words: to look for a new style of life, a new life.” For most, to convert means not just repairing a road but building a new one. It means living a new life. It means living differently.
          • One of the biggest challenges for the Church in our country is that so many Christians try to live like everyone else does rather than as Christ does, and as the saints do. Rather than allow our faith to be leaven that lifts the whole world up, we permit the contaminants of the world to enter our hearts, our homes and even our Churches. We take our categories not from God, not from God’s holy ones, but from worldly gurus. We find comfort in the polls of what everyone else is thinking, saying or doing, even when such behavior is explicitly contrary to the Gospel. Rather than growing to be more like Christ, rather than increasing in love, in prayerful discernment, in purity and blamelessness, we become indistinguishable from the crowds, and some of us even gradually corrupt. Today, St. John the Baptist, and St. Paul, and ultimately Jesus, are calling us to turn away from our worldly standards, sins and idols, to turn toward Christ, and to begin to turn with him full-time. That’s what conversion means.
          • But John calls us to more than conversion. His mission was not merely to announce the need for repentance, but to point out how sins would be forgiven. He told the people, “One more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals” (Mk 1:7). A short time later, he saw that “more powerful one” coming to him at the Jordan and exclaimed, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world” (Jn 1:29). If John were physically present here tonight, dressed in his designer camel hair and leather belt, consuming his gourmet locusts and honey, his hands would point to us first to the baptismal font where our need for forgiveness is met by God’s merciful power — as it will be for many of our OCIA candidates next Sunday night — and then to Christ’s presence in the confessional through his priests, where the Lamb of God takes away our sins, the sins for which he paid such a precious price on Calvary.
          • Many Catholics do not have sufficient appreciation for what Christ wants to do for us in the Sacrament of Confession. He comes with his bulldozers, backhoes, and heavy equipment to be able to make straight the path for us to come back fully into his graces, but sometimes we don’t give him the chance. One of the most insidious lies of the evil one in some parts of the Church today is to convince us that the Sacrament of Confession is an optional part of the Catholic faith. It’s in fact part of canon law, a precept of the Church, and a condition to being a Catholic in good standing in the Church, that we would make a good confession at least once a year. But throughout the generations, most Catholics would make a good confession at least twice a year, one during Advent, at the beginning of a new liturgical year and in preparation for Christmas, and a second time in Lent, so that that they would be able worthily to receive Jesus’ risen Body and Blood in Holy Communion at Easter. Various recent surveys, however, have shown that about 45 percent of Catholics never go to the Sacrament of Reconciliation and another 30 percent go less than annually. 38 percent of daily Mass goers, 73 percent of Sunday Mass goers, and 94 percent of irregular Mass going Catholics either never receive the Sacrament or receive it less than once a year (CARA). The evil one has a vested interest in keeping us from the Sacrament of Penance because he wants us to live and die in our sins and absolutely not be forgiven of them. He does not want us to be pure and blameless, filled with the righteousness that comes from Jesus. Far more than trying to get us to commit specific sins, he really desires us to become hardened sinners through not repenting and coming to the Lord who wants to cleanse us in his mercy and to bring good even out of the sins we have committed. Jesus said clearly in the Gospel that only the sick need a doctor, that only sinners need a savior, and the devil wants to get us to buy the lie that we really don’t need Jesus to save us from our sins.
          • Pope Francis has worked very hard to oppose this diabolical lie. I’ll never forget his first Sunday as Pope. I was in Rome doing color-commentary for the papal conclave for EWTN television. He said, “God never tires of forgiving us. It’s we who tire of asking for forgiveness.” And he prayed: “May we never tire of asking for what God never tires to give.” He himself has said openly that goes to confession at least every two weeks. Catholics who really are trying to grow in their faith to come to confession at least a month. St. John Paul II was once asked the most important thing by young people what was the most important thing they could do to grow in faith, and he surprised them by saying, “Go frequently to confession!” The reason is not only so that we can remain in the grace of the Lord — remain in communion with him and receive his life — but also so that we can grow massively in self-knowledge and know where we need God’s help most. When we make a good examination of conscience, he said, we begin to see the ways we’re regularly tempted, and that dramatically changes our prayer, as we learn how to go to the Lord and ask his help, for example, to put him first, be patient with our friends, respectful with our parents, charitable to those in need, chaste online and in our relationships, forgiving to those who have hurt us, and so on. One of my most important commitments to you over these last two and a half years has been in making the Sacrament of Confession available. Each semester I have heard about 140 hours of confessions. I’ve had the privilege, as every priest confessor does, to see the good work that God is trying to bring to completion in his people, as they go from confession to conversion, humbly allow him even to bring good out of their sins. This week I’ll be hearing confessions as I normally do every day from 11-12, but on Tuesday, the first day of the study period, I will be hearing confessions from 9 in the morning through 5:30 pm, with the only break to celebrate Mass at 12:10. My hope is to make God’s mercy as accessible and easy as possible for you to receive. Please put me to work! In case any of you might be afraid to come for any reason, please know that in the Confessional here, you can go either anonymously or face-to-face, whichever you prefer. In today’s newsletter, but also in the racks back by the Confessional, I have put in an Examination of Conscience pamphlet that I prepared with the help of the student board members of Columbia Catholic Ministry to help you prepare well. It has in it a “How to Go to Confession” sheet in case it’s been a long time since your last Confession and you need a refresher of how to go without having to worry about how. I also put in the newsletter a Frequently Asked Questions Sheet about the Sacrament of Penance in case you sometimes ask why we need to go to a priest for Confession, what’s the difference between mortal and venial sins, and the rest. Please give it a read, not only so that you can grow in your knowledge and love of what Jesus wishes to give you in this Sacrament but so that you can be an ever more effective ambassador for Christ in bringing others to receive his mercy, too. I’d urge you to remember what Jesus says to us in the Gospel, that Heaven rejoices more for one repentant sinner than for 99 who never needed to repent. This week you can make God and all the angels and saints erupt in joy by coming to receive God’s mercy, and by bringing others to receive it, too. That is the way we make straight the paths. That is the way we become pure, blameless and righteous. That is one of the most important ways by which we grow as Christians and as human beings, as God little by little brings to completion the good work he’s coming. Indeed, the Church today helps us to realize that conversion and coming to receive God’s mercy is the best way for us to prepare for his coming in the past in Bethlehem, the best way for us to prepare for his coming at the end of time or at the end of “our time,” whichever comes first, and the best way for us to prepare to receive him in the sacraments and prayer, especially in the Holy Eucharist, as we have the awesome privilege to be about to do. Today the whole Church continues the work of St. John the Baptist, saying, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the paths.” That’s our homework for this week. Let’s get to it and then we will be able to experience personally what we proclaimed in tonight’s Psalm: the Lord has done, and continues to do, great things for us. We are filled with joy!

            •  

            The readings for today’s Mass were:

            Reading 1 BAR 5:1-9
            Jerusalem, take off your robe of mourning and misery;
            put on the splendor of glory from God forever:
            wrapped in the cloak of justice from God,
            bear on your head the mitre
            that displays the glory of the eternal name.
            For God will show all the earth your splendor:
            you will be named by God forever
            the peace of justice, the glory of God’s worship.
            Up, Jerusalem! stand upon the heights;
            look to the east and see your children
            gathered from the east and the west
            at the word of the Holy One,
            rejoicing that they are remembered by God.
            Led away on foot by their enemies they left you:
            but God will bring them back to you
            borne aloft in glory as on royal thrones.
            For God has commanded
            that every lofty mountain be made low,
            and that the age-old depths and gorges
            be filled to level ground,
            that Israel may advance secure in the glory of God.
            The forests and every fragrant kind of tree
            have overshadowed Israel at God’s command;
            for God is leading Israel in joy
            by the light of his glory,
            with his mercy and justice for company..
            Responsorial Psalm PS 126:1-2, 2-3, 4-5, 6.
            R. (3) The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.
            When the LORD brought back the captives of Zion,
            we were like men dreaming.
            Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
            and our tongue with rejoicing.
            R. The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.
            Then they said among the nations,
            “The LORD has done great things for them.”
            The LORD has done great things for us;
            we are glad indeed.
            R. The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.
            Restore our fortunes, O LORD,
            like the torrents in the southern desert.
            Those who sow in tears
            shall reap rejoicing.
            R. The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.
            Although they go forth weeping,
            carrying the seed to be sown,
            They shall come back rejoicing,
            carrying their sheaves.
            R. The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.
            Reading 2 PHIL 1:4-6, 8-11
            Brothers and sisters:
            I pray always with joy in my every prayer for all of you,
            because of your partnership for the gospel
            from the first day until now.
            I am confident of this,
            that the one who began a good work in you
            will continue to complete it
            until the day of Christ Jesus.
            God is my witness,
            how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.
            And this is my prayer:
            that your love may increase ever more and more
            in knowledge and every kind of perception,
            to discern what is of value,
            so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,
            filled with the fruit of righteousness
            that comes through Jesus Christ
            for the glory and praise of God.

            Alleluia LK 3:4, 6

            R. Alleluia, alleluia.

            Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths:
            all flesh shall see the salvation of God.
            R. Alleluia, alleluia.

            Gospel LK 3:1-6
            In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar,
            when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea,
            and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee,
            and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region
            of Ituraea and Trachonitis,
            and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene,
            during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas,
            the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the desert.
            John went throughout the whole region of the Jordan,
            proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,
            as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah:
            A voice of one crying out in the desert:
            “Prepare the way of the Lord,
            make straight his paths.
            Every valley shall be filled
            and every mountain and hill shall be made low.
            The winding roads shall be made straight,
            and the rough ways made smooth,
            and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

            The post Building And Traveling The Royal Road of Conversion, Forgiveness and Holiness, Second Sunday of Advent (C), December 8, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

            32 min
          • Becoming Pure and Blameless for the Day of Christ, Second Sunday of Advent (C), December 8, 2024

            Fr. Roger J. Landry

            Chapel of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
            Second Sunday of Advent, Year C
            December 8, 2024
            Bar 5:1-9, Ps 126, Phil 1:1:4-6.8-11, Lk 3:1-6

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

            https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.8.24_MCs_Homily_1.mp3

             

            The following text guided the homily: 

            • On the second Sunday of Advent each year, the Church leads us on pilgrimage to the Jordan River, so that we might enroll in the school of St. John the Baptist, hear his message and put it into action. At first glance, it seems like a strange choice to meet him at the Jordan, 30 years after Christ’s birth, millennia before Jesus’ Second Coming. But the reason why the Church always visits John at the Jordan is because he was the one chosen by God the Father from all eternity to get his people ready to receive His Son, who was already walking toward the Jordan River to inaugurate his public ministry. Advent, as you know, literally means “coming toward,” and in it we ourselves are called to prepare for God’s coming toward us — in history, mystery and majesty, as we say: in the past, 2000 years ago in Bethlehem; in the future, with power and great glory on the clouds of heaven; and in the present, in his Word, in the Eucharist, and in grace. The preparatory work announced by John is the way we’re called to get ourselves ready to receive the Lord who is coming. What is that work?
            • When we meet him at the Jordan, John blares, “I am the voice of One crying out in the desert.” He didn’t say, “I am one crying out in the desert,” but rather, “I am the voice of one crying out in the desert.” John is the loudspeaker, the spokesperson; who is the “one crying out?” It’s the word, Christ Jesus himself. John’s message is God’s message, which John was screaming at the top of his powerful lungs. The message was urgent and clear: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” In the ancient world, the roads were a mess. Every time there was a battle, the roads would be attacked and bridges destroyed, to try to stop the advance of the enemy. The weather took its toll as well, leading to all types of serious potholes and other obstacles. Any time a dignitary would be coming, they would have either to fix the roads or build new ones so that the rolling caravan accompanying him could arrive without delay or hassle. John the Baptist is telling us that to get ready for the Lord whom we are constantly bidding to come this Advent— “Maranatha!,” “Come, Lord Jesus!,” “O Come Divine Messiah!,” “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” — we, too, need to prepare a way for him. We, too, need to make straight the paths. In the ancient world, preparing such a path meant a great deal of manual work, making crooked paths straight, rough ways smooth, and even charting paths through the mountains and valleys. For us, that pathway will not be traced on the ground, but in our hearts. It will not be made in the wilderness, but in our life. The work is not something that will make our hands dirty, but our souls clean. John the Baptist is calling us to
            • To preach conversion is the mission of the Baptist, which is why we encounter him every Advent, because in Advent this message must be preached and conversion must be practiced. The reason is because Jesus has come into the world to save us from our sins and from what our sins lead to, death. The very name, Jesus, means “God saves.” In order for us to appreciate our Savior and what he did for us, we have to realize that we are “great sinners … by our own most grievous fault” who need Him to save us from our sins. That’s why John the Baptist’s message is such a gift. His whole vocation, his whole mission, was to deliver that message. Before he was even conceived, the Archangel Gabriel had said to his dad, Zechariah, “He will turn the hearts of many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah, he will go before the Lord, to turn … the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (Lk 1:16-17). Nine months later at his birth, Zechariah exclaimed, “You, my child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins” (Lk 1:76-77).  When the Baptist arrived at the Jordan, he fulfilled those prophecies, “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of their sins,” as we read in today’s Gospel.  His first words at the Jordan were “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Mt 3:2). Those were the identical words that Jesus himself would use to inaugurate his public ministry a little later, after his forty-day retreat in the desert (Mt 4:17). Thus, John was indeed the voice of Jesus crying out in the desert for “repentance” through the forgiveness of our sins. That voice and that word continue to echo live
            • The Lord is coming for us in Advent, but for him to reach his destination, we have to convert. “To make straight the paths of the Lord” means to clear the path of sin, which is the major obstacle for the Lord to come into our life. Quoting the prophet Isaiah (Is 40:4), John the Baptist says, “Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth” (Lk 3:5). We have to call those topographical formations by their proper names. We have to make low the mountains of our pride and egocentrism. We have to fill in the valleys that come from a shallow prayer life, a minimalistic way of living our faith, a superficial way of living friendship. We have to straighten out whatever crooked paths we’ve been walking: if we’ve been involved in some secret sinful behaviors, the Lord calls us through John the Baptist to end them; if we’ve been engaged in some dishonest practices, we’re called to straighten them out and do restitution; if we’ve been harboring grudges or hatred, or failing to reconcile with others, now’s the time to clear away all the debris; and if we’ve been pushing God off the side of the road, if we’ve been saying to Him that we don’t really have the time for him, now’s the time to get our priorities straight.
            • And this is not just our work, but God’s, as Baruch tells us in the first reading. Baruch, the secretary of Jeremiah (Jer 36:4), was writing for the Jews exiled in Babylon words of consolation that they would return from the place to which their sins had led them. Speaking to Jerusalem as if it were a person, he urged, “Look to the east and see your children gathered … at the word of the Holy One, rejoicing that they are remembered by God. Led away on foot by their enemies they left you; but God will bring them back to you, borne aloft in glory as on royal thrones. For God has commanded that every lofty mountain be made low, and that the age-old depths and gorges be filled to level ground that Israel may advance secure in the glory of God.” This points to how God was going to clear the path for his children, that he was going to treat them as royal dignitaries and call them home. We might think the Advent project of making straight the paths is primarily our work of straightening things out for Jesus to come to us, but Baruch helps us to see it’s primarily God’s work making possible our being able to come to him, to return to his holy city, his dwelling place. That’s why in the Psalm today, we repeat “The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy!,” as we exclaim that the Lord has brought back the captives of Zion, filled our mouths with laughter and tongues with rejoicing, restoring our fortunes, turning our tears into joy, converting our seeds into sheaves. The Advent road repair that has to take place, the work of conversion, is ultimately a great work of divine mercy given to us by God to bring us from slavery to sanctity, from sterility to fruitfulness, from sadness to rejoicing, from shame to glory.
            • There’s a reason why John the Baptist preached at the Jordan River. It was more than just a source of water where he could baptize. The Jordan river was the place that represented the border between the desert — where the Jews wandered aimlessly for 38 years after centuries of slavery in Egypt— and the Promised Land. By preaching his message there, John was inviting the Jews of his day to come out of the bondage of slavery, to leave their faults and wandering, sinful lives behind, and enter into the promised land full of God’s blessings. The Baptist preaches the same thing to us perpetually. He points us to a new exodus —from sin to sanctity, from death to life — and states very clearly that the path from the desert into the new promised land is conversion and the forgiveness of sins.
            • First, conversion. During the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, the future Pope Benedict gave a homily to catechists from around the world assembling in Rome. He focused on how the first message the Church must proclaim to the world and live is this message of John the Baptist that we hear at the beginning of every new liturgical year, the message to “repent and believe.” He commented very powerfully on what conversion really is: “The fundamental content of the Old Testament is summarized in the message by John the Baptist: metanoete – Convert! There is no access to Jesus without the Baptist; there is no possibility of reaching Jesus without answering the call of the precursor, rather: Jesus took up the message of John in the synthesis of His own preaching: [repent and believe]. The Greek word for converting means: to rethink – to question one’s own and common way of living; to allow God to enter into the criteria of one’s life; to not merely judge according to the current opinions. Therefore, to convert means: not to live not as all the others live, not to do what all do, not to feel justified in dubious, ambiguous, evil actions just because others do the same; it means to begin to see one’s life through the eyes of God; thus looking for the good, even if uncomfortable; not aiming at the judgment of the majority, of men, but on the justice of God – in other words: to look for a new style of life, a new life.”
            • One of the biggest challenges for the Church is that so many Christians try to live like everyone else does rather than as Christ does, as the saints do. Rather than allow our faith to be leaven that lifts the whole world up, the contaminants of the world enter our hearts, our homes and even our Churches. We take our categories not from God but from worldly gurus. The venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, who died 45 years ago tomorrow and for whose beatification we continue to pray, used to say that once upon a time only Catholics believed in the Immaculate Conception. “Now everyone believes he’s immaculately conceived!” The world doesn’t like conversion, so we downplay our need for it, pretending that we’re not sinners, or that we don’t need God’s forgiveness, or that we don’t need to travel the road of conversion God established for us to seek and find that mercy.
            • Today, St. John the Baptist, tells us all of our need to turn away from our worldly standards, sins and idols, to reach out for God’s mercy, and to begin truly believing in Jesus, walking with him, basing our entire existence on him and spreading his life to others. Conversion, as the future Pope Benedict said, means to rethink and question our own way of life, to make the commitment not to live as the crowds live but as Christ and his saints live, not to feel justified simply because we can point to a poll that everyone else is living that way, but to begin to see our whole life through the eyes of God and make the love of God and others for real the measure and the criteria of our life. This is a message each of us is called to ponder and act upon in a more profound way.
            • The second aspect is the forgiveness of sins. John the Baptist’s mission was not merely to announce the need for repentance, but to point out how sins would be forgiven. He told the people, “One more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals” (Mk 1:7). A short time later, he saw that “more powerful one” coming to him at the Jordan and exclaimed, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world” (Jn 1:29). If John were physically present here today, dressed in camel hair and his leather belt, he would say to us, “Behold the One of whom I was speaking! Behold the Lamb of God, who comes to take away your sins and the sins of the world” and his hands would point to us both to the baptismal font where our need for forgiveness is met by God’s merciful power and then to Christ’s presence in the confessional through his priests, where the Lamb of God takes away our sins, the sins for which he paid such a precious price on Calvary. We’re much better off than John the Baptist’s first listeners. For them physically to make straight the paths, to level the mountains, to fill in the valleys, rebuild the bridges, and straighten the roads was infinitely more complicated then than it is now, with dump trucks, backhoes, bulldozers, the army corps of engineers and so much more. Spiritually it’s so much easier too. We don’t have to repair roads with our bare hands, with buckets of dirt, primitive hand tools and, if we’re lucky, a few oxen; God provides the heavy equipment. Because as Baruch reminds us, it’s ultimately God’s work. It’s in the sacrament of penance that God himself goes in, with all the power of heaven, to do all the heavy lifting. He will give us the grace to trust in his mercy, to make a thorough examination of conscience, to confess our sins sincerely, humbly and courageously, and to resolve to make our confession a true conversion of life, allowing him to draw good even out of our sins, turning our seeds into sheaves and sorrow into joy.
            • In today’s epistle, St. Paul prays for the Christians that the work of conversion and forgiveness of sins continue so that we can live the new style of life that is the fully Christian one. He prays that “the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.” That “good work” is one of non-stop conversion, as we seek to turn away from sin, turn toward God and turn with God in all aspects of our life. St. Paul specifies what the fruit of that “good work” is: “This is my prayer: that your love may increase more and more, … so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ.” God wants us to be pure and blameless, filled with his righteousness, or, as we will hear tomorrow on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, “holy and immaculate before him.” This is what Baruch means, too, when God through him tells us that he wants us to “put on the splendor of glory from God” and be “wrapped in the cloak of justice from God.”
            • That is why this message of the conversion from the Baptist each Advent is such “good news,” because it’s an expression of God’s love giving us a second chance, or a third chance, or a seventy times seventh chance. It’s an announcement that the King is coming and wants to meet us, but he doesn’t want to ambush us by visiting us when our spiritual house is a disaster area deserving of FEMA funds. Through the work of the Baptist continued by the Church, he announces he’s coming and he gives us the chance to clean our house to welcome fittingly such a Guest. The call to conversion is a proclamation that no matter what we’ve done, God’s forgiveness is greater than all our filth, his mercy is greater than any and every human misery. We’re sinners, yes, but God comes to save us from those sins. Heaven rejoices more for one repentant sinner, Jesus tells us, than for 99 who never needed to repent, and insofar as the only one who never needed to repent is the Immaculate Mother of God and she pleased God immeasurably by her constant fiat, we begin to see just how central conversion and forgiveness through the Sacrament God established are to God’s whole plans. Conversion and coming to receive God’s mercy is the best way for us to prepare for his coming in the past in Bethlehem. Conversion and coming to receive God’s mercy is the best way for us to prepare for his coming at the end of time or at the end of “our time,” whichever comes first. Conversion and coming to receive God’s mercy is the best way for us to prepare to receive him in the sacraments and prayer, especially in the Holy Eucharist, as we have the awesome privilege to be about to do.
            • We finish with the words of the beautiful hymn that so many Catholic parishes sing on this day. It summarizes the message that Jesus crying out in the wilderness gives us each Second Sunday of Advent through John the Baptist, his forerunner, and indicates to us Whom we’re about to receive:

              • On Jordan’s bank the Baptist’s cry

              Announces that the Lord is nigh.
              Awake and hearken for he brings
              Glad tidings from the King of Kings.  

              Then cleansed be every soul from sin,

              Make straight the way of God within.
              Prepare we in our hearts a home,
              Where such a mighty guest may Come.

              The readings for today’s Mass were:

              Reading 1 BAR 5:1-9
              Jerusalem, take off your robe of mourning and misery;
              put on the splendor of glory from God forever:
              wrapped in the cloak of justice from God,
              bear on your head the mitre
              that displays the glory of the eternal name.
              For God will show all the earth your splendor:
              you will be named by God forever
              the peace of justice, the glory of God’s worship.
              Up, Jerusalem! stand upon the heights;
              look to the east and see your children
              gathered from the east and the west
              at the word of the Holy One,
              rejoicing that they are remembered by God.
              Led away on foot by their enemies they left you:
              but God will bring them back to you
              borne aloft in glory as on royal thrones.
              For God has commanded
              that every lofty mountain be made low,
              and that the age-old depths and gorges
              be filled to level ground,
              that Israel may advance secure in the glory of God.
              The forests and every fragrant kind of tree
              have overshadowed Israel at God’s command;
              for God is leading Israel in joy
              by the light of his glory,
              with his mercy and justice for company.. 

              Responsorial Psalm PS 126:1-2, 2-3, 4-5, 6.
              R. (3) The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.
              When the LORD brought back the captives of Zion,
              we were like men dreaming.
              Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
              and our tongue with rejoicing.
              R. The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.
              Then they said among the nations,
              “The LORD has done great things for them.”
              The LORD has done great things for us;
              we are glad indeed.
              R. The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.
              Restore our fortunes, O LORD,
              like the torrents in the southern desert.
              Those who sow in tears
              shall reap rejoicing.
              R. The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.
              Although they go forth weeping,
              carrying the seed to be sown,
              They shall come back rejoicing,
              carrying their sheaves.
              R. The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.
              Reading 2 PHIL 1:4-6, 8-11
              Brothers and sisters:
              I pray always with joy in my every prayer for all of you,
              because of your partnership for the gospel
              from the first day until now.
              I am confident of this,
              that the one who began a good work in you
              will continue to complete it
              until the day of Christ Jesus.
              God is my witness,
              how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.
              And this is my prayer:
              that your love may increase ever more and more
              in knowledge and every kind of perception,
              to discern what is of value,
              so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,
              filled with the fruit of righteousness
              that comes through Jesus Christ
              for the glory and praise of God. 

              Alleluia LK 3:4, 6

              R. Alleluia, alleluia.

              Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths:
              all flesh shall see the salvation of God.
              R. Alleluia, alleluia.

              Gospel LK 3:1-6
              In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar,
              when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea,
              and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee,
              and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region
              of Ituraea and Trachonitis,
              and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene,
              during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas,
              the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the desert.
              John went throughout the whole region of the Jordan,
              proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,
              as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah:
              A voice of one crying out in the desert:
              “Prepare the way of the Lord,
              make straight his paths.
              Every valley shall be filled
              and every mountain and hill shall be made low.
              The winding roads shall be made straight,
              and the rough ways made smooth,
              and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

              The post Becoming Pure and Blameless for the Day of Christ, Second Sunday of Advent (C), December 8, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

              26 min
            • On the Jubilee of Hope and the Love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus as a Source of our Hope, Leonine Forum NYC Chapter and Columbia Catholic Ministry 2024 Advent Day of Recollection, December 7, 2024

              Fr. Roger J. Landry

              Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
              Advent Day of Recollection for the Leonine Forum NYC Chapter and Columbia Catholic Ministry
              December 7, 2024

              https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.7.24_On_the_The_Jubilee_of_Hope_and_the_Sacred_Heart_1.mp3

              The post On the Jubilee of Hope and the Love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus as a Source of our Hope, Leonine Forum NYC Chapter and Columbia Catholic Ministry 2024 Advent Day of Recollection, December 7, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

              52 min
            • Lessons from the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage for Advent, Leonine Forum NYC Chapter and Columbia Catholic Ministry 2024 Advent Day of Recollection, December 7, 2024

              Fr. Roger J. Landry

              Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
              Advent Day of Recollection for the Leonine Forum NYC Chapter and Columbia Catholic Ministry
              December 7, 2024

              https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.7.24_Lessons_from_the_Eucharistic_Pilgrimage_for_Advent_1.mp3

              The post Lessons from the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage for Advent, Leonine Forum NYC Chapter and Columbia Catholic Ministry 2024 Advent Day of Recollection, December 7, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

              1 hr 1 min
            • Walking In, and Announcing, the Way of Mercy, First Saturday of Advent, December 7, 2024

              Fr. Roger J. Landry

              Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
              Advent Day of Recollection for Columbia Students and the Leonine Forum
              Saturday of the First Week of Advent
              December 7, 2024
              Is 30:19-21.23-26, Ps 147, Mt 9:35-1:1.5-8

               

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

              https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.7.24_Homily_1.mp3

               

              The following points were attempted in the homily: 

              • We’re accustomed to focus on the “double-dynamism” of Advent: Christ’s coming to us in history, mystery and majesty and our going out, our running forth, to meet him. We ponder his reasons and sentiments for coming into our world and the dispositions we need to meet him where he’s at and to allow him to bring us the salvation he came into the world to give. But there’s really a “triple dynamism” in Advent, a third movement that is supposed to happen after we run out to meet the One who has come into the world. It’s our moving to continue his holy work, our going forth united with him to continue the mission of salvation. Today’s readings, and especially the saint we celebrate today, help us to focus on all three of these Advent movements.
              • The first movement concerns Christ’s reasons and sentiments coming into the world. They’re aptly summarized in today’s Gospel: “At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd.” These words not only describe why Jesus “went around to all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom and curing every disease and illness,” but also why he came into our world in the first place. He looked at us and saw that we were mangled and abandoned, lost, in need of God’s guidance and God’s healing, and he entered the world as our Shepherd to protect us from the wolves and to call us by name to follow him through dark valleys into the verdant pastures of his sheepfold. He was the fulfillment of what Isaiah had been inspired by the Holy Spirit to prophesy in today’s first reading: “He will be gracious to you when you cry out, as soon as he hears he will answer you. The Lord will give you the bread you need and the water for which you thirst. No longer will your Teacher hide himself, but with your own eyes you shall see your Teacher, while from behind, a voice shall sound in your ears: ‘This is the way; walk in it,’ when you would turn to the right or to the left.” Jesus would be the Answer to, and the Answerer of, our prayers. He would give us not only our material bread but become our spiritual Bread to feed us. He would not only quench our physical thirsts but becoming our Living Water so that we would never thirst again (Jn 4:13-14). He would assume our human nature so that we could see our Teacher and be able to learn not only from his words but most especially from following his example. And his words and example would attune our consciences to hear his voice speaking to us from within, “This is the way; walk in it,”  what Isaiah would have called on Monday at daily Mass (if we were not celebrating the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception) the “holy way,” because we would have observed his path and be moved inwardly to follow in the footsteps of him who said, “I am the way!” That’s the dynamism of the Lord’s coming to us in history, mystery and majesty.
              • The second movement is for us to go out to meet him who is coming to us with that compassion. It involves going out with eagerness, with our prayers to be heard, with our hunger and thirst for more of what God alone can give, with our need for a Shepherd to guide us, with a passion for his proclamation of the Good News, his teaching us how to live it and his healing, especially the much needed healing of our souls. Just like the crowds in the Gospels went to meet Jesus on mountains, on seashores, in valleys, in cities and villages, so we go out to meet him who looks on us with bowel-bursting mercy (which is what the phrase “had compassion on the crowds” literally means in Greek).
              • That brings us to the third movement. It’s what happens after the encounter with God that occurs when these first two dynamisms meet. Jesus wants that encounter with him to be transformative, nourishing, and healing to such a great extent that we begin to develop Jesus’ own pity for the crowds. He wants to change us through our meeting him in such a way that we can share his presence, so that others, in seeing us, may see a reflection of the Master and of his teaching, his proclamation, his healing, his compassion. Today’s Gospel illustrates this. His heart bursting with compassion, Jesus told the disciples that “the harvest is abundant but the laborers are few.” He therefore asked them, “Pray to the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.” Little did they know that when they were praying for laborers, they were praying for themselves! Immediately after those prayers, St. Matthew tells us today, Jesus “summoned his Twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to drive them out and to cure every disease and every illness.” He gave them his own authority to continue his work. He instructed them to do exactly what he himself had been doing: “Go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, make this proclamation: ‘The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.’  Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, drive out demons.” He told them that just as “without cost you have received,” so “without cost you are to give.” Jesus wanted their own innards sick with compassion toward the mangled and abandoned crowds. He wanted to empower them with his own compassion and authority in order to be able to shepherd them aright. And part of the disciples’ own healing, part of their own absorption of the Lord’s proclaiming and teaching, was to become nurses of the Divine Physician, teaching assistants of the Master, echoes of his Gospel proclaimed. They were able to do all of this because once they really encountered the Lord as he wants to be met, he would transform them more and more into members of his body and then accompany them in all of this work. Isaiah prophesied in today’s first reading, “He will give rain for the seed that you sow in the ground.” He would bless their labor in the Vineyard — the Lord wants laborers, not just bodies, in his Vineyard! — but in a special way water the seed they sow, not letting their efforts go to waste. But I think there’s also a more significant meaning here. Jesus himself would say, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life.” Just as Jesus fell to the ground and died as a grain of wheat and bore great fruit, so he calls us to sow ourselves, promising that he would water that sacrifice. The encounter with Jesus on which Advent helps us to focus is geared toward this type of transformation, so that we, meeting Christ, will take on his compassion and seek to sow ourselves for the salvation of others and in the process preserve our own life into eternity.
              • We see the truth of this triple dynamism in the life of the great saint we celebrate today. In his young 30s, in the early 370s, the future St. Ambrose was prefect of Gaul — an enormous responsibility. He was intrigued by the Christian faith, we could say he even believed it, but he really hadn’t met Christ in a way that could get him to change his priorities and get baptized. After the death of the Bishop of Milan, he went to where the election was to take place to make sure that there were no fights between the Orthodox Catholics of the time and the heretic Arians (who believed that Jesus was the greatest man who ever lived and chosen by God but not God). He gave a little speech reminding everyone of Christ’s teachings on peace and mutual love, at which point someone in the crowd began to shout “Ambrose, Bishop!” It soon started to be echoed by everyone, Catholics and Arians alike. He tried to run away from what these responsibilities would mean, but when the emperor Valentinian heard of the election, he consented to it, proud that he had chosen as Prefect someone with the virtues capable of serving as a Bishop. Eventually Ambrose was baptized, then ordained a deacon, a priest, and then, on this day 1650 years ago, in 374, a bishop. After his ordinations, he set himself to going out to meet Christ who had chosen him in every way so that he could follow every step and help others to walk in the way Jesus had indicated. He sought to learn the Christian faith in such detail that he could really guide others by word and example — becoming eventually a doctor of the Church, one of the greatest teachers in the history of the faith. This required a great deal of study under the tutelage of a priest, Simplicianus. He was already a superb administrator and leader, but he needed to become a real man of God and prayer, study and charity — as he met Christ in the tabernacle, in Scripture, in others. I’ll focus on one thing he taught the Church, which is about the gut-busting mercy we see in Jesus in today’s Gospel. The phrase, “O Felix Culpa,” “O Happy Fault,” is normally attributed to St. Augustine, whom St. Ambrose converted first by his rhetoric and then the substance of what he taught and enfleshed, but it’s a really a paraphrase of what St. Augustine said. The spiritual son of St. Ambrose had actually said, “For God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist.” And it’s likely that he was influenced not only by his experience of the multitude of happy sins of his youth that eventually brought him such a great Redeemer and led him to write about it in his famous “Confession,” but by the preaching of St. Ambrose who had helped bring him to conversion in Milan. St. Ambrose would often stress this theme of mercy from different angles, something that may have helped St. Augustine realize that God wanted to transform the manure of his past into fertilizer for new growth. “The Lord knew that Adam would fall and then be redeemed by Christ,” St. Ambrose declared. “Happy ruin, which has such a beautiful reparation!” (Commentary on Psalm 39, 20). Elsewhere he said, “We who have sinned more have gained more, because your grace [of mercy, Lord] makes us more blessed than our absence of fault does” (Commentary on Ps 37, 47). And in one of the Prefaces of the Ambrosian Liturgical rite, the priest sings to God, “You bent down over our wounds and healed us, giving us a medicine stronger than our afflictions, a mercy greater than our fault. In this way even sin, by virtue of your invincible love, served to elevate us to the divine life” (Sunday XVI per annum). Jesus, the Divine Physician, comes to us with medicine more powerful than any of our afflictions. We run out to him to receive it and then, like Ambrose, we’re called to bring Jesus and that medicine to others, because the harvest is great but the laborers are few.
              • As we conclude this Advent Day of Recollection, we give God thanks for having come here to meet us in the Holy Eucharist and in the Sacrament of his gut-bursting Mercy, to teach us through his Word and announce the Gospel of the Kingdom, to heal us in the way he knows we need, to indicate to us and become the holy highway in which we’re called to walk, to fill us with the great hope so that we may stay perpetually spiritually awake and vigilant, to be humble and honest before him, and to be transformed by the fire of his light so that we might burn with it in a way that draws other to its source. We conclude the day with the source and the summit of our faith, the Mass, in which we live all three parts of the triple dynamism of Advent. The Lord Jesus comes here to teach us, to proclaim his Good News, to heal us, to feed us, to quench our thirst. We come out to meet him, not because we have to, but because we want to, because we love him, because we know we need him. And it’s here that the Lord transforms us by his teaching in the Liturgy of the Word and by our communion with God-with-us in the Eucharist so that, at the end of Mass, he may send us forth to glorify the Lord by our life, to roll up our sleeves as laborers in his vineyard. Little did the twelve disciples know that when they were praying for laborers for the Lord’s harvest that Jesus would immediately respond by calling them by name. Little did they know that through their laborers, it would begin a world-wide harvest until the end of time. Little do we know what the Lord intends to do with us if we respond like they did, like St. Ambrose did. The Lord wants us to grasp that every time we’ve heeded his command to pray to the Harvest Master for workers, we haven’t just been praying for others, but we’ve been praying for ourselves. He’s called us here today in order to teach, heal and transform us so that, with his heart-filled compassion, we may go out to the Indies he has given us to harvest and sow ourselves together with the One whose words and very Body and Blood will be sown in us today.

                •  

                The readings for today’s Mass were: 

                Reading 1 is 30:19-21, 23-26
                Thus says the Lord GOD,
                the Holy One of Israel:
                O people of Zion, who dwell in Jerusalem,
                no more will you weep;
                He will be gracious to you when you cry out,
                as soon as he hears he will answer you.
                The Lord will give you the bread you need
                and the water for which you thirst.
                No longer will your Teacher hide himself,
                but with your own eyes you shall see your Teacher,
                While from behind, a voice shall sound in your ears:
                “This is the way; walk in it,”
                when you would turn to the right or to the left.
                He will give rain for the seed
                that you sow in the ground,
                And the wheat that the soil produces
                will be rich and abundant.
                On that day your flock will be given pasture
                and the lamb will graze in spacious meadows;
                The oxen and the asses that till the ground
                will eat silage tossed to them
                with shovel and pitchfork.
                Upon every high mountain and lofty hill
                there will be streams of running water.
                On the day of the great slaughter,
                when the towers fall,
                The light of the moon will be like that of the sun
                and the light of the sun will be seven times greater
                like the light of seven days.
                On the day the LORD binds up the wounds of his people,
                he will heal the bruises left by his blows.
                Responsorial Psalm ps 147:1-2, 3-4, 5-6
                R. (see Isaiah 30:18d) Blessed are all who wait for the Lord.
                Praise the LORD, for he is good;
                sing praise to our God, for he is gracious;
                it is fitting to praise him.
                The LORD rebuilds Jerusalem;
                the dispersed of Israel he gathers.
                R. Blessed are all who wait for the Lord.
                He heals the brokenhearted
                and binds up their wounds.
                He tells the number of the stars;
                he calls each by name.
                R. Blessed are all who wait for the Lord.
                Great is our LORD and mighty in power:
                to his wisdom there is no limit.
                The LORD sustains the lowly;
                the wicked he casts to the ground.
                R. Blessed are all who wait for the Lord.

                Alleluia Is 33:22

                R. Alleluia, alleluia.

                The LORD is our Judge, our Lawgiver, our King;
                he it is who will save us.
                R. Alleluia, alleluia.

                Gospel mt 9:35-10:1, 5a, 6-8
                Jesus went around to all the towns and villages,
                teaching in their synagogues,
                proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom,
                and curing every disease and illness.
                At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them
                because they were troubled and abandoned,
                like sheep without a shepherd.
                Then he said to his disciples,
                “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few;
                so ask the master of the harvest
                to send out laborers for his harvest.”
                Then he summoned his Twelve disciples
                and gave them authority over unclean spirits to drive them out
                and to cure every disease and every illness.
                Jesus sent out these Twelve after instructing them thus,
                “Go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
                As you go, make this proclamation:
                ‘The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.’
                Cure the sick, raise the dead,
                cleanse lepers, drive out demons.
                Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.”

                The post Walking In, and Announcing, the Way of Mercy, First Saturday of Advent, December 7, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                19 min
              • Second Sunday of Advent (C), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, December 7, 2024

                Fr. Roger J. Landry

                Conversations with Consequences Podcast
                Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent, C, Vigil
                December 7, 2024

                 

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

                https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.7.24_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

                 

                The following text guided the homily: 

                • This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday, as we meet his forerunner, his herald, Saint John the Baptist, at the Jordan River.
                • John was chosen and sent by God the Father to get his people ready to receive Jesus when he at last openly manifested himself to begin his public ministry. At the Jordan, John blared, not, “I am one crying out in the desert,” but rather, “I am the voice of one crying out in the desert.” John was the loudspeaker, the spokesperson. The “one crying out” was of course the word, Christ Jesus himself, who was about to spend 40 days on retreat in that very Judean desert. John’s message, therefore, was God’s message, which John was screaming at the top of his powerful lungs. The message was urgent and clear: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”
                • In the ancient world, the roads were a mess. Every time there was a battle, the roads would be attacked and bridges destroyed, to try to stop the advance of the enemy. The weather took its toll as well, leading to all types of serious potholes and other obstacles. Any time a dignitary would be coming, they would have either to fix the roads or build new ones so that the rolling caravan accompanying him could arrive without delay and without hassle. John the Baptist is telling us that to get ready for the Lord whom we are constantly bidding to come this Advent, we, too, need to prepare a way for him. We, too, need to make straight the paths. In the ancient world, preparing such a path meant a great deal of manual work. Quoting the Prophet Isaiah, John says, “Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth” (Lk 3:5). We have to call those topographical formations by their proper names. We have to make low the mountains of our pride and egocentrism. We have to fill in the valleys that come from a shallow prayer life, a minimalistic way of living our faith. We have to straighten out whatever crooked paths we’ve been walking: if we’ve been involved in some secret sins or sinful behaviors, the Lord calls us through John the Baptist to end it; if we’ve been involved in some dishonest practices, we’re called to straighten them out and do restitution; if we’ve been harboring grudges or hatred, or failing to reconcile with others, now’s the time to clear away all the debris; and if we’ve been pushing God off the side of the road, if we’ve been saying to Him that we don’t really have the time for him, now’s the time to get our priorities straight. The gift of Advent will succeed or fail on the basis of how well we convert and clear our lives of sin so that the Lord may come to us.
                  • There’s a reason why John the Baptist preached at the Jordan River. It was more than just a source of water where he could baptize. The Jordan was the place that represented the border between the desert — where the Jews wandered aimlessly for 38 years after centuries of slavery in Egypt— and the Promised Land. By preaching his message there, John was inviting the Jews of his day to come out of the bondage of slavery, to leave their faults and wandering, sinful lives behind, and enter into the promised land full of God’s blessings. The Baptist preaches the same thing to us this Sunday. He points us to a new exodus — from death to life, from sin to sanctity — and states very clearly that the path from the desert into the new promised land is through conversion and the forgiveness of sins. To convert means more than to eliminate a bad habit. The Greek word for conversion is metanoete, which means to rethink and question one’s whole way of living, judging not according to polls and the lives of celebrities but seeing our whole life through the eyes of God and striving to make the love of God and others the measure and the criteria of our life. To convert means resolving to live the way Jesus Christ lived and taught us to live. It ultimately means a death and resurrection in which we die to the old Adam and begin to live a new life with Christ by means of the forgiveness of sins.
                  • One of the biggest challenges for the Church in the United States is so many Christians are trying to live like everyone else does, rather than as Christ does and the saints do. Rather than allow our faith to be leaven that lifts the whole world up, we permit the toxins of the world to enter our hearts, our homes and even our Churches. We take our categories not from God but from worldly gurus. The venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, who died 45 years ago this Monday — my predecessor for 16 years as the National Director of the Society of the Propagation of the Faith, and for whose beatification we ardently pray — used to say that once upon a time only Catholics believed in the Immaculate Conception. “Now everyone believes he’s immaculately conceived!” Because the world, in other words, doesn’t like conversion, we downplay our need for it, pretending that we’re not sinners who need God’s forgiveness. We live in a self-affirmation age in which many want to avoid taking responsibility for their choices, a therapeutic age in which we run to counselors and psychiatrists and psychologists trying to deal with our guilt and often with the consequences of our own and others’ sinful choices but without going to Jesus and those he has sent out to absolve our guilt and take away the sins of the world. This Sunday, St. John the Baptist, tells all of us of our need to turn away from our worldly standards, our sins, our idols, to reach out for God’s mercy, and to begin truly believing in Jesus, basing our life on him, walking with him, and helping others to join him and us.
                  • John the Baptist’s mission, however, was not merely to announce the need for repentance and conversion, but to point out how sins would be forgiven. It wasn’t just baptism in the Jordan, which, at his time, was just a sign of the need for the forgiveness of sins, but without the power yet to remove those sins. John told the people, “One more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals” (Mk 1:7). A short time later, he saw that “more powerful one” coming to him at the Jordan and exclaimed, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world” (Jn 1:29). If John were physically present among us in 2024, dressed in camel hair and his leather belt, he would say to us, “Behold the One of whom I was speaking! Behold the Lamb of God, who comes to take away your sins and the sins of the world” and his hands would point to us both to the baptismal font where our need for forgiveness is met by God’s merciful power and then to the confessional where the Lamb of God, through his priests, continues to take away our sins for which he paid such a precious price on Calvary. We’re much better off than John the Baptist’s first listeners. Just as for them to make straight the paths, level the mountains, fill in the valleys, rebuild the bridges, and straighten the roads in earthly life was infinitely more complicated than it is now, with dump trucks, backhoes, bulldozers, the army corps of engineers and so much more, so spiritually it’s likewise much easier. We don’t have to repair roads with our bare hands, with buckets of dirt, primitive hand tools and, if we’re lucky, a few oxen; God provides the heavy equipment. It’s in the Sacrament of Penance where he himself, with all the power of heaven, does most of the lifting. One of the most important things we need to do during Advent is make a thorough confession, where we examine for the peaks that need to be flattened, the deep holes that need to be filled, the serpentine ways that need to be straightened and then come to the Lord for mercy.
                  • The offer of divine mercy is why the Baptist’s message of conversion each Advent is such “good news,” It’s an expression of God’s love, his giving us a second chance, or a third chance, or a seventy times seventh chance. It’s an announcement that the King is coming and wants to meet us, but he doesn’t want to ambush us by visiting us when our spiritual house is a disaster area deserving of FEMA funds. Through the work of the Baptist and the Church, God announces that he’s coming and he gives us the chance, not to mention his help, to clean our house to welcome him fittingly. The call to conversion is a proclamation that no matter what we’ve done, God’s forgiveness is greater than all our filth, his mercy is greater than any and every human misery. We’re sinners, yes, but God comes to save us from those sins. Heaven rejoices more for one repentant sinner, Jesus tells us, than for 99 who never needed to repent, and insofar as the only one who never needed to repent is the Mother of God — whose Immaculate Conception we will celebrate on Monday with a Holy Day of Obligation — and we know that she pleased God immeasurably by her constant fiat, we begin to see just how central conversion and forgiveness through the Sacrament God established are to God’s whole plans. Conversion and coming to receive God’s mercy are the best way for us to prepare for his coming in the past in Bethlehem. Conversion and coming to receive God’s mercy is the most fitting means for us to prepare for his coming at the end of time or at the end of “our time,” whichever comes first. Conversion and coming to receive God’s mercy are the most appropriate Advent practices for us to prepare to receive him in the sacraments and prayer, especially in the Holy Eucharist.
                  • On the Second Sunday of Advent each year, I love to finish with the words of the beautiful hymn that so many Catholic parishes sing on this day. They summarize the entire message that Jesus, crying out in the wilderness, gives us each Second Sunday of Advent through John the Baptist, his forerunner: “On Jordan’s bank the Baptist’s cry announces that the Lord is nigh. Awake and hearken for he brings glad tidings from the King of Kings. Then cleansed be every soul from sin, make straight the way of God within. Prepare we in our hearts a home, where such a mighty guest may come.” That mighty guest is coming. Let’s get ready interiorly to run out to meet him!

                    •  

                    The Gospel passage on which this homily was based was: 

                    Gospel
                    Lk 3:1-6

                    In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar,

                    when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea,
                    and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee,
                    and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region
                    of Ituraea and Trachonitis,
                    and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene,
                    during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas,
                    the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the desert.
                    John went throughout the whole region of the Jordan,
                    proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,
                    as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah:
                    A voice of one crying out in the desert:
                    “Prepare the way of the Lord,
                    make straight his paths.
                    Every valley shall be filled
                    and every mountain and hill shall be made low.
                    The winding roads shall be made straight,
                    and the rough ways made smooth,
                    and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

                    The post Second Sunday of Advent (C), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, December 7, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                    10 min
                  • Running With Faith To Our Light and Salvation, First Friday of Advent, December 6, 2024

                    Fr. Roger J. Landry

                    Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
                    Friday of the First Week of Advent
                    Memorial of St. Nicholas of Bari
                    December 6, 2024
                    Is 29:17-24, Ps 27, Mt 9:27-31

                     

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

                    https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.6.24_Homily_1.mp3

                     

                    The following points were attempted in the homily: 

                    • We encounter again today the intersecting double-dynamisms of Advent: Christ’s coming in the past, present and future — history, mystery and majesty — and the way the Church has been teaching us how we’re called to run out to meet him in each of these three moments and be so transformed by him that we will follow and walk with him thereafter.
                    • Today Christ was passing by two blind men who had gone out to meet him, crying out, “Son of David, have mercy on us!” But then Jesus had them journey to encounter him physically. It would have been easy for Jesus just to go to them where they were and work the miracle there. But he went into the city to make them make the effort to follow him. When they do, that’s when Jesus approaches and asks them the question of faith, “Do you believe that I can do this for you?” When they express their faith, Jesus helps them to see. This is a pattern we see throughout the Gospel. Jesus could have been born right next to the Shepherds, but instead he comes down from heaven to Bethlehem and has them move some distance to run by faith. In the Gospel we heard on Wednesday, when Jesus multiplies the loaves and fish, the scene began with his having all of the people bringing him the lame, the blind and those with illnesses climb a mountain before they received their miraculous cures. He comes, but he still makes us get up and go to meet him, to stoke our faith and our desire. This is a very important spiritual lesson both for Advent and for life. Jesus with his mercy comes to us in history, mystery and majesty but we have to recognize our need for mercy and be willing to make the effort to come to receive it. Like St. John the Baptist will announce this Sunday, we need to make straight the paths for his coming — and our going!
                    • Jesus’ messianic work can be summarized by healing our blindness. The Season of Advent can be encapsulated by God’s desire to give us the vision to walk by the light of faith. In the Gospel verse, we prayed, “Behold, our Lord shall comes with power; he will enlighten the eyes of his servants.” In the first reading, Isaiah tells us, “On that day … out of gloom and darkness, the eyes of the blind shall see,” and we need to see ourselves among the blind whom the Savior comes to heal. I remember one talk at the UN several years ago during conversations on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. A former Ambassador, now disabled, spoke about how when we think about the disabled, we ought to be thinking not just about “others” but also about ourselves. He said that if we live long enough, we’re going to start to have eye problems, need hearing aids, end up using canes and handicapped ramps and wheelchairs, and may likewise be dependent on so many things that today we take for granted. He said we need to remember that all of us will one day be handicapped. What is true at a physical level is certainly true spiritually. We’re all to some degree spiritually blind, incapable of seeing God where we ought. We’re deaf to his frequency with regard to many of the things he’s trying to say to us. Even though we can walk, fear cripples us from walking in certain directions. Jesus wants to address all of those as he comes, but we need to learn from the blind men how to cry out for mercy and long to see with the eyes of faith Jesus whenever, wherever and however he comes.
                    • The Lord to whom we need to look, to whom we direct that prayer, the Messiah who will make the eyes of the blind see, is, as we pray today in the Responsorial Psalm, our “light and salvation.” He’s the one who saves our lives and illumines everything. And once we begin to see things in his light, four things happen, as we prayed later in the Psalm:
                      • First, we’re filled with courage.  “Whom should I fear? … Of whom should I be afraid?,” we prayed. Because the Lord is illumining our path and nothing in all of creation can separate us from his love, we have every reason not to remain in the darkness of fear. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to do what we need to do despite our fear. When we see Christ with us — who triumphed even over death — how could we not have the courage of the martyrs?
                      • Second, we’re enabled to see God’s sacredness all around us: “One thing I ask of the Lord; this I seek,” we prayed: “To dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, that I may gaze on the loveliness of the Lord and contemplate his temple.” When the Psalm was being written, the Temple was understood to be the Temple in Jerusalem built by Solomon. But we know that when Jesus came, he opened our eyes to see that he is the true Temple and that we become part of that temple through baptism. To contemplate his temple means to see that the whole world is charged with his grandeur. To dwell in the house of the Lord all our days means to dwell in him. That’s what he wants us to see!
                      • Third, we’re filled with thanksgiving because we behold God’s generosity everywhere.  “I believe that I shall see the bounty of the Lord in the land of the living,” we prayed together. The Lord gives abundantly and when we see with his light we begin to grasp just how generous he is, that he is constantly giving every meal we eat, every day we have, every friend we make, every prayer answered. And he even loves us enough to give us the Cross and some privations precisely so that he can fill us with even greater spiritual gifts.
                      • Fourth, we’re filled with faith and hope to live the Advent of life. We prayed, “Wait for the Lord with courage; be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord.” Because the Lord is our Light and Salvation, we are able audaciously to wait for him with strong hearts, with “proud” hearts that remember our dignity restored by the immensity of his life. Waiting for him courageously in that way is what Advent is about. We’re waiting for him to do for us something even greater than what he did for the men in today’s Gospel.
                      • Today the Church celebrates the feast of someone who lived this way, courageously seeking to align his life with the Lord as his light and salvation and to help others to do the same. St. Nicholas was born in the town of Patara in the Roman Province of Asia, which is now southern Turkey. He grew up in the light of faith, formed in a good Christian home. After both of his parents died when he was young, and before he would enter training to become a priest and then later become the Bishop of Myra (modern day Demre in Turkey), he was already following the Lord, acting on the Lord’s summons to love God with all he had and love his neighbor as Christ does. We see this, while he was still a layman, in the famous story of his help for a poor family in Patara. The culture of the time looked at women as burdens of the men who were responsible for them. In order for a girl to marry, the father had to provide her with a dowry so that her new husband would be able to pay for her upkeep, at least for some period of time. Families without money for a dowry often couldn’t get their daughters married. One poor father didn’t know what to do for his three daughters for whom there was a danger, if he were to die or be incapable of work, that they might be driven or drawn into prostitution for survival. Nicholas heard of the family’s situation and one night threw a bag of gold coins through the family’s open window, enough for the dowry for the oldest daughter who was soon married. The next night, Nicholas threw in another bag, sufficient for the dowry of the middle daughter, who likewise was married. The third night Nicholas tossed a third bag to help marry the third daughter of the father, who was waiting this time to find out who was the anonymous benefactor. The generosity of Saint Nicholas is continued through the generosity of Santa Claus (a translation of St. Nicholas) every Christmas, when all of us, like St. Nicholas, pay forward the generosity we have received from Christ. As a bishop he continued courageously to see things in Christ’s light, to live and walk in the light, let the light of his deeds of charity shine before all so that they might glorify the Father in Heaven, and help others to see and live in the light as well. He was one of the fathers at the Council of Nicaea, the 1700th anniversary of which the Church will make next year. The Council of Nicaea helped respond to the heresy of Arianism, which taught that Jesus really wasn’t God, just the greatest man who had ever lived. He worked hard so that the Church and the world would look at Jesus not just as a prophetic carpenter, not just as the Messiah, but as their Light and Salvation, God from God, light from light. Today he wants to help us like he helped the people of his day.
                      • The Lord comes to us today to illumine, strengthen and save us and the way we’re called to go out to meet him is with a faith like that of the blind men, following him here to Church, where after having taught us, he’s about to feed us with himself. Unlike the instructions Jesus gave to them to make sure no one knew about what he did for them, he tells us to go and tell the whole world. Illumined by his word, strengthened by our communion, and grateful for this downpayment on salvation, let us, like St. Nicholas, seek to bring his radiant light and gift of salvation to each person we meet today.

                        •  

                        The readings for today’s Mass were: 

                        Reading 1 IS 29:17-24
                        Thus says the Lord GOD:
                        But a very little while,
                        and Lebanon shall be changed into an orchard,
                        and the orchard be regarded as a forest!
                        On that day the deaf shall hear
                        the words of a book;
                        And out of gloom and darkness,
                        the eyes of the blind shall see.
                        The lowly will ever find joy in the LORD,
                        and the poor rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.
                        For the tyrant will be no more
                        and the arrogant will have gone;
                        All who are alert to do evil will be cut off,
                        those whose mere word condemns a man,
                        Who ensnare his defender at the gate,
                        and leave the just man with an empty claim.
                        Therefore thus says the LORD,
                        the God of the house of Jacob,
                        who redeemed Abraham:
                        Now Jacob shall have nothing to be ashamed of,
                        nor shall his face grow pale.
                        When his children see
                        the work of my hands in his midst,
                        They shall keep my name holy;
                        they shall reverence the Holy One of Jacob,
                        and be in awe of the God of Israel.
                        Those who err in spirit shall acquire understanding,
                        and those who find fault shall receive instruction.
                        Responsorial Psalm PS 27:1, 4, 13-14
                        R. (1a) The Lord is my light and my salvation.
                        The LORD is my light and my salvation;
                        whom should I fear?
                        The LORD is my life’s refuge;
                        of whom should I be afraid?
                        R. The Lord is my light and my salvation.
                        One thing I ask of the LORD;
                        this I seek:
                        To dwell in the house of the LORD
                        all the days of my life,
                        That I may gaze on the loveliness of the LORD
                        and contemplate his temple.
                        R. The Lord is my light and my salvation.
                        I believe that I shall see the bounty of the LORD
                        in the land of the living.
                        Wait for the LORD with courage;
                        be stouthearted, and wait for the LORD.
                        R. The Lord is my light and my salvation.

                        Alleluia

                        R. Alleluia, alleluia.

                        Behold, our Lord shall come with power;
                        he will enlighten the eyes of his servants.
                        R. Alleluia, alleluia.

                        Gospel MT 9:27-31
                        As Jesus passed by, two blind men followed him, crying out,
                        “Son of David, have pity on us!”
                        When he entered the house,
                        the blind men approached him and Jesus said to them,
                        “Do you believe that I can do this?”
                        “Yes, Lord,” they said to him.
                        Then he touched their eyes and said,
                        “Let it be done for you according to your faith.”
                        And their eyes were opened.
                        Jesus warned them sternly,
                        “See that no one knows about this.”
                        But they went out and spread word of him through all that land.

                        The post Running With Faith To Our Light and Salvation, First Friday of Advent, December 6, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                        23 min

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                      Father Roger J. Landry is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, who works for the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations in New York.

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