Catholic Preaching

Catholic Preaching

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  • Building Our Lives Wisely On God And His Advent Promises, First Thursday of Advent, December 5, 2024

    Fr. Roger J. Landry

    Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
    Thursday of the First Week of Advent
    December 5, 2024
    Is 26:1-6, Ps 118, Mt 7:21.24-27

     

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

    https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.5.24_Homily_1.mp3

     

    The following points were attempted in the homily: 

    • Throughout the Advent Season, we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus,” “O Come, Divine Messiah!,” “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” and these are all good aspirations, but the Church, which selects the Gospel passages throughout this first week of Advent very well to help us learn the proper dispositions to enter into the meaning of this season and get off to a good start in this new liturgical year, helps us to grasp that it’s by no means enough for us to stop there. In today’s Gospel, Jesus says to us very clearly, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” It’s not enough for us to bid the Lord to come, but we need to build our life on him as he comes. As we run out to meet him who’s coming to us, he wants to transform us so that we build our whole life on him, as we seek to live totally together with him. “The Lord is an eternal Rock,” Isaiah tells us today. The Psalm adds, “The Lord is God and he has given us light.” The Lord is the solid, stable, unchanging foundation for life, the God who not only is “Light from Light,” but shares that light with us so that we may walk as children of light. Isaiah will tell us on Christmas night that the “people walking in darkness have seen a great light,” and that light is the Lord. Our Advent construction project is to build our life on that rock.
    • Jesus gives us an image today, taken from his conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount, about how we’re supposed to live what he teaches. “Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.  The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house.  But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock.” That’s what our response is supposed to be to Jesus’ triple coming: to build our life on his taking on our humanity so that we may share in his divinity; to construct our existence on Him in the present, in his Word and in especially in the Word-made-flesh as the source and summit, the root and center of Christian life; and to ground our hopes, aspirations and daily choices in the guarantee of his second coming and to live, as we’re reminded to live each Advent, vigilant and alert each day for his return. Not everyone lives this way. Many are foolish. Many of us are foolish, because we hear his Word, we may even be able to cite chapter and verse, but we don’t always act on it. Jesus says, “Everyone who listens to these words of mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who built his house on sand. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. And it collapsed and was completely ruined.” The true Advent response is Mary’s, which, as we will hear on Monday on the Solemnity of her Immaculate Conception, in response to the Archangel Gabriel’s words said, “Behold I am the Lord’s servant. Let it be done to me according to your Word!” She shows us how to build long for God’s word, to build our life on God’s word and to share God’s word.
    • To build our whole existence on Jesus requires great trust, because Jesus’ words are different than the world’s. It’s challenging to build our life on the word of forgiving seventy times seven times, to love our enemies, to love others as God infinitely loves us. It’s hard to build our life on the commandments, the corporal and spiritual works of mercy and especially the Beatitudes which began the Sermon on the Mount. Whereas the world thinks we need to be rich to be fulfilled, Jesus says we need to be poor; whereas the world says we have to be popular and congenial, Jesus says we need to be persecuted for his sake; whereas the world says we need to be powerful, Jesus says we need to be meek peacemakers; whereas the world says we need to have all our sexual fantasies fulfilled, Jesus responds we need to be pure of heart; whereas the world says we need to have all our appetites satiated, Jesus says we need to hunger and thirst for holiness. We’re tempted to construct our life on what everyone else is doing, or on our whims, or to maximize our pleasure and minimize our pain. It’s hard to build on Jesus when he challenges us to trust. But hard is not impossible. And God gives us himself to make the difficulty lighter and sweeter. God encourages us to do so today. “Trust in the Lord forever!,” God calls us through Isaiah. “A strong city have we; he sets up walls and ramparts to protect us.” The Psalm says, “It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes.” This is true and Advent is a season for us to act on it.
    • God gives us a daily opportunity to build ourselves on him at the Mass. In the Liturgy of the Word, God wants us to ground ourselves anew on the rock of God’s word, provided that we try to live the word we hear rather than merely say in response to it “Thanks be to God” and “Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.” We’re called, like Mary, to respond, “Let it be done to me according to your word!” Then we come to the Liturgy of the Eucharist and have the chance to construct our life on this gift, on Christ himself. Then we have the chance, in communion with him, to build our life on the words of his great commission, to go in peace, glorifying the Lord with our life. May we respond to this great privilege and build ourselves firmly on Christ with trust so that no matter what storms come, we will be set firmly on Christ and come to experience eternal tranquility in the house that God has built in heaven for all his beloved children.

      •  

      The readings for today’s Mass were: 

      Reading 1 IS 26:1-6
      On that day they will sing this song in the land of Judah:
      “A strong city have we;
      he sets up walls and ramparts to protect us.
      Open up the gates
      to let in a nation that is just,
      one that keeps faith.
      A nation of firm purpose you keep in peace;
      in peace, for its trust in you.”
      Trust in the LORD forever!
      For the LORD is an eternal Rock.
      He humbles those in high places,
      and the lofty city he brings down;
      He tumbles it to the ground,
      levels it with the dust.
      It is trampled underfoot by the needy,
      by the footsteps of the poor.
      Responsorial Psalm PS 118:1 AND 8-9, 19-21, 25-27A
      R. (26a) Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
      or:
      R. Alleluia.
      Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good,
      for his mercy endures forever.
      It is better to take refuge in the LORD
      than to trust in man.
      It is better to take refuge in the LORD
      than to trust in princes.
      R. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
      or:
      R. Alleluia.
      Open to me the gates of justice;
      I will enter them and give thanks to the LORD.
      This gate is the LORD’s;
      the just shall enter it.
      I will give thanks to you, for you have answered me
      and have been my savior.
      R. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
      or:
      R. Alleluia.
      O LORD, grant salvation!
      O LORD, grant prosperity!
      Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD;
      we bless you from the house of the LORD.
      The LORD is God, and he has given us light.
      R. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
      or:
      R. Alleluia.

      Alleluia IS 55:6

      R. Alleluia, alleluia.

      Seek the LORD while he may be found;
      call him while he is near.
      R. Alleluia, alleluia.

      Gospel MT 7:21, 24-27
      Jesus said to his disciples:
      “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’
      will enter the Kingdom of heaven,
      but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.
      “Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them
      will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.
      The rain fell, the floods came,
      and the winds blew and buffeted the house.
      But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock.
      And everyone who listens to these words of mine
      but does not act on them
      will be like a fool who built his house on sand.
      The rain fell, the floods came,
      and the winds blew and buffeted the house.
      And it collapsed and was completely ruined.”

      The post Building Our Lives Wisely On God And His Advent Promises, First Thursday of Advent, December 5, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

      10 min
    • Running Forth To Be Fed and To Feed, First Wednesday of Advent, December 4, 2024

      Fr. Roger J. Landry

      Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
      Wednesday of the First Week of Advent
      Memorial of Saint John Damascene
      December 4, 2024
      Is 25:6-10, Ps 23, Mt 15:29-37

       

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

      https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.4.24_Homily_1.mp3

       

      The following points were attempted in the homily: 

      • Today the two main coordinates of Advent intersect. First, Advent is a triple-dynamism: Christ comes to us and we are called not to stay where we are but to go out to meet him and, having encountered him, we begin to follow him more intimately in this world into eternity. The second set of coordinates is that there’s a triple meaning to Christ’s Advent or coming: his coming in history (Bethlehem), in mystery (prayer and the sacraments) and in majesty (at the end of time or end of our time on earth). Today we see these two sets of coordinates, these two principal ways of understanding Advent, intersect in the readings the Church gives us.
      • First we see the triple-dynamism. In the Gospel, Jesus walked by the Sea of Galilee and then up a mountain where he waited for the vast crowds to follow him. It would have been much easier for him to stay at the sea shore, but he wanted to have the people make an effort to climb a hill to be with him. Through his incarnation, he came near to us because he wanted to make the encounter with us easy. On the other hand, he didn’t want to make it too easy. He wanted us to sweat. He wanted us to overcome our inertia. He wanted to train us in little ways to be faithful to the pilgrimage of earthy life which is an uphill Way of the Cross following in his footsteps. His coming near but not pampering us is to help us, from that encounter beyond, to learn how to pick up our Cross and follow him through life, through the Cross, into eternity. We see a similar theme at work in the Responsorial Psalm. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, calls us by name and leads us into dark valleys, where we’re called to follow him on the path to verdant pastures where he will give us repose. Jesus doesn’t take us by a short cut or an easy route. Dark valleys can be frightening! But it’s by journeying through them following Jesus that we grow in faith.
      • And we see in all the readings what Jesus prepares for us when we catch up to him on the mountain for the encounter. He gives us a banquet. Isaiah tells us in the first reading that this mountain banquet features “a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines.” In the psalm we see that the Good Shepherd, after leading us through the obscure, scary ravine up hill to the green fields, “spreads the table” before us and makes our “cup overflow.” And in the Gospel we see the first of three fulfillments of these prophecies when Jesus feeds the crowd of four thousand with seven buns and a few fish. This is one of two miracles of the multiplication of the loaves and fish (the other was a crowd of five thousand, that multiplied five buns and two fish and the leftovers of which filled twelve baskets, more than the seven here). St. John called this miracle a “sign,” meaning something that points to something else. The first banquet signified is when Jesus would take bread and wine in the Upper Room and totally change them into the richest food and choicest wine ever known, his own Body and Blood. But even that was a sign pointing to the eternal wedding banquet, for which the Eucharist is a foretaste.
      • We see, here, that the encounter with Christ after his movement and ours happens in a three-fold banquet. The first banquet is the actual multiplication of the loaves and fish in history. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, a place that means “house of bread,” and he is the Father’s answer to the prayer Jesus put on our lips, “Give us today our daily bread.” The miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and the fish is the first fulfillment of Isaiah’s and Psalm 23’s prophecy. The second fulfillment is in mystery, in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, the perpetuated Last Supper through time. The third is fulfilled in majesty, in the eternal wedding banquet. In Advent we prepare for each of these three banquets. Christ comes to set the table for us in each of these three ways and we’re called to go out to meet him at all three, in a sense simultaneously. We prayed in the Opening Prayer today, “Prepare our hearts, we pray, O Lord our God, by your divine power, so that at the coming of Christ your Son we may be found worthy of the banquet of eternal life and merit to receive heavenly nourishment from his hands.” We ask God to prepare our hearts — the center and core of who we are, with all our affections — to be found at Christ’s arrival of the banquet of eternal life and receive heavenly nourishment from his hands. It’s easy to think about this happening at the banquet of majesty in heaven; it’s likewise not that difficult for us to perceive its fulfillment in mystery, here at Mass. But it’s also meant to be fulfilled in history. Every time God fulfills our prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread,” there is a participation, in some sense, in a banquet of eternal life, because we’re receiving nourishment from God’s hands. The hand of the Lord feeds us, as we pray in Ps 145: “The eyes of all look hopefully to you; you give them their food in due season. You open wide your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.” And what happens is something eternal, because eternal life, as Jesus says to us during the Last Supper, is to know the Father as the one true God and to know Jesus Christ whom He sent, a knowledge that happens by the power of the Holy Spirit. To see God’s providential love behind every meal is to recognize God does for us out of compassion every day something similar to what he did on the mountainside, and he feeds us personally.
      • But for us truly to make that journey to meet Christ in the way he wants to be met, for us to merit to receive the nourishment from his hands and participate with him in the multi-level banquet of eternal life, we need to meet him with humility and charity, as the readings show us today.
      • First, humility. We are called to see ourselves in the blind, lame, deformed, and mute who come to Jesus. Spiritually we are so often blind and incapable of seeing Jesus in his generosity behind our material bread; truly present under the “super-substantial Bread come down from Heaven,” which is the Eucharist; in the distressing disguise of others; in the events of every day. Jesus wants to cure us. We’re also lame and in need of the help of others to see the Lord Jesus. We can’t get there on our own and need to be humble enough to ask for help. We’re often deformed, in desperate need of reform, getting back into spiritual shape or good spiritual shape for the first time; and we’re frequently mute, feeling unable or, better, unwilling to use the gift of speech to speak to or about God. Jesus, the long-awaited Messiah, wants to give us through material, mystical and eschatological food, eyes to see him, ears to hear him, legs to follow him, opened tongues to proclaim him and reformed lives to witness him.
      • Second, charity. St. Matthew tells us, “Great crowds came to him, having with them the lame, the blind, the deformed, the mute, and many others. They placed them at his feet, and he cured them.” Jesus didn’t merely have them hike up a mountain to be with them. But he had them bring the handicapped with them. Many of them likely would never have beheld this great miracle unless they loved their neighbor, their family members and friends, enough to guide them, or carry them, up the hill to Jesus. Likewise if we’re going to show up properly prepared for the banquet in history, mystery, or majesty, we’re called to show up with charity, bringing others, leading others to the healing and transformation Jesus wants to give. One of the signs of the Messiah, as Jesus announced several times, was that he would make the blind see, the lame walk, the mute speak and the prisoners experience liberation. He does that in all three banquets where we encounter him. We are called to bring others to experience this unbelievable gift. We’re called to bring people to receive banquets here on earth, even to our homes, as Jesus says elsewhere in the Gospel. We’re supposed to invite them to the banquet of delight that is the Holy Eucharist. We’re called to invite them to the path that leads to the eternal wedding banquet, willing to carry them up a mountain to do it. We may not make the banquet, we may not meet Jesus where he’s at, unless we’re seeking him on this path of love of neighbor.
      • Today the Church celebrates the feast of someone who not only went out to meet the Lord with humility and love as the Lord sought to feed him at the table, at the altar and now at the eternal banquet, but who sought to bring his contemporaries to appreciate and receive these gifts as well. Many of St. John Damascene’s contemporaries were handicapped spiritually, they were “blind,” because they had been infected by the iconoclastic heresy of the 8th century that led to the destruction of icons and other holy images from a literalistic misinterpretation of the commandment not to make graven images. What God had forbidden was making images like the golden calf and then worshipping them; he wasn’t forbidding the use of images representing God, because God made himself such an image at the incarnation. Christ is the “image of the invisible God” and so, therefore, if God had allowed himself to be depicted by taking on human flesh then it’s possible for us to try to continue touching God with our hands, seeing him with our eyes, and continuing in some way a representation of his presence. That’s what John fought for and what was eventually enshrined in the decrees of the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. The essence of what he fought for is how God incarnates himself in our realities. He communicates himself to us through our senses. And he wants us to make the effort to go through the dark, cloudy valley, to receive the nourishment he wishes to give us, to go from “sign” to “Signified.” Every meal is meant to be a sign of God’s giving us heavenly nourishment. The Eucharist points to the eternal banquet. Like icons they are meant to bring us into an eternal holy communion with the God or the saint depicted.
      • Advent is all about going out to meet the Lord who comes to feed us and transform us. Jesus the Good Shepherd has set before us an incredible, delicious banquet, and we are invited by him to go out to meet him in the day-to-day reality of our world, in the great gift of the Sacraments, and in the deepest desires of our hearts, the eternal nuptial banquet, and then, having been fed, to go out in search of others. We ask God for the grace to prepare our hearts to rejoice in this triple invitation and to help us to bring all those who, like us, are blind, deaf, lame, mute and deformed to the banquet in which Christ heals us, fills us with hope, and guides us to heaven. In a few minutes we will behold the Lord to whom we looked to save us and rejoice and be filled with gladness that he not only have saved us, but through this Eucharistic banquet unites us to himself in holiness.

        •  

        The readings for today’s Mass were: 

        Reading 1
        IS 25:6-10A
        On this mountain the LORD of hosts
        will provide for all peoples
        A feast of rich food and choice wines,
        juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines.
        On this mountain he will destroy
        the veil that veils all peoples,
        The web that is woven over all nations;
        he will destroy death forever.
        The Lord GOD will wipe away
        the tears from all faces;
        The reproach of his people he will remove
        from the whole earth; for the LORD has spoken.
        On that day it will be said:
        “Behold our God, to whom we looked to save us!
        This is the LORD for whom we looked;
        let us rejoice and be glad that he has saved us!”
        For the hand of the LORD will rest on this mountain.
        Responsorial Psalm
        PS 23:1-3A, 3B-4, 5, 6
        R. (6cd) I shall live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.
        The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
        In verdant pastures he gives me repose;
        Beside restful waters he leads me;
        he refreshes my soul.
        R. I shall live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.
        He guides me in right paths
        for his name’s sake.
        Even though I walk in the dark valley
        I fear no evil; for you are at my side
        With your rod and your staff
        that give me courage.
        R. I shall live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.
        You spread the table before me
        in the sight of my foes;
        You anoint my head with oil;
        my cup overflows.
        R. I shall live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.
        Only goodness and kindness follow me
        all the days of my life;
        And I shall dwell in the house of the LORD
        for years to come.
        R. I shall live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.
        Gospel
        MT 15:29-37
        At that time:
        Jesus walked by the Sea of Galilee,
        went up on the mountain, and sat down there.
        Great crowds came to him,
        having with them the lame, the blind, the deformed, the mute,
        and many others.
        They placed them at his feet, and he cured them.
        The crowds were amazed when they saw the mute speaking,
        the deformed made whole,
        the lame walking,
        and the blind able to see,
        and they glorified the God of Israel.
        Jesus summoned his disciples and said,
        “My heart is moved with pity for the crowd,
        for they have been with me now for three days
        and have nothing to eat.
        I do not want to send them away hungry,
        for fear they may collapse on the way.”
        The disciples said to him,
        “Where could we ever get enough bread in this deserted place
        to satisfy such a crowd?”
        Jesus said to them, “How many loaves do you have?”
        “Seven,” they replied, “and a few fish.”
        He ordered the crowd to sit down on the ground.
        Then he took the seven loaves and the fish,
        gave thanks, broke the loaves,
        and gave them to the disciples, who in turn gave them to the crowds.
        They all ate and were satisfied.
        They picked up the fragments left over–seven baskets full.

        The post Running Forth To Be Fed and To Feed, First Wednesday of Advent, December 4, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

        20 min
      • Eyes That See What Advent and Life Are About, First Tuesday of Advent, December 3, 2024

        Fr. Roger J. Landry

        Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
        Tuesday of the First Week of Advent
        Memorial of St. Francis Xavier
        December 3, 2024
        Is 11:1-10, Ps 72, Lk 10:21-24

         

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

        https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.3.24_Homily_1.mp3

         

        The following points were attempted in the homily: 

        • Today in the readings, we continue to focus, as we do each Advent, on the qualities of our response in preparing to run out to meet Christ who comes to us in history (Bethlehem), mystery (prayer, the Sacraments, his word, and other) and majesty (on the clouds of heaven at the end of time). As we run out to this encounter, we get ready for him to change us, so that from this point forward, we might run with him toward the eternal Jerusalem.
        • Today the Church wants us to focus, first, on the virtue of childlike trust that is necessary to live Advent and the Christian life well. In the Gospel, Jesus praised his Father for his “gracious will” to reveal the mysteries of the kingdom to the “childlike,” to those who trust in him as beloved children, to those who are docile, uncomplicated, simple, pure, and unrebelliously dependent on his providential care and love. These mysteries are hidden from the “wise and the clever” of the world, not because God doesn’t want them to receive the revelation and come to salvation but because they obscure their own perception of revelation through their self-made complications. The fullness of revelation, Jesus says, is the knowledge of the Father and the mystery of his love. The fullness of revelation is seen in the image of the Father, Christ himself, who incarnates that wisdom, and received when we into Christ’s own relationship with the Father by the work of the Holy Spirit. Elsewhere in the Gospel Jesus says that unless we convert and become like little children, we will not inherit the kingdom of God. Unless we learn to trust in him, unless we see things with simple and pure faith, unless we learn to depend on him and recognize that we’re never going to be “self-sufficient,” we won’t be able to understand his kingdom and receive it. Jesus says these words in the Gospel right after he castigates those in Chorazin and Bethsaida for not converting after all his miracles. They witnessed him and his works, but it didn’t lead them to conversion and faith because they sought “adult” explanations that were, in fact, erroneous. The Church wants us to recover the pure vision, the wonder, the trust that should characterize everything we do as Christians. Jesus says that when we do recover that vision, we will be filled with joy. At the beginning of today’s Gospel, St. Luke tells us, “Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit.” He was full of joy at the reality that it was God the Father’s “gracious will” to reveal the mysteries of the kingdom to the “childlike.” And at the end of today’s Gospel, Jesus turned to his disciples and told them, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I say to you, many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.” The great heroes of Old Testament times all hungered to receive “all the things” that had been handed over to Christ by the Father. They longed to see and hear the fulfillment of all the prophecies in the Messiah who would be Son of God and Savior in a way far greater than they had imagined. Jesus rejoiced at the disciples’ good fortune. If that’s true, how much greater is Jesus’ joy that we not only behold him in his Real Presence, hear his words in the Gospel, but have a chance to touch him and be touched by him in a way far more profound than even his disciples when he was proclaiming these words for the first time! This is why St. John, in his first letter, overflowing with joy, wrote, “What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we looked upon and touched with our hands concerning the Word of life … we proclaim now to you … so that our joy may be complete.”
        • In the first reading we see one way in which we really need to have that childlike trust, accepting these images Jesus will give. The Prophet Isaiah tells us about the “shoot” that will “sprout from the stump of Jesse.” Jesse was David’s father and David began the Davidic line of kings. Just two generations after David, however, there were attacks to that line and eventually the kingdom of Judah and Israel would be chopped down. Jesse’s line was just a “stump,” but Isaiah foretells that a “shoot shall sprout” from it, fomenting among the Jews the longing for the Messiah, the longing ultimately for Jesus. Isaiah tells us that he would be filled with the spirit of God, that the Spirit would rest on him, the “spirit of wisdom and of understanding, … of counsel and of strength, … of knowledge and of fear of the Lord.” When Jesus entered the Nazareth synagogue to preach for the first time, he cited Isaiah and said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” and gave the purpose of that anointing: “because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor, …  to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.” He was the shoot who would bring justice to the world, not judging, as Isaiah describes, by appearances or deciding by hearsay. That new ordering of things in his kingdom would bring about a revolution. It requires true childlike trust to embrace what Jesus says. Isaiah describes the impact of the Messiah’s coming by means of unimaginable consequences in the animal kingdom that were meant to be a metaphor for what would happen among human beings living in a childlike way by the Spirit: wolves and lambs, leopards and kids, calves and lions, cows and bears, children and cobras, would play together without fear, without bloodshed, without destruction. If that’s what the shoot from Jesse’s stump would bring to the animal kingdom, how much of a greater impact should he have on human beings, as he helps us to live according to his justice, to enter his kingdom, to receive that same Spirit that fills with wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge and awe of the Lord! There are many who on hearing these words will treat them like pie-in-the-sky utopianism, but we’re supposed to receive them conscious of the fact that the power of the Spirit of the Lord and his gifts can bring about that state in which enemies learn how to love each other rather than destroy each other. That’s what the one who is coming in history, mystery, and majesty wants to accomplish. That’s a revolution that will be led by spiritual children. Isaiah says that when the shoot sprouts, “a little child [will] guide” both calf and young lion, a “baby shall play by the cobra’s den and the child lay his hand on the adder’s lair.” That’s not only a prophecy about the child Jesus, but also about the child-like children of the kingdom who will lead this revolution by turning lions, cobras and adders into siblings.
        • The second thing today’s readings teach us is about how we, having received that gift of revelation as children, are meant to share it. As we, in Christ, are filled with the spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge and awe of the Lord, the Spirit sends us forth just like he did the apostles on the day of Pentecost. Like St. John, we can’t keep within “what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we looked upon and touched with our hands concerning the Word of life.” We must “proclaim” it, not just so that others’ eyes and ears may be similarly blessed but so that “our joy may be complete,” because we cannot hold it within. At the end of today’s prophecy from Isaiah, he says that “the root of Jesse,” Jesus, will be “set up as a signal for the nations. The Gentiles shall seek out, for his dwelling shall be glorious.” We’ll sing about this as we draw closer to Christmas in the O Antiphon for December 19, my last daily Mass among you, when we will pray, “O Radix Iesse, qui stas in signum populorum, super quem continebunt reges os suum, quem Gentes deprecabuntur: veni ad liberandum nos, jam noli tardare.” “O shoot from the stump of Jesse, who stand as a sign of the peoples, about whom the kings remain silent and the Gentiles praise: come free us, do not delay.” Jesus will be a sign for the nations, even more, an efficacious sign or sacrament, of God-with-us. And we’re called to take him as that sign to others.
        • This is what the saint we celebrate today did in an extraordinary way. St. Francis Xavier, the patron of the missions, was marked, as we prayed in the opening Collect, by the “zeal of faith” that led him to seek to spread it in multiple places where faith in Christ had never been proclaimed, like portions of India, Borneo, Indonesia, Japan, and even the shores of China. Today the Church has us pray that we might have the same passion, raising up to God the petition that we might “burn with the same zeal” and, after Communion, that God will “enkindle in us that fire of charity with which St. Francis Xavier burned for the salvation of souls.” Every year priests, religious and all those who pray the Liturgy of the Hours ponder this letter he sent in 1544 to his friend, former college roommate and religious superior, St. Ignatius of Loyola. In it we see that zeal of faith, that fire of charity, that is meant to mark us all as we see to bring the Root of Jesus as a sign to all nations. St. Francis Xavier wrote, “We have visited the villages of the new converts who accepted the Christian religion a few years ago. … The native Christians have no priests. They know only that they are Christians. There is nobody to say Mass for them; nobody to teach them the Creed, the Our Father, the Hail Mary and the Commandments of God’s Law. I have not stopped since the day I arrived. I conscientiously made the rounds of the villages. I bathed in the sacred waters all the children who had not yet been baptized. This means that I have purified a very large number of children so young that, as the saying goes, they could not tell their right hand from their left. The older children would not let me say my Office or eat or sleep until I taught them one prayer or another. Then I began to understand: ‘The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.’ I could not refuse so devout a request without failing in devotion myself. I taught them, first the confession of faith in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, then the Apostles’ Creed, the Our Father and Hail Mary. I noticed among them persons of great intelligence. If only someone could educate them in the Christian way of life, I have no doubt that they would make excellent Christians. Many, many people hereabouts are not becoming Christians for one reason only: there is nobody to make them Christians.” Then we get to the heart of his message, something that he wanted to proclaim at his Alma Mater, something that he would want to proclaim here at Columbia. He continued: “Again and again I have thought of going round the universities of Europe, especially Paris, and everywhere crying out like a madman, riveting the attention of those with more learning than charity: ‘What a tragedy: how many souls are being shut out of heaven and falling into hell, thanks to you!’ I wish they would work as hard at this as they do at their books, and so settle their account with God for their learning and the talents entrusted to them. This thought would certainly stir most of them to meditate on spiritual realities, to listen actively to what God is saying to them. They would forget their own desires, their human affairs, and give themselves over entirely to God’s will and his choice. They would cry out with all their heart: Lord, I am here! What do you want me to do? Send me anywhere you like – even to India.” Reading those words soon after they were published for the first time, the future St. Philip Neri went to his spiritual director and said that he thought the Lord was asking him to follow Francis to India. His wise spiritual director told him, “No. Rome will be your Indies!,” and St. Philip worked as hard bringing people back to the faith in Rome after the sack and so much debauchery as St. Francis Xavier had been doing in far away lands. Likewise, for us, Manhattan must be our Indies. The campus of Columbia is our missionary land now. There’s no reason why we can’t do here what St. Francis did in Goa, Malaysia and Japan. He had 46 chromosomes just like us. But he burned with the love for Christ for those who did not know him. And when we burn with a similar fire, we will say, as he wrote in that 1544 letter, “Send me anywhere you like.”
        • When I read those words today I am brought back exactly a decade ago, December 3, 2014. My bishop had called me the previous night at 9 pm, asking if I might come to see him. I was actually in the Detroit airport flying back from Green Bay and told him I couldn’t get to his house until about 11:30 pm. So we set up an appointment the following morning. Because of the urgency with which he wanted to meet me, I knew that my life was about to change, although I didn’t know how. In the morning, before Mass, as I was praying the Office of Readings in the Liturgy of the Hours, I was arrested by St. Francis Xavier’s words, “Send me anywhere you like — even to India.” I realized once again that God was asking of me a blank check, to be willing to go wherever he wanted. When I met with the bishop later that morning, he agonizingly made some polite small talk, as interiorly I impatiently waited to find out where the Lord was sending me. He then told me that he had received a letter from Archbishop Bernardito Auza requesting that I be released to come to work with him. As a diocesan newspaper editor and commentator on Church affairs, I knew the names of all 32 archbishops who head archdioceses in the United States as well as all of the Archbishops who headed Roman departments. I hadn’t heard of Archbishop Auza, whose four-letter name my bishop somehow elongated to five different syllables. I thought he had to be a bishop somewhere in missionary territories. I began to imagine sleeping in mosquito nets and being far away from civilization. For a moment I wondered if I might be able to take my blank check back. Eventually my bishop said something about New York City and I wondered what that meant. I knew Cardinal Dolan was the Archbishop. I remembered that there was one other Archbishop in the city, the papal nuncio to the United Nations, but I thought he was Archbishop Francis Chullikatt from India. Eventually, however, Bishop da Cunha made clear that Archbishop Auza was the Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations and that therefore the request was to come to New York to help in the work of the Holy See to bring the light of Catholic Social teaching to the needs and problems of the world. With an interior sigh of relief, I told my bishop that I would do it! That changed my life, as I came to New York and had the chance for the next seven years to proclaim the Gospel to all nations, all at the same time. It’s also what made possible, eventually, my remaining in New York after that was done to serve as Catholic chaplain at Columbia University and the founding chaplain of the Merton Institute. That’s what has also made possible my being named National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies, trying to promote a missionary spirituality among Catholics in the United States and, under the patronage of St. Francis Xavier, catalyze the support among Americans for the spread of the Gospel worldwide, by actualizing his message and crying out like a madman to have people everywhere recognize that many are not living in relationship with Jesus Christ because too many of us are focused on other things as more important than sharing Jesus’ light and love! Today is a day on which all of us are reminded that the Church and we don’t have a mission, but are a mission, and Christ summons each of us to continue his saving mission. We the Church have been set up as a signal for the nations, conscious that many prophets and kings of all, and people of every race, tongue and social class today, long to see what we see and to hear what we hear.
        • How blessed our eyes are to behold the Lamb of God here on the altar! How blessed are our ears to hear him speaking to us today! How blessed are we to have received the outpouring of the Holy Spirit who once again today seeks to fill us with the spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel, courage, knowledge and awe of the Lord, and to come down upon us to make us one body, one spirit in Christ. With childlike trust, we turn in prayer to Jesus whom we’re about to receive and beg him for all the graces He knows we need to become more childlike and joyful still and to move us inwardly to spend our lives bringing that joy out to those around us, so that we might live with them in the kingdom when all Isaiah’s prophecies will be fulfilled.

          •  

          The readings for today’s Mass were: 

          Reading 1
          IS 11:1-10

          On that day,

          A shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse,
          and from his roots a bud shall blossom.
          The Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him:
          a Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
          A Spirit of counsel and of strength,
          a Spirit of knowledge and of fear of the LORD,
          and his delight shall be the fear of the LORD.
          Not by appearance shall he judge,
          nor by hearsay shall he decide,
          But he shall judge the poor with justice,
          and decide aright for the land’s afflicted.
          He shall strike the ruthless with the rod of his mouth,
          and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked.
          Justice shall be the band around his waist,
          and faithfulness a belt upon his hips.

          Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb,

          and the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
          The calf and the young lion shall browse together,
          with a little child to guide them.
          The cow and the bear shall be neighbors,
          together their young shall rest;
          the lion shall eat hay like the ox.
          The baby shall play by the cobra’s den,
          and the child lay his hand on the adder’s lair.
          There shall be no harm or ruin on all my holy mountain;
          for the earth shall be filled with knowledge of the LORD,
          as water covers the sea.

          On that day,

          The root of Jesse,
          set up as a signal for the nations,
          The Gentiles shall seek out,
          for his dwelling shall be glorious.

          Responsorial Psalm
          PS 72:1-2, 7-8, 12-13, 17
          R. (see 7)  Justice shall flourish in his time, and fullness of peace for ever.
          O God, with your judgment endow the king,
          and with your justice, the king’s son;
          He shall govern your people with justice
          and your afflicted ones with judgment.
          R. Justice shall flourish in his time, and fullness of peace for ever.
          Justice shall flower in his days,
          and profound peace, till the moon be no more.
          May he rule from sea to sea,
          and from the River to the ends of the earth.
          R. Justice shall flourish in his time, and fullness of peace for ever.
          He shall rescue the poor when he cries out,
          and the afflicted when he has no one to help him.
          He shall have pity for the lowly and the poor;
          the lives of the poor he shall save.
          R. Justice shall flourish in his time, and fullness of peace for ever.
          May his name be blessed forever;
          as long as the sun his name shall remain.
          In him shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed;
          all the nations shall proclaim his happiness.
          R. Justice shall flourish in his time, and fullness of peace for ever.
          Alleluia
          R. Alleluia, alleluia.
          Behold, our Lord shall come with power;
          he will enlighten the eyes of his servants.
          R. Alleluia, alleluia.
          Gospel
          LK 10:21-24

          Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said,

          “I give you praise, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
          for although you have hidden these things
          from the wise and the learned
          you have revealed them to the childlike.
          Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will.
          All things have been handed over to me by my Father.
          No one knows who the Son is except the Father,
          and who the Father is except the Son
          and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.”

          Turning to the disciples in private he said,

          “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see.
          For I say to you,
          many prophets and kings desired to see what you see,
          but did not see it,
          and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.”

          The post Eyes That See What Advent and Life Are About, First Tuesday of Advent, December 3, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

          23 min
        • Running Forth To Meet Christ with the Proper Dispositions, First Monday of Advent, December 2, 2024

          Fr. Roger J. Landry

          Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
          Monday of the First Week of Advent
          December 2, 2024
          Is 2:1-5, Ps 122, Mt 8:5-11

           

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

          https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.2.24_Homily_1.mp3

           

          The following points were attempted in this homily: 

          • In Advent, we focus first and foremost on the Lord’s coming. The word Advent itself means “coming” and points to the fact that during this season we renew our awareness that Christ is coming to us in history, mystery and majesty: history in Bethlehem; mystery in the Sacraments, prayer and in those made in his image and likeness; and in majesty at the end of time and the end of our lives. But we don’t wait passively. Christ’s coming is not the only action in this season. As we prayed yesterday in the collect to begin the Mass, we beg the Father for the grace of “resolve to run forth to meet” his Son “with righteous deeds at his coming.” Like the wise bridesmaids in Jesus’ parable (Mt 25), we head out to meet him not merely at times that are convenient but in the middle of the night with lighted lamps. For us to run forth, we need to train, like sprinters in track-and-field, and train not just our physical muscles but our heart and spirit. “Running” to meet Christ who is coming is not principally something external, but interior. Today’s readings, especially the figure of the Roman Centurion in the Gospel, models for us those interior virtues we need this Advent and beyond to run out to encounter the Lord. In the Gospel, the centurion hears that Jesus is on his way to Capernaum, but he’s not content just to wait for him to show up. He goes out to meet him along the way and meets him at the edge of the city. And he went out with various essential Advent attributes.
          • First, he went out to meet him with faith. Jesus is amazed that the Centurion, a non-Jew, has so much faith and exclaims, “In no one in Israel have I found such faith.” The Centurion had a confident assurance that God could give him the miracle that he sought, even if he didn’t see it done. At the beginning of Advent, we can assess whether we go out to meet the Lord in history, mystery and majesty with this type of faith.
          • The second Advent disposition we see in the Centurion is what is at the root of his faith, a sense of obedience that makes him trust in the Lord’s authority. “I too am a man subject to authority,” he said, “with soldiers subject to me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come here,’ and he comes; and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” The Lord Jesus was amazed at that confident faith, something that came from regular obedience of those in authority and grasping with what authority Christ himself must be acting. To be obedient is to act on what one hears. In Hebrew to “hear” and to “obey” are the same word when it comes to hearing God. That’s why St. Paul in his letter to the Romans talked about the goal of the Christian life as the “obedience of faith” (Rom 1:5, 16:26). Faith leads to obedience and obedience similarly strengthens our faith, since we know that the Lord acts with the authority of the one who created the heavens and the earth. Advent is a time to run forth in faith-filled obedience to God and his commands.
          • The third Advent virtue also strengthens our faith. It’s humility. When Jesus, having encountered the Centurion who had “run” out to him, says that he will come to his home to heal his servant, the Centurion replies that he is not worthy to have Jesus enter his home. Even though he was a powerful leader in the Roman army with many men subject to his beck and call, he was still humble and recognized before Jesus that he did not merit even a visit. He was humble before Jesus, because he regarded him obviously as far more than a Jewish carpenter, but intuited that Jesus far outranked him as at least the emissary of God. Advent is a season of humility in which we recognize that we’re not worthy of the Lord who is coming, a reality that is meant to fill us with gratitude at the awesome privilege we have of encountering the Lord. There’s a reason why we use the Centurion’s very words every time we prepare to meet Christ at his coming in mystery during Mass. Advent is a time to advance in the humble awe toward the Lord’s action.
          • The fourth Advent disposition is to unity. The centurion was united in solidarity with his servant and interceded for him. In the first reading, from the Prophet Isaiah, all the nations say, “Come, let us climb the LORD’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths.” In the Psalm today we pray, “Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord” and focus on how Jerusalem, a symbol of God’s people, is “built as a city with compact unity.” There’s a communal dimension to our faith that is essential to understanding what Advent is about. Jesus didn’t come into the world to save us as a whole bunch of isolated lost sheep. He came to form us into a sheepfold, into a family, into a communion. Advent is therefore a time of particularly focused spiritual and material solidarity. It’s a time that we make a pilgrimage not solo, but with others. Jesus pointed to that communion at the end of today’s Gospel scene when he promised, “I say to you, many will come from the east and the west, and will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the banquet in the Kingdom of heaven.” Advent — indeed the whole of life — is a pilgrimage not merely with some friends, but one that Jesus wants to be made by people of every nation, and so it’s a journey to which we intentionally are supposed to be inviting even those we don’t know at all or know well. To make this pilgrimage well, we won’t be just doing it along with others, but united with others. The Jerusalem to which the Jews were ascending, and we ascend together spiritually, has “compact unity.” This points to the type of tight bonds of unifying love we’re called to have toward each other. The Lord wants us to make this pilgrimage together with each other, up close, you and me and all those whom the Lord places together with us. He wants us to help each other. And one of the greatest ways we help each other is through our prayer, which is another key aspect of today’s reading and our overall Advent dispositions. Just like the centurion’s servant, we all need healing and we need to pray for each other to receive the healing and salvation Christ brings, even at a distance.
          • The fifth disposition is joy. We prayed six times in the Psalm about joy. “Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.” Our joint pilgrimage is one meant to be done with great happiness and enthusiasm. We’re supposed to say, “I rejoiced when they said to me, “We will go up to the house of the Lord!” Jesus came into our world so that his joy might be in us and our joy might be complete (Jn 15:11). The Archangel Gabriel’s first words to Mary were “Rejoice!” On Christmas morning, the angels announced to the shepherds “good news of great joy” for all the people. The Lord wants us making the exertion to go up not out of dry duty but out of passionate, enthusiastic joy, a joy that flows from faith, a joy that comes from humility, a joy that can’t restrain itself because of the healing we’ve experienced, as we enter into God’s own joy, which rejoices most over one repentant and reconciled sinner.
          • So as the Lord comes to us this Advent, we sprint out to meet him with faith, obedience, humility, unity, and joy. And the best way we grow in these dispositions is here at Mass as we prepare now to meet Jesus with faith, acknowledging him as our Lord and God; with obedience, as we “do this in memory of” him, as he commanded; with humility, recognizing we’re not worthy to receive him; together with others, made “one Body, one Spirit” in Christ; with joy, because we’re about to receive within the “pearl of great price!,” and open to allowing his glory to flow through us as sap from vine to branches. Our response to the Mass is to say, “Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord” so that he may “instruct us in his ways” in the Liturgy of the Word and so that he might strengthen us to “walk in his paths” by entering into us in the Liturgy of the Eucharist. This is where our Advent begins.

            •  

            The readings for today’s Mass were: 

            Reading 1 IS 2:1-5
            This is what Isaiah, son of Amoz,
            saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
            In days to come,
            The mountain of the LORD’s house
            shall be established as the highest mountain
            and raised above the hills.
            All nations shall stream toward it;
            many peoples shall come and say:
            “Come, let us climb the LORD’s mountain,
            to the house of the God of Jacob,
            That he may instruct us in his ways,
            and we may walk in his paths.”
            For from Zion shall go forth instruction,
            and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
            He shall judge between the nations,
            and impose terms on many peoples.
            They shall beat their swords into plowshares
            and their spears into pruning hooks;
            One nation shall not raise the sword against another,
            nor shall they train for war again.
            O house of Jacob, come,
            let us walk in the light of the LORD!
            Responsorial Psalm PS 122:1-2, 3-4B, 4CD-5, 6-7, 8-9
            R. Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.
            I rejoiced because they said to me,
            “We will go up to the house of the LORD.”
            And now we have set foot
            within your gates, O Jerusalem.
            R. Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.
            Jerusalem, built as a city
            with compact unity.
            To it the tribes go up,
            the tribes of the LORD.
            R. Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.
            According to the decree for Israel,
            to give thanks to the name of the LORD.
            In it are set up judgment seats,
            seats for the house of David.
            R. Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.
            Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!
            May those who love you prosper!
            May peace be within your walls,
            prosperity in your buildings.
            R. Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.
            Because of my relatives and friends
            I will say, “Peace be within you!”
            Because of the house of the LORD, our God,
            I will pray for your good.
            R. Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.
            Alleluia SEE PS 80:4
            R. Alleluia, alleluia.
            Come and save us, LORD our God;
            let your face shine upon us, that we may be saved.
            R. Alleluia, alleluia.

            Gospel MT 8:5-11

            When Jesus entered Capernaum,

            a centurion approached him and appealed to him, saying,
            “Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, suffering dreadfully.”
            He said to him, “I will come and cure him.”
            The centurion said in reply,
            “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof;
            only say the word and my servant will be healed.
            For I too am a man subject to authority,
            with soldiers subject to me.
            And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes;
            and to another, ‘Come here,’ and he comes;
            and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
            When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him,
            “Amen, I say to you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith.
            I say to you, many will come from the east and the west,
            and will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
            at the banquet in the Kingdom of heaven.”

            The post Running Forth To Meet Christ with the Proper Dispositions, First Monday of Advent, December 2, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

            20 min
          • Running Forth to Meet Christ, First Sunday of Advent (C), December 1, 2024

            Fr. Roger J. Landry

            Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
            First Sunday of Advent, C
            December 1, 2024
            Jer 33:14-16, Ps 25, 1 Thess 3:12-4:2, Lk 21:25-28.34-36

             

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

            https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.1.24_CCM_Homily_1.mp3

             

            The following text guided today’s homily: 

            • Today we begin a new liturgical year. Sometimes Christians find this a little strange, that in the Church New Year’s Day begins today, on December 1, the First Sunday of Advent, rather than on January 1, exactly a month from now. But, when you come to think about it, it’s today that makes all the sense in the world and next month that makes little. Our liturgical year traces the life of the central figure in human history, Jesus Christ, from the time when the Jews anxiously awaited his appearance (Advent proper), to his time in the womb, birth, presentation, flight into Egypt and return, finding in the temple, forty days in the desert, baptism, public ministry, miracles, going up to Jerusalem and entering her on a donkey, Last Supper, agony, trial, crucifixion and death, resurrection, ascension, sending the Holy Spirit, and ultimately return in glory that we anticipated in a special way last week on the feast of Christ the King. This is what the liturgical year means. Jesus said to us 17 times in the Gospel, “Follow me!” and each liturgical year we do just that, tracing his footsteps along the route of salvation history, trying to become more and more like him whom we’re following.
            • Compared to this, the civil year means very little. The reason why we celebrate the civil New Year on January 1 is because 2070 years ago, in 46 BC, Julius Caesar decreed that the year would begin with the month of January, the month dedicated to the pagan god Janus, the deity with two faces heading in opposite directions. Caesar thought it was appropriate, because, in a sense, Janus would be facing backward learning the lessons of the year just passed and forward to the year now beginning. How much does this tradition mean to you? Yet most of us will make plans to celebrate it — with Times Square the center of the world’s attention as a crowd counts down from ten and a ball drops on cue — even though the reason for the celebration makes no more sense to us than the lyrics of Auld Lang’s Syne. Today’s New Year’s Day in the Church, on the other hand, really does mean something. If we’re accustomed to the good practice of making New Year’s resolutions, now would be the fitting time to make them. Now’s the time that the Church wants us to make them, so that we can make this new liturgical year a real “year of the Lord” (A.D.).
            • What resolutions should we make as we begin this new year? To make good, intelligent and ultimately useful ones, it would be helpful first to understand the purpose of Advent. Advent is a time in which we prepare to meet Christ in history, mystery and majesty, in the past, present and future. The word Advent is derived from the Latin word “to come,” and our response to Jesus’ coming in Bethlehem 2000 years ago, in prayer, the Sacraments and daily life today, and in glory on the clouds of heaven is summarized by the opening prayer of today’s Mass, in which we “resolve to run forth to meet … Christ with righteous deeds at his coming.” Christ comes to us and we eagerly run out to embrace him.
            • The first way we do so is in history, as we retrace the centuries of spiritual preparation of the Jewish people for the coming of the Messiah. That’s why we lean on the writings of various prophets, like Jeremiah today, Isaiah quite a bit, but also Micah, Zephaniah and others, in order to help us profit from everything God revealed to help get his people ready for the Messiah when he finally came. We know that some were ready — like Mary, St. Joseph, the Shepherds, the Magi, and eventually St. John the Baptist, Simeon, Anna the Prophetess, the disciples and the apostles — but the vast majority of the Jewish people, who had been awaiting the advent of their Messiah for over a thousand years, were simply and sadly not prepared when at last he came. Every Advent, we learn from their mistakes and seek to heed the message of the prophets and make the spiritual pilgrimage to Bethlehem. This is the focus especially of the third and final part of Advent, which begins December 17 and encompasses the Fourth Sunday.
            • The second way we run forth to meet Christ is in mystery, meaning the sacraments, prayer, in the moral life and in the various ways Christ comes to us each day. If most of God’s people were out of it when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, despite centuries of preparation, most of God’s people today seem to behave even more obliviously. We have been prepared by Jesus the Messiah himself, who said, “I am with you always until the end of the age.” He showed us how to pray and promised that he would be in our midst. He gave us his own Body and Blood in the Eucharist and taught us that he was really, truly present. He summarized for us the moral life as life with him, as branches on the Vine, as following him and imitating his example, as loving others as he has loved us first. But the vast majority even of the baptized, who know and call themselves Christians, do not run forth to meet Christ with righteous deeds each day. They live basically like most others live, repeating the mistakes of the ancient Bethlehem inn-keepers, or worse, the mistakes of Herod’s scholars or even sometimes of Herod himself. Every Advent, every new spiritual year, we have the chance to renew ourselves in the most important choice we’ll ever make in life, which is to respond to Jesus’ presence in the world like Mary and Joseph did, centering our whole life on Jesus, rather than keeping him as just as one of many parts of our life, or the periphery of our life, or not at all on our existential radar. The present, meeting Jesus in mystery, is a special focus on the second part of Advent, and particularly of the work of St. John the Baptist, whom we will meet on the Second and Third Sundays.
            • The third and final way we run forth to meet Christ is in majesty, as we prepare for Jesus’ second coming, having learned from the unexpired words of the prophets about how to get ready spiritually to receive Jesus and having put those words into practice by the way we seek to run forth to meet him each day in the Eucharist, in prayer, and in charity. Preparing for Jesus’ second coming is the focus of this First Sunday of Advent and, in some ways, the principal theme of Advent. Just like a good student at the beginning of a course looks over the course description and the syllabus to learn how to approach the class intelligently, so the whole Church looks ahead toward the end the time to learn how we need to live here and now. Jesus is indeed coming again — at the end of time or at the end of life, whichever comes first — and doesn’t want to catch us off guard. He wants us to be ready. The chief purpose of Advent is to help get us ready so that when he comes — even if he comes today — we will be prompt and eager to run forth to embrace him.
            • The readings the Church gives us today are particularly helpful with regard to getting ready for Jesus’ second coming in majesty, but they are likewise useful in terms of meeting Jesus in history and mystery, too. At the beginning of today’s Gospel passage, Jesus speaks of a generalized disorientation with changes in the sun, moon, and stars, all of which used to help the ancients find their bearings. They’ll all be convulsed, together with the waves, and no longer capable of serving that purpose. Then, however, Jesus says, we will “see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” Jesus wants to become the one from whom we get our bearings, who gives us our direction, who orients our entire life. Jesus gives us four verbs describing what we should do as he comes, which will help us live well not just in Advent but throughout life:
              • “Stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand” —  We should lift up our heads, our hearts, our whole existence to our Redeemer. It’s common for us to be weighed down by the things of this world. Like the woman in St. Luke’s Gospel who for 18 years was bent over and incapable of standing up straight, whom Jesus healed on the Sabbath in a synagogue, we often don’t take our eyes off the ground. We focus on material things. We are crushed by our worries. We obsess about what weighs us down. Jesus tells us to get up and raise our minds to him, our hearts to him, and souls to him, with all our strength. Our redemption is at hand, our redeemer is in reach, and he wants us to run forth to embrace him.
              • “Be vigilant” — Elsewhere in the Gospel, Jesus gave a parable about his second coming in which he contrasted the faithful and prudent steward who awaited his Master’s return and faithfully fed himself and others with the nourishment the Master provided, with the unfaithful and foolish servant who said, “My Master is long delayed” and began to get smashed and to abuse the servants under his care. This is the essential lesson of Jesus’ first coming: few were vigilant, but most people were not. Jesus wants us to be alert for every way he comes to us, to recognize his presence, faithfully to feed ourselves and others with the food and gifts he provides.
              • “Pray that you have the strength to escape the imminent tribulations” — Jesus tells us to pray, and specifically to pray that we have the strength to escape the imminent tribulations and to stand before him. He is quite realistic about temptations and our need for strength in the face of them. We remember what happened in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus took Peter, James and John apart from the others to pray with him. He instructed them, “Watch and pray that you may not undergo the test, for the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” Their weak flesh, however, won out. They didn’t stay awake and pray but fell asleep. And when the soldiers came for Jesus, they all failed the test. To remain strong under trial, we must remain with God in prayer. Prayer wakes us up to see that God is alive and is with us. It helps us to escape caving into tribulations but to convert them into opportunities to give witness and glorify God. Advent is meant to be a time of prayer, but we need to choose to make it so.
              • “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life” — To let our hearts become drowsy through worldly pleasures and anxieties is the opposite of standing erect and raising our heads, the contrary to vigilance and prayer. Jesus does not want to let our hearts fall asleep by seeking worldly pleasures, being eaten alive by worries, or anaesthetizing our existence through drunkenness or other addictive escapes. This obsession about pleasure and on escaping pain keeps us from concentrating on Jesus. We remember what Jesus told us in the Parable of the Sower and the Seed, that the thorns in the soil that choke the growth of his action in our life are “anxieties and riches and the pleasures of life” (Lk 8:14). We need to be on guard against them. We need the virtue of courage to fight against our anxieties and fears. We likewise need the virtue of temperance to strengthen us against becoming addicted either to good things or evil. At the beginning of a new liturgical year, as we think about Christ’s second coming, the Church wants us to heed Christ’s words of preparation and to ask for those virtues.
              • In the second reading today, St. Paul tells the Christians in Thessalonika, who were so preoccupied with the Lord’s second coming that some had even stopped working, how to live day-to-day life well in view of the Lord’s definitive advent. His advice is super straightforward. He wants them to “increase and abound in love for one another and for all.” The time we have, he indicates, is a time to grow in love. The best way we prepare to love God when he comes is by loving the neighbor he sends us each day, and even running forth, like the Good Samaritan, to care for our neighbors in need. St. Paul similarly urges them, and us, to “Strengthen your hearts to be blameless in holiness … at the coming of Our Lord Jesus.” He points out, first, that it is principally our hearts that need to be strengthened. The problem is seldom with what we know or don’t know, but what we love or don’t love. Where our treasure is, as Jesus told us in the Sermon on the Mount, there will our heart be. The apostle wants us to strengthen our hearts to be “blameless in holiness,” to get an A+ in hungering and thirsting, choosing and doing what pleases God. He puts forward the example of the saints as well as what they had received from him and his collaborators as examples of how they should conduct themselves. And he summoned all of them to be on guard lest any of them rest on their previous spiritual laurels. If they’re already living in a way pleasing the Lord, he said, they should “do so even more,” as each day is one day closer to Christ’s return. He urges them to “increase and abound,” not to remain satisfied.
              • The Advent wreath we’ve blessed and lit is meant to symbolize this growth, this readiness, this desire of our heart to be blameless in holiness and vigilant and eager in prayer. The most important part of the Advent wreath, we know, is not the color of the candles, which symbolize the hopeful spirit of the weeks, or the evergreens, which symbolize God’s eternal love. The most important part is the flame, which symbolizes our prayerful vigilance for Christ’s coming. Just like the five wise bridesmaids in Jesus’ parable (Mt 25:1-14) whose lamps were always burning in anticipation for the return of the Bridegroom, so the flame of these candles symbolize and remind us of the flame of desire we are called to have for Jesus’ return. That fire, that flame, grows week-by-week as a sign of how our eagerness is supposed to be growing toward becoming in us an all-consuming bonfire. The Advent wreath, here in Church, or at the entrance to the Merton Institute, or even in our homes and dorm rooms, is, like a candle in a window in former days when one was expecting a visitor, a sign of vigilance, of not falling asleep, of eager longing for the arrival of that guest. It’s an expression of how we are getting increasingly ready to run out to meet Christ when he comes and knocks.
              • With all of this in mind, let’s get practical about how we’re going to live the gift of this Advent and the new spiritual year that begins today. There’s an annual temptation to waste Advent, like most in our culture, who don’t live this season much if at all, who the day after Thanksgiving start celebrating a “Holiday season” that basically worships, not the baby Jesus, but commerce; that leads many people to spend more time shopping than they do in Church; that gets them to focus on gifts for lots of people but not really on the gift of themselves to Jesus and Jesus’ incredible self-gift to them. Others can focus more on getting and decorating Christmas Trees and preparing to welcome Santa Claus than getting their souls ready and preparing to embrace Christ. Students at Columbia can be tempted during this season to focus all of their attention on cramming for their exams, full of worldly cares and anxieties, and to spend little time preparing for the final exam of life when Christ comes again. Other people can spend Advent going from one Christmas party to another and celebrating, honestly, not Jesus, his love and his teachings, but mistletoes, eggnog and the very “drunkenness and carousing” Jesus warns us about in the Gospel.
              • We have a choice to make about the type of Advent we’re going to lead. What resolutions will we make to live Advent well and make this new spiritual year a true year of the Lord, the best spiritual year of our life until now? I’m going to ask you to consider a few things:
                • Run forth to meet Jesus in the Eucharist as often as you can throughout the Advent Season and beyond. The Bridegroom is here and the wisest will come out to meet him as much as possible. If you can’t come to Mass each day because you’ve got class at that hour, I’d encourage you at least to meditate on the readings with the help of the free copy of The Word Among Us, or to watch Mass at any time of time on your smart phone or computer. I’d urge you as often as you can to raise your heads and to your Redeemer who is at hand, and who wants to place himself on your hand or on your tongue, so that from within he can strengthen your heart and lift your mind.
                • Run forth to meet Jesus in prayer. If you’re not yet coming to adore God here in the Eucharist, give him this gift as you prepare for his birthday at Christmas. Imitate the shepherds and the Magi and Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem and come to worship him. Make your own the words of today’s Psalm and come to say to him, “Your ways, O Lord, make known to me; teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my savior, and for you I wait all the day!” Next Saturday, we will have an Advent Morning of Recollection here in Church from 9 through 12:45, with talks on prayer, Advent, adoration and Mass. Please try to make it part of your Advent journey.
                • Run forth to meet Jesus in his mercy. Try to make the best confession of our life this Advent season and then come at least once a month throughout this year to obtain Jesus’ healing. Whenever we’re preparing to receive guests, we like to tidy up the house. Confession is the way by which Jesus himself helps us through his priests to prepare to receive him within in Holy Communion “blameless in holiness” and so be ready to receive him well at his coming with all his holy ones at the end of time. I hear confessions Monday through Friday from 11 to noon. I’ll hear confessions during the Morning of Recollection on Saturday, starting at 8 am. On the first day of study period, December 10, I’ll hear confessions all day from 9 am through 5:30 pm, except the 12:10 Mass, to make it as convenient as possible for you to come. Jesus has come into the world as the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world. Let him this Advent take away yours!
                • Finally, run forth to others to help them come to meet Jesus with you in his Body and Blood, in prayer, and in his mercy. This is actually the greatest gift you could give someone for Christmas. This is also a gift that would please God very much. In the midst of a world that is trying to take Christ out of Christmas, it’s crucial for us who believe in Him, who have received the countless gifts of his love, to spread our love of him and keep him front and center not only in the way we spend our time this Advent season, the way we prepare our souls, but also the way we imitate his generosity and share in his saving mission by helping others come with us to meet him.
                • Each Advent is a gift of the Lord, to bring us back to what is most important in life, God’s love for us and our response to him in faith and love. On this first day of this new liturgical year, on this first day of the rest of our life, let us ask the Lord for the grace to make this a truly holy year. As he speaks to us and prepares to give himself to us as the Word-made-flesh in Holy Communion, let us ask him to help us run forth to embrace him, to stand erect, with hearts and heads strengthened and uplifted, increasing and abounding in love and righteous deeds, vigilant and prayerful, absolved and blameless in holiness, with lives not drowned in fear, anxiety or addictions but filled with fortitude, temperance and the inebriation of his grace. The Lord is coming in history, mystery and majesty. Let us run forth to meet him! And let us help each other to hasten to meet him, so that changed by him, we might together sprint with him throughout the year drawing ever closer to eternity. Come, Lord Jesus!

                  •  

                  The readings for today’s Mass were: 

                  Reading I
                  Jer 33:14-16

                  The days are coming, says the LORD,

                  when I will fulfill the promise
                  I made to the house of Israel and Judah.
                  In those days, in that time,
                  I will raise up for David a just shoot ;
                  he shall do what is right and just in the land.
                  In those days Judah shall be safe
                  and Jerusalem shall dwell secure;
                  this is what they shall call her:
                  “The LORD our justice.”

                  Responsorial Psalm
                  Ps 25:4-5, 8-9, 10, 14

                  R. (1b)  To you, O Lord, I lift my soul.

                  Your ways, O LORD, make known to me;
                  teach me your paths,
                  Guide me in your truth and teach me,
                  for you are God my savior,
                  and for you I wait all the day.
                  R. To you, O Lord, I lift my soul.
                  Good and upright is the LORD;
                  thus he shows sinners the way.
                  He guides the humble to justice,
                  and teaches the humble his way.
                  R. To you, O Lord, I lift my soul.
                  All the paths of the LORD are kindness and constancy
                  toward those who keep his covenant and his decrees.
                  The friendship of the LORD is with those who fear him,
                  and his covenant, for their instruction.
                  R. To you, O Lord, I lift my soul.

                  Reading II
                  1 Thes 3:12—4:2

                  Brothers and sisters:

                  May the Lord make you increase and abound in love
                  for one another and for all,
                  just as we have for you,
                  so as to strengthen your hearts,
                  to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father
                  at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones.  Amen.

                  Finally, brothers and sisters,

                  we earnestly ask and exhort you in the Lord Jesus that,
                  as you received from us
                  how you should conduct yourselves to please God
                  and as you are conducting yourselves
                  you do so even more.
                  For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.

                  Alleluia
                  Ps 85:8

                  R. Alleluia, alleluia.

                  Show us, Lord, your love;
                  and grant us your salvation.
                  R. Alleluia, alleluia.

                  Gospel
                  Lk 21:25-28, 34-36

                  Jesus said to his disciples:

                  “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars,
                  and on earth nations will be in dismay,
                  perplexed by the roaring of the sea and the waves.
                  People will die of fright
                  in anticipation of what is coming upon the world,
                  for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
                  And then they will see the Son of Man
                  coming in a cloud with power and great glory.
                  But when these signs begin to happen,
                  stand erect and raise your heads
                  because your redemption is at hand.

                  “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy

                  from carousing and drunkenness
                  and the anxieties of daily life,
                  and that day catch you by surprise like a trap.
                  For that day will assault everyone
                  who lives on the face of the earth.
                  Be vigilant at all times
                  and pray that you have the strength
                  to escape the tribulations that are imminent
                  and to stand before the Son of Man.”

                  The post Running Forth to Meet Christ, First Sunday of Advent (C), December 1, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                  32 min
                • First Sunday of Advent (C), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, November 30, 2024

                  Fr. Roger J. Landry

                  Conversations with Consequences Podcast
                  Homily for the First Sunday of Advent, C, Vigil
                  November 30, 2024

                   

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

                  https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.30.24_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, in which he gives us the orientations he would like us to have as we begin the Season of Advent and a new liturgical year.
                  • We’ve just finished the national celebration of Thanksgiving, in which we’ve had a chance to thank God for all of the ways with which he blesses us, year in, year out. One of the sources of gratitude we should have is for the way he constantly gives us new beginnings, so that we can improve on what we’ve gotten right and learn from our mistakes in order to become more like him and take greater advantage of the gift of time we have to grow to love him and others more. Advent is the time in which we go back to the beginnings to get a fresh spiritual start.
                  • During Advent, we prepare for Christ’s second coming by reliving the preparation of the Jewish people for his first coming and by learning better how to embrace him in the present in the various ways he comes to us, most especially in prayer, the Sacraments and in the people he sends us each day.
                  • Jesus begins this Sunday’s passage by talking about the end times, which he says will feature changes in the sun, moon and stars, the shaking of the heavens and the roaring of the seas and the waves. He was describing how the things by which people at his time would get their bearings — like the sun during the day and the moon and the stars at night — would be dramatically altered and people would be like mariners on convulsing seas with think cloud cover by which they can’t get their bearings. Things in which people formerly took their security would be no more. At that time, he said, we would see the Son of Man, Jesus our incarnate Lord, coming on a cloud with power and great glory. We celebrated last week the Solemnity of Christ the King and Jesus is using a divine image taken from last Sunday’s first reading from the Book of the Prophet Daniel. Jesus was indicating that we would now have to find our bearings exclusively in him, in his divinity shining through our humanity.
                  • To this coming, Jesus says, we should respond in four ways.
                  • First, he says we should stand erect and raise our heads because our redemption is at hand. We shouldn’t try to hide. We shouldn’t run away. We should lift up our heads, our hearts, our whole existence to our Redeemer. It’s common for us to be weighed down by the things of this world. Like the woman in St. Luke’s Gospel who for 18 years was bent over and incapable of standing up straight, whom Jesus healed on the Sabbath in a synagogue, we often don’t take our eyes off the ground. We focus on our worries; we obsess about what weighs us down. As we begin this new liturgical year, Jesus tells us to get up and raise our minds to him, our hearts to him, and souls to him, with all our strength. Our redemption is at hand, it’s at arms’ reach, and he wants us to seize it. He comes precisely to redeem us and that should make us eager, not alarmed.
                  • Second, he tell us to be vigilant. Elsewhere in the Gospel, Jesus gave a parable about his second coming in which he contrasted the faithful and prudent steward who awaited his Master’s return and faithfully fed others and himself with the nourishment the Master provided with the unfaithful and stupid servant who said “My Master is long delayed” and began to get smashed and to neglect and abuse the servants under his care. When Jesus came into the world the first time, we recall that some people were vigilant, prayerful and ready, but most people were not. Mary Immaculate was ready and said a hearty “yes” to God’s will. St. Joseph was ready and therefore capable of adapting quickly to God’s mysterious plans. The shepherds were ready, vigilant at night, and ran to Bethlehem as soon as they heard the good news of great joy. The Magi were ready, so alert in fact that they were able to discern the newborn king’s presence through the presence of a star. On the other hand, Herod was not ready, too caught up in his own pride and sensuality, in his own fears and anxieties, to recognize the Source of his authority. The inn keepers were not ready, too ensconced in their business and in their need for order that they didn’t have room to house their Creator. The scholars of the law were not ready to make even the short six-mile journey downhill from Jerusalem to Bethlehem to discover and learn from the Divine Legislator. The vast majority of the Jewish people, who had been awaiting the coming of the Messiah for centuries, were simply and sadly not prepared when at last he came. Jesus does not want us to be caught off guard like them. He wants us to learn from their mistakes. He wants us to be primed for every way he comes to us, to recognize his presence, to feed ourselves and others faithfully with the gifts he provides. He wants this new Church year we begin this Sunday to be the best spiritual year of our life.
                  • Third, he tells us to pray, and specifically to pray that we have the strength to escape the imminent tribulations and to stand before him. He is quite realistic about temptations and about our need for strength in the face of them. We remember what happened in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus took Peter, James and John apart from the others to pray with him. He instructed them, “Watch and pray that you may not undergo the test, for the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” Their weak flesh, however, won out. They didn’t stay awake and pray, but fell asleep. And when the soldiers came for Jesus, they all failed the test. To remain strong under trial, we must remain with God, and we abide with Him in prayer. Prayer wakes us up to see that God is alive and is with us. It helps us to escape caving into tribulations but to convert them into opportunities to give witness and glorify God.
                  • Lastly, Jesus tells us to make sure that our hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life. This is the opposite of standing erect and raising our heads. This is contrary to vigilance and prayer. The way Jesus does not want to live is to let our hearts fall asleep by seeking worldly pleasures, or being eaten alive by worries, or by anaesthetizing our existence through drunkenness or other addictive escapes. This obsession about pleasure and on escaping pain keeps us from concentrating on Jesus. We can’t lift our hearts up to the Lord if the heart is asleep.
                  • So as we begin this new liturgical year, it’s a time for us to make some resolutions based on Jesus’ imperatives to raise our heads and hearts to God, to remain vigilant, to pray, and to be sober. GK Chesterton once said, “The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions.” If we don’t make resolutions now, we may never make them. It’s a time for us to make a concrete resolution to pray more and better each day. It’s an occasion to make the choice to come to daily Mass, seeking to meet with eagerness the same Jesus in the Eucharist we would hope to meet when he comes on the clouds. It’s an opportunity for us to make straight the paths of the Lord through not just a good confession but the best confession of our life. It’s another chance for us to become Good Samaritans, to care for those in need, to sacrifice lovingly for our neighbor in imitation of the way Jesus lovingly sacrificed for us. It’s the moment to stand erect, raise our heads, defibrillate our hearts, stay alert and enter into communion with Jesus.
                  • One means by which Catholics in various places throughout the centuries have sought to turn this Advent summons into devotion is through the use of the Advent wreath, which we will bless in our Churches and many of us will use in our homes. The most important part of the Advent wreath, we know, is not the color of the candles, which symbolize the hopeful spirit of the weeks, or the evergreens, which symbolize God’s eternal love. The most important part is the flame, which symbolizes our prayerful vigilance for Christ’s coming. Just like the five wise bridesmaids in Jesus’ parable whose lamps were always burning in anticipation for the return of the Bridegroom, so the flame of these candles symbolizes and reminds us of the flame of desire we are called to have for Jesus’ return. The Advent wreath with its light is meant to help us to remain always ready for Christ’s light to irradiate our entire life. It’s a sign of vigilance, of not falling asleep, of not letting our faith in his love and our longing for him taper off. It’s an external sign of how week by week, not just throughout Advent but through our year and life, our flame of love for God is supposed to be growing until our entire existence is a living flame of love, burning for the coming of Christ.
                  • Advent is ultimately a gift of the Lord to bring us back to what is most important in life, God’s love for us and our response to him in faith and love. Filled with gratitude after having marked Thanksgiving, as we prepare for this first day of this new liturgical year, let us ask the Lord for the grace to make this upcoming liturgical year a truly holy one, a year of prayer, a year of faith, a year of increased love, a true year of the Lord! O Come, O Come Emmanuel!

                    •  

                    The Gospel reading on which the homily was based was: 

                    Gospel
                    Lk 21:25-28, 34-36

                    Jesus said to his disciples:

                    “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars,
                    and on earth nations will be in dismay,
                    perplexed by the roaring of the sea and the waves.
                    People will die of fright
                    in anticipation of what is coming upon the world,
                    for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
                    And then they will see the Son of Man
                    coming in a cloud with power and great glory.
                    But when these signs begin to happen,
                    stand erect and raise your heads
                    because your redemption is at hand.

                    “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy

                    from carousing and drunkenness
                    and the anxieties of daily life,
                    and that day catch you by surprise like a trap.
                    For that day will assault everyone
                    who lives on the face of the earth.
                    Be vigilant at all times
                    and pray that you have the strength
                    to escape the tribulations that are imminent
                    and to stand before the Son of Man.”

                    The post First Sunday of Advent (C), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, November 30, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                    10 min
                  • Learning with Our Lady to Sing the Song of the Lamb, 34th Wednesday (II), November 27, 2024

                    Fr. Roger J. Landry

                    Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
                    Wednesday of the 34th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
                    Memorial of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal
                    November 27, 2022
                    Rev 15:1-4, Ps 98, Lk 21:12-19

                     

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

                    https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.27.24_Homily_1.mp3

                     

                     

                    The following points were attempted in the homily: 

                    • Today Jesus continues to describe in the Gospel what will happen at his second coming. Yesterday he mentioned some of the physical, international, meteorological and geological events, from the destruction of the temple, to wars and insurrections, to earthquakes, famines, plagues and mighty signs from the sky. Today he turns to what will happen to his followers. It may make the events he described yesterday seem appealing by comparison: he describes how we will be seized and persecuted, handed over to religious and civil authorities, put into prisons, betrayed by parents, siblings, relatives, and friends, hated by all because of his name, and some of us killed.
                    • Yet Jesus doesn’t preach this as bad news. He says that there is a two-fold purpose for all of this, one to strengthen us as devout disciples and the other as ardent apostles. First, it’s meant to help us to secure our salvation: Jesus says “by your perseverance you will secure your lives.” This means not that salvation will be given to us as a reward for “objective perseverance,” but that to be saved we need the subjective virtue of perseverance and he wants to train us in it. Second, he says it will lead to our effectively carrying out our apostolate: all of this “will lead to your giving testimony.” With regard to the latter point, he assures us that “I myself will give you a wisdom in speaking that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute.” He also promises that even though we will be hated, suffer, and some of us will be put to death, “not a hair on your head will be destroyed,” since every follicle is under God’s providential care, he’s numbered each one and we’ll get back every strand at the resurrection of the body. In order to grasp this passage, however, it’s key for us candidly to acknowledge two things that occasionally make us and other Christians uncomfortable.
                    • First, Jesus never promised that being a Christian would be easy. He said, in fact, the opposite. He told us that to be his disciple we’d need to deny ourselves, pick up our Cross each day and follow him whose footsteps eventually became bloody and whose feet were eventually nailed to a Cross. We need to face squarely what Jesus says about the Christian life, because unless we grasp it, we will not persevere and save our souls. If we don’t grasp, for example, that we will be hated by many people, that we will be betrayed by family members and friends, that we may have to suffer from civil and religious believers on account of our fidelity to Jesus, then when those things happen, we might lose heart and abandon Jesus. If the martyrs never grasped that Jesus was saying that as Christians they might be martyred, they might never have remained faithful when they were being arrested and tortured for Christ. If a wife didn’t realize she might suffer from her husband if she seeks to love Jesus with all her mind, heart, soul and strength, she might not persevere in fidelity. I don’t know how some priests and religious would survive the barrage of criticism we normally get for faithfully preaching and teaching the Gospel of life and love or about treating immigrants as we would treat Christ unless we knew that, like Jesus, we would be hated, even by some good people, for doing so, even sometimes from our own families. Jesus is telling all of us clearly about the “cost” of being his disciple, so that we don’t have “buyer’s remorse,” but rather give all we have to obtain the “pearl of great price” knowing that the purchase price may require even our own blood.
                    • Second, Jesus clearly has a one-track mind when it comes to our life on this earth. He doesn’t consider our earthly existence an absolute value, just like he didn’t consider his own earthly existence one either. Rather, he tells us that in order to save our life we have to lose it, that in order to bear fruit we need to fall to the ground like a grain of wheat and die. That’s the only way to make sense of what he says today. He’ll allow us to be persecuted, imprisoned, interrogated, betrayed, hated and even killed in order to bring about our eternal salvation and give us a chance to share the Gospel with others. Our physical life isn’t as valuable to him as our salvation or our preaching the Gospel in suffering. God permits our suffering and even our physical death in order to bring about these more important goods. We know from Church history how many conversions happened due to the preaching with words and witness of the martyrs. St. Stephen’s death was the occasion of the conversion of St. Paul. So many guards converted seeing and hearing the joy of the early martyrs as they approached death. Jesus’ own death, we know, led to the conversion of the centurion and countless others. Jesus will easily permit our death if through our death we may bring others to the path of life. This is an important lesson for us. Jesus may likewise, for example, allow us to get cancer if through our suffering we may not only grow in faith to secure our eternal life but convert some of the other patients or the medical personnel in the oncology ward. God has a one-track mind when it comes to what’s most important: our salvation and others’. And unless we’re willing to sacrifice our life for our and others’ salvation, we may not persevere and we may not bear apostolic fruit. We also need to see, however, that Jesus doesn’t leave us on our own with regard to these challenges. He promises us that he will give us himself to sustain us. “I myself shall give you,” he promises, “a wisdom in speaking that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute.” He himself will ensure that “not a hair on your head will be destroyed” eternally. So we should never fear when this occurs because we know Jesus will be with us.
                    • All of these lessons about perseverance toward salvation and witness are depicted in the Church in triumph in today’s first reading from the Book of Revelation. There St. John says he saw a “great and awe-inspiring sign.” We would expect to see something beautiful and uplifting, but what he says, at first glimpse, seems frightening: “seven angels with the seven last plagues through which God’s fury is accomplished.” He goes on to day he was a “sea of glass mingled with fire” —  fire is a sign of judgment— and people standing on top of it. Now we get to what was great and awe-inspiring: they were “holding God’s harps” and they sang two songs: the “song of Moses” and the “song of the Lamb.” The reference to Moses helps to bring it all together. After the ten plagues, Moses had led the Israelites through the desert and the Red Sea to the promised land. Even though the Jews had been enslaved by the Egyptians, even though they were being persecuted, chased and hunted down for destruction, God saved them, helping them to do the impossible, pass through the Red Sea on dry ground, to salvation. And we know what they did immediately after the arrived on the other shore and saw those who were following them as if they were prey perish in the Red Sea behind them. We hear it every Easter vigil: “Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord: ‘I will sing to the Lord, for he is gloriously triumphant; horse and chariot he has cast into the sea. My strength and my courage is the Lord, and he has been my savior. He is my God, I praise him; the God of my father, I extol him. The Lord is a warrior, Lord is his name! Pharaoh’s chariots and army he hurled into the sea; the elite of his officers were submerged in the Red Sea. The flood waters covered them, they sank into the depths like a stone. Your right hand, O Lord, magnificent in power, your right hand, O Lord, has shattered the enemy. In your great majesty you overthrew your adversaries; you loosed your wrath to consume them like stubble. … Who is like to you among the gods, O Lord? Who is like to you, magnificent in holiness? … In your mercy you led the people you redeemed; in your strength you guided them to your holy dwelling. … The Lord shall reign forever and ever” (Ex 15:1-18). That’s the song that those who had “won the victory over the beast [the devil] and its image” were singing as they were standing on the sea of glass and fire. In the Lamb they had won an even greater victory and experienced an even more important Passover, from death into life, through the fire of suffering and judgment. They sang the “song of Moses” and the “song of the Lamb,” and the latter was one, as we heard on Monday, that “seemed to be a new hymn” and could only be learned by the “hundred and forty-four thousand who had been ransomed from the earth” and who “follow the Lamb wherever he goes.” It could only be sung by those who had experienced suffering together with the Lamb and had triumphed over the beast. What was their hymn? The Book of Revelation tells us. It’s a hymn that ties together so many parts of the Psalms that the saints and martyrs lived on earth. Notice that it’s all about God, not about them: “Great and wonderful are your works, Lord God almighty (Ps 92:5; 139:14). Just and true are your ways, O king of the nations (Ps 145:7). Who will not fear you, Lord, or glorify your name? (Ps 86:9) For you alone are holy (Ps 99:3). All the nations will come and worship before you (Ps 86:9), for your righteous acts have been revealed” (Ps 98:2). That’s a hymn that God wants us all singing! But in order for us to sing it, we, too, have to pass through fire, we have to be willing, like the saints and martyrs, to persevere in faith, to be persecuted, hated, even struck down by family members, by civil leaders and religious leaders, as a pretext for our giving witness that will proclaim that God and all his works are truly wonderful, true, just and holy.
                    • How do we learn to become secure by faith and learn to sing the triumphant songs of Moses and the Lamb? One great help we have is the example and intercession of Our Lady. Today the Church celebrates her under the title of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, who on November 27, 1830, appeared to St. Catherine Labouré at the Daughters of Charity Convent on Rue du Bac in Paris. We see in our Lady’s life that she was courageously willingly to allow her own heart to be pierced out of fidelity to her Son and his Mission. We see how she was able to suffer with him all the way to Calvary, standing at the foot of his Cross. And she wants to help us persevere courageously whenever we are enduring what her Son describes, so that we might sing his triumph not just after the persecutions are over but even during them. When Mary came to St. Catherine, she asked her to have a medal struck with the words, “O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.” Recourse means to “run-back,” and those who run back to Mary in distress will find her always compassionate, no matter the circumstance. If we are frightened when it comes to thinking about suffering or martyrdom, death and judgment, we should run to her who is the Consolation of the Afflicted and the Gate of Heaven. In the image that St. Catherine saw and had struck that Mary revealed to her, Mary had rings on her various fingers that were as radiant as the sun, but a few of the rings were dull without light. St. Catherine asked why some were resplendent and others not. Mary replied that the luminous rings symbolized the graces that God had flow through her hands for those who had recourse to her; the dull rings were graces that God would have given through her but people never asked. She wants to give more, to each of us, than we actually ask for. Are any of those graces for the security in faith that will give us the courage to be bold in giving witness to Jesus? In our life, we’ve made some of her rings shine and others remain dull. Today’s feast is an opportunity for us to remember this truth and to run back to her help often, not only so that all her fingers shine but so that she can strengthen our faith so that, with her, we might shine forever in the Lord’s kingdom. We run to her to ask her for her help so that we might live secure on the Blessed Fruit of her womb, the Way, the Truth and the Life, the stone rejected by the builders that has become the cornerstone, and live with him in his kingdom on earth so as to live with him in his heavenly kingdom forever.
                    • Today as we enter into the new and eternal Passover in the Holy Eucharist, we ask God the Father to send the Holy Spirit to strengthen us to enter into Jesus’ suffering and death so that we might enter into his life and eternal glory on the other side of the sea of glass and fire. We ask him to fill us with Jesus’ words, with a wisdom in speaking that everyone will be powerless to resist and refute, so that we bring others to him and persevere with them until the eschaton where we hope to sing the Song of Moses and of the Lamb with Our Lady, St. Catherine Labouré and all the saints!

                      •  

                      The readings for today’s Mass: 

                      Reading 1 rv 15:1-4
                      I, John, saw in heaven another sign, great and awe-inspiring:
                      seven angels with the seven last plagues,
                      for through them God’s fury is accomplished
                      .Then I saw something like a sea of glass mingled with fire.
                      On the sea of glass were standing those
                      who had won the victory over the beast
                      and its image and the number that signified its name.
                      They were holding God’s harps,
                      and they sang the song of Moses, the servant of God,
                      and the song of the Lamb:
                      “Great and wonderful are your works,
                      Lord God almighty.
                      Just and true are your ways,
                      O king of the nations.
                      Who will not fear you, Lord,
                      or glorify your name?
                      For you alone are holy.
                      All the nations will come
                      and worship before you,
                      for your righteous acts have been revealed.”
                      Responsorial Psalm ps 98:1, 2-3ab, 7-8, 9
                      R. (Rev. 15: 3b) Great and wonderful are all your works, Lord, mighty God!
                      Sing to the LORD a new song,
                      for he has done wondrous deeds;
                      His right hand has won victory for him,
                      his holy arm.
                      R. Great and wonderful are all your works, Lord, mighty God!
                      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. Great and wonderful are all your works, Lord, mighty God!
                      Let the sea and what fills it resound,
                      the world and those who dwell in it;
                      Let the rivers clap their hands,
                      the mountains shout with them for joy.
                      R. Great and wonderful are all your works, Lord, mighty God!
                      Before the LORD, for he comes,
                      for he comes to rule the earth;
                      He will rule the world with justice
                      and the peoples with equity.
                      R. Great and wonderful are all your works, Lord, mighty God!
                      Gospel lk 21:12-19
                      Jesus said to the crowd:
                      “They will seize and persecute you,
                      they will hand you over to the synagogues and to prisons,
                      and they will have you led before kings and governors
                      because of my name.
                      It will lead to your giving testimony.
                      Remember, you are not to prepare your defense beforehand,
                      for I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking
                      that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute.
                      You will even be handed over by parents,
                      brothers, relatives, and friends,
                      and they will put some of you to death.
                      You will be hated by all because of my name,
                      but not a hair on your head will be destroyed.
                      By your perseverance you will secure your lives.”

                      The post Learning with Our Lady to Sing the Song of the Lamb, 34th Wednesday (II), November 27, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                      17 min
                    • The Eucharist and Family Life, Mater Salvatoris College Preparatory School, Stamford, CT, November 26, 2024

                      Fr. Roger J. Landry

                      Mater Salvatoris College Preparatory School
                      Stamford, Connecticut
                      November 26, 2024

                       

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

                      https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.26.24_The_Eucharist_and_Family_Life_1.mp3

                       

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

                      The Eucharist and Family Life

                       

                      The post The Eucharist and Family Life, Mater Salvatoris College Preparatory School, Stamford, CT, November 26, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                      1 hr 9 min
                    • Young Eucharistic Saints: Models to Follow, Mater Salvatoris College Preparatory School, Stamford, CT, November 26, 2024

                      Fr. Roger J. Landry

                      Mater Salvatoris College Preparatory School
                      Stamford, Connecticut
                      November 26, 2024

                       

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

                      https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.26.24_Young_Eucharistic_Saints_1.mp3

                       

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

                      Young Eucharistic Saints Models to Follow

                       

                      The post Young Eucharistic Saints: Models to Follow, Mater Salvatoris College Preparatory School, Stamford, CT, November 26, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                      47 min
                    • Embracing the Lord, the King, Who Comes To Rule the Earth, 34th Tuesday (II), November 26, 2024

                      Fr. Roger J. Landry

                      Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
                      Tuesday of the 34th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
                      November 26, 2024
                      Rev 14:14-19, Ps 96, Lk 21:5-11

                       

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

                      https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.26.24_Homily_1.mp3

                       

                      The following points were attempted in the homily: 

                      • Throughout the month of November, but especially in this last week of the liturgical year, the Church has us ponder the four last things. Today the Church puts before us lessons on the first two last things, death and judgment, so that we might prepare well for them, as true Christians.
                      • Many of us when we think about death and judgment can be filled with fear, anxiety, even dread. On the surface today’s readings might buttress those trepidations. In the first reading, the Book of Revelation describes the time of judgment as two angels and someone looking like a son of man coming out with sharp sickles in their hands to reap the harvest of judgment, being instructed to use that sickle to “cut the clusters from the earth’s vines, for its grapes are ripe” and then throwing them into the “great wine press of God’s fury.” In the Gospel, Jesus describes how all the stones and votive offerings in the resplendent Temple of Jerusalem will be thrown down, how there will be impostors coming and saying deceptively “I am he” and the “time has come!,” how there will be wars, insurrections, earthquakes, famines, plagues and “awesome sights and mighty signs” from the sky. All of this can make us think that death and judgment will be straight out of a Stephen King horror movie in which we’ve become the victims.
                      • But fear is not supposed to be our reaction. Jesus tells us in the Gospel, “Do not be deceived,” “Do not follow them!,” and “Do not be terrified.” He’s describing these events so that we can be at peace while they occur. We see it in St. Matthew’s parallel version of today’s Gospel. After he describes what will happen at the end of time he says, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” He wants us to build our lives on his word as the foundation of rock that will keep us secure even when the earthquakes, wars, insurrections, famines and plagues happen. Everything else is like building on sand (Mt 7:24-29). The proper reaction is likewise summarized by the Responsorial Psalm, in which we prayed four times, “The Lord comes to judge the earth!,” and added, “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 shall all the trees of the forest 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.” We’re to focus more on the Lord than we do on these events and we’re supposed to focus on him both now and in anticipation of that moment. As long as we’re not being deceived by impostors but living by the Lord’s truth, as long as we’re not following the pretenders but following the Good Shepherd, as long as we’re not focusing on terrors but recognizing that the Lord seeks to tell us, “Do not be afraid, it is I!,” then there’s absolutely no reason to fear death and judgment. In fact, we should look forward to the Lord’s coming and the signs that augur that his second coming is near. It’s only when we’re not really living as the Lord wants in the present that we begin to become afraid.
                      • With regard to our attitude toward the Lord’s coming, I love to tell a story from my childhood. Today is actually the 20,000th day of my life and so, as we prepare for Thanksgiving this Thursday, it’s a time for me to give thanks for the whole of my life. Today I give thanks for one of the lessons from the time I was a boy. My father would leave for work at 4 am to commute to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and would come back each day, almost like clockwork, between 4:10 and 4:15 pm. We would all be excited once it got to 4 pm. At about 4:10, we’d hear the brakes squealing on our own Ford Van as it came to a stop and then hear my father shut the heavy steel door. All four of us kids and our black labrador retriever Toby would run to the back door all hoping to be the first person to jump up into my dad’s strong arms and give him a hug, a kiss and a hearty, “Welcome home, Dad!” That was most days. There were several occasions, however, in which we had done something in which my mother said sternly, “I’m going to tell your father what you did when he comes home!” On those days, when it came to be 4 pm, we started sweating even in the dead of winter. When the brakes squealed and the van door slammed, rather than running to greet my father, we would try to find the biggest pile of dirty clothes, or the darkest closet, in order to hide from him! I think this is an appropriate image to describe how we prepare for the Lord’s coming. When we’re living in a way that would make him proud, when we’re living as he would expect, when we’re living with love for him and for others, we can’t wait for him to return. It’s only when we’re behaving in a way we know he wouldn’t approve of, when we’re being naughty, that we dread his return.
                      • And so the real lesson of today’s readings is for us to live today how we would want to be found by the Lord if today were the day of the Lord. It’s to live without fear, following him in truth, walking by faith, loving him and others as he taught us. In the image from the Book of Revelation, it means living in such a way that we’re becoming ripe, that our grapes are maturing with Jesus’ own juice poured out in love for God and others leaving nothing back, which happens naturally when we’re living as branches attached to Him the Vine (Jn 15). If we’re living as wild grapes producing sour wine, that will be obvious to everyone, to God and to us in the judgment of the great wine press the Book of Revelation foretells; if, on the other hand, we’re living as we ought, as branches on the vine, we know that the wine we produce will be greater than anything produced by the best vineyards at vintage time.
                      • That’s what the Lord would like to see from us as well. Each day at Mass, Jesus gives us his body and blood and attaches us ever more deeply as branches to Him who is the Vine, so that his very sap, his lifeblood, flows through us, making it capable for us to spend ourselves without reserve for God and others united to Christ who gave everything he had down to the last drop of his blood. Jesus described elsewhere in the Gospels that the judgment will be like a harvest that will take place “when the grain is ripe and at once he goes in with his sickle” and how the wheat will be separated from the chaff (Mk 4:29; 13:24-30, 37-43). He wants us to be ready for that judgment so that when the harvest comes we might bear fruit that comes from our union with him. Today at this Eucharist he reminds us, as he did his first followers during the Last Supper, “Remain in me, as I remain in you. … I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit. … Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither; people will gather them and throw them into a fire and they will be burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.” It’s through the Eucharist more than any other means that we abide in Christ and he in us. It’s our union with him here that gives us the faith and constancy we need to spend ourselves fully, not to be afraid, but to follow him in a life of bearing fruit. He promises us that if we remain in him and the words he has given remain in us, then we can ask the Father for anything and it will be done. Today we ask the Father through Christ the Vine to give us the grace to remain faithful and fruitful in life and faithful and fruitful in death. That is the way we’ll have the joy of sharing her eternal prize in that place with the angels will lift their sickles in triumph. And so let us offer the Lord Jesus the fruit of the vine and the work of human hands and ask him not just to transform this matter into himself but through it make us ever more fruitful branches.

                        •  

                        The readings for today’s Mass were: 

                        Reading 1 rv 14:14-19
                        I, John, looked and there was a white cloud,
                        and sitting on the cloud one who looked like a son of man,
                        with a gold crown on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand.
                        Another angel came out of the temple,
                        crying out in a loud voice to the one sitting on the cloud,
                        “Use your sickle and reap the harvest,
                        for the time to reap has come,
                        because the earth’s harvest is fully ripe.”
                        So the one who was sitting on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth,
                        and the earth was harvested.
                        Then another angel came out of the temple in heaven
                        who also had a sharp sickle.
                        Then another angel came from the altar, who was in charge of the fire,
                        and cried out in a loud voice
                        to the one who had the sharp sickle,
                        “Use your sharp sickle and cut the clusters from the earth’s vines,
                        for its grapes are ripe.”
                        So the angel swung his sickle over the earth and cut the earth’s vintage.
                        He threw it into the great wine press of God’s fury.
                        Responsorial Psalm ps 96:10, 11-12, 13
                        R. (13b) The Lord comes to judge the earth.
                        Say among the nations: The LORD is king.
                        He has made the world firm, not to be moved;
                        he governs the peoples with equity.
                        R. The Lord comes to judge the earth.
                        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 shall all the trees of the forest exult.
                        R. The Lord comes to judge the earth.
                        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 comes to judge the earth.
                        Gospel lk 21:5-11
                        While some people were speaking about
                        how the temple was adorned with costly stones and votive offerings,
                        Jesus said, “All that you see here–
                        the days will come when there will not be left
                        a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.”
                        Then they asked him,
                        “Teacher, when will this happen?
                        And what sign will there be when all these things are about to happen?”
                        He answered,
                        “See that you not be deceived,
                        for many will come in my name, saying,
                        ‘I am he,’ and ‘The time has come.’
                        Do not follow them!
                        When you hear of wars and insurrections,
                        do not be terrified; for such things must happen first,
                        but it will not immediately be the end.”
                        Then he said to them,
                        “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.
                        There will be powerful earthquakes, famines, and plagues
                        from place to place;
                        and awesome sights and mighty signs will come from the sky.”

                        The post Embracing the Lord, the King, Who Comes To Rule the Earth, 34th Tuesday (II), November 26, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                        9 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.

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