Catholic Preaching

By Father Roger LandryReligion & Spirituality Christianity

Catholic Preaching episodes

June 24Rejoicing at the Birth of St. John the Baptist, Solemnity of the Birth of St. John the Baptist, June 24, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Acton University, Grand Rapids Convention Center
Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist
June 24, 2026
Is 49:1-6, Ps 139, Acts 13:22-26, Lk 1:57-66.80

To listen to an audio recording of today’s Mass please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.24.26_Homily_1.mp3

The following text guided today’s homily:
Why’s John’s Birthday so important?
Today we celebrate the solemnity of the Birth of St. John the Baptist. Only three times in the Church’s year do we celebrate birthdays. December 25th is the most obvious birthday we commemorate. Daily Mass goers know that on September 8 we mark the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but we mark it rather quietly in comparison to the solemnity with which we celebrate her Immaculate Conception nine months earlier. Today, June 24th, we celebrate the birth of the famous son of Zechariah and Elizabeth. The Archangel Gabriel had said to Zechariah about the son his elderly and presumably barren wife would conceive, “Many will rejoice at his birth!” (Lk 1:14) and today we join that in that jubilation. Jesus would later say, “Among those born of women no one is greater than John” (Luke 7:28), and the Church’s liturgical calendar puts that truth into prayer: after Jesus, no one born of woman, not even the Blessed Virgin, has a more solemn celebration associated with his worldly-visible debut than John the Baptist.
It’s important to ask why the Church has always considered this feast so important. I think the fundamental answer is because the Church considers the life of John the Baptist so important and considers the events of his conception, gestation and birth highly significant aspects of his life. John’s vocation to give witness to the Lord, to go before him to prepare his way, began not when he appeared at the Jordan in camel’s hair, but in the womb. The Archangel Gabriel told his father, “Even before his birth, he will be filled with the Holy Spirit” (Lk 1:15). We saw an effect of this at the Visitation, when John leaped in the womb of his mother pointing out the presence of the prenatal Lamb of God within Mary (Lk 1:44). What God said to Jeremiah in the first reading of the Vigil of this Solemnity, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations” and to Isaiah in today’s, “The Lord, who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him,” could just as easily be said about John. He was formed in the womb and consecrated to be a prophet to the nations in order to bring God’s people back to Him, and he was already carrying out that consecrated mission from his earliest days.
John’s Mission and Ours
These truths about a consecrated mission from the womb, however, apply not just to Jeremiah, Isaiah and John the Baptist. The truth is that the Lord knows every one of us that intimately before he forms us in the womb. We can all exclaim with the words of today’s Psalm, “Truly you have formed by inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb!” None of us is a number, a census statistic, a random biological happening to God. Just like John the Baptist had a vocation and a mission from before he was born, each of us is formed by God with a divine destiny and given a vocation and mission in this world to achieve that destiny and help others achieve their own. While there will be specific differences between your and my mission and John’s, there are several characteristics in common.
Like John’s, our mission is given by God as part of God’s plan for us from the beginning.
Like John, the Lord fills us with the Holy Spirit at our baptism to help us accomplish this mission.
Like John, we are called to recognize who God is, that he is so great and holy that none of us is worthy to loosen the straps of his sandals (Mk 1:7; Lk 3:16; Acts 13:25). This recognition makes the Lord’s desire to stoop down and wash our feet even more mind-blowing (Jn 13:5).
Like John, we recognize that we’re not the Messiah, that we’re not God, which means that we, like John, recognize that we don’t call the shots — God does — and we not only trust in His will by actually say and mean, “thy will, not mine, be done.”
Like John, we need to make straight the paths for God to rule in our life. For John, that meant going out into the desert to pray, fasting on locusts and wild honey, dressing in a way that symbolized his interior repentance and reparation. For us, it means going away from our distractions to pray, fasting and living a penitential and reparative life and adorning ourselves with sacrificial love.
Like John, after we’re living a converted life, we are called to summon others to conversion. John did it at the Jordan River. We’re called to do it wherever the Lord has planted or sent us. We have the mission to help prepare the way for Christ to come into the lives of those around us.
Like John, we’re called on to decrease so that Christ may increase in others lives, to grow each day in humility.
Like John, each of us is called to be a “friend of the Bridegroom.” That’s the title John gave himself when his disciples complained to him that everyone was going to Jesus instead of him. “He who has the bride is the bridegroom,” he replied. “The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice; therefore this joy of mine is now full. He must increase, but I must decrease.” Jesus is the Bridegroom, who had come to enter into a spousal covenant with all of us in the Church as his bride. John considered himself the “Friend of the Bridegroom,” an ancient expression referring to the “best man” who would protect the bride until the time when husband and wife would begin living together. He was Jesus’ friend. Each of us, likewise, is called to be the friend of Jesus, to introduce others to the one who in the Last Supper, said, “I call you friends, because I have revealed to you everything I have heard from my Father,” and to protect his bride from all those who would want to distract her heart from the bridegroom.
Like John, we’re called to point others to the Lamb of God. John did it when he saw Jesus at the Jordan. We’re called to do it by pointing people to Jesus in the Eucharist, pointing to him taking away sins in the confessional, pointing to him calling us to follow him in the moral life, pointing to him speaking to us in the pages of Sacred Scripture, pointing to him in the thirsty, the hungry, the naked, the stranger, the sick and the imprisoned and encouraging them to respond with the love that God deserves.
No matter what our state of life, or age, or sex, each of us is called to imitate John the Baptist in these areas.
What will we become?
As we read in today’s Gospel, at John’s birth everybody wondered aloud, “What will this child become?” That is the question people have at the birth of every child. It was asked at our birth by our parents and many others. All parents, in one form or another, have asked it hundreds of times about their own children. Zechariah and Elizabeth would never have dreamed in their little village of Ain Karim that, here in Grand Rapids, more than 2000 years later, we would be remembering their son’s birthday. Even with all the miraculous occurrences surrounding his conception, little could they have comprehended the role he would play in salvation history — his life, his martyrdom, his being the precursor of the Son of God in birth, in preaching and even in death. Similarly, few parents who bring their child to birth and baptism have any idea of God’s incredible plans for their children. And God has even greater plans for children being baptized than he did for John the Baptist! After Jesus said in the Gospel that John is the greatest born of woman, he added, “but the least in the kingdom of God is greater than he” (Lk 7:28). Each of us is consecrated by God in the womb of the Church (the baptismal font) to be not just his forerunner, but his son or daughter, and to live forever with him in his eternal kingdom of God. We may or may not become famous in this world, we may not have our birthdays celebrated across the globe in hundreds of languages in the year of our Lord 2,500 but God intends us all to be quite famous in the next. That’s his desired answer to the question parents in every generation ask about their children, “What will this child become?” He wants them to work with him so that their child will become just as much a saint as John the Baptist, by imitating all that God teaches us about how to relate to his Son Jesus through his cousin’s virtues.
That’s God’s desire. That’s our calling and our mission. God will give us all the help he knows we need to achieve that destiny — which also includes Crosses! — but whether we achieve it or not depends on us. The celebration of a birthday is a time for all of us to reflect on the meaning of life and this celebration of John the Baptist’s birth brings us to reflect not just on the meaning of his life, but the meaning of our own. When Elizabeth said, “His name is John” and Zechariah wrote it on the tablet — meaning “God is gracious” — they probably didn’t realize that one day that name would have a prefix. Little did our parents realize when they brought us to be baptized that God’s plan is for us one day to have that same prefix. The same goes for every child parents bring to the font. All of us are meant to have our name preceded by the most glorious prefix possible: “saint.” But to be given that honor and induction into the eternal hall of fame, we must live up to the title, a word that means “holy.” We become holy on the day of our baptism and are called to live in that holiness in each of our choices, by living in constant communion with God and God’s will. All of us have known young people who were enormously gifted academically, athletically or musically: some have really invested those gifts, but others have wasted their talents and amount to very little in any of those areas. The same thing happens with the spiritual talents and gifts God gives us. Some of us develop them fully; some of us waste them. Even though John was filled with the Holy Spirit from before he was born, he still lived a life of great self-denial so that he would never deny God. He responded to his mission with fidelity and allowed God’s work to continue in him. That’s what we are called to do. What we become in response to our divine destiny is dependent on our choices, on whether we develop or fail to invest the tremendous gifts and calling God gives each of us. Today’s celebration is meant to remind us that each of us is capable of the fidelity and courage we see in John the Baptist if only we respond to God’s graces as he did!
John’s Birthday Gift
We conclude by turning back one last time to St. John the Baptist on this his birthday. Normally on birthdays we give the anniversarian a gift, but today John the Baptist gives us a present, the gift of his intercession for us that we may be faithful to the mission God has given each of us from the womb, remain in holy communion with God, and collaborate with him to bring or help others maintain their holy communion with God. And just like he did nearly 2000 years ago, he indicates to us the path to holiness by pointing us to Jesus in the Eucharist, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. As we prepare to receive Jesus now, we thank Him for the gift of our life and the gift of those we know and love. And we ask Him for the help so that we, like John, might develop our friendship with him so that he may increase within us and bring us and others to the eternal destiny for which we, like John, were born.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 IS 49:1-6
Hear me, O coastlands,
listen, O distant peoples.
The LORD called me from birth,
from my mother’s womb he gave me my name.
He made of me a sharp-edged sword
and concealed me in the shadow of his arm.
He made me a polished arrow,
in his quiver he hid me.
You are my servant, he said to me,
Israel, through whom I show my glory.
Though I thought I had toiled in vain,
and for nothing, uselessly, spent my strength,
yet my reward is with the LORD,
my recompense is with my God.
For now the LORD has spoken
who formed me as his servant from the womb,
that Jacob may be brought back to him
and Israel gathered to him;
and I am made glorious in the sight of the LORD,
and my God is now my strength!
It is too little, he says, for you to be my servant,
to raise up the tribes of Jacob,
and restore the survivors of Israel;
I will make you a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.
Responsorial Psalm PS 139:1B-3, 13-14AB, 14C-15
R. (14) I praise you, for I am wonderfully made.
O LORD, you have probed me, you know me:
you know when I sit and when I stand;
you understand my thoughts from afar.
My journeys and my rest you scrutinize,
with all my ways you are familiar.
R. I praise you for I am wonderfully made.
Truly you have formed my inmost being;
you knit me in my mother’s womb.
I give you thanks that I am fearfully, wonderfully made;
wonderful are your works.
R. I praise you, for I am wonderfully made.
My soul also you knew full well;
nor was my frame unknown to you
When I was made in secret,
when I was fashioned in the depths of the earth.
R. I praise you, for I am wonderfully made.
Reading 2 ACTS 13:22-26
In those days, Paul said:
“God raised up David as king;
of him God testified,
I have found David, son of Jesse, a man after my own heart;
he will carry out my every wish.
From this man’s descendants God, according to his promise,
has brought to Israel a savior, Jesus.
John heralded his coming by proclaiming a baptism of repentance
to all the people of Israel;
and as John was completing his course, he would say,
‘What do you suppose that I am? I am not he.
Behold, one is coming after me;
I am not worthy to unfasten the sandals of his feet.’
“My brothers, sons of the family of Abraham,
and those others among you who are God-fearing,
to us this word of salvation has been sent.”
Alleluia SEE LK 1:76
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
You, child, will be called prophet of the Most High,
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel LK 1:57-66, 80
When the time arrived for Elizabeth to have her child
she gave birth to a son.
Her neighbors and relatives heard
that the Lord had shown his great mercy toward her,
and they rejoiced with her.
When they came on the eighth day to circumcise the child,
they were going to call him Zechariah after his father,
but his mother said in reply,
“No. He will be called John.”
But they answered her,
“There is no one among your relatives who has this name.”
So they made signs, asking his father what he wished him to be called.
He asked for a tablet and wrote, “John is his name,”
and all were amazed.
Immediately his mouth was opened, his tongue freed,
and he spoke blessing God.
Then fear came upon all their neighbors,
and all these matters were discussed
throughout the hill country of Judea.
All who heard these things took them to heart, saying,
“What, then, will this child be?”
For surely the hand of the Lord was with him.
The child grew and became strong in spirit,
and he was in the desert until the day
of his manifestation to Israel.
The post Rejoicing at the Birth of St. John the Baptist, Solemnity of the Birth of St. John the Baptist, June 24, 2026 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
9 min
June 23 The Social Teaching of St. John Paul II, Acton University 2026, June 23, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Acton University 2026
Grand Rapids, Michigan
June 23, 2026

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6.23.26 The Social Teaching of St. John Paul II

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1 hr 15 min
June 23 TPMS General Assembly Briefing, June 22, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
The Pontifical Mission Societies USA
Briefing on the 2026 TPMS General Assembly
For Diocesan TPMS Directors
June 22, 2026

To listen to an audio recording of today’s presentation, please click below:
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6.22.26 TPMS General Assembly Briefing
The post TPMS General Assembly Briefing, June 22, 2026 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
1 hr 2 min
June 19 Placing Our Treasure and Setting Our Eyes on God, Eleventh Friday (II), June 19, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Annual Retreat for the Priests of the Diocese of Gary
Mundelein Seminary Conference Center
Mundelein, Illinois
Friday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Romuald
June 19, 2026
2 Kings 11:1-4.9-18.20, Ps 132, Mt 6:19-23

To listen to an audio recording of the homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.19.26_Homily_1.mp3

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 2 KGS 11:1-4, 9-18, 20
When Athaliah, the mother of Ahaziah,
saw that her son was dead,
she began to kill off the whole royal family.
But Jehosheba, daughter of King Jehoram and sister of Ahaziah,
took Joash, his son, and spirited him away, along with his nurse,
from the bedroom where the princes were about to be slain.
She concealed him from Athaliah, and so he did not die.
For six years he remained hidden in the temple of the LORD,
while Athaliah ruled the land.
But in the seventh year,
Jehoiada summoned the captains of the Carians
and of the guards.
He had them come to him in the temple of the LORD,
exacted from them a sworn commitment,
and then showed them the king’s son.
The captains did just as Jehoiada the priest commanded.
Each one with his men, both those going on duty for the sabbath
and those going off duty that week,
came to Jehoiada the priest.
He gave the captains King David’s spears and shields,
which were in the temple of the LORD.
And the guards, with drawn weapons,
lined up from the southern to the northern limit of the enclosure,
surrounding the altar and the temple on the king’s behalf.
Then Jehoiada led out the king’s son
and put the crown and the insignia upon him.
They proclaimed him king and anointed him,
clapping their hands and shouting, “Long live the king!”
Athaliah heard the noise made by the people,
and appeared before them in the temple of the LORD.
When she saw the king standing by the pillar, as was the custom,
and the captains and trumpeters near him,
with all the people of the land rejoicing and blowing trumpets,
she tore her garments and cried out, “Treason, treason!”
Then Jehoiada the priest instructed the captains
in command of the force:
“Bring her outside through the ranks.
If anyone follows her,” he added, “let him die by the sword.”
He had given orders that she
should not be slain in the temple of the LORD.
She was led out forcibly to the horse gate of the royal palace,
where she was put to death.
Then Jehoiada made a covenant between the LORD as one party
and the king and the people as the other,
by which they would be the LORD’s people;
and another covenant, between the king and the people.
Thereupon all the people of the land went to the temple of Baal
and demolished it.
They shattered its altars and images completely,
and slew Mattan, the priest of Baal, before the altars.
Jehoiada appointed a detachment for the temple of the LORD.
All the people of the land rejoiced and the city was quiet,
now that Athaliah had been slain with the sword
at the royal palace.
Responsorial Psalm PS 132:11, 12, 13-14, 17-18
R. (13) The Lord has chosen Zion for his dwelling.
The LORD swore to David
a firm promise from which he will not withdraw:
“Your own offspring
I will set upon your throne.”
R. The Lord has chosen Zion for his dwelling.
“If your sons keep my covenant
and the decrees which I shall teach them,
Their sons, too, forever
shall sit upon your throne.”
R. The Lord has chosen Zion for his dwelling.
For the LORD has chosen Zion;
he prefers her for his dwelling.
“Zion is my resting place forever;
in her will I dwell, for I prefer her.”
R. The Lord has chosen Zion for his dwelling.
“In her will I make a horn to sprout forth for David;
I will place a lamp for my anointed.
His enemies I will clothe with shame,
but upon him my crown shall shine.”
R. The Lord has chosen Zion for his dwelling.
Alleluia MT 5:3
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Blessed are the poor in spirit;
for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel MT 6:19-23
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth,
where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal.
But store up treasures in heaven,
where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal.
For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.
“The lamp of the body is the eye.
If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light;
but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be in darkness.
And if the light in you is darkness, how great will the darkness be.”
The post Placing Our Treasure and Setting Our Eyes on God, Eleventh Friday (II), June 19, 2026 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
12 min
June 18 Archbishop Fulton Sheen and a Missionary Priesthood, Retreat for the Priests of the Diocese of Gary, June 18, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Annual Retreat for the Priests of the Diocese of Gary
Mundelein Seminary Conference Center
Mundelein, Illinois
June 18, 2026
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.18.26_Sheen_Priests_and_the_Missions_1.mp3
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59 min
June 18 Missionary Preaching, Retreat for the Priests of the Diocese of Gary, June 18, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Annual Retreat for the Priests of the Diocese of Gary
Mundelein Seminary Conference Center
Mundelein, Illinois
June 18, 2026
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.18.26_Missionary_Preaching_1.mp3
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58 min
June 18Relating To, And Becoming Like, Our Father, Eleventh Thursday (II), June 18, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Annual Retreat for the Priests of the Diocese of Gary
Mundelein Seminary Conference Center
Mundelein, Illinois
Thursday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
June 18, 2026
Sirach 48:1-14, Ps 97, Mt 6:7-15

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.18.26_Homily_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
Three days from Father’s Day, the Church providentially has us ponder the way Jesus helped us confidently turn to God our Father. The essential mission of the Son of God made man was to bring us into the life of the Blessed Trinity, to help us become sons in the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit. Salvation isn’t just a rescue from a self-alienated eternity from God — a salvation from — but it was ultimately a redemption for. Jesus had come so that we might have life to the full, so that his joy might be ours, so that we might receive the kingdom that it is the Father’s pleasure to give. In this retreat, as we recalibrate our mission based on Jesus’, today’s Gospel gives us the opportunity to examine our relationship with God the Father as sons and then look at our own priestly spiritual fatherhood in light of the attributes of Father to whom Jesus helps us turn.
As priests, we pray the Our Father many times a day: at Mass, at Lauds and Vespers, and at least six times in the Rosary. Liturgically, however, we have a chance to preach on the Lord’s prayer only three times a year at daily Mass: on Tuesday of the First Week of Lent, on the 11th Thursday in Ordinary Time, and on the 27th Wednesday in Ordinary Time, and on Sunday, only once in the three-year cycle, when St. Luke’s version of the Our Father appears in the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C. Strangely, we are not given St. Matthew’s richer version of the Our Father in Year A. Because it’s part of every Mass and we are always able to preach on the liturgy, it’s of course possible for us to share reflections on this most important vocal prayer in Christianity at other times, but I’m not sure how many of us take advantage of that opportunity. Therefore, we may not have the chance that sacred preaching gives us to go deeper into the meaning of the Our Father, what subjects Jesus has us ask for and in what sequence, and what things he doesn’t teach us to raise. The prayer of the Our Father, liturgically, is excised from the middle of yesterday’s Gospel, when Jesus is telling us in prayer not only not to do it for show but not to babble on like the pagans who think they’ll be heard by the sheer volume of words. For us and our people not to babble the Our Father but to pray it, it’s very helpful when we have the privilege to enter liturgically into its depths, since it is first and foremost meant to be prayed together in liturgy when we can most effectively pray, as one Body, in the first-person plural Jesus gives us.
The first word is the most important. Pater in Greek, Abba in Hebrew. Jesus teaches us to turn as children to our dad who loves us. The second word, hemon, or “of us,” helps us to recognize that we’re part of a big family with whom and for whom he wants us to pray. We focus on the fact that he is in heaven, which is an indication of his holiness and an indication of our true homeland. Then we turn to the most urgent and important Jesus wants us to ask for: the Father’s name, not ours, to be hallowed, his kingdom, not our fiefdom, to come, his will, not ours to be done. Jesus has us focus in prayer, in other words, on God the Father not ourselves. He has us focus first and foremost on praise and thanksgiving, not contrition, intercession and petition, because praising God and thanking him are the most important forms of prayer. But we likewise know that when we hallow God’s name in word and deed we’re also sharers in his name; when we’re praying for and helping to establish his kingdom, we’re also summoned to enter into it as members of the royal family; when we’re begging for his will to be done, we know that his will is for our salvation and sanctification. But Jesus has us pray, first, patrocentrically, not egocentrically. Then Jesus specifies for us what petitions we should be making for ourselves. Each derives from the nature of God’s Fatherhood. Like all fathers who derive their identity from him, God the Father seeks to provide for us, to forgive us and protect us. That’s what we beseech. We ask him first to give us today our epiousios or supersubstantial bread, which we now if far more than material sustenance: it’s his own Son in the Holy Eucharist. We ask him for his mercy and for the grace to be merciful like him toward others. As a humble confession of our weakness, we beg him not to let us fall when tempted but to deliver us, in this world and forever, from the Evil One.
It’s important for us to look at the Our Father not just as words or a formula to be recited but as a prayer to be lived. Jesus wants us to live in filial relationship to his Father and ours, to recognize that divine filiation means to look on and treat each other as brothers and sisters. He wants us to grasp that we hallow his name, we glorify him, by our “good deeds” that cause others to praise him. He wants us to seek and live in that kingdom of the Father that is our great inheritance and to help others enter into it. He wants us, just like the saints, to do the will of the Father. He wants us to be grateful to God’s providence and come receive his Son the Living Bread come down from heaven, to be as merciful as he is merciful, to count on him for strength in trial and to liberate us from the devil, his empty promises and evil works. The Our Father is meant to lead to a whole Christian way of life together with the Father, something that should mean even more to us as we approach Father’s Day.
Since God’s fatherhood is the source from which all fatherhood in heaven and earth is derived and modeled, the Our Father also indicates to us a great deal about how we’re called to exercise our vicarious spiritual fatherhood as priests. We’re supposed to be dads, not distant men, full of affective and sacrificial love for those whom the Lord entrusts to us. We’re supposed to be family makers and therefore leaders and makers of communion. We’re supposed to be eschatological and anagogical figures pointing to heaven and showing people how to live in this world with their minds, words and hearts set above. We’re supposed to mention his name, not worry about our own; seek his kingdom with all its attributes rather than obsess about our own authority and possessions; to do his will like Jesus did, with joy and resolve, even in our own Gethsemanes. Like God the Father and natural fathers, we’re supposed to be providers, givers not takers, conscious of the fact that we can give at the altar what no one else can, and to make the Eucharist available, even and perhaps especially in the midst of life-threatening pandemics. We’re supposed to be men of mercy spurring others on to mercy, so that we can more effectively dispense and receive, and help others receive, divine mercy. We’re supposed to strengthen people in the fight against temptation, by pointing out temptations and giving them the means to avoid near occasions and choose the Lord when they can’t. And like any natural father who would die protecting their children from kidnappers or abusers or others who would do them harm, so we are out of love are summoned courageously to free them from the seductions and ambushes of the devil by teaching them clearly about the devil and the various means he employs to get us to choose sin and spiritual suicide over God and life.
Missionaries continue Jesus’ mission of bringing people into communion with God the Father, to bring them to baptism by which they can truly call God their Father, to help them live out their divine filiation and so hallow God’s name and themselves, and, in short, to live the words Jesus taught us to pray. In the first reading, we have Sirach’s great praise of the Prophet Elijah, who illustrates this type of life. His whole life was in communion with God. He sought God’s glory. He strove to live and get others to live faithfully in the Lord’s vineyard, a sign of his kingdom, as well as anointed kings and reminded both the good and bad they were under God’s dominion. He always sought to do what God was asking, no matter how difficult. He prayed to God for food and God provided with ravens in the desert and through the faithful generosity of the widow of Zarephath. He learned from God the way of mercy, as we saw with Ahab, and convinced people of their need to repent. He was repeatedly strengthened when he was tested, as by the priests of Baal, and was delivered from evil, as God liberated him from Jezebel’s diabolically inspired machinations. All of this came from Elijah’s prayer, which was not full of babbling, but a gentle whisper, and a bold heart that recognized that God could do anything, including ignite a sacrifice drenched in water. Elijah’s example inspires us to this same type of filial prayer and life. How awesome, Sirach said, Elijah was in his wondrous deeds. How awesome God is who worked those wonders in Elijah. How awesome are the deeds God works through us, most especially the sacraments!
It’s significant that the most important time we pray the Our Father is in the heart of the Mass, as we pray together with Jesus on the altar and each other, as the Holy Spirit helps us collectively to cry out “Abba, Father!” (Rom 8:15). It’s in the Mass that God answers the prayer Jesus taught us, giving us his Son precisely so that through, with and in Him, we can relate to God as Father, live for the Father’s glory, kingdom and will, be nourished by him with the greatest food ever, be strengthened by his mercy to let our sun and rain fall on the good and the bad, unite ourselves to him in the midst of trials and remain attached to the Stronger Man who came to free us in this world and forever from the evil One. As we prepare to pray the Our Father audaciously today, let us ask the grace to do so as beloved sons and priests called to be spiritual dads, with all the wonder with which Mary and the apostles learned it from Jesus’ lips and said it for the first time.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
SIR 48:1-14
Like a fire there appeared the prophet Elijah
whose words were as a flaming furnace.
Their staff of bread he shattered,
in his zeal he reduced them to straits;
By the Lord’s word he shut up the heavens
and three times brought down fire.
How awesome are you, Elijah, in your wondrous deeds!
Whose glory is equal to yours?
You brought a dead man back to life
from the nether world, by the will of the LORD.
You sent kings down to destruction,
and easily broke their power into pieces.
You brought down nobles, from their beds of sickness.
You heard threats at Sinai,
at Horeb avenging judgments.
You anointed kings who should inflict vengeance,
and a prophet as your successor.
You were taken aloft in a whirlwind of fire,
in a chariot with fiery horses.
You were destined, it is written, in time to come
to put an end to wrath before the day of the LORD,
To turn back the hearts of fathers toward their sons,
and to re-establish the tribes of Jacob.
Blessed is he who shall have seen you
And who falls asleep in your friendship.
For we live only in our life,
but after death our name will not be such.
O Elijah, enveloped in the whirlwind!
Then Elisha, filled with the twofold portion of his spirit,
wrought many marvels by his mere word.
During his lifetime he feared no one,
nor was any man able to intimidate his will.
Nothing was beyond his power;
beneath him flesh was brought back into life.
In life he performed wonders,
and after death, marvelous deeds.
Responsorial Psalm
PS 97:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7
R. (12a) Rejoice in the Lord, you just!
The LORD is king; let the earth rejoice;
let the many isles be glad.
Clouds and darkness are round about him,
justice and judgment are the foundation of his throne.
R. Rejoice in the Lord, you just!
Fire goes before him
and consumes his foes round about.
His lightnings illumine the world;
the earth sees and trembles.
R. Rejoice in the Lord, you just!
The mountains melt like wax before the LORD,
before the Lord of all the earth.
The heavens proclaim his justice,
and all peoples see his glory.
R. Rejoice in the Lord, you just!
All who worship graven things are put to shame,
who glory in the things of nought;
all gods are prostrate before him.
R. Rejoice in the Lord, you just!
Gospel
MT 6:7-15
Jesus said to his disciples:
“In praying, do not babble like the pagans,
who think that they will be heard because of their many words.
Do not be like them.
Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
“This is how you are to pray:
‘Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name,
thy Kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us;
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.’
“If you forgive others their transgressions,
your heavenly Father will forgive you.
But if you do not forgive others,
neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.”
The post Relating To, And Becoming Like, Our Father, Eleventh Thursday (II), June 18, 2026 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
25 min
June 17An Inheritance to Receive and Pass On, Eleventh Wednesday (II), June 17, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Annual Retreat for the Priests of the Diocese of Gary
Mundelein Seminary Conference Center
Mundelein, Illinois
Wednesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
June 17, 2026
2 Kings 2:1.6-14, Ps 31, Mt 6:1-6.16-18

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
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The following text guided the homily:
Elijah was the great prophet of the Lord, who, in the midst of ferocious opposition by political leaders and the leaders of other religions, proclaimed God, his word and his ways in way that called the children of Israel back to the true God. He sought to help them remember who they were, heirs of the covenants made with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and David. He sought to help them remain faithful to these Covenants. Today we have the scene at the very end of his life. The prophet Elisha, his assistant and coadjutor, was clinging to him. He didn’t want to say bye. He didn’t want to lose him. He swore an oath on the name of the Living God not to leave him. Eventually, after yet another miracle of crossing the Jordan, Elijah got Elisha to focus on his departure and to ask for whatever he might be able to do for him. He requested a double portion of his spirit. It’s a strange phrase. It ultimately goes back to the Mosaic law, where the first-born son received two-thirds of the family inheritance to ensure he could care for his mothers and sisters after his dad’s death. It was a sign of both special blessing and responsibility. Elisha was asking to be Elijah’s spiritual heir, to be the recipient of his spiritual goods so that he might use them to continue Elijah’s work. Elijah said that Elisha was asking for something “not easy,” because that’s ultimately God’s to give, but said that if Elisha saw Elijah taken away by God from him, it would be a sign that God had granted the wish. That’s what occurred when Elijah was taken up by God in a flaming chariot by horses of fire. And we see the immediate impact with Elisha’s using Elijah’s mantle to part the Jordan just as Elijah had done a short time before.
In this retreat on the missionary mind, heart and identity of priests, it’s important for us to focus on the transmission not just of the Gospel but of the full inheritance of the deposit of faith. Just as Elisha followed upon Elijah, so we follow, as Elishas, upon a long line of prophets, priest and kings stretching all the way back to Christ himself. And we, similarly, are in the spot of Elijah, with Elishas after us. We ask the Lord for a double-portion of Peter, Paul and the other disciples, of Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp, of Chrysostom and Augustine, of Thomas and Bonaventure, of Francis and Dominic, of Ignatius and Francis Xavier, of Francis de Sales and Vincent de Paul, of the North American Martyrs, of Junipero Serra and Frances Cabrini, of Stanley Rother and Fulton Sheen. Seven months before John Paul II died, I brought a group to a general audience to meet him. As we were having our photo taken with him, I felt a hand on my head, something that I thought was outrageous for such a moment with the successor of St. Peter. When I turned around after the photo, prepared to give a stare-down to a mischievous pilgrim, I saw that the hand was attached to a white cassock. I blurted out in Italian to St. John Paul — whom I had had the privilege to meet 10 times previously for brief conversations and who knew me by a nickname, il gemello americano, based on first having met me with my identical twin brother Scot — “Che cosa ha significato quello, Santità?,” “What did that mean, Holiness?” And he replied, “Un Giorno saprai!,” “One day you’ll know.” I’ve always prayed since that God would give me a double-portion of John Paul II’s holiness and apostolic zeal. As we think about this episode of Elijah and Elisha, we are summoned not just to think as Elishas of all of the Elijahs ahead of us — bishops who have ordained us, priests who have mentored us, the great saints who have interceded for us, stretching all the way back to the Upper Room — but also we should ponder as Elijahs the Elishas God wants to receive from us the gifts that moths can destroy, rust can’t corrode or the IRS can’t tax. It’s a time for praying to the harvest master for vocations for his harvest to whom we can see to pass on a double-portion of our spirit. God is involved in all of this. And not to be outdone, when Jesus was preparing to be taken to heaven, he gave us not a double-portion of his spirit, but he sent out the full outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the Church, upon his priests and prophets, from the Upper Room down to the present day. This is the gift that allows us to conform ourselves, our desires, our intentions, our goals, our mind and heart, to Christ’s. This is what makes possible our continuing his work.
With these thoughts in mind, we turn to the Gospel, where we have the words we have the privilege to proclaim every Ash Wednesday. They teach us that prayer, fasting and almsgiving are not just Lenten activities, but perpetual calls for us and the whole Christian people. A retreat is a time for us, of course, for us to examine not just the quality and quantity of our prayer, but also to examine our fasting and whether we’re really hungering for what God hungers, as well as our almsgiving, short-term and long-term, both of the material possessions God has temporarily placed in our hands but more importantly of our life and whether we’re imitating Jesus’ Eucharistic total self-giving. But I leave those to your prayer. Based on the first reading, I’d like to focus instead on what Jesus says about the purity of intention with which he wants us to do not only those three staple spiritual practices but everything. Jesus today has us concentrate both on the audience for whom we’re praying, hungering and giving of ourselves and the reward.
The audience in the case of fasting, prayer and almsgiving is not supposed to be others, in order vainly to gain their approval or esteem. The audience needs to be God who sees in secret. We fast for God, in order to hunger for him more and to share his hunger for the care of all his hungry and needy sons and daughters. We pray for him, in our “inner room” where we store our valuables, and seek to conform ourselves with his will, his glory, his kingdom, his name. We give alms for him, as his stewards, knowing that he has placed within our reach all our material goods, our time, our life, even God himself, so that we can be the extension of God’s providence to others. So often we can be tempted to do things for the eyes of our peers and parishioners, the bishop and those in the chancery, even those in the media or on social media. But that’s what so many of the outwardly righteous scribes and Pharisees did, what so many people in the world seek to do. Jesus wants us to act for God and God alone.
And that leads directly to the subject of reward. Jesus promises, “And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” Many Christians are uncomfortable with the whole thought of reward because it seems “impure” to do it for any benefit other than out of love for God. But Jesus who made us is constantly speaking to us about rewards. He mentions that if we are persecuted for the sake of his name, our reward in heaven will be great; if we’re faithful in little things, we’ll be given greater responsibilities; if we leave all things for him and his name, we’ll be given 100-fold in this life and eternal life; if we’re faithful, we will be with him forever. Jesus has made us to work for a goal. The goal, however, he wants us to strive for, as he tells us later in the Sermon on the Mount, is the “kingdom of God and his righteousness” knowing that “everything else will be given” to us besides. We seek what St. Thomas Aquinas asked for when God said to him, “Bene scripsisti de me Thoma; quam ergo mercedem accipias?” “You have written well of me Thomas; What reward would you receive?” He replied, “Non aliam, Domine, nisi te ipsum,” or “Nothing but you, Lord!” So the reward we seek is not vain, the reward we seek is not this-worldly, the reward we seek is precisely the Reward with a capital R God wants to give: himself. Jesus himself tells us: “Your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom!” And we know the Kingdom of God is God. He is our great inheritance. He is what we seek to obtain and to pass on.
Today at Mass we come to put into action Christ’s words today. We come having fasted, not out of routine, not out of vanity, but out of hunger for God’s word and for God himself in the Eucharist. We come praying not for others to notice but with our hearts lifted up to God, seeking what he wants, which is that we live these words we’ve heard and make our lives Eucharistic, doing “this” in memory of him. We come prepared to receive the greatest alms of all and to pay that gift forward, to the end of our life. The full portion of the Holy Spirit is about to be sent upon us to help us to have purity of intention and to recognize that God is our reward. Our hearts that hope in the Lord are about to take comfort as God fulfills our heart’s deepest longing!
The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
2 KGS 2:1, 6-14
When the LORD was about to take Elijah up to heaven in a whirlwind,
he and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal.
Elijah said to Elisha, “Please stay here;
the LORD has sent me on to the Jordan.”
“As the LORD lives, and as you yourself live,
I will not leave you,” Elisha replied.
And so the two went on together.
Fifty of the guild prophets followed and
when the two stopped at the Jordan,
they stood facing them at a distance.
Elijah took his mantle, rolled it up
and struck the water, which divided,
and both crossed over on dry ground.
When they had crossed over, Elijah said to Elisha,
“Ask for whatever I may do for you, before I am taken from you.”
Elisha answered, “May I receive a double portion of your spirit.”
“You have asked something that is not easy,” Elijah replied.
“Still, if you see me taken up from you,
your wish will be granted; otherwise not.”
As they walked on conversing,
a flaming chariot and flaming horses came between them,
and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind.
When Elisha saw it happen he cried out,
“My father! my father! Israel’s chariots and drivers!”
But when he could no longer see him,
Elisha gripped his own garment and tore it in two.
Then he picked up Elijah’s mantle that had fallen from him,
and went back and stood at the bank of the Jordan.
Wielding the mantle that had fallen from Elijah,
Elisha struck the water in his turn and said,
“Where is the LORD, the God of Elijah?”
When Elisha struck the water it divided and he crossed over.
Responsorial Psalm
PS 31:20, 21, 24
R. (25) Let your hearts take comfort, all who hope in the Lord.
How great is the goodness, O LORD,
which you have in store for those who fear you,
And which, toward those who take refuge in you,
you show in the sight of the children of men.
R. Let your hearts take comfort, all who hope in the Lord.
You hide them in the shelter of your presence
from the plottings of men;
You screen them within your abode
from the strife of tongues.
R. Let your hearts take comfort, all who hope in the Lord.
Love the LORD, all you his faithful ones!
The LORD keeps those who are constant,
but more than requites those who act proudly.
R. Let your hearts take comfort, all who hope in the Lord.
Gospel
MT 6:1-6, 16-18
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Take care not to perform righteous deeds
in order that people may see them;
otherwise, you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father.
When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you,
as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets
to win the praise of others.
Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward.
But when you give alms,
do not let your left hand know what your right is doing,
so that your almsgiving may be secret.
And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.
“When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites,
who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners
so that others may see them.
Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward.
But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door,
and pray to your Father in secret.
And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.
“When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites.
They neglect their appearance,
so that they may appear to others to be fasting.
Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward.
But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face,
so that you may not appear to others to be fasting,
except to your Father who is hidden.
And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.”
The post An Inheritance to Receive and Pass On, Eleventh Wednesday (II), June 17, 2026 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
19 min
June 17 Missionary Formation, Retreat for the Priests of the Diocese of Gary, June 17, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Annual Retreat for the Priests of the Diocese of Gary
Mundelein Seminary Conference Center
Mundelein, Illinois
June 17, 2026

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.17.26_Missionary_Formation_1.mp3
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59 min
June 16 Missionary Prayer (Part II), Retreat for the Priests of the Diocese of Gary, June 16, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Annual Retreat for the Priests of the Diocese of Gary
Mundelein Seminary Conference Center
Mundelein, Illinois
June 16, 2026

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.16.26_Missionary_Prayer_II_1.mp3
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1 hr 3 min

About Catholic Preaching

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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.