Catholic Preaching

Catholic Preaching

By Father Roger LandryReligion & Spirituality Christianity

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November 10, 2024Saint Josemaria Escriva: The Saint of Ordinary Life, Highland Study Center, November 9, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Highland Study Center, Manhattan
November 9, 2024

To listen to an audio recording of tonight’s talk, please click below:
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This is the outline of the talk:
November, the saints and the call to holiness
Josemaria Escriva and the universal call to holiness
Holiness in ordinary life. John Paul II’s characterization of St. Josemaria as the “saint of ordinary life.”
My own encounter with St. Josemaria and his call to holiness in college and beyond. “The world crises are crises of saints.” My 2002 homily on the scandals. The sanctification of temporalities in the priesthood.
John Paul II, the high standard of ordinary Christian living and training in holiness.
Systematic discussion of St. Josemaria and Holiness
We are all called, and therefore can become, saints
To become a saint, we must begin with a clear enough sense of what holiness is. St. Josemaria gives us, like the Church, several complementary answers.
Josemaria stressed that the saints are not superheroes, but ordinary people who willed holiness.
The pursuit of holiness begins with God’s work, not ours. We must trust in him, depend on him, respond to him.
We need to desire sanctity
That desire must become concrete. This is what has led to the elements of a Plan of Life, which could be called a path of sanctity.
Resolution to take holiness seriously.
Keep presence of God throughout the day.
Leads to unity of life.
Prayer
Eucharist
Gospel
Spiritual Reading
Holiness for most is sought not by withdrawing from the world, but remaining in it without being of it. The setting is right in the middle of the world, in daily life.
To stay in the world and become saints, we need to learn how to sanctify our work. This is one of the most practical insights of St. Josemaria and of Opus Dei.
Holiness is not cookie cut. While there are similar pillars of holiness, the path taken is individual.
But sanctity always involves heroism.
Heroism involves the virtue of persevering in allowing God to work and corresponding to his efforts.
The universal call to holiness involves regarding others as called to be saints, too.
That means we have a mission to form others toward holiness
Conclusion
Prayer

The post Saint Josemaria Escriva: The Saint of Ordinary Life, Highland Study Center, November 9, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
1 hr 9 min
November 09, 2024Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, November 9, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, B, Vigil
November 9, 2024

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
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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. During these days after the national elections when we are looking ahead to the changes coming soon, Jesus helps us to focus on things that are of perennial importance, not just to ourselves, our families, and the Church, but also to our country and to the type of service we, Catholics, are meant to provide. Today Jesus helps us concentrate on the generosity we’re called to give in imitation of his own.
Last week, you remember, Jesus told us clearly what the first and greatest commandment is, the most important thing we have to do in life: to love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength. Love, as we know, is more than merely words and feelings, but is shown in deeds. Love is choosing to act for the good of another, sacrificing oneself for sake of someone or something else. This Sunday Jesus presents us with a standard to help us to determine, in our concrete circumstances, whether we are really trying to love God with all we are and have.
After Jesus had finished his “formal” teaching in the courtyard of the Temple of Jerusalem, he began to “people watch,” in order to instruct his apostles about how to put what he was teaching into action. They saw the stream of people depositing money in the temple treasury, which was a large tuba-shaped receptacle leading to a secure money box. People would put their coins in the horn at the top, which was like a funnel, and then the sound of the coins would resonate as they rolled down the metal tubing into the box. Many rich people, St. Mark tells us, were putting in large sums and “making a lot of noise” on the treasury tuba. But then a poor widow came and put in two lepta, two small, super thin coins that together were worth about a penny and likely barely made a sound. Jesus gave a surprising lesson that the disciples obviously never forgot. Jesus praised the poor widow rather than all the rest, saying that she had contributed more than all of them, for they, he said, “gave out of their surplus, but she gave everything she had, all she had to live on.” This widow, because of her poverty, could easily have been excused for giving nothing. Or she could have justly chosen to drop into the tuba only one of the lepta and kept the other for herself. But she gave all. And her generosity was praised by Jesus and will remain famous until the end of time.
What could have moved her to give to the Temple even what she needed to survive? There’s only one reason: her deep faith. She believed not simply that God exists, or that he worked various miracles in the past to help her people. She believed so much in him and was so convinced of the importance of what was going on in God’s house that she wanted to dedicate her life and all her goods to continuing and expanding it. She accounted the continuance and expansion of that saving work as worth more than even her own life.
The truth is that the stronger our faith, the more we are willing to trust in God and the more we are willing to sacrifice. The more we love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength, the more we will give of ourselves and what we have to the advance of his work. The first apostles, moved by faith in Christ, left fishing businesses and lucrative tax collection seats to follow Christ, even though they would have, like Jesus, no bread, no money, no bags, no change of clothes, and no place to lay their head (Lk 9:3; 9:58). The early Christians, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles, used to sell their property and lay the proceeds at the feet of the apostles in order to share with those in most need and advance the proclamation of the Gospel (Acts 4:34-35). But we don’t go back two thousand years to Palestine to come up with such examples. We can think about the building of so many parishes in the United States, like three of those where I was assigned in Massachusetts, where poor immigrants offered to God not only sizeable portions of their paltry paychecks, but also so much of their elbow grease, coming before and after work to assist the hired masons, engineers and architects, to save the church money so that more of what they raised could be spent constructing to God’s glory a Church far more beautiful. Unlike in Europe, the Church in the United States was not built by “rich people” putting in “large sums,” but by poor immigrants forsaking savings and going without vacations in order together to build something worthier of God, something that expressed their faith, something that made concrete that they loved him more than they loved even themselves.
It’s important that we have a consequential conversation with the Lord about how we use the money and resources of which he has made us stewards. Like with the widow in the Gospel, Jesus wants to be able to praise each and all of us for our generosity. This is not just an economic issue on the basis of which parishes, schools and other Church institutions will be maintained, survive and thrive, but far more importantly a moral issue, since, as economists tell us, how we spend our money is a sign of what we value. The great Presbyterian Biblical commentator William Barclay commented on this Gospel scene, “Real generosity gives until it hurts. For many of us, it is a real question if our giving to God’s work is any sacrifice at all. Few people will do without their pleasures to give a little more to the work of God. It may well be a sign of the decadence of the Church and the failure of our Christianity that gifts have to be coaxed out of church people, and that often they will not give at all unless they get something back in the way of entertainment or of goods. There can be few of us who read this story [of the poor widow] without shame.”Today’s Gospel teaches us that it’s not so much the size of the contribution that matters, but the sacrifice that the gift entails. The relatively small value and priority that many Catholics, by their economic choices, give to the mission of the Church is one of the principal reasons why the Church in the United States is suffering, even in areas in which Church institutions can easily pay their bills and care for the needy. The reason is, as Jesus tells us elsewhere in the Gospel, because “the measure with which we measure will be measured back to us” (Lk 6:38). In other words, if we give generously, we will receive generously; if we give sparingly, we will receive sparingly (see 2 Cor 9:6). This is not because God withholds his graces from the stingy, but because the human heart is a two-way street. If a person’s heart is open and generous, then it is capable of receiving from God the blessings God wishes to give. If it is tight and miserly, on the other hand, then very little of God’s grace will be able to penetrate. We cannot serve both God and mammon, and if we are even partially trying to serve mammon, that part of us will atrophy in its receptivity to God.
We see this encapsulated in the episode of the rich young man in the Gospel, about whom we spoke a month ago (see Mt 19:16-30; Mk 10:17-31). He came to Jesus and asked him the most important question anyone can ask, how to inherit eternal life. The Lord told him to keep the commandments and then listed them. The rich young man replied that he had kept all of these since he youth, but realized that he was still missing something in order to be happy. The Lord looked on him with love and said that if he wished to be perfectly happy, he should go, sell all that he has, give the proceeds to the poor, and then come follow him. At that the young man’s face fell to the ground and he walked away sad. Faced with a choice between Jesus and his money, between true happiness and transient wealth, the rich young man chose his money, and went away sad because money can never buy happiness. In the same way, if we wish to receive the fullness of the graces Christ wants to give us in this life and in the next, then we, unlike the rich young man, need to detach ourselves from our possessions, from our money, and devote them to the sake of the kingdom. We see this in the lives of so many young people who enter the priesthood and religious life working for very little pay or none at all because they are working ultimately for God. We see it in missionaries who forsake the comforts of life in the United States in order to travel to undeveloped parts of the world to share the Gospel. We see it in FOCUS missionaries on university campuses in our country, who dedicate two or more years of their life, raising their own funds, in order to share the faith on campus. We see it in many Catholics individuals and families who, despite all of their bills, sacrifice their time, gifts and material blessings to build up the kingdom of the One who gave them everything, strengthen his church, and care for the poor. On the other hand, if we like the Rich Young Man continue to want to hold on to our money and stuff, then it is likely we will walk away from Jesus sad, too, for it is only in giving that we receive.
In this illustration of the importance of generosity, Jesus, like in all his lessons, never merely said, “Do what I say,” but always, “Follow me!” Today’s encounter with the poor widow is sandwiched between last week’s instruction on loving God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength, and next week’s prophecy about the last days. Immediately afterward, St. Mark moves to the Passover, the Last Supper, and Jesus’ crucifixion and death. In other words, this teaching about generosity is enveloped between Christ’s teaching about total self-giving love and his own putting those words into practice on Calvary. In Jesus’ calling us to give not just what is extra but what is essential, not just what is “left over” but what is right, he’s merely telling us to love as he has loved us, all the way, holding nothing back. He gave his life in exchange for ours, valuing us more than he valued himself. As he comes this Sunday to strengthen us to “do this in memory” of him, we ask him to make us as generous as he is, to open our hearts fully to the gift of his grace, to help us to love him with all our mind, heart, soul, strength and possessions, so that we — and many others we might be able to help encounter him through our generosity — might experience his happiness in this world and forever with him in the next. This life of Christian generosity, of self-giving to God and others, is the best way we will help renew our culture and country after last Tuesday’s elections. God bless you.

The Gospel passage on which the homily was based was:
Gospel
Mk 12:38-44 or 12:41-44
In the course of his teaching Jesus said to the crowds,
“Beware of the scribes, who like to go around in long robes
and accept greetings in the marketplaces,
seats of honor in synagogues,
and places of honor at banquets.
They devour the houses of widows and, as a pretext
recite lengthy prayers.
They will receive a very severe condemnation.”
He sat down opposite the treasury
and observed how the crowd put money into the treasury.
Many rich people put in large sums.
A poor widow also came and put in two small coins worth a few cents.
Calling his disciples to himself, he said to them,
“Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more
than all the other contributors to the treasury.
For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth,
but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had,
her whole livelihood.”
The post Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, November 9, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
10 min
November 08, 2024Citizens of Heaven and Children of the Light, 31st Friday (II), November 8, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Friday of the 31st Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Elizabeth of the Trinity
November 8, 2024
Phil 3:17-4:1, Ps 122, Lk 16:1-8

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
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The following points were attempted in the homily:
Today we are able to continue to meditate on the realities we celebrate on All Saints and All Souls Days. The Gospel is meant to help us to prepare for our judgment by inspiring us toward a life of sanctity, minimally out of eternal self-interest. Jesus stresses in a brutal, cutthroat, bottom-line manner what we need to do and does so by means of what for many Catholics is the most confusing parable in the Gospel, what’s popularly called the Parable of the Dishonest Steward, something that can get some people to wonder whether Truth incarnate is praising a crooked business manager for deception, whether he who gave us the commandment “Thou shalt not steal” is himself praising someone for violating it. But Jesus is doing no such thing. In order to grasp what Jesus was and was not saying and what the crucial lesson is for us, however, we first need to understand better the literal sense of this passage through grasping something about the way loans were done in the ancient world.
In the Parable, a manager is about to get sacked because he was squandering the property of his business owner. His boss gave him his pink slip and told him to do an audit of the books prior to his dismissal. So the man called in those mostly tenant farmers who owed his employer money or items and reduced their debts considerably. At first glance, this seems like dishonesty, like he was allowing these debtors to steal from his boss, but it wasn’t. In the ancient world, the way loans were conducted was that the manager or broker would be paid by adding on something to what was borrowed, rather than a percentage taken out of the master’s proceeds. For example, if someone borrowed 50 denarii or 50 barrels of oil, he would have to pay back the 50 to the master and another 10 — or 30 or 50 — to the broker, whatever the broker thought he could get. This dishonest steward was probably tacking on way too big of a commission, and, in order to maximize his profits, was probably, like Fannie and Freddie two decades ago, lending out the master’s property to very bad risks, allowing people on the Master’s fields who were going to waste it rather than produce. Hence, when the manager called in those who owed, for example, 100 containers of wheat, and reduced the amount to 80, what he was almost assuredly doing was eliminating most or all of his commission. Therefore, he wasn’t allowing them to steal from the owner; he was eliminating his own take. Faced with the decision of saving his life by making friends who would take care of him after he was fired or trying to hold out to the end onto the possibility of making money via these commissions, he chose to save his life. His master — and Jesus through the master in the Parable — calls this prudent and wise.
What’s the application to us? Jesus wants us to examine whether we are in the place of that dishonest steward. God has given each of us tremendous gifts on the basis of which we have made profits, or tried to make profit. He has given us our hands, which we use to work. He has given us our brains, which we use to think. He has given us our families and friends, our education, our lives, and so many other blessings. He has given us our vocation to holiness, the Word of God, the Sacraments, prayer and so much more! With these gifts, we have profited! But have we been using those gifts fundamentally to build up our kingdom or to build up the Master’s? If we’ve been squandering his gifts on ourselves or the things of this world, Jesus gives us this parable in order to help us to see that our time is coming to an end and that we need to prepare an accounting. He wants us, like the steward in the Gospel, to start to sacrifice our “commissions,” our possessions, our time, our lives for others so that we might be taken care of in return — so that they may remember us, and then be our supporters and welcome us into, as Jesus says, “eternal homes.” The implication is that if we don’t want to do the right thing simply because it is right, if we don’t want to love others because we’re Christian or we have good heart, then at least we should do it because it is in our eternal best interest. Like the steward in the parable, we are faced with the choice between trying to keep our profits and trying to save our lives. We cannot take money or possessions with us as we go. The only thing that fits through the “eye of the needle” (Lk 18:25) are acts of love. All earthly mammon will eventually turn out to be no more valuable than monopoly money. Jesus wants us to be as wise in the spiritual realm as greedy businessmen are in the material realm. If we use whatever God has given us in this world to take care of others, at our judgment and after it, they will be among those in heaven who welcome us into the eternal home of heaven. Jesus will turn to us and tell us that whatever we did for them, he took personally: “Whatever you did for the least of my brothers and sisters, you did for me” (Mt 25:40).
Jesus says immediately after today’s Gospel that the “children of this age” are shrewder in dealing with their own generation than “the children of light.” What he was saying is that people who are worldly are often much more “prudent” than believers when it comes to making choices that concern their survival. Business owners, if they know that a certain practice is losing them money, try to fix it right away. If they can’t, they eliminate it. They know that in order to survive, they’ve got to cut their losses, otherwise they’ll end up in bankruptcy. Christians, however, when we know that a certain thing is losing us God’s grace, seldom act in such a decisive and intelligent way. Even though such a serious sin might send us into eternal chapter 11, we often don’t get rid of it. Jesus instructs us to act with bottom-line brutality in the Sermon on the Mount, but few of us follow this advice: “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell” (Mt 5:29-30). The failure to cut out sinful behavior from our lives is, for Jesus, simply stupid. Sinning in such a way is cooperating with the devil, and that would be like a businessman’s employing someone whom he knows will steal from him and try to destroy his business.
In this story, Jesus is essentially telling us to use our heads, to be smart about our salvation. Jesus’ words today are like a top notch group of business consultants who come in to analyze a failing business, find out where the inefficiencies are and design a business plan not only to save the company but make it thrive; but the key is not just in the information, in knowing what needs to be done, but in having the wisdom, courage and resolve to implement that plan. That’s what Jesus is proposing to us today, with urgency. Unlike in the parable, when we meet him face-to-face, we’ll have no time to return to try to fix things. We have to fix them now. If we’ve been selfish with our gifts, if we haven’t been putting God first, if we have been neglecting those left in ditches on the side of the road, the time is now to use our heads to do so. If we’ve been trying to compromise with a sin, with something that is obviously wrong but which we’re trying to deny, the time is now to change. Now is the time for us to be as shrewd about storing up for ourselves heavenly wealth as millionaires are to increase their fortunes here on earth. We cannot serve both God and mammon. We cannot worship God and the Golden Calf. We cannot be sons and daughters of the eternal Father and seek the inheritance offered by the prince of the world. Just as the steward in the parable couldn’t try to keep all his commissions and win the favor of those who owed him, so we must choose between storing up treasure and pleasure in this world, or using everything we have in this world to store up eternal treasure and happiness in the next. This is a choice the Rich Young Man was presented by Jesus and sadly refused to take. Today Jesus out of love offers us the same deal urging us to seize it and obtain the pearl of great price.
In today’s first reading, St. Paul wants to help those in Philippi and us here to make that choice. He encourages us to live as prudent children of the light, as good stewards of the gift of life God has given us, by joining with others in being imitators of him and observing those who conduct themselves according to the model we find in him, who based his entire life of Christ. Specifically he was urging us to model ourselves on his cruciform following of the Crucified Lord. In his Letter to the Galatians, St. Paul would say that his sole boast was in the Cross of Christ by which the world was crucified to him and him to the world. He would say that he had been crucified with Christ and the life he was now living in the flesh he was living by faith in the Son of God who died for him and gave himself up for him. He would say (to the Corinthians) that Christ and the Cross is the power and glory of God, because the Cross is not so much a symbol and instrument of pain but of the love that allows one to sacrifice and suffer so much for others. While the way of the Cross is the path of sanctity, however, St. Paul tells us “even in tears,” “many … conduct themselves as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction. Their God is their stomach; their glory is in their ‘shame.’ Their minds are occupied with earthly things.” Rather than lovers of Christ and the Cross, they are enemies of it, who make pleasure their god, who glory in their shameful sins, who are on the road of destruction because their minds and hearts obsess about this worldly treasure. There remain many enemies of the Cross of Christ today. But we, as children of the light, as honest stewards, are called to be friends, lovers, of Christ on the Cross. St. Paul describes what our end should be and where our mind and heart should be directed: to God in heaven. He says to the people of the Roman Colony of Philippi, where many had become citizens after serving 21 years in the Roman Army and valued that gift as much as St. Paul did having been born in Tarsus, that we should remember that “our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we also await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” To remember our heavenly citizenship is a great means to keep stoked our hunger for heaven. It helps us to keep our eyes fixed on the goal, because doing so also makes it possible for us more easily to love the Cross. Even when we struggle to want the Cross and the death to which it leads because our mortal flesh fears the pain and the suffering, St. Paul encourages us by remembering the grace of God who “will change our lowly body to conform with his glorified Body by the power that enables him also to bring all things into subjection to himself.” God has the strength to help subject our appetites to his holy will. This is the means by which we will be able to “stand firm in the Lord.”
Today we celebrate a saint who was a great example of a good steward of her life who always remembered her citizenship, lived as a friend of Christ on the Cross, and sought with all her being to help others sanctify their hungers for the triune God. The great Carmelite, Saint Elisabeth of the Trinity (1880-1906) is someone who prudently used her gift of time and prepared a powerful account of the stewardship of her life. She’s particularly inspirational for Christians in this month of November because she wasn’t born a saint. She needed God’s help and strength to overcome a ferocious temper. Her mother told her that, because of her strong personality, she would either become a terror or a saint. A big change took place with her first Confession at the age of seven. It brought her what she called her “conversion” and from that point forward she vowed to become a “sweet, patient and obedient daughter.” The Holy Spirit helped her. After she received Jesus in Holy Communion at the age of 11, a further change happened in her, as she began to treasure the incredible gift of Jesus within her. A great pianist and award winner at the Dijon Conservatory, she started to use her musical abilities as a wise steward for God’s glory rather than her own, by singing in two Church choirs. She would eventually say that she wanted to do all things for the praise of God’s glory. She began teaching Catechism so that others would share the same holy desire. She lived just 250 yards from a Discalced Carmelite Monastery and she wanted to enter there in order to serve God with everything she had, a response to a calling she discerned God had given her. Her mother resisted for several years, but finally relented. Elizabeth entered at 21, where she would live for five years, until she would die of Addison’s disease at the age of 26. She recognized she could serve the Lord as a good steward in the little things of each day, saying, “I find Him everywhere while doing the wash as well as while praying.” She became known as the “prophet of the presence of God.” She sought to unite everything to God, knowing that in grace God was dwelling within her. Saint Elizabeth’s beautiful prayer about God’s dwelling within us in grace is contained for us in paragraph 260 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church describing how God’s plan for us is not only to enter into the perfect unity of the Trinity in heaven, but to become a dwelling place of God now, following through on Jesus’ promise that if we love him and keep his word, the Father will love us and the Trinity will come to us and make a dwelling place within us. “O my God,” she wrote, “Trinity whom I adore, help me forget myself entirely so to establish myself in you, unmovable and peaceful as if my soul were already in eternity. May nothing be able to trouble my peace or make me leave you, O my unchanging God, but may each minute bring me more deeply into your mystery! Grant my soul peace. Make it your heaven, your beloved dwelling and the place of your rest. May I never abandon you there, but may I be there, whole and entire, completely vigilant in my faith, entirely adoring, and wholly given over to your creative action.” That’s a practical reality of standing firm in the Lord, as St. Paul calls us to do today! She accepted her own immense sufferings as a gift from God and invested them for great “commissions,” uniting herself with Christ on the Cross and allowing herself to join Christ in the salvation of souls, making up what was lacking in his sufferings for the sake of his body the Church. She wasn’t afraid to die, saying, “I am going to Light, to Love, to Life,” because in this world, within her, she was regularly communing with that same Light, Love and Life. Before Saint Elizabeth died, she said, “I think that in Heaven my mission will be to draw souls by helping them to go out of themselves in order to cling to God by a wholly simple and loving movement, and to keep them in this great silence within which will allow God to communicate Himself to them and to transform them into Himself.” Her work is to pray that we will be kept by God in the silence of prayerful union that will transform our whole life progressively into communion with God, so that we will by the power of the Holy Spirit and following the command of Jesus go out of ourselves to bring others into that same communion with God and with us. She’s praying for us and the whole Church now that we will become these prudent children of light obedient by word and deed and by the power of the Holy Spirit.
The Lord who calls us as true children of the light is prepared to give us all the help he knows we need to do so. He is about to feed us with himself, the greatest treasure in the world, and to send the same Holy Spirit who will soon convert bread and wine into his Body and Blood to renew us in our divine filiation so that we might truly call out “Abba, Father!” and live in accordance with that dignity. He is coming to dwell within us. Today as we prepare to receive him, we ask him to grant us that help he knows we need to to imitate his own wisdom and way of life, to approach him who is Light, Love and Life, so that, when it comes time for us to render an account of all the blessings of life he has given us, he may praise us eternally for acting shrewdly and, together with all those we’ve helped through sharing God’s generosity as good and faithful stewards, we may be welcomed by him with St. Elizabeth of the Trinity into his eternal home!

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 PHIL 3:17—4:1
Join with others in being imitators of me, brothers and sisters,
and observe those who thus conduct themselves
according to the model you have in us.
For many, as I have often told you
and now tell you even in tears,
conduct themselves as enemies of the cross of Christ.
Their end is destruction.
Their God is their stomach;
their glory is in their “shame.”
Their minds are occupied with earthly things.
But our citizenship is in heaven,
and from it we also await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
He will change our lowly body
to conform with his glorified Body
by the power that enables him also
to bring all things into subjection to himself.
Therefore, my brothers and sisters,
whom I love and long for, my joy and crown,
in this way stand firm in the Lord, beloved.
Responsorial Psalm PS 122:1-2, 3-4AB, 4CD-5
R. (1) 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.
Alleluia 1 JN 2:5
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Whoever keeps the word of Christ,
the love of God is truly perfected in him.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel LK 16:1-8
Jesus said to his disciples, “A rich man had a steward
who was reported to him for squandering his property.
He summoned him and said,
‘What is this I hear about you?
Prepare a full account of your stewardship,
because you can no longer be my steward.’
The steward said to himself, ‘What shall I do,
now that my master is taking the position of steward away from me?
I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg.
I know what I shall do so that,
when I am removed from the stewardship,
they may welcome me into their homes.’
He called in his master’s debtors one by one.
To the first he said, ‘How much do you owe my master?’
He replied, ‘One hundred measures of olive oil.’
He said to him, ‘Here is your promissory note.
Sit down and quickly write one for fifty.’
Then to another he said, ‘And you, how much do you owe?’
He replied, ‘One hundred measures of wheat.’
He said to him, ‘Here is your promissory note;
write one for eighty.’
And the master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently.
For the children of this world
are more prudent in dealing with their own generation
than the children of light.”
The post Citizens of Heaven and Children of the Light, 31st Friday (II), November 8, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
18 min
November 07, 2024The Supreme Good of Knowing Christ Jesus and His Mercy, 31st Thursday (II), November 7, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Thursday of the 31st Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Votive Mass of the Mercy of God
November 7, 2024
Phil 3:3-8, Ps 105, Lk 15:1-10

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.7.24_Homily_I.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
In the aftermath of Tuesday’s election, as we continue to pray and commit ourselves as Catholics to work for national reconciliation, we encounter today in the liturgy of the word some of God’s most powerful messages on his mercy and the way that it is meant to transform us, so that, enriched by God’s mercy, we might share that mercy with others, both bringing others to God for the mercy they need from him, and by forward the mercy we’ve received from God in the way that we seek to be merciful to others.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus communicates something that we can never truly grasp deeply enough, which is just how much he passionately cares for those who are lost. He gives us two Parables, the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin, both of which — together with the Parable of the Prodigal Son that immediately follows (and that the Church inexplicably excises from the lectionary as we make our way sequentially through St. Luke’s Gospel) — communicate to us two of the most important spiritual lessons as we relate to God.
The first lesson is how precious we are to him. We’re not just a number. If we’re lost, he cares about us so much that he’ll leave everything else behind to come for us. He doesn’t say, “I still have 99 sheep. Let the lost one learn his or her lesson the hard way.” No, he leaves the others and, just like Mary and Joseph scampered ancient Jerusalem in search of the adolescent Jesus, the Good Shepherd goes in search of us. The Parable of the Lost Coin gives us a sense of why. This is not a story about losing one of ten silver dollars. The coins Jesus was referring to comprised the typical Jewish ten-coined headdress that a woman would wear for her wedding. To lose one of those coins would be like losing a wedding ring, something that would cause a wife or even a husband to overturn every rug and retrace every step. For Jesus, he would search for us with even greater passion because we’re not just a symbol of love and commitment like a ring or a coin from a spousal headdress, but we are his Bride, for whom he would always lay down his life. That’s the first point, how precious we are.
The second point is about the extraordinary joy of God when we’re found. The joy in these parables is off the charts. Both the shepherd and the woman call all their friends and neighbors to celebrate with them. And Jesus says, in the moral of the Parables, “In just the same way, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous people who have no need of repentance!” This is an extraordinary truth. We know how much joy Mary, for example, gave God by her constant yes. She was the supremely righteous person who because of her sinlessness did not need to repent of anything. And yet her Son, Truth incarnate, tells us, that heaven rejoices more whenever any of us repents than the yeses and faithfulness of even 99 Blessed Virgin Marys. That is not meant to downgrade in the least God’s joy at Mary’s or our fidelity. But it’s meant to highlight, with Jesus’ own words, his desire for mercy. Based on these Parables, Pope Francis has underlined, “God’s greatest joy is forgiving!” It’s so important for us to recognize how much God loves each one of us, especially when we’re lost, and in response, to give God this joy by allowing him to bring us back to the fold and renew us in our spousal covenant, and to help us bring others back to him so that he may forgive them, too. When we think of all of the blessings God has given us over the course of life and the thought wells up in us to thank him, the thanks he most desires, what will give him the most joy, is when we come to receive his forgiveness and help lead others to that same font of love.
Paul was someone who gave God this joy by his conversion. He tasted the joy of God as he converted. And then he spent the whole rest of his life crisscrossing the ancient world appealing to others as an ambassador of Christ to “be reconciled to God.” In today’s first reading, he talks very profoundly about what his conversion was. It wasn’t principally like most conversions, from a sinful life to a good one. We can be tempted to think that his conversion was from murdering Christians to making them. But as Pope Benedict used to stress, the essence of the conversion of St. Paul was from a false notion of a holy life to a true one. The false notion was reliance on a rigorous interpretation and living out of the Mosaic law. “In righteousness based on the law,” he tells us today, “I was blameless.” But after Jesus Christ met him on the road to Damascus, he recognized that he was not saved by his fidelity to the works of the law — saved, in other words, by his own actions — but saved rather by God, by receiving his grace, his mercy, through faith. And once he realized this, his whole life changed. He tells us today, “Whatever gains I had, these I have come to consider a loss because of Christ. Even more, I consider everything as a loss — the real word is refuse — because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”
Jesus became for him the “pearl of great price,” the “treasure buried in the field,” worth selling everything else to obtain. Everything else in his life combined was like worthless garbage compared to the joy of knowing Christ Jesus — not knowing about him, but knowing him personally. Real conversion happens when we come to know Jesus Christ in the same personal way. And to know Christ, as we see today, is to know him in all his mercy, to know him as one who will leave all other 7.9 billion people in the world behind to come for us, the one who will never stop searching, and the one who, when we finally enter into relationship with him again. When St. Paul went to Corinth, he vowed to know nothing but “Christ and him crucified,” which basically means to know Christ in the mercy that led him to consider his crucifixion as refuse compared to the good of saving and knowing forever each of us! And so today we reflect on the joy Jesus has when he is able to share with us his merciful love, a joy he wishes to share with us just as much as he did with Paul. Jesus came, he said once, so that his joy might be in us and our joy might be complete, and he seeks to perfect our happiness through the experience of his joy-filled mercy.
St. Paul counted everything else in life a loss compared to the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus. Today we have a chance to know him in the deepest possible way, by entering into a life-changing holy communion with him here at Mass in a way anticipated only by the nine months Mary with joy carried him within. May we be so filled with God’s merciful love and joy that we may draw others to this same encounter — and all hearts searching for the Lord, as we prayed in the Psalm, may rejoice now and forever.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 PHIL 3:3-8A
Brothers and sisters:
We are the circumcision,
we who worship through the Spirit of God,
who boast in Christ Jesus and do not put our confidence in flesh,
although I myself have grounds for confidence even in the flesh.
If anyone else thinks he can be confident in flesh, all the more can I.
Circumcised on the eighth day,
of the race of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin,
a Hebrew of Hebrew parentage,
in observance of the law a Pharisee,
in zeal I persecuted the Church,
in righteousness based on the law I was blameless.
But whatever gains I had,
these I have come to consider a loss because of Christ.
More than that, I even consider everything as a loss
because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
Responsorial Psalm PS 105:2-3, 4-5, 6-7
R. (3b) Let hearts rejoice who search for the Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Sing to him, sing his praise,
proclaim all his wondrous deeds.
Glory in his holy name;
rejoice, O hearts that seek the LORD!
R. Let hearts rejoice who search for the Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Look to the LORD in his strength;
seek to serve him constantly.
Recall the wondrous deeds that he has wrought,
his portents, and the judgments he has uttered.
R. Let hearts rejoice who search for the Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
You descendants of Abraham, his servants,
sons of Jacob, his chosen ones!
He, the LORD, is our God;
throughout the earth his judgments prevail.
R. Let hearts rejoice who search for the Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Alleluia MT 11:28
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
and I will give you rest, says the Lord.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel LK 15:1-10
The tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to Jesus,
but the Pharisees and scribes began to complain, saying,
“This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
So Jesus addressed this parable to them.
“What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them
would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert
and go after the lost one until he finds it?
And when he does find it,
he sets it on his shoulders with great joy
and, upon his arrival home,
he calls together his friends and neighbors and says to them,
‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.’
I tell you, in just the same way
there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents
than over ninety-nine righteous people
who have no need of repentance.
“Or what woman having ten coins and losing one
would not light a lamp and sweep the house,
searching carefully until she finds it?
And when she does find it,
she calls together her friends and neighbors
and says to them,
‘Rejoice with me because I have found the coin that I lost.’
In just the same way, I tell you,
there will be rejoicing among the angels of God
over one sinner who repents.”
The post The Supreme Good of Knowing Christ Jesus and His Mercy, 31st Thursday (II), November 7, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
16 min
November 06, 2024Calculating and Joyfully Paying The Costs of Discipleship, 31st Wednesday (II), November 6, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Wednesday of the 31st Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Votive Mass for the Faithful Departed
November 6, 2024
Phil 2:12-18, Ps 27, Lk 14:25-33

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.6.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
Today, as we pray for the 47th President of the United States, for the gift of wisdom and the healing of his many flaws, for peace in our country, and for us as citizens to assume a greater responsibility for the culture and direction of our country, the readings today help us to focus on even more important and lasting realities, but those that, when properly understood and lived, can help us to be the salt, light and leaven here in our country that the Gospel demands. The readings help us, in this month of November, to deepen our reflection on the call to holiness and on the last things (death, judgement, heaven and hell). They move us to think about salvation, to stoke up our desire for it, and to make the choices that will secure it.
In the first reading, St. Paul tells the Philippians and us to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” The word for “work” in Greek used here means to “complete the work” or to “finish the job” of your salvation; the word for “fear” is the Greek word for “reverential awe.” We’re not supposed to be afraid of God but with a holy awe grasp the gift of God and make sure we allow him to bring to completion the work of salvation he has begun in us. The “trembling” buttresses the holy awe. If someone had a winning lotto ticket worth hundreds of millions of dollars, we can imagine how the person would take care of the ticket, making sure it wouldn’t be accidentally dropped or lost, while bringing the ticket to lottery officials to obtain the treasure. We’re supposed to treat our salvation as something far more valuable than that, as we journey to God to reap the eternal treasure he seeks to impart.
St. Paul tells us that in this “completing the work,” God gives us his help. “For God is the one who, for his good purpose, works in you both to desire and to work.” God both fills us with the desire for salvation and then gives us his grace to act on that desire. We see the desire described in the Responsorial Psalm when the inspired author says, “One thing I ask of the Lord, this I seek: to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, that I may gave on the loveliness of the Lord and contemplate his temple.” God has implanted within us this desire for salvation, for him, for his house, for his kingdom, for his glory, for his love. He always implants within us a desire to seek and ask for what he desires to give us. But we have to act on that desire and God helps us with that as well, to “complete the work” that the fulfillment of that desire requires.
Jesus describes that work in today’s Gospel. To complete the work of salvation, Jesus says, we need to count the cost and joyfully pay it. We need to grasp that the offer of salvation God gives us through sharing his own eternal life is the pearl of great price, the treasure buried in a field, worth sacrificing everything else to obtain. With a holy awe and trembling, we need to respond to his call to follow him, and he gives us the grace both to desire and to act on that call. He tells us that to follow him as his disciple to salvation, we have to do three things. First, we need to “hate” father and mother, spouse and children, brothers and sisters. The Hebrew word for “hate” doesn’t mean “detest,” but rather means the opposite of “prefer.” It basically conveys not putting the person or thing we “hate” in first place. Jesus, after all, calls us to honor our father and mother, not despise them. But we have to make sure that they don’t become gods in our life, that if there is ever a choice between what God is asking of us and what our parents, or husband or wife, or children are asking of us, that we say “God’s will be done” instead of “My loved one’s will be done.” And we need to remember that if we do “hate” them in this way, we actually will love them more because we will love them in God. Second, Jesus says one needs to hate “even his own life,” “carry his own cross” and “follow” him. We need to account Jesus more valuable than our existence, in imitation of him who valued our life more valuable than His. This is the faith that led the martyrs directly to heaven. If we love our comforts, our life in this world more than we love God, then we won’t be completing the work of salvation because Jesus clearly taught us that to save our life we must lose it and that unless we fall to the ground and die like a grain of wheat we won’t bear the fruit of salvation. Third, Jesus says one must “renounce all his possessions.” We must renounce the stuff that possesses us and then as good stewards place and use everything we have and are for God and his service, giving of ourselves together with our things for God and others, because if we cling to possessions we will not be able to fit through the eye of the needle to salvation.
In buttressing the conditions of the completion of the work of our salvation, Jesus employs two analogies that point to the cost of discipleship. He says that to build a tower, we need to calculate the cost and get the proper supplies lest we not finish what we began. Likewise, to win a battle, we have to know whether we have the resources to defeat the enemy. In building the tower toward heaven, we have to have the “supplies” of detachment from ourselves, our loved ones, our possessions and our life. In fighting against the twenty thousand troops of the evil one, we have to divest ourselves of whatever will hinder us in battle, whatever earthly desires the devil can use against us, and put on the armor of God, as we heard last week, and let the Lord be our buckler and shield, his salvation our helmet, his truth our cincture, his holiness our breastplate, his Gospel our sandals, his word our sword, and faith in him our body shield. We won’t be able to finish what’s been started unless we count the cost and pay it, knowing that in the biggest picture of all, this is the wisest and greatest deal in life, the pearl and treasure worth more than everything else.
And as we pay that price with God’s help, acting on that desire by the God-assisted work of building and fighting, we’re supposed to do it with a particularly Christian attitude. St. Paul describes what that attitude needs to be in the second half of today’s first reading.
First, it’s to be done “without grumbling or questioning.” We remembered how the Jews grumbled in the desert having been freed by God from slavery in Egypt. We know how they questioned Moses and essentially questioned God. Sometimes we can grumble at the cost the Lord asks of us, as if salvation is cheap, as if we should be able to have God and have our idols, too. Rather than murmuring and doubting we need to respond with gratitude and faith.
Second, we should do so in a “blameless and innocent” way, as “children of God without blemish.” God wants us to become pure and he’ll give us the help to live without sin. This does not mean that we will never be tempted or never fall. He’s established, however, the Sacrament of his Mercy precisely to help us to live as his beloved children in a way that removes the blemishes.
Third, we should complete the work of our salvation “as lights in the world” in the midst of a “crooked and perverse generation.” The path to salvation is not meant to be a secret that we keep to ourselves. The Christian life is meant to illumine and warm others, drawing them out of darkness toward the same path and same Source of light. The light of the world, Jesus himself, called us to be the light of the world, reflecting his light the way the moon reflects the sun’s — not hiding that light under a bushel basket. We’re supposed to share that light with others so that they may walk with us as children of light. There are two ways we need to do that, St. Paul says. The first is to “hold on to the word of life,” by treasuring God’s word, knowing it, enfleshing it, and sharing it. God’s word is a lamp in the darkness to the upright (Ps 119:105) and we need to live by that lamp and help others to do so. Second, one of the most important colors of the bright light of Christians is supposed to be joy. St. Paul says, after describing his own joy, “In the same way you also should rejoice and share your joy with me.” These are considerations that Christians in our country must take very seriously at a time in which many will be anxious about what the near future will bring, and at a time in which everyone knows our national spirit and institutions need profound renewal.
St. Paul says toward the end of today’s passage that he was being “poured out as a libation upon the sacrificial service of your faith.” In Roman pagan worship to which most of the Philippians would have been exposed prior to their conversion, a libation was a cup of wine poured as an offering to the gods before and after every meal, something similar to the grace we Christians pray at those same times. St. Paul was saying that he was pouring out his life as a libation as the beginning of their sacrifice to God, as a starter and exclamation point of their completing the work of salvation. He was giving his life, in other words, to help them to sacrifice their own and obtain the prize of salvation. He learned that type of generosity from Jesus himself who, at Mass, pours out his own blood as a libation so that our sacrifice may be acceptable to God, the Father Almighty, so that we may receive all the help we need to pay the price of faith with joy, to choose the Lord, to complete the work of salvation and come to dwell in the house of the Lord, gazing on God’s loveliness, all our days into eternity. This is the chief means by which God, to his good purpose, works in us both the holy desire for salvation and the trembling and awesome work of completing it. This is the means by which he fills us with his light and salvation and makes us capable of bringing that gift as shining lights to our country and to the world.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 phil 2:12-18
My beloved, obedient as you have always been,
not only when I am present but all the more now when I am absent,
work out your salvation with fear and trembling.
For God is the one who, for his good purpose,
works in you both to desire and to work.
Do everything without grumbling or questioning,
that you may be blameless and innocent,
children of God without blemish
in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation,
among whom you shine like lights in the world,
as you hold on to the word of life,
so that my boast for the day of Christ may be
that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.
But, even if I am poured out as a libation
upon the sacrificial service of your faith,
I rejoice and share my joy with all of you.
In the same way you also should rejoice and share your joy with me.
Responsorial Psalm ps 27:1, 4, 13-14
R. (1a) The Lord is my light and my salvation.
The LORD is my light and my salvation;
whom should I fear?
The LORD is my life’s refuge;
of whom should I be afraid?
R. The Lord is my light and my salvation.
One thing I ask of the LORD;
this I seek:
To dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
That I may gaze on the loveliness of the LORD
and contemplate his temple.
R. The Lord is my light and my salvation.
I believe that I shall see the bounty of the LORD
in the land of the living.
Wait for the LORD with courage;
be stouthearted, and wait for the LORD.
R. The Lord is my light and my salvation.
Gospel lk 14:25-33
Great crowds were traveling with Jesus,
and he turned and addressed them,
“If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother,
wife and children, brothers and sisters,
and even his own life,
he cannot be my disciple.
Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me
cannot be my disciple.
Which of you wishing to construct a tower
does not first sit down and calculate the cost
to see if there is enough for its completion?
Otherwise, after laying the foundation
and finding himself unable to finish the work
the onlookers should laugh at him and say,
‘This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.’
Or what king marching into battle would not first sit down
and decide whether with ten thousand troops
he can successfully oppose another king
advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops?
But if not, while he is still far away,
he will send a delegation to ask for peace terms.
In the same way,
everyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions
cannot be my disciple.”
The post Calculating and Joyfully Paying The Costs of Discipleship, 31st Wednesday (II), November 6, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
21 min
November 05, 2024Having the Same Attitude As Christ, 31st Tuesday (II), November 5, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, New York
Tuesday of the 31st Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Mass for the Nation or State
November 5, 2024
Phil 2:5-11, Ps 22, Lk 14:14-24

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.5.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
Today, on the day on which Americans choose the 47th President of the United States and when many will be obsessively focused on the election results, we have in the Word of God today something even more urgent and important. It’s something that should be characteristic of Christian leaders and citizens. It describes the road, not to the White House, but to the Father’s House. Today as we remember to vote, it’s key for us to remember the etymology of the word vote: it comes from the Latin votum, which means “vow,” and reminds us ultimately of our commitments to God, to make sure we are casting with freedom our ballot for Jesus each day. As we think about the positions, policies and personal qualities of Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, it’s crucial that we focus even more on the thoughts and actions of Jesus Christ. That’s what today’s readings help us to focus on.
In the first reading, we have one of the most important passages in the whole New Testament, which sums up who Jesus is and how we’re supposed to relate to him. It’s so central to our faith that the Church prays it every Saturday night as the Canticle for Vespers, as we enter into the Christian Sabbath and ponder Christ’s Resurrection. It’s the epistle on Palm Sunday, and the Gospel Verse on Palm Sunday and Good Friday, as we prepare to ponder Jesus’ passion and death. Everything begins with St. Paul’s words, “Have among yourselves the same attitude that is … in Christ Jesus.” We are to put on the mind of Christ, as the King James translation has it. Then St. Paul stresses what Christ’s mindset was. Even though he was the morphe (form or shape) of God, the unchangeable divinity, he took on the morphe of a slave in human likeness, the permanent condition of being man. This points to the meaning of the incarnation. He didn’t hold onto his divine essence because he knew, first, he couldn’t lose it but second he chose to divest himself of all divine appearances in lieu of his mission of salvation. He “emptied himself” and “humbled himself,” St. Paul tells us in a kenosis that a led even to crucifixion. That’s the first part of Christ’s mindset that we’re called to understand and imitate: having received his total outpouring, we’re called not to grasp onto things but to humble and pour ourselves out in turn, obedient to the Father in life and in death. The second part of this passage refers to how Jesus after this kenosis is lifted up by the Father: “God greatly exalted him,” he raised him up on the third day, and “bestowed on him the name that is above every other name,” which means both “Jesus” (God saves) as well as “Kyrios,” Lord. Every tongue in creation is meant to make the profession, “Jesus Christ is Lord.” This is the “glory of God the Father,” when his Son is exalted as Savior and Lord. Jesus wants us to enter into that exaltation by entering into his kenosis.
Pope Benedict commented on this passage in two catecheses in 2005, at the very beginning of his pontificate. About the first part of the hymn, verses 5-8, he said, “Christ, incarnate and humiliated by the most shameful death of crucifixion, is held up as a vital model for Christians. Indeed, as is clear from the context, their ‘attitude must be that of Christ’ (v. 5), and their sentiments, humility and self-giving, detachment and generosity. He certainly possesses the divine nature with all its prerogatives. But this transcendent reality is not interpreted or lived out under the banner of power, greatness and dominion. Christ does not use his equality with God, his glorious dignity or his power as an instrument of triumph, a sign of remoteness or an expression of incontestable supremacy (cf. v. 6). On the contrary, he strips or ’empties himself,’ immersing himself without reserve in our weak and wretched human condition … marked by suffering, poverty, limitation and death. … God does not appear only as a man, but he makes himself man and truly becomes one of us, he truly becomes the ‘God-with-us’ who is not satisfied with looking down kindly upon us from the throne of his glory, but plunges in person into human history. This radical and true sharing in the human condition, with the exception of sin (cf. Heb 4: 15), leads Jesus to the boundary that is a sign of our finite condition and transience: death… actually the most disgraceful death.” He draws a moral lesson from this: “Entering into the sentiments of Jesus means not considering power, riches and prestige as the supreme values in our lives, for basically they do not respond to our most profound spiritual thirst, but rather, by opening our hearts to the Other, carrying with the Other our life’s burden and opening ourselves to Our Heavenly Father with a sense of obedience and trust, knowing that by such obedience to the Father, we will be free. Entering into the sentiments of Jesus: this should be our daily practice of living as Christians.”
That humility, obedience and trust lead to what God the Father does, as St. Paul describes in the second part of the hymn. Pope Benedict says, “The second movement, upwards, reveals the paschal glory of Christ, who manifests himself once more after death in the splendour of his divine majesty. The Father, who welcomed his Son’s act of obedience in the Incarnation and passion, now ‘exalts’ him in a supreme way, as the Greek text tells us. This exaltation is expressed not only through the enthronement at God’s right hand, but also with the conferral upon Christ of a ‘name which is above every name,’ … that of ‘Lord,’ of God himself. Indeed, the proclamation of faith, chorally intoned from Heaven, earth and the netherworld lying prostrate in adoration, is clear and explicit: ‘Jesus Christ is Lord.’ … The reference made to the scandal of the cross (cf. 1 Cor 1: 23), and even earlier to the true humanity of the Word made flesh (cf. Jn 1: 14), is interwoven with and culminates in the event of the Resurrection. The sacrificial obedience of the Son is followed by the glorifying response of the Father, to which adoration is united on the part of humanity and creation. … In the Son, the project of salvation reaches fulfilment and the faithful are invited, especially in the liturgy, to announce and to live the fruits [of salvation]. This is the destination where the Christological hymn leads us, upon which for centuries the Church meditates, sings and considers as a guide of life: ‘Have this mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus.’ … To learn to feel as Jesus felt; to conform our way of thinking, deciding and acting to the sentiments of Jesus. We will take up this path if we look to conform our sentiments to those of Jesus. Let us take up the right path.”
To put on the mind of Christ, to conform our way of thinking, deciding and acting to Jesus’, brings us to the Gospel in which Jesus discloses his mindset. In this part of St. Luke’s Gospel that we would have begun on Friday if we didn’t have the Solemnity of All Saints, Jesus has been sketching out for us the kingdom of God in the image of a banquet, using a dinner invitation he had accepted as the backdrop. He used it to talk about the meaning of the Sabbath, about where to sit humbly, about whom to invite and today about how to respond to his invitation. To understand what he sketches today, we have to grasp something about the way banquets were done in the ancient world. There were no email invites with cyberspatial RSVPs. They didn’t use a postal service. They used messengers. First, the emissaries were sent out to let people know of an upcoming banquet with a general sense that it would be ready in a day, or two, or several. The people got things ready in the meantime. Then when things were set the messengers went out again to invite people to come. In the parable today, we find the messengers going out that second time, to those who had already accepted the invitation to tell them, “Come, everything is now ready!” That’s when we get the excuses about work (land), novelty (five yoke of oxen) and family (wife), three good things that were taking the place of something more important. These were people who had accepted God’s invitation but then allowed other things to supplant that summons and commitment they had made to him. They asked to be excused. They didn’t appreciate what the invitation meant. The best analogy would be to someone who accepts an invitation today to come to dinner but then just doesn’t show after you’ve already prepared everything for him or her and when you call simply says a tepid, “Sorry, something else came up.” That’s the way, however, many of Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries were responding to the invitation to the banquet of the kingdom. So in the parable the king sends out his emissaries to invite the poor, blind, maimed and lame, those who are humbled by circumstances, those who never get invitations, and after that he sent the emissaries into the highways and hedgerows to try to persuade with all of their muster everyone else to come, because the reality that the King knew was either they would come to his banquet, meaning heaven, or remain outside forever. To put on the mind of Christ means, first, to accept his invitation, recognize the privilege of having been asked, and then come to the banquet. It means, second, to share his zeal for others’ coming, including those whom the world normally excludes. And third, it means to look at our relationship with him fundamentally as a banquet, as an occasion full of joy and celebration, even in the midst of difficulties, because he himself is with us.
St. Paul, in his beautiful hymn to Christ’s kenosis and exaltation, actually stopped short. As great as Jesus’ humility was in the incarnation and the crucifixion, it’s even greater in the Eucharist, when he becomes our food. But that’s how far he goes in order to help us to become humble with him so as to be exalted with him. At the beginning of today’s Gospel, someone said to Jesus, “Blessed is the one who will dine in the Kingdom of God.” Today Jesus has invited each of us to his paschal banquet on earth, so that thorough the liturgy of the word he might calibrate our mind to his and, despite the fact that we’re so often blind to his face, maimed to his touch and the touch of others, poor with respect to his grace, and lame in following his footsteps, he summons us all the same, wanting to transform us and send us out humbly as his messengers to invite everyone we meet to join us at this banquet, which is a foretaste to the unending dinner of heaven. “Blessed is the one who will dine in the Kingdom of God.” Indeed, blessed are those called to the Supper of the Lamb! Let us use our freedom today, having put on Christ’s attitude, to choose to respond to his invitation and then to go out transformed to help our country, conscious that our dignity as sons and daughters, friends and invitees of the King of Kings, is far more exalted than the office of President of the United States!

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 PHIL 2:5-11
Brothers and sisters:
Have among yourselves the same attitude
that is also yours in Christ Jesus,
Who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
something to be grasped.
Rather, he emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
coming in human likeness;
and, found human in appearance,
he humbled himself,
becoming obedient to death,
even death on a cross.
Because of this, God greatly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name
that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Responsorial Psalm PS 22:26B-27, 28-30AB, 30E, 31-32
R. (26a) I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people.
I will fulfill my vows before those who fear him.
The lowly shall eat their fill;
they who seek the LORD shall praise him:
“May your hearts be ever merry!”
R. I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people.
All the ends of the earth
shall remember and turn to the LORD;
All the families of the nations
shall bow down before him.
R. I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people.
For dominion is the LORD’s,
and he rules the nations.
To him alone shall bow down
all who sleep in the earth.
R. I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people.
To him my soul shall live;
my descendants shall serve him.
Let the coming generation be told of the LORD
that they may proclaim to a people yet to be born
the justice he has shown.
R. I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people.
Alleluia MT 11:28
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
and I will give you rest, says the Lord.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel LK 14:15-24
One of those at table with Jesus said to him,
“Blessed is the one who will dine in the Kingdom of God.”
He replied to him,
“A man gave a great dinner to which he invited many.
When the time for the dinner came,
he dispatched his servant to say to those invited,
‘Come, everything is now ready.’
But one by one, they all began to excuse themselves.
The first said to him,
‘I have purchased a field and must go to examine it;
I ask you, consider me excused.’
And another said, ‘I have purchased five yoke of oxen
and am on my way to evaluate them;
I ask you, consider me excused.’
And another said, ‘I have just married a woman,
and therefore I cannot come.’
The servant went and reported this to his master.
Then the master of the house in a rage commanded his servant,
‘Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town
and bring in here the poor and the crippled, the blind and the lame.’
The servant reported, ‘Sir, your orders have been carried out
and still there is room.’
The master then ordered the servant,
‘Go out to the highways and hedgerows
and make people come in that my home may be filled.
For, I tell you, none of those men who were invited will taste my dinner.’”
The post Having the Same Attitude As Christ, 31st Tuesday (II), November 5, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
20 min
November 04, 2024Regarding Others As More Important and Inviting Them to Dinner, 31st Monday (II), November 4, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Monday of the 31st Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Charles Borromeo
November 4, 2024
Phil 2:1-4, Ps 131, Lk 14:12-14

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The following points were attempted in the homily:
In this month of November, we focus on the call that the Lord has given us to be holy as he is holy. Today, Jesus and St. Paul speak to us about the path to holiness. Let’s begin with St. Paul.
On Friday, if we did not have the celebration of All Saints, we would have begun reading at daily Mass from St. Paul’s beautiful letter to the Philippians, which we will have throughout until Friday. Philippi was the first place in Europe to hear the Gospel. It was the place where, after St. Paul had had a dream of a Macedonian asking him to come over, he left Troas and went on a boat to Neapolis, eventually coming to Philippi, a Roman colony with lots of disunity. It was there he met Lydia and stayed in her house. It was there he cured the possessed girl whom others were using to divine by the power of the devil. It was there he was thrown in jail and liberated by the earthquake. St. Paul had a special relationship with Philippi. It was the only place from which he accepted charity for himself, probably to give its people a chance to repair for the sufferings he endured there. He had a great desire for its unity and sanctity, and this letter was meant to help everyone come to unity. The real climax and center of the letter we will hear tomorrow, when St. Paul will tell us “Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus.” He calls us to put on Christ’s mind, to adapt ourselves to the Lord, to respond to his grace to think as Christ thinks, to will as Christ wills, to act as Christ acts. That’s his fundamental prayer for the Christians in Philippi and for the Christians in New York. That’s the path to holiness. That’s the proper context to understand what he says in today’s first reading: “Complete my joy by being of the same mind, with the same love, united in heart, thinking one thing.” Their unity will come about by their all attuning their minds and hearts to Christ’s. Once that happens, then the rest of his prayer will come about: “Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory,” because Christ did everything out of selflessness and for the Father’s glory. “Rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests but also everyone for those of others.” Christ ultimately regarded us as more important than himself, giving his life to save our lives. Even though he was God, he became our servant so that we might enter into divine life. When we adopt Christ’s attitude, then we, too, will not act out of self-centeredness or for earthly fame but will seek God’s glory, kingdom and will. We will seek to follow Christ’s example of greatness by becoming the servant of all, by washing the feet of others, by giving our lives for their salvation. We will seek, like Jesus did, to empty ourselves and become a servant, obeying God all the way to death.
We see that attitude, that mindset, of Christ in today’s Gospel when he gives invitation advice to those who had been invited to a dinner with him, a dinner in which he cured a man with dropsy to their scandal (as we would have heard on Friday if we didn’t have the proper readings for All Saints), a dinner in which he spoke about taking the lowest seats. He teaches us not to have dinner parties out of self-interest or for our own vanity or ambition — something that was probably taking place then as the creme de la creme were invited for the dinner with Jesus, an increasingly famous traveling rabbi — but out of charity, to serve others with love. “When you hold a lunch or a dinner,” Jesus said, “do not invite your friends or your brothers or sisters or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment. Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” Jesus’ advice is revolutionary, because most of us naturally invite to dinner those family and friends or people with whom we can do business or guests of honor who can make us feel important. Jesus is telling us to invite the seeming nobodies, the handicapped, the overlooked and marginalized, those who often go without food, not to mention don’t receive invitations. This is precisely what he does in the Eucharist, inviting not just everybody including those who are challenged in any way, but us, who are often so poor in our relationship with him, crippled in our ability to do his work, lame in our ability to follow him when it gets strenuous, blind in our ability to see him in others or in various circumstances. He invites not just the Blessed Virgin to dinner, but those who have betrayed him and will betray him, those who cannot possibly ever repay him. And he tells us to do the same.
The point I would like to stress today, however, as we ponder this month the example of all the saints, is what Jesus says at the end of passage. He tells those who act on his words and invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, “Blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” He doesn’t just say at the “resurrection,” because we know that at the end of time, there will be the “resurrection of life” and the “resurrection of condemnation” (Jn 5:29), there will be the separation of the “sheep” and the “goats,” respectively, to the kingdom of the Father or to the fire prepared for the devil and his angels (Mt 25:31-46). Jesus says specifically that those who do this will be repaid at the resurrection of the “righteous.” The only way we’ll be repaid there is if we are indeed righteous. Jesus is indicating to us a clear path to heaven by acting on what he’s teaching today: the actual act of inviting and caring for those who cannot pay for us, as well as the spiritual point of not doing things in any circumstance in order to be repaid. The path to heaven may be as simple as this, by loving and caring for those who can’t reward us here, because in so doing, we will be having the same attitude as found in Christ Jesus and pouring ourselves out kenotically like Christ. We will be humbly regarding others as more important than ourselves, looking out not for our own interests but also for those of others.
Today we celebrate a saint who, as Archbishop of Milan, literally hosted dinner parties on Jesus’ invitation list. Later, during a plague, he organized the feeding of 60,000 to 70,000 poor, handicapped and often contagious people every day. He was one who had the same attitude of Christ, humbly regarded even the most worldly insignificant as more important than him, and sought to serve them with love until the end of his life. Born of the incredibly wealthy and influential Medici family, he could have easily become haughty and worldly. At 22, because his uncle was Pope Pius IV, he was made a Cardinal without ordination. God brought good out of this nepotism, however, because St. Charles — even at a ridiculously young age — quickly became the principal figure in reforming the Church after the Protestant Reformation through helping to bring the Council of Trent to conclusion. When his elder brother died, his family expected him to resign his offices and return to run the family estate, but he preferred God to them and he made the definitive choice for Holy Orders. He had been appointed Administrator of the Archdiocese of Milan — then the largest diocese in the world — as a benefice, but as soon as Pius IV had died and the Council completed, he was able to be ordained subdeacon, deacon, priest and bishop and take up the charge as Archbishop. There he encountered a very corrupt situation throughout, where most people, including priests and religious, were not acting in accordance with their Christian dignity. His famous phrase was, “Be who you promised you would be,” in baptism, in marriage, and in holy orders. He corrected and fought abuses out of love for them and those harmed, calling clergy to care for their flock against wolves and to help heal their wounds. He formed priests and religious and built seminaries to train priests well so that they might be good shepherds with the attitude of Christ, the eternal high priest, and serve others by his instructions, rather than looking out for their own interests, since many of the problems that afflicted lay people had to do with clergy who were setting a scandalous example. Such reform led to his receiving much opposition. One religious community that didn’t want to be reformed actually sent some monks to try to murder him while he was praying in his chapel. Miraculously, however, the bullet that hit him in the back simply fell to the ground. Because of his hard work at reform, however, the Catholics of Milan and — because of his work in Rome — across much of the Catholic world experienced the fruits of reform. More than anything, he sought to help the clergy recognize that to live and serve with Christ’s mindset required them to be willing to risk their lives for the flock. In 1576, when Milan was undergoing mass starvation and the ravages of the plague, the governor, most of his officials, and most of the nobles, all fled. But St. Charles remained and begged the clergy and the religious not to abandon the sheep entrusted to them, urging them to prefer a holy death to a late one. He had already been giving most of his earnings to the care of the poor, but to meet this crisis, he exhausted his personal fortune, even taking on large debts. He similarly sold many of the Church’s vessels. Each day he was feeding 60,000 to 70,000 poor and often contagious people daily. He challenged the clergy and religious: “The same Son of God, who for the sake of the salvation of all men, including his enemies and the impious, was fixed to the cross and died in the greatest shame and the bitterest torment, invites us to go forward into the danger of a quiet and glorious death for devout brethren. He to whom we owe as much repayment as we could not obtain by dying a thousand times without end, does not even request this pathetic life of ours, but only that we put it at risk. … It is indeed a desirable time now when without the cruelty of the tyrant, without the rack, without fire, without beasts, and in the complete absence of harsh tortures that are usually the most frightful to human weakness, we can obtain the crown of martyrdom.” He ended up dying basically of exhaustion at 46, but in his few years, he accomplished so much more than most people who have lived far longer, because he had Christ’s mentality and regarded others as greater and worthy to be served. Today we turn to God and ask him, in the words of today’s opening prayer, to help us to become more like St. Charles in this imitation: “Preserve in the midst of your people, we ask, O Lord, the spirit with which you filled the Bishop Saint Charles Borromeo, that your Church may be constantly renewed and, by conforming herself to the likeness of Christ, may show his face to the world.”
Today as we approach the altar with all our handicaps, Jesus seeks to nourish us with himself so that having his mind and heart we, like St. Charles, may make room at this table for all those who are not here who need Jesus just as much as we do, and to make room at our our tables and in our lives, for those Jesus loves so much that he gave his life to save.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 phil 2:1-4
Brothers and sisters:
If there is any encouragement in Christ,
any solace in love,
any participation in the Spirit,
any compassion and mercy,
complete my joy by being of the same mind, with the same love,
united in heart, thinking one thing.
Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory;
rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves,
each looking out not for his own interests,
but also everyone for those of others.
Responsorial Psalm ps 131:1bcde, 2, 3
R. In you, O Lord, I have found my peace.
O LORD, my heart is not proud,
nor are my eyes haughty;
I busy not myself with great things,
nor with things too sublime for me.
R. In you, O Lord, I have found my peace.
Nay rather, I have stilled and quieted
my soul like a weaned child.
Like a weaned child on its mother’s lap,
so is my soul within me.
R. In you, O Lord, I have found my peace.
O Israel, hope in the LORD,
both now and forever.
R. In you, O Lord, I have found my peace.
Gospel lk 14:12-14
On a sabbath Jesus went to dine
at the home of one of the leading Pharisees.
He said to the host who invited him,
“When you hold a lunch or a dinner,
do not invite your friends or your brothers or sisters
or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors,
in case they may invite you back and you have repayment.
Rather, when you hold a banquet,
invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind;
blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you.
For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
The post Regarding Others As More Important and Inviting Them to Dinner, 31st Monday (II), November 4, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
21 min
November 03, 2024God’s Guidance For This Time of Elections, 31st Sunday (B), November 3, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
31st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
November 3, 2024
Deut 6:2-6, Ps 18, Heb 7:23-28, Mt 12:28-34

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The following text guided the homily:
Today we start what will surely be a highly dramatic and historically consequential week, nearing the end of a political season that many, on various sides, have been framing in apocalyptic terms. Some are charging that what’s at stake is the end of democracy if one presidential candidate — whom they are labeling as a fascist, an insurrection inciter, and a convicted criminal — is elected. Others are saying that what’s at stake are the lives of millions in the womb and the freedom of the Church, if the most pro-abortion presidential candidate of all time — who wants women proudly to shout their abortions and prevent any medical personnel from religious or conscientious objection, and who, among other anti-Catholic words and actions, believes Knight of Columbus should be disqualified from judgeships and high government service — gains the majority of the electoral college. Both campaigns, not to mention media programs, celebrities, columnists, social media influencers, and thousands of zealous adherents, have been ramping up the fears of catastrophe if one or the other is elected. In an already anxious age, millions are understandably on edge.
And lots of people are looking to pastors, priests and ministers. Some are looking for guidance about what to do. Others are looking at them for other reasons. This morning, I saw a tweet from last night from a highly influential Protestant lay religious leader and best-selling author whom I know, who wrote: “If your pastor doesn’t make clear tomorrow from the pulpit that you are to vote against” a particular political ticket that opposes Christian teaching on two particular issues, “you have an obligation to leave that church and take your [money] with you.” And so some are apparently looking to see whether their preachers are, in effect, faithful Christians worthy of continuing to serve as ministers or bridges between God and his people. And the only way for preachers to show that they are would be to use the pulpit today to instruct their flock to vote for a particular outcome on Tuesday.
Because of the anxiety most have, because of the questions many have, and because of the expectations for particular talking points some have, it’s especially important for us to turn today and listen carefully to the Word of God. Right on cue, God seeks to orient us as his sons and daughters as we face this momentous week. He wants to strengthen us as his sons and daughters so that we might do what we ought, and then, as salt, light, and leaven, to help guide our neighbors and fellow citizens.
In today’s Gospel, a scribe asks Jesus, “Which is the first of all the commandments?” The question, in other words, asks, “What is the most important thing I need to do?” Note that Jesus doesn’t say, perhaps to the surprise of some contemporary commentators, “Make sure you vote this way in the election.” Instead, he tells us something far more important, not just for life in general but even for our duties as citizens.
I’d like to focus on the two most important lessons he gives us.
The first is about the primacy of God. Jesus echoes in the Gospel something from today’s first reading from the Book of Deuteronomy. It’s a message that is fundamental not just for Israel to hear but for the United States and people of every country and time: “The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.” In an age that seems to reduce almost everything to political messianism, in which political campaigns are trying to enlist and manipulate religious believers toward political ends, as if this election is the definitive battle between good and evil, light and darkness, life and death, with the only option to vote for one candidate or the other as a de facto political redeemer, the Word of God wants us to remember that there is only one Lord. As we prayed in the Psalm, the Lord and the Lord alone is our true strength, rock, fortress, deliverer, refuge, shield, horn of salvation, stronghold and savior. The Letter to the Hebrews makes this even more explicit in reminding us that Jesus, our incarnate Lord whom we will celebrate in three weeks as King of the Universe, is our eternal high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, perfect, higher than the heavens, who remains in office forever and is always able and eager to save those who approach God the Father through him, since he lives forever to make intercession for them. These words are a great consolation, on November 3rd, and for November 5th, November 6th and beyond. The Good Shepherd will not leave us orphans. He has triumphed over sin and death. And he has promised to be with us always until the end of time.
These words, and the reality to which they point, are meant to become a way of life. They summon us not just to acknowledge Jesus as Lord, not only to trust him and to adore him, but, as he reminds us today, to love him who loved us first, and to do so with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. The first of all the commandments, the most important thing we need to do in life, is to love God. It’s not enough simply to know him. It’s not sufficient to recognize that we should love and honor him. We must concretely love him. Jesus told the scribe who rejoiced at Jesus’ answer to his query, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” The scribe was closeto the Kingdom but not yet in it, because to enter and live in the Kingdom, we must not just know that we must love, but actually love. And when we love in the way Jesus indicates, we begin to live in God’s kingdom, in the world but not of it. We become as it were the soul of the world, even in the midst of external chaos and instability. God wants to give us the peace that comes from grounding our life in the love of him who is indeed our strength, rock, fortress, deliverer, refuge, shield, horn of salvation, stronghold and savior. There is only one God and we will never find his name on any electoral ballot. That’s the first truth God wants us to remember today.
The second crucial lesson Jesus teaches is about how to relate to others at every time, including during election season. Jesus states that the second most important thing we need to do in life is to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Indeed, as he would say elsewhere, the way we show our love of God is not to love him as he has loved us but to love one another as he has loved us. The word Jesus uses for love is agape, which means unconquerable benevolence. It means an orientation of life that features a willingness to sacrifice, to forgive seventy times seven times, to serve, even to die. What makes Christians distinctive, from Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount onward, is that we have agape even for those who have made themselves our mortal adversaries. We’re not necessarily going to like our enemies, or have them over for tea, or agree with them. But we are called to love them. To pray for them. To try to understand them. To strive to save them. To seek to find the good in them and help it grow. And never to give up on them.
This reminder about the love of neighbor is pivotal in an age in which political campaigns regularly try to get us to hate our neighbors and to fear them as existential threats. One campaign has tried to get us to fear and hate immigrants, especially those who have come illegally or are trying to come here illegally, as people intent on stealing our jobs, terrorizing our neighborhoods, trafficking our teens, and even eating our dogs. Another campaign has tried to get us to fear our own sons and daughters in the womb, to despise those who try to defend them, to denigrate and marginalize people of faith, and to demonize and cancel those who don’t agree with their radical revolution of human anthropology and sexuality. Both sides imply that to love our neighbor, especially those of another political persuasion, would be naïve and downright dangerous. We’re in a de facto civil war, they suggest, and therefore it’s important to know our enemies, make sure others regard them as enemies, and passionately oppose them. With religious zeal, they try to convince us that the Golden Rule no longer applies; rather, we need to hate those who hate us and do unto them first the malevolent things they intend to do to us before they get the chance.
It’s tempting, sometimes, to capitulate to this fear-mongering rhetoric, because it’s repeated almost incessantly on various television programs, talk shows, podcasts, social media scrolls and more. But as Christians, we must resist it. It’s “election interference” not by the Russians but by the Evil One himself, who always seeks to divide and to get us to turn on each other. Jesus, however, calls us to love our neighbor with the love we have for ourselves and our loved ones, with the love with which he himself loves them and loves us. That’s not a platitude but a command. This means, concretely, among other applications, that we must love Donald Trump. We must love Kamala Harris. We must love those who support them. We must love those who oppose them. Even as we work to defeat their particular ideas and candidacies. If we don’t love them as we work, perhaps vigorously against their positions, we are not living as Christians, as sons and daughters of the eternal Father. At times this summons to Christian love is not just hard but heroic. But it’s what Jesus himself did and does. It’s what the Blessed Mother did and does. It’s what the saints in every age do. Jesus’ powerful words from the Sermon on the Mount have never lost their force. Let’s listen to him with fresh ears: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same?” For us to be different from the pagans, for us to enter the kingdom of God and live by its principles, we must love like God the Father loves, like God the Son loves, like the Holy Spirit has helped the saints throughout the centuries love. Even though there won’t be millions of dollars spent on commercials telling us this, it’s more important and urgent than the outcome of this Tuesday’s election.
So, as we draw near to election day, and especially to its aftermath, the Lord is reminding us of our supreme duties as his sons and daughters. Before we give to Caesar, we’re called to give to God what belongs to God, and that means to love him with all our mind, heart, soul and strength, to serve him as his loyal subjects, to live as citizens of heaven with the virtues befitting Jesus and his followers. Then, in an age of division and growing animosities, we’re called to bring those virtues to a culture that desperately needs them, no matter what outcome election day brings, and beyond.
Then, … third, out of love for God and neighbor, we need to vote — and vote differently than the rest. We vote our faith. We vote our prayer. We vote our conscience, that inner forum in which we converse with God as he guides us in all our moral choices. We vote for candidates, platforms, ballot items, that will best enable us to love God and neighbor and form a culture that will facilitate that highest and most common good of all. There are some voices, like the Tweeter I mentioned this morning, who want to convince us that there’s only one moral choice in this election, as if God himself were running, and we need to be on guard against such idolatry and political manipulation of religious believers and faith. There are, however, many moral issues that we must weigh together with God, as we exercise our responsibilities — not just on the first Tuesday after a Monday in November, but always — to help promote a culture of life and a civilization of love, and strive to form in our generation “one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all,” including and especially those most vulnerable.Those looking for an endorsement from me will not get one. It’s not because I’m a coward or evasive or because I haven’t figured out for myself how to handle an election in which the major candidates both have manifest and manifold problems. But it’s because each of us needs to go before God and get his guidance as to how to exercise our freedom and responsibility best in this election, confident that God will help us prioritize among the contrasting issues, candidates, policies, platforms and promises. Since each of us will have to answer for our decision on judgment day, each of us needs to go to God in prayer now to ascertain the right path.
To strengthen us to live and love by the standards to which he calls us, God who is love, and who has made us in his image, in love and for love, gives us himself. In his appearances 350 years ago to St Margaret Mary Alacoque, revealing his Sacred Heart to her, Jesus referred to himself in the Holy Eucharist as the “Sacrament of Love.” The Eucharist is indeed the efficacious sign of Jesus’ love, what brings his love to the world. To receive him is to receive Love incarnate. To receive him worthily is to commit to love, to offer our own body, blood, and all we are and have first to God as our “holy and acceptable sacrifice, our spiritual worship” and then, together with God, to others. This true Christian love, flowing from the infinite love of God, is what our country most needs. Loving in this way is our greatest duty not just to God but to our nation. As we now draw near to Jesus, whose priesthood never passes away, who lives forever to make intercession for us, who is holy, innocent, undefiled, sinless, higher than the heavens and yet humbly about to come to this altar and make us his dwelling place, let us ask him to give us the help he knows we need to live as he commands, to love him here with all we’ve got and to truly to love others, including those who vehemently disagree with us, as he, from the Cross, loved us to the end.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading I
Dt 6:2-6
Moses spoke to the people, saying:
“Fear the LORD, your God,
and keep, throughout the days of your lives,
all his statutes and commandments which I enjoin on you,
and thus have long life.
Hear then, Israel, and be careful to observe them,
that you may grow and prosper the more,
in keeping with the promise of the LORD, the God of your fathers,
to give you a land flowing with milk and honey.
“Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone!
Therefore, you shall love the LORD, your God,
with all your heart,
and with all your soul,
and with all your strength.
Take to heart these words which I enjoin on you today.”
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 18:2-3, 3-4, 47, 51
R. (2) I love you, Lord, my strength.
I love you, O LORD, my strength,
O LORD, my rock, my fortress, my deliverer.
R. I love you, Lord, my strength.
My God, my rock of refuge,
my shield, the horn of my salvation, my stronghold!
Praised be the LORD, I exclaim,
and I am safe from my enemies.
R. I love you, Lord, my strength.
The LORD lives! And blessed be my rock!
Extolled be God my savior.
You who gave great victories to your king
and showed kindness to your anointed.
R. I love you, Lord, my strength.
Reading II
Heb 7:23-28
Brothers and sisters:
The levitical priests were many
because they were prevented by death from remaining in office,
but Jesus, because he remains forever,
has a priesthood that does not pass away.
Therefore, he is always able to save those who approach God through him,
since he lives forever to make intercession for them.
It was fitting that we should have such a high priest:
holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners,
higher than the heavens.
He has no need, as did the high priests,
to offer sacrifice day after day,
first for his own sins and then for those of the people;
he did that once for all when he offered himself.
For the law appoints men subject to weakness to be high priests,
but the word of the oath, which was taken after the law,
appoints a son,
who has been made perfect forever.
Alleluia
Jn 14:23
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Whoever loves me will keep my word, says the Lord;
and my father will love him and we will come to him.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Mk 12:28b-34
One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked him,
“Which is the first of all the commandments?”
Jesus replied, “The first is this:
Hear, O Israel!
The Lord our God is Lord alone!
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul,
with all your mind,
and with all your strength.
The second is this:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
There is no other commandment greater than these.”
The scribe said to him, “Well said, teacher.
You are right in saying,
‘He is One and there is no other than he.’
And ‘to love him with all your heart,
with all your understanding,
with all your strength,
and to love your neighbor as yourself’
is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
And when Jesus saw that he answered with understanding,
he said to him,
“You are not far from the kingdom of God.”
And no one dared to ask him any more questions.
The post God’s Guidance For This Time of Elections, 31st Sunday (B), November 3, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
24 min
November 03, 2024More Important Than The Elections, 31st Sunday (B), November 3, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx
31st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
November 3, 2024
Deut 6:2-6, Ps 18, Heb 7:23-28, Mt 12:28-34

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.3.24_MCs_Homily_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
Today we start what will surely be a highly dramatic and historically consequential week, nearing the end of a political season that many, on various sides, have been framing in apocalyptic terms. Some are charging that what’s at stake is the end of democracy if one presidential candidate — whom they are labeling as a fascist, an insurrection inciter, and a convicted criminal — is elected. Others are saying that what’s at stake are the lives of millions in the womb and the freedom of the Church, if the most pro-abortion presidential candidate of all time — who wants women proudly to shout their abortions and prevent any medical personnel from religious or conscientious objection, and who, among other anti-Catholic words and actions, believes Knight of Columbus should be disqualified from judgeships and high government service — gains the majority of the electoral college. Both campaigns, not to mention media programs, celebrities, columnists, social media influencers, and thousands of zealous adherents, have been ramping up the fears of catastrophe if one or the other is elected. In an already anxious age, millions are understandably on edge.
That’s why it’s especially important for us to listen carefully today to the Word of God. Right on cue, God seeks to orient us as his sons and daughters as we face a momentous week as well as to strengthen us, as salt, light, and leaven, to help guide our neighbors and fellow citizens. In today’s Gospel, a scribe asks Jesus, “Which is the first of all the commandments?” In other words, “What is the most important thing I need to do?” And Jesus doesn’t say, perhaps to the surprise of some contemporary commentators, “Make sure you vote this way in the election.” Instead, he tells us something far more important, not just for life in general but even for our duties as citizens. I’d like to focus on the two most important lessons.
The first is about the primacy of God. Jesus echoes in the Gospel something from today’s first reading from the Book of Deuteronomy. It’s a message that is fundamental not just for Israel to hear but for the United States and people of every country and time: “The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.” In an age that seems to reduce almost everything to political messianism, in which political campaigns are trying to enlist and manipulate religious believers toward political ends, as if this election is the definitive battle between good and evil, light and darkness, life and death, with the only option to vote for one candidate or the other as a savior, the Word of God wants us to remember that there is only one Lord. As we prayed in the Psalm, he is our strength, rock, fortress, deliverer, refuge, shield, horn of salvation, stronghold and savior. The Letter to the Hebrews makes this even more explicit in reminding us that Jesus, our incarnate Lord whom we will celebrate in three weeks as King of the Universe, is our eternal high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, perfect, higher than the heavens, who remains in office forever and is always able and eager to save those who approach God the Father through him, since he lives forever to make intercession for them. These words are a great consolation, on November 3rd and for November 5th, November 6th and beyond. The Good Shepherd will not leave us orphans. He has promised to be with us always until the end of time. He has triumphed over sin and death.
These words, and the reality to which they point, are meant to become a way of life. They summon us not just to acknowledge Jesus as Lord, to trust him and to adore him, but, as he reminds us today, to love him who loved us first, and to do so with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. The first of all the commandments, the most important thing we need to do in life, is to love God. It’s not enough simply to know him. It’s not sufficient to recognize that we should love and honor him. We must actually love him. Jesus told the scribe who rejoiced at Jesus’ answer to his query, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” The scribe was close to the Kingdom but not yet in it, because to enter and live in the Kingdom, we must not just know that we must love, but actually love. And when we love in the way Jesus indicates, we begin to live in God’s kingdom, in the world but not of it. We become as it were the soul of the world, even in the midst of external chaos and instability. God wants to give us the peace that comes from grounding our life in the love of him who is indeed our strength, rock, fortress, deliverer, refuge, shield, horn of salvation, stronghold and savior. There is only one God and we will never find him on any electoral ballot. That’s the first truth God wants us to remember today.
The second crucial lesson Jesus teaches is about how to relate to others at every time, including during election season. Jesus states that the second most important thing we need to do in life is to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Indeed, as he would say elsewhere, the way we show our love of God is not to love him as he has loved us but to love one another as he has loved us. The word Jesus uses for love is agape, which means unconquerable benevolence. It means an orientation of life that features a willingness to sacrifice, to forgive seventy times seven times, to serve, even to die. What makes Christians distinctive, from Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount onward, is that we have agape even for those who have made themselves our mortal adversaries. We’re not necessarily going to like our enemies, or have them over for tea, or agree with them. But we are called to love them. To pray for them. To try to understand them. To strive to save them. To seek to find the good in them and help it grow. And never to give up on them.
This reminder about the love of neighbor is pivotal in an age in which political campaigns regularly try to get us to hate our neighbors and to fear them as existential threats. One campaign has tried to get us to fear and hate immigrants, especially those who have come or are trying to come here illegally, as people intent on stealing our jobs, terrorizing our neighborhoods, trafficking our teens, and even eating our dogs. Another campaign has tried to get us to fear our own sons and daughters in the womb, to despise those who try to defend them, to deride people of faith, and to demonize and cancel those who don’t agree with their radical revolution of human anthropology and sexuality. Both sides imply that to love our neighbor, especially those of another political persuasion, would be naïve and downright dangerous. We’re in a de facto civil war, they suggest, and therefore it’s important to know our enemies, make sure others regard them as enemies, and passionately oppose them. With religious zeal, they try to convince us that the Golden Rule no longer applies; rather, we need to hate those who hate us and do unto them first the malevolent things they intend to do to us before they get the chance.
It’s tempting, sometimes, to capitulate to this fear-mongering rhetoric, because it’s repeated almost incessantly on various television programs, talk shows, podcasts, social media scrolls and more. But as Christians, we must resist it. It’s “election interference” not by the Russians but by the Evil One himself, who always seeks to divide and to get us to turn on each other. Jesus, however, calls us to love our neighbor with the love we have for ourselves and our loved ones, with the love with which he himself loves them and loves us. That’s not a platitude but a command. This means, concretely, among other applications, that we must love Donald Trump. We must love Kamala Harris. We must love those who support them. We must love those who oppose them. Even as we work to defeat their particular ideas and candidacies. If we don’t love them as we work, perhaps vigorously against their positions, we are not living as Christians, as sons and daughters of the eternal Father. At times this summons to Christian love is not just hard but heroic. But it’s what Jesus himself did and does. It’s what the Blessed Mother did and does. It’s what the saints in every age do. Jesus’ powerful words from the Sermon on the Mount have never lost their force. Let’s listen to him with fresh ears: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same?” For us to be different from the pagans, for us to enter the kingdom of God and live by its principles, we must love like God the Father loves, like God the Son loves, like the Holy Spirit has helped the saints throughout the centuries love. Even though there won’t be millions of dollars spent on commercials telling us this, it’s more important and urgent than the outcome of this Tuesday’s election.
So, as we draw near to election day, and especially to its aftermath, the Lord is reminding us of our supreme duties as his sons and daughters. Before we give to Caesar, we’re called to give to God what belongs to God, and that means to love him with all our mind, heart, soul and strength, to serve him as his loyal subjects, to live as citizens of heaven with the virtues befitting Jesus and his followers. Then, in an age of division and growing hatred, we’re called to bring those virtues to a culture that desperately needs them, no matter what outcome election day brings, and beyond.
Then, … third, out of love for God and neighbor, we need to vote. And vote differently than the rest. We vote our faith. We vote our prayer. We vote our conscience, that inner forum in which we converse with God as he guides us in all our moral choices. We vote for candidates, platforms, ballot items, that will best enable us to love God and neighbor and form a culture that will facilitate that highest and most common good of all. There are some voices who want to convince us that there’s only one moral choice in this election, as if God himself were running, and we need to be on guard against such idolatry and political manipulation of religious believers and faith. There are, however, many moral issues that we must weigh together with God, as we exercise our responsibilities — not just on the first Tuesday after a Monday in November, but always — to help promote a culture of life and a civilization of love, and strive to form in our generation “one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all,” including and especially those most vulnerable.Those looking for an endorsement from me will not get one. It’s not because I’m a coward or evasive or because I haven’t figured out for myself how to handle an election in which the major candidates both have manifest and manifold problems. But it’s because each of us needs to go before God and get his guidance as to how to exercise our freedom and responsibility best in this election, conscious that God will help us prioritize among the contrasting issues, candidates, policies, platforms and promises. Since each of us will answer for our decision on judgment day, each of us needs to go to God in prayer to ascertain the right answers now.
To strengthen us to live and love by the standards to which he calls us, God who is love, and who has made us in his image, in love and for love, gives us himself. In his appearances 350 years ago to St Margaret Mary Alacoque, revealing his Sacred Heart to her, Jesus referred to himself in the Holy Eucharist as the “Sacrament of Love.” The Eucharist is indeed the efficacious sign of Jesus’ love, what brings his love to the world. To receive him is to receive Love incarnate. To receive him worthily is to commit to love, to offer our own body, blood, and all we are and have first to God as our “holy and acceptable sacrifice, our spiritual worship” and then, together with God, to others. This true Christian love, flowing from the infinite love of God, is what our country most needs. Loving in this way is our greatest duty not just to God but to our nation. As we now draw near to Jesus, whose priesthood never passes away, who lives forever to make intercession for us, who is holy, innocent, undefiled, sinless, higher than the heavens and yet humbly about to come to this altar and make us his dwelling place, let us ask him to give us the help he knows we need to live as he commands, to love him here with all we’ve got and to truly to love others, including those who vehemently disagree with us, as he, from the Cross, loved us to the end.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading I
Dt 6:2-6
Moses spoke to the people, saying:
“Fear the LORD, your God,
and keep, throughout the days of your lives,
all his statutes and commandments which I enjoin on you,
and thus have long life.
Hear then, Israel, and be careful to observe them,
that you may grow and prosper the more,
in keeping with the promise of the LORD, the God of your fathers,
to give you a land flowing with milk and honey.
“Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone!
Therefore, you shall love the LORD, your God,
with all your heart,
and with all your soul,
and with all your strength.
Take to heart these words which I enjoin on you today.”
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 18:2-3, 3-4, 47, 51
R. (2) I love you, Lord, my strength.
I love you, O LORD, my strength,
O LORD, my rock, my fortress, my deliverer.
R. I love you, Lord, my strength.
My God, my rock of refuge,
my shield, the horn of my salvation, my stronghold!
Praised be the LORD, I exclaim,
and I am safe from my enemies.
R. I love you, Lord, my strength.
The LORD lives! And blessed be my rock!
Extolled be God my savior.
You who gave great victories to your king
and showed kindness to your anointed.
R. I love you, Lord, my strength.
Reading II
Heb 7:23-28
Brothers and sisters:
The levitical priests were many
because they were prevented by death from remaining in office,
but Jesus, because he remains forever,
has a priesthood that does not pass away.
Therefore, he is always able to save those who approach God through him,
since he lives forever to make intercession for them.
It was fitting that we should have such a high priest:
holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners,
higher than the heavens.
He has no need, as did the high priests,
to offer sacrifice day after day,
first for his own sins and then for those of the people;
he did that once for all when he offered himself.
For the law appoints men subject to weakness to be high priests,
but the word of the oath, which was taken after the law,
appoints a son,
who has been made perfect forever.
Alleluia
Jn 14:23
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Whoever loves me will keep my word, says the Lord;
and my father will love him and we will come to him.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Mk 12:28b-34
One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked him,
“Which is the first of all the commandments?”
Jesus replied, “The first is this:
Hear, O Israel!
The Lord our God is Lord alone!
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul,
with all your mind,
and with all your strength.
The second is this:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
There is no other commandment greater than these.”
The scribe said to him, “Well said, teacher.
You are right in saying,
‘He is One and there is no other than he.’
And ‘to love him with all your heart,
with all your understanding,
with all your strength,
and to love your neighbor as yourself’
is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
And when Jesus saw that he answered with understanding,
he said to him,
“You are not far from the kingdom of God.”
And no one dared to ask him any more questions.
The post More Important Than The Elections, 31st Sunday (B), November 3, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
14 min
November 02, 2024Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, November 2, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time, B, Vigil
November 2, 2024

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.2.24_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday, as we participate in the dialogue between the Lord Jesus and a scribe — basically a Scripture professor with a specialty in Mosaic law — about the “first of all the commandments.”
Jesus’ answer to the scribe’s question is well-known to us. Quoting the Book of Deuteronomy, perhaps the most famous passage of the Hebrew Bible, he said, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength” (see Deut 6:4-5) Then he volunteered what he thought was the second of all 613 commandments the Scribes had enumerated in what we now call the Old Testament: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” taken from the Book of Leviticus (19:18), before concluding by saying, “There is no other commandment greater than these.” Upon hearing Jesus’ answer, the scribe exclaimed, “Well said, teacher!,” and expressed his agreement that loving God and neighbor is “worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices,” worth more, in other words, than all of the other worship given to God in the temple. The worship that is most important, the priority we should have in our relationship with God, is to love God and to love our neighbor with everything we have. Jesus concludes the conversation by saying to the scribe, somewhat curiously, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” Through his understanding, in other words, he was close to the kingdom but not yet in it. Why? In St. Luke’s Gospel, after a similar conversation with another scholar of the law who had asked, not, “Which is the first of all the commandments?,” but “What must I do to inherit eternal life?,” to which the same answer was given about loving God and others, Jesus said to him, “Do this and you will live.” The upshot is that to enter the kingdom, we must do more than know what we need to do, but actually do what we know we need to do.
And so we need to ask ourselves? Do I really love God? To love God is more than to acknowledge his existence. It means more than to fulfill certain duties to him owe out of justice. It means to be willing to sacrifice for him, willingly, the way we sacrifice readily for anyone we love, like a man in love sacrifices for the woman he wants to be his wife or a mother sacrifices for a beloved child. It means to care about what God cares about. It means to seek to please him as much as we can. Many of us can think our relationship with God is fine if, basically, we love the Lord with “most of our heart,” with “some of our mind,” with a “little of our strength,” and with the “majority of our soul.” As long as we’re not committing mortal sins, we tell ourselves, as long as we’re not betraying God, or angry at him, or despising him, or doing anything evil against him, then things are basically fine in our relationship. Or we can think that we love the Lord simply because we have good thoughts about him, admire him, think that he’s kind, merciful and generous. But Jesus is calling for much more than this. Love is more than having good feelings or impressions about another; love is the unconquerable benevolence that leads to willing, to choosing consistently, the good of the other for the other’s sake. Love is opting as a habit to give ourselves for another, putting someone else ahead of us, like Jesus would say during the Last Supper and put into action the following afternoon: laying down one’s life for one’s friends, in little ways or supremely. There are many solid Christians who love God to the point of making sacrifices for him, but as this Sunday’s Gospel shows us, it’s not enough to sacrifice some of the time and gifts that he’s given us for him and his glory. It’s not enough to give God some of our mind, heart, soul and strength. Jesus is calling us to love God in deeds and affection with all we’ve got.
And so we need to get practical.
Jesus calls us to love him with all our mind. How much of our mind do we dedicate to God? Do we try to think as God thinks in our decisions? Do we truly fill our minds with his thoughts through prayer and reading the Bible and good spiritual books or do we fill them with the world’s thoughts through reading the news more than the Bible or surfing the internet or watching television more than we pray?
Jesus likewise calls us to love him with all our heart. Do we really love God more than we love everything and everyone else in our life? Jesus says elsewhere in the Gospel that we’re not fit to be his disciple unless we love him more than our family members, more than our stuff, more than even our own life. This is obviously challenging but do we try to love him with all our heart?
He calls us to love him with all our strength. How much effort do we make to love him? Do we battle through distractions in prayer? Do we prioritize Mass, adoration and time with him in prayer, making the effort to get there, especially during times when it is challenging to do so? When we do attend, do we give it 100 percent to try to pay attention?
He calls us to love him with all our soul. That means he wants us full of grace. Do we seek to stay free of all sin or do we compromise with sin and give in to gossip, complaining, holding grudges and the like? Do we take advantage of the opportunities for the Sacrament of Confession so that whatever in our soul is not of God can be forgiven?
Jesus also calls us to love our neighbor. The love we have for God will be shown by our love for those whom he loves.
And so we likewise can ask whether we are striving to love our neighbor with our mind: are we thinking about our neighbor, trying to understand our neighbor and to lead our neighbor to God through the neighbor’s own categories? Do we think good things about others, noticing their good points rather than their weaknesses, giving them the benefit of the doubt rather than thinking the worst.
Do we love our neighbor with our heart? Do we only half-love, trying to keep appearances of loving while inside not loving with mercy and understanding for the things in our neighbor we don’t appreciate? Do we love our neighbor with affection, including those who are difficult to love, and making the effort to care for the wounds of their heart.
Do we strive to love our neighbor with our strength? Are we sacrificing for our neighbors and going the extra mile to help them with deeds? Do we summon the strength to forgive them?
Finally do we love our neighbor with our soul? Since when we’re in the state of grace, God is in our soul, do we strive to love our neighbor together with God? Do we care in a special way for their souls, that they be full of God?
I think most of us, hearing these questions, will recognize we have a lot of work to do. But Jesus doesn’t leave us on our own. He can command us to love because he loves us first. He pours his love into our hearts so that it may overflow into our mind, will, emotions, soul and muscles. He enters into us so that, together with him from the inside, we may love our neighbor as he has loved us first. He makes it simpler for us: allowing us to love God in him and to love him in our neighbor, promising that whatever we do to the least of our brothers and sisters, he takes personally. In short, he makes it possible for us, through love, to enter his kingdom, to do what he teaches and live. But we need to keep before us the challenge he gives us, to love, to give, to sacrifice for God and for others.
This consequential conversation about the two most important things we need to do is a fitting context to consider as we begin this month of November. On Friday, we celebrated All Saints Day in which we not only remembered the famous heroes of our faith as well as the humble “saints next door” and of our families who have made the eternal Hall of Fame. All Saints Day, and the month of November, is also a time for us to ponder that we, too, are called to sanctity. There are various ways we can define holiness, but one of the best is that holiness is the “perfection of love.” Sanctity means loving God with all we’ve got and loving our neighbor with the love of God. In St. Luke’s Gospel, as I mentioned a little earlier, the scribe asked Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” We could rephrase the question as “What must I do to become a saint?” To move from “not being far from the kingdom of God” to entering into the kingdom of heaven, is to love as Jesus describes. And so it’s important for us to focus on the love we put into our life, into living our faith.
At Mass on All Saints Day, Jesus proclaimed to us the beatitudes. We know them. But we can examine whether we love God and others in putting them into practice. Do we love God and others so much that we are poor in spirit, devaluing the things of this world because we treasure God and sharing what we have with those who need it more than we do? Do we love God and others to the point of mourning whenever others are suffering and seek to comfort them with the consolation we have received from God? Do we love God and others enough to become meek, gentle, and humble before them, rather than try to affirm ourselves and our rights and our strength? Do we love God and others to hunger and thirst for holiness, for justice, for a right relationship with God and others, and to be passionate to remedy any injustice against God and others? Do we love God enough to become merciful like he is merciful and readily forgive and reconcile with others 70 times 7 times? Do we love God and others to be pure of heart, to be chaste, and see God in others, refusing ever to use them for our pleasure or needs? Do we love God and others enough to be called children of God by seeking peace rather than strife, even putting our own lives and risk to restore harmony to war torn areas? Do we love God and others enough to be persecuted in witness to our Christian faith, to be cancelled, to be insulted, mocked and calumniated?
The path to heaven, the path to sanctity, is a path of love. Jesus indicates it to us in the conversation he has with the scribe in the Gospel that he wants us to have with each of us this Sunday. And to help us on the road to sanctity through love, he gives us himself, in his body and blood. In preparation, let us ask him to help us to pray Mass with all our mind, heart, soul and strength and to be strengthened by Jesus on the inside, by means of Holy Communion, to “do this in memory of” him, giving our bodies, our blood, our sweat, our tears, our mind, heart, soul and strength for the good of others as Jesus has given all he had for us and our salvation. This is the path so that on future November first, others will be praying through our intercession and seeking to follow our truly Christian, indeed, holy example.

The Gospel passage on which the homily was based was:
Gospel
Mk 12:28b-34
One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked him,
“Which is the first of all the commandments?”
Jesus replied, “The first is this:
Hear, O Israel!
The Lord our God is Lord alone!
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul,
with all your mind,
and with all your strength.
The second is this:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
There is no other commandment greater than these.”
The scribe said to him, “Well said, teacher.
You are right in saying,
‘He is One and there is no other than he.’
And ‘to love him with all your heart,
with all your understanding,
with all your strength,
and to love your neighbor as yourself’
is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
And when Jesus saw that he answered with understanding,
he said to him,
“You are not far from the kingdom of God.”
And no one dared to ask him any more questions.
The post Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, November 2, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
11 min

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

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