Catholic Preaching

By Father Roger LandryReligion & Spirituality Christianity

Catholic Preaching episodes

October 24, 2024The Fire of the Love of Christ That Surpasses Knowledge, 29th Thursday (II), October 24, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Thursday of the 29th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Anthony Mary Claret
October 24, 2024
Eph 3:14-21, Ps 33, Lk 12:49-53

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 in the first reading, St. Paul prostrates himself before God the Father in prayer, begging him to sent the fire of the Holy Spirit upon the Christians in Ephesus and upon us to strengthen us in our inner self. He prays that the Holy Spirit will strengthen us in mind, will and conscience so that we might allow Christ to dwell in our hearts, and, rooted in love, to have the courage to understand “the breadth and length and height and depth [of] the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” and “be filled with all the fullness of God.” Several early saints interpreted the breath, length, height and depth as the dimensions of the Cross, which is fundamentally not a sign of pain but of the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge that bore that pain for love of us. St. Paul was praying to the Father to raise us as his children by the Holy Spirit to be strengthened by the Cross, to allow his crucified and risen Son to abide in us and to help us to understand the cruciform dimensions of the Christian life so as to open ourselves to the fullness of the God of love. It’s an extraordinary prayer, begging for a fullness St. Paul himself had already tasted when he himself admitted he had been crucified with Christ and that the life he was living in the flesh he was living by faith in the Son of God who loved him and died for him, a fullness he called “God’s power and wisdom.”
In the Gospel, Jesus speaks about the fire he had come to earth to ignite, and links it to “the baptism with which [he] must be baptized,” which is the baptism of blood on the Cross. He said he was in “anguish” until that baptism be accomplished and the fire begin blazing. His love on the Cross is meant to be a fire of love that is meant to light the world ablaze, the type of love that will transform and strengthen us within. It’s a living flame that will eventually unite all people in the love of the Father who sent his Son to form a loving family, but that union will happen only when people allow themselves to be “burned” and “transformed” by Christ’s love. Many are afraid of the fire, afraid of zeal. That’s why Jesus says that he has come not to “bring peace but division,” because he and the fire of his love would be a sign of contradiction dividing even family members; this is not because Christ is a divider, but when someone in a family opts for Christ, others who want to be first get jealous and angry, and that’s what divides. This was true in the early Church. Often when Jews converted to Christianity, they were disowned by their family. Still today when a Muslim converts to Christianity in Pakistan and various other fundamentalist Muslim countries, or a Hindu converts in certain fundamentalist areas in India, a contract is put out on them, and most often by the members of his or her own family. There are those who find the all-consuming fire of Christ’s love a threat and the sinful reaction to others’ coming alive in love does divide. But the love of Christ burning in the family is able to forgive and to heal, so that all members of the family, God-willing, will grow stronger in faith, allow Christ to remain in their home, and come to the celestial home of the Father from whom every family on earth takes its name.
This fire of love that Christ came to unite features prominently in the new encyclical Pope Francis published this morning entitled Dilexit Nos, about the love of the Sacred Heart for us. He says that Jesus’ heart was filled with the fire of the Holy Spirit. One section he entitles simply “Fire” in which he urges us to heed St. Bonaventure’s counsel, “In the end we should not pray for light, but for ‘raging fire,’ [so that] … the knowledge that Christ died for us does not remain knowledge, but necessarily becomes affection, love.” He said that to build a civilization of love, we need the “fire and the light that radiate from the heart of Christ.” So he encourages us to “welcome the love of Christ in complete trust, and enable its fire to spread in our lives, [so that] we [will] become capable of loving others as Christ did.” That leads inexorably to our Christian mission.” The flames of love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus,” he commented, “expand through the Church’s missionary outreach, which proclaims the message of God’s love revealed in Christ. Saint Vincent de Paul put this nicely when he invited his disciples to pray to the Lord for ‘this spirit, this heart that causes us to go everywhere, this heart of the Son of God, the heart of our Lord, that disposes us to go as he went… he sends us, like [the apostles], to bring fire everywhere.'”
Someone who lived with this fire and sought to “bring fire everywhere” is the saint the Church remembers today. St. Anthony Mary Claret was born in Catalunia in 1807. I once happened upon his birthplace walking in the Spanish Pyrenees back in 1993. I prayed at the Church he was baptized in Sallent and pondered, a month before I entered seminary, the meaning of his life and my life and the call to sanctity given in baptism. I’ve always felt a close connection to him since. He was so passionate about spreading the faith, helping others to pray and receive the Lord’s superabundant mercy that he was named a missionary Archbishop of Santiago in Cuba, where he worked tireless to help the Cubans grow in faith. He founded the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate to help him in this work and into which he sought to pour the fire of God’s love and the gifts of the Holy Spirit so that they could bring that fire everywhere. Many of them brought it burning to martyrdom. So many bold Claretian seminarians gave their life for God and for their brothers and sisters during the Spanish civil war that they have been dubbed the “Martyrial Congregation.” St. Anthony was recalled to Spain by the Queen to be her chaplain and he used his office, through the office of the queen, to do a tremendous amount of good in bringing the love of God to the court, where he sought to eliminate silly and suggestive talk, immorality, impurity and greed. Wherever he went he sought to pass on to others the fire of divine love that burned within, of the breadth, length, height and depth of the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.
We receive Christ’s holy fire each Mass, as Christ seeks to make our hearts burn and, as St. Ephrem used to proclaim in the early Church, when we consume the host we’re consuming “Fire.” In the Eucharist, we enter into Christ’s passion, and Christ seeks to strengthen us, and comes to remain in us, so that we may experience in this world a little of the fullness with which he wishes to fill us forever. And it’s through this communion that St. Paul’s prayer that God the Father through his Spirit strengthen us in our inner self is answered.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 EPH 3:14-21
Brothers and sisters:
I kneel before the Father,
from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,
that he may grant you in accord with the riches of his glory
to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner self,
and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;
that you, rooted and grounded in love,
may have strength to comprehend with all the holy ones
what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,
so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to accomplish far more than all we ask or imagine,
by the power at work within us,
to him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus
to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Responsorial Psalm PS 33:1-2, 4-5, 11-12, 18-19
R. (5b) The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.
Exult, you just, in the LORD;
praise from the upright is fitting.
Give thanks to the LORD on the harp;
with the ten stringed lyre chant his praises.
R. The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.
For upright is the word of the LORD,
and all his works are trustworthy.
He loves justice and right;
of the kindness of the LORD the earth is full.
R. The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.
But the plan of the LORD stands forever;
the design of his heart, through all generations.
Blessed the nation whose God is the LORD,
the people he has chosen for his own inheritance.
R. The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.
But see, the eyes of the LORD are upon those who fear him,
upon those who hope for his kindness,
To deliver them from death
and preserve them in spite of famine.
R. The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.
Gospel PHIL 3:8-9
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
I consider all things so much rubbish
that I may gain Christ and be found in him.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel LK 12:49-53
Jesus said to his disciples:
“I have come to set the earth on fire,
and how I wish it were already blazing!
There is a baptism with which I must be baptized,
and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!
Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?
No, I tell you, but rather division.
From now on a household of five will be divided,
three against two and two against three;
a father will be divided against his son
and a son against his father,
a mother against her daughter
and a daughter against her mother,
a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”
The post The Fire of the Love of Christ That Surpasses Knowledge, 29th Thursday (II), October 24, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
22 min
October 23, 2024Faithful and Prudent Stewards of God’s Grace, 29th Wednesday (II), October 23, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Wednesday of the 29th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. John of Capistrano
October 23, 2024
Eph 3:2-12, Is 12:2-6, Lk 12:39-48

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.23.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
Today in the Gospel Jesus speaks about the characteristics of a “faithful and prudent steward” whom he implicitly contrasts with an unfaithful and imprudent one. The faithful and prudent steward has two basic qualities. First, he is vigilant for the Master’s presence and lives in such a way as if the Master is always present. Second, he gives to others the Master’s food at the proper time. The unfaithful and imprudent steward is one who says “My Master is delayed in coming” and instead of nourishing others starts to abuse them, beginning to “beat the menservants and maidservants, to eat and drink and get drunk.” Jesus asks, “Who, then, is the faithful and prudent steward whom the Master will put in charge of his household?,” and he wants us to be among them. He reminds us, “Much will be required of the person entrusted with much and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.” None of us, in other words, has been entrusted with “little,” but “much” and “more.” But the Lord wants us to recognize the gifts we have received and be good stewards of them in giving to others of the storehouse with which he has entrusted us.
So what are those gifts with which we’ve been entrusted and what is the type of stewardship that a faithful and prudent servant carries out with regard to them? In today’s first reading, St. Paul describes that treasure and that prudent and faithful stewardship. “You have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for your benefit,” he wrote to the Christians in Ephesus. “Of this I became a minister by the gift of God’s grace… to preach to the Gentiles the inscrutable riches of Christ and to bring to light for all what is the plan of the mystery hidden from ages past in God, … so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the Church.” He was constantly in God’s presence because he was in God’s grace, which is not a thing but our sharing as creatures in the life of God. The Lord had blessed him with the gift of revelation and he needed to dispense it as food to others, lavishing them on the feast of the fact that “Gentiles are coheirs, members of the same Body, and copartners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel.” The treasure is Christ’s salvific will. St. Paul’s stewardship was to preach it to all the nations. St. Paul knew that he had been given “even more” for this task, and that’s why he was speaking “with boldness of speech and confidence of access through faith in [Christ].”
This stewardship of the revelation of the Lord and the need to dispense it to the nations is the background for the feast we celebrate today. St. John Capistrano (1386-1456) is an example of a prudent and faithful steward who knew he had received a treasure from God and wanted to pay it forward. He was a brilliant young man who became mayor of his town at 26. He was used to being in charge. But he was vain and occasionally vicious. He had a major conversion and discerned that the Lord was calling him to be a Franciscan despite his marriage and personal weaknesses. The day he presented himself to the Franciscans, he mounted a donkey, sat backward toward the tail, put a paper on his back listing all his sins, and then let the donkey be led to the Franciscan monastery as the people of the town, especially the kids, pelted him with filth and epithets. He was accepted, but the Franciscan who was put in charge of him knew how difficult it would be to get him to obey the Holy Spirit after he was used to being in charge. He was therefore brutal with him. Eventually, however, with the help of prayer, the Holy Spirit and lots of mortification, God strengthened him to become an instrument of so much good within the Franciscan order, in Italy and even in various countries where he was sent to reconcile. He became an extraordinary preacher bringing vast multitudes to conversion and inspiring them to seek what really matters. He was such an effective preacher that he was sent to Hungary to inspire people to raise up and defend the treasure of the faith against the invading Muslim Turks. He eventually was a leading voice at the Council of Ferrara-Florence that tried to bring the Church back to unity, so that the Church Christ founded, east and west, might collaborate to invest what God had given. He was a prudent and faithful steward who fed his people with the Gospel, with the sacraments, and with faith, hope and love at the proper time — and the Church still remembers him more than five and a half centuries after his death.
“Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more,” Jesus said at the end of today’s Gospel. We have been entrusted with the greatest riches of all in Jesus’ body and blood in Holy Communion. The Son of Man comes not only at an hour we do not expect but very punctually at an hour we do, each day in daily Mass. And he wishes to do in us St. John of Capistrano allowed him to do in him, so that we who have been entrusted with much may meet the demand flowing from those great riches — to share the “mystery of Christ” with others, to give them their food at the proper time, and to let the springs of salvation overflow.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 eph 3:2-12
Brothers and sisters:
You have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace
that was given to me for your benefit,
namely, that the mystery was made known to me by revelation,
as I have written briefly earlier.
When you read this
you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ,
which was not made known to human beings in other generations
as it has now been revealed
to his holy Apostles and prophets by the Spirit,
that the Gentiles are coheirs, members of the same Body,
and copartners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel.
Of this I became a minister by the gift of God’s grace
that was granted me in accord with the exercise of his power.
To me, the very least of all the holy ones, this grace was given,
to preach to the Gentiles the inscrutable riches of Christ,
and to bring to light for all what is the plan of the mystery
hidden from ages past in God who created all things,
so that the manifold wisdom of God
might now be made known through the Church
to the principalities and authorities in the heavens.
This was according to the eternal purpose
that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord,
in whom we have boldness of speech
and confidence of access through faith in him.
Responsorial Psalm is 12:2-3, 4bcd, 5-6
R. (see 3) You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation.
God indeed is my savior;
I am confident and unafraid.
My strength and my courage is the LORD,
and he has been my savior.
With joy you will draw water
at the fountain of salvation.
R. You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation.
Give thanks to the LORD, acclaim his name;
among the nations make known his deeds,
proclaim how exalted is his name.
R. You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation.
Sing praise to the LORD for his glorious achievement;
let this be known throughout all the earth.
Shout with exultation, O city of Zion,
for great in your midst
is the Holy One of Israel!
R. You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation.
Gospel lk 12:39-48
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Be sure of this:
if the master of the house had known the hour
when the thief was coming,
he would not have let his house be broken into.
You also must be prepared,
for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.”
Then Peter said,
“Lord, is this parable meant for us or for everyone?”
And the Lord replied,
“Who, then, is the faithful and prudent steward
whom the master will put in charge of his servants
to distribute the food allowance at the proper time?
Blessed is that servant whom his master on arrival finds doing so.
Truly, I say to you, he will put him
in charge of all his property.
But if that servant says to himself,
‘My master is delayed in coming,’
and begins to beat the menservants and the maidservants,
to eat and drink and get drunk,
then that servant’s master will come
on an unexpected day and at an unknown hour
and will punish the servant severely
and assign him a place with the unfaithful.
That servant who knew his master’s will
but did not make preparations nor act in accord with his will
shall be beaten severely;
and the servant who was ignorant of his master’s will
but acted in a way deserving of a severe beating
shall be beaten only lightly.
Much will be required of the person entrusted with much,
and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.”
The post Faithful and Prudent Stewards of God’s Grace, 29th Wednesday (II), October 23, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
19 min
October 23, 2024Lawyers as Signs and Agents of Hope, Columbia Law School Catholics Red Mass, 29th Tuesday (II), October 22, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Red Mass for Columbia Law School Catholics
29th Tuesday of Ordinary Time, Year II
October 22, 2024
Eph 2:12-22, Ps 85, Lk 12:35-38

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
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The following outline guided the homily:
It’s great to be celebrating the second of what we pray will eventually be hundreds of Red Masses for Columbia Law School Catholics in the decades and centuries ahead.
Red Mass Tradition. 1243 by Pope Innocent IV for the ecclesiastical court. Grew quickly. It begins the judicial year. First Red Mass in the US was celebrated in 1928 by Cardinal Hayes at old St. Andrew’s Church, down by the courthouses here in NYC.
The Red Masses take their name from the Red Vestments worn by the priest when he celebrates a Votive Mass of the Holy Spirit. Judges, Lawyers, Paralegals, Court Personnel, and everyone working in the legal profession have a special need for the Holy Spirit’s seven-fold gifts: wisdom, understanding, knowledge, prudence, courage, reverence, fear or awe of the Lord. We ask for those gifts tonight on us and on all those involved in the administration of justice and those preparing to be officers of the court.
The Holy Spirit fills us with hope and the readings and today’s feast of St. John Paul II are all about hope.
Those in the legal profession are meant to be signs and agents of hope.
Hope for justice for those who are wronged.
Hope for improving the laws of a nation and making it a better place for everyone.
Hope for getting deals done in a way that’s fair to everyone.
Hope within families for solid providers to care for loved ones.
What hope is
Hope is living with God in the World.
That means presence of God. Aware that the Lord is near. Not doing our own thing but doing things in collaboration with him, with his virtues, with his integrity care and concern.
JP II at the United Nations: Witnesses of Hope.
General Assembly of the United Nations in 1995.
“I come before you as a witness: a witness to human dignity,a witness to hope, a witness to the conviction that the destiny of all nations lies in the hands of a merciful Providence.”
In that speech, he gave the reason for the hope that he bore within. For him, hope was essentially a paraphrase of his famous repetition of Jesus’ words “Be not afraid!” in the Mass to inaugurate his papacy which took place 46 years ago today.
He said to the representatives of the nations of the world, “Now is the time fornew hope, which calls us to expel the paralyzing burden of cynicism from the future of politics and of human life. … We must learn not to be afraid, we must rediscover a spirit of hope and a spirit of trust. Hope is not empty optimism springing from a naive confidence that the future will necessarily be better than the past.
Hope and trust are the premise of responsible activity and are nurtured in that inner sanctuary of conscience where ‘man is alone with God’ and he thus perceives that heis not alone amid the enigmas of existence, for he is surrounded by the love of the Creator!
Hope and trust: these may seem matters beyond the purview of the United Nations. But they are not. The politics of nations, with which your Organization is principally concerned, can never ignore the transcendent, spiritual dimension of the human experience. … In order to recover our hope and our trust at the end of this century of sorrows, we must regain sight of that transcendent horizon of possibility to which the soul of man aspires.”
He finished by saying, “As a Christian, my hope and trust are centered on Jesus Christ. …Jesus Christ is for us God made man, and made a part of the history of humanity. Precisely for this reason, Christian hope for the world and its future extends to every human person.”
When George Weigel was choosing a title for his definitive biography of St. John Paul II, a work in which I played a small role, he chose “Witness to Hope,” something that not only summarized his speech to the United Nations, but his whole life.
Each of us is meant to be a witness to hope. Every Christian is. Every Catholic lawyer is.
How do lawyers become people of hope?
There are a few answers from the readings.
First is through hard work. Servants in the Gospel. Second Watch. Third Watch. The Lord is proud of people who are working for and with him at that time, keeping an awareness of his presence.
The second is through communion with the Church. First reading. Dividing wall. Communion of saints, with Church militant and also Church triumphant.
The third is maintaining a clear eschatological sense of our work. That even the sufferings work out for the good. Jesus makes an extraordinary promise about heaven, that he will wait on us.
John Paul II gave some other indications to lawyers about how to be true witnesses of hope.
John Coverdale’s 2005 article soon after JP II’s death, The Legacy of John Paul II to Lawyers. Seton Hall Law Review.
Coverdale is a professor emeritus at Seton Hall School of Law, with his JD from Notre Dame and Ph.D’s in both history and Philosophy as well as a licentiate in Sacred Theology.
He argued that JP II said that to be real agents of hope in a sometimes desperate world will come more from just legal expertise and hard work, but some other coordinates.
Recognizing the value and dignity of every person
Capacity for a gift of self, for real sacrifice.
Vigorous understanding of Freedom and its relationship to the truth at a time of epistemological and moral relativism. Thirst for truth. Real freedom, not license, but the uncoerced ability to know and embrace the truth
Grasp the nature of law as an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community, and promulgated. Unlike the positivistic conception which sees whatever the legislature (or in some cases, the courts) commands as law, thereby making the law essentially an act of the will of the legislator, John Paul II views law as primarily an act of reason which directs men toward their proper goal
Coverdale talked about applications to the protecting the life of those at the margins, to solidarity and subsidiarity, to economic organization at the service of the person, to private property and the destination of goods.
JP II’s thought, Coverdale say, “has special relevance to lawyers, because all lawyers who aspire to go beyond being mere technicians must come to grips with the ultimate questions that concern the goal of human life and the sort of society that will contribute to its attainment.”
Where does a Catholic lawyer get the strength to be a sign and agent of hope.
Here at Mass. Here the HS helps us keep a lively awareness of Jesus’ presence, which is the source of our hope. By his power, Jesus comes to abide in us in Holy Communion. By his work, he makes us more and more fellow citizens with the saints through Holy Communion.
It’s here at Mass that Jesus, “girds himself, has us recline at table, and proceeds to wait on them.” That’s what Jesus, after all, did at the Last Supper, taking on the form of a slave and washing his apostles’ feet and feeding them with his very own body and blood.
Every Mass is a Perpetual Pentecost. Here the work of the Holy Spirit to form us to be like Jesus reaches its zenith. He makes us witnesses to Christ, who is our hope.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 eph 2:12-22
Brothers and sisters:
You were at that time without Christ,
alienated from the community of Israel
and strangers to the covenants of promise,
without hope and without God in the world.
But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off
have become near by the Blood of Christ.
For he is our peace, he made both one
and broke down the dividing wall of enmity, through his Flesh,
abolishing the law with its commandments and legal claims,
that he might create in himself one new person in place of the two,
thus establishing peace,
and might reconcile both with God,
in one Body, through the cross,
putting that enmity to death by it.
He came and preached peace to you who were far off
and peace to those who were near,
for through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.
So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners,
but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones
and members of the household of God,
built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets,
with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone.
Through him the whole structure is held together
and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord;
in him you also are being built together
into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.
Responsorial Psalm ps 85:9ab-10, 11-12, 13-14
R. (see 9) The Lord speaks of peace to his people.
I will hear what God proclaims;
the LORD–for he proclaims peace.
Near indeed is his salvation to those who fear him,
glory dwelling in our land.
R. The Lord speaks of peace to his people.
Kindness and truth shall meet;
justice and peace shall kiss.
Truth shall spring out of the earth,
and justice shall look down from heaven.
R. The Lord speaks of peace to his people.
The LORD himself will give his benefits;
our land shall yield its increase.
Justice shall walk before him,
and salvation, along the way of his steps.
R. The Lord speaks of peace to his people.
Gospel lk 12:35-38
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Gird your loins and light your lamps
and be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding,
ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks.
Blessed are those servants
whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival.
Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself,
have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them.
And should he come in the second or third watch
and find them prepared in this way,
blessed are those servants.”
The post Lawyers as Signs and Agents of Hope, Columbia Law School Catholics Red Mass, 29th Tuesday (II), October 22, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
31 min
October 22, 2024 Overview of the Theology of the Body, Merton Institute for Catholic Life, October 21, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Thomas Merton Institute for Catholic Life
Columbia University
October 21, 2024

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10.21.24 Overview of the Theology of the Body

To download Father Landry’s “Cliff Notes” of the Theology of the Body, please click here:
Summary of the Theology of the Body

The post Overview of the Theology of the Body, Merton Institute for Catholic Life, October 21, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
1 hr 46 min
October 22, 2024Becoming Witnesses of Hope by Living and Serving with God in the World, 29th Tuesday (II), October 22, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Tuesday of the 29th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
October 22, 2024
Eph 2:12-22, Ps 85, Lk 12:35-38

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.22.24_1210_Mass_1.mp3

The following points were made in the homily:
Today on the Memorial of St. John Paul II, as I look at this morning’s first reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians and Jesus’ promise in the Gospel about eternity, my thoughts turn to what John Paul II said to the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1995. The readings today are about hope and he came, he said, “I come before you as a witness: a witness to human dignity, a witness to hope, a witness to the conviction that the destiny of all nations lies in the hands of a merciful Providence.” In that speech, he gave the reason for the hope that he bore within. For him, hope was essentially a paraphrase of his famous repetition of Jesus’ words “Be not afraid!” in the Mass to inaugurate his papacy which took place 46 years ago today. He said to the representatives of the nations of the world, “Now is the time for new hope, which calls us to expel the paralyzing burden of cynicism from the future of politics and of human life. … We must learn not to be afraid, we must rediscover a spirit of hope and a spirit of trust. Hope is not empty optimism springing from a naive confidence that the future will necessarily be better than the past. Hope and trust are the premise of responsible activity and are nurtured in that inner sanctuary of conscience where ‘man is alone with God’ and he thus perceives that he is not alone amid the enigmas of existence, for he is surrounded by the love of the Creator! Hope and trust: these may seem matters beyond the purview of the United Nations. But they are not. The politics of nations, with which your Organization is principally concerned, can never ignore the transcendent, spiritual dimension of the human experience. … In order to recover our hope and our trust at the end of this century of sorrows, we must regain sight of that transcendent horizon of possibility to which the soul of man aspires.” He finished by saying, “As a Christian, my hope and trust are centered on Jesus Christ. … Jesus Christ is for us God made man, and made a part of the history of humanity. Precisely for this reason, Christian hope for the world and its future extends to every human person.” When George Weigel was choosing a title for his definitive biography of St. John Paul II, a work in which I played a small role, he chose “Witness to Hope,” something that not only summarized his speech to the United Nations, but his whole life.
We are all called to be witnesses to hope because of our faith in Jesus Christ and bring that hope to the campus and to the world. Today’s first reading teaches us that our hope comes from the fact, as John Paul II said, that Jesus is with us in the world. St. Paul describes to the Christians in Ephesus their situation before the proclamation of the Gospel. “You were at that time without Christ, alienated from the community of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, without hope and without God in the world.” They were hopeless because they were living without God in the world. Once one begins to live with God, one begins to have hope in every circumstance. We could even define hope as “living with God in the world.” Pope Benedict wrote about this in his beautiful 2007 encyclical on Christian Hope, Spe Salvi. “Paul reminds the Ephesians that before their encounter with Christ they were ‘without hope and without God in the world’ (Eph 2:12). Of course he knew they had had gods, he knew they had had a religion, but their gods had proved questionable, and no hope emerged from their contradictory myths. Notwithstanding their gods, they were ‘without God’ and consequently found themselves in a dark world, facing a dark future. … Here too we see as a distinguishing mark of Christians the fact that they have a future: it is not that they know the details of what awaits them, but they know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness. Only when the future is certain as a positive reality does it become possible to live the present as well. … The dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown open. The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life. … The Ephesians, before their encounter with Christ, were without hope because they were ‘without God in the world.’ To come to know God—the true God—means to receive hope.” That’s the hope that came to all the nations. St. Paul describes it, “Now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have become near by the Blood of Christ.”
That hope is supposed to be reinforced by living in communion with other believers who are supposed to be, with us, mutual witnesses to hope. Our communion with Christ leads to a communion with his body the Church. St. Paul says of Jews and Gentiles that Christ “made both one and broke down the dividing wall of enmity, … that he might create in himself one new person in place of the two … and might reconcile both with God, in one Body, through the Cross.” That dividing wall of enmity is a reference to the tall wall of separation in the Jerusalem Temple between the Courtyard of the Gentiles and the Courtyard of the Jews. A gentile couldn’t enter the inner courtyard and there was a sign that if one were caught he would be executed. There was strict separation between the two. Christ tore down that wall “that he might create in himself one new person in place of the two, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile both [Jew and Gentile] with God, in one Body, through the cross, by it putting that enmity to death.” That leads to the beautiful reality that in Christ, as St. Paul says, “So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone. Through him the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord; in him you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.” That’s the reality of the Church. We are united with each other but also with the the saints, built upon Christ, as a holy temple, the dwelling place of God. That’s a great living source of hope as Christ our Hope dwells within us, as we constantly give reasons for the hope within us to each other, and as we together give a witness of hope to the world.
That hope is obviously nourished by Jesus’ great promises of what awaits us as his faithful disciples, as his friends, followers, and members of his Mystical Body. Today in the Gospel he gives us a great promise of what heaven will be like when he says that “he will gird himself, have them recline at table and proceed to wait on them.” He shows the enormous gratitude God will give to us for our fidelity, for our trusting with hope in Him, for our living in communion with others, and by the way we live out our love for him and each other. For this to occur, we have to keep an awareness of his presence with us in the world, which is the source of hope. He summons us to be “like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival. … And should he come in the second or third watch and find them prepared in this way, blessed are those servants.” This is the attitude we call “presence of God,” an awareness that Jesus is with us in the world, an alertness to the various ways he comes to us. This is the fundamental source of our hope, as Pope Benedict says. This awareness of the presence of God is contrasted with the attitude Jesus will describe in tomorrow’s Gospel: namely the person who forgets God, who thinks “My master is delayed in coming” and “begins to beat the menservants and the maidservants, to eat and drink and get drunk.” These are people who live without God in the world. So our hope is shown in our service of God and others. If we’re aware Jesus is with us, it’s so much easier to love him and others. And the more we do, the more we are filled with love for God and others, the easier it is to be filled with hope and to become, through our Christian loving service, true witnesses of hope in a world that needs us to be beacons.
Jesus wants to help us keep a lively awareness of his presence, which is the source of our hope. He meets us in prayer. He comes to abide in us in Holy Communion. He wants to make us more and more fellow citizens with the saints through Holy Communion. Jesus’ promise that if we remember him and live with him in the world, if he finds us vigilant in loving service, “he will gird himself, have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them,” comes to fulfillment in the Mass. That’s what Jesus, after all, did at the Last Supper, taking on the form of a slave and washing his apostles’ feet and feeding them with his very own body and blood. That’s what he does for us here at this Eucharistic banquet. That’s what he promises to do forever in heaven if we, like St. John Paul II, live together with Him in the world and live in a communion of genuine sacrificial love with all the holy ones, building our entire life on Christ the capstone. At every Mass, we come together to give everyone a reason of the hope that’s within us. And at the end of every Mass, we are sent out with Christ within and with his blessing to be witnesses of this hope!

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 eph 2:12-22
Brothers and sisters:
You were at that time without Christ,
alienated from the community of Israel
and strangers to the covenants of promise,
without hope and without God in the world.
But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off
have become near by the Blood of Christ.
For he is our peace, he made both one
and broke down the dividing wall of enmity, through his Flesh,
abolishing the law with its commandments and legal claims,
that he might create in himself one new person in place of the two,
thus establishing peace,
and might reconcile both with God,
in one Body, through the cross,
putting that enmity to death by it.
He came and preached peace to you who were far off
and peace to those who were near,
for through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.
So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners,
but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones
and members of the household of God,
built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets,
with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone.
Through him the whole structure is held together
and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord;
in him you also are being built together
into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.
Responsorial Psalm ps 85:9ab-10, 11-12, 13-14
R. (see 9) The Lord speaks of peace to his people.
I will hear what God proclaims;
the LORD–for he proclaims peace.
Near indeed is his salvation to those who fear him,
glory dwelling in our land.
R. The Lord speaks of peace to his people.
Kindness and truth shall meet;
justice and peace shall kiss.
Truth shall spring out of the earth,
and justice shall look down from heaven.
R. The Lord speaks of peace to his people.
The LORD himself will give his benefits;
our land shall yield its increase.
Justice shall walk before him,
and salvation, along the way of his steps.
R. The Lord speaks of peace to his people.
Gospel lk 12:35-38
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Gird your loins and light your lamps
and be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding,
ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks.
Blessed are those servants
whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival.
Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself,
have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them.
And should he come in the second or third watch
and find them prepared in this way,
blessed are those servants.”
The post Becoming Witnesses of Hope by Living and Serving with God in the World, 29th Tuesday (II), October 22, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
17 min
October 21, 2024Becoming Truly Rich, 29th Monday (II), October 21, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Monday of the 29th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of Blessed Giuseppe “Pino” Puglisi, Martyr
October 21, 2024
Eph 2:1-10, Ps 100, Lk 12:13-21

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 in the Gospel, there is a huge contrast between two types of riches, two types of inheritance, two types of legacy, one very often sought by those who are spiritually worldly, the other counseled by Jesus; one ultimately a patrimony of monopoly money, the second an endowment of God. It’s important for us to enter into this scene which is as relevant today as it was what someone in the crowd shouted the question to Jesus, “Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.” Jesus’ response to the man’s request for Jesus to command his brother to give him his share of the inheritance is, “Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?” Jesus didn’t come from heaven to earth to settle inheritance disputes but to make us aware of a totally different type of inheritance. He was the one who told the Parable of the Prodigal Son, which begins with a hunger for an inheritance that leads one to treat his father as if he were already dead. All sin can be summarized in a sense by a desire to place possessions, or money, or the things of this world, and ultimately oneself over other people, including one’s family members. St. Paul would say that “love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Tim 6:10). Jesus gives today an important antidote as medicine against this spirit of acquisitiveness that leads to all types of sins: “Take care to guard against all greed,” Jesus says, “for … one’s life does not consist of possessions.” He then tells a parable about the rich fool who was blessed with a bountiful harvest who, instead of sharing any of his good fortune with those who were hungry after the harvest of grain had filled up the barns he already had, decided to tear down his barns and build bigger ones in an unbelievable building project of selfishness. The man egocentrically said to himself, “As for you, you have so many good things stored up for many years.” He didn’t care that many others didn’t have the bare necessities. And that led to other excesses as he convinced himself to “rest, eat, drink and be merry!” Charity wasn’t even in the picture. And he had a rude awakening coming. That night he would die. “You, fool, this night your life will be demanded of you,” Jesus puts into the mouth of his Father. “And the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?” Jesus drew the moral of the story: “Thus it will be for the one who stores up treasure for himself, but is not rich in what matters to God.”
We’re living in a culture of the grain bin. We obsess about storing treasures or even junk up for ourselves, constantly building new storage facilities to house the stuff that can no longer fit in our homes, rather than giving the stuff we don’t need away. Perhaps the most ubiquitous grain bin of all are financial portfolios, where so many focus, even sometimes obsess, about seeing them grow, while often few think nearly as much if at all about how to share those blessings with others, especially those in desperate need. To all of us in this culture, Jesus calls us to become rich in what matters to God. In the passage right after today’s section, which unfortunately is not included, Jesus tells us: “Sell your belonging and give alms. Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.”
How do we become rich what matters to God? St. Paul tells us in today’s first reading from his Letter to the Ephesians: divine mercy. St. Paul highlights the richness of God’s mercy by contrasting it, first, to our condition when God acted with mercy. We “were dead in [our] transgressions and sins in which [we] once lived following the age of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the desires of our flesh, following the wishes of the flesh and the impulses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest.” Our transgressions and sins had separated us from the life of God because we were seeking other things than God, we were following the desires of the flesh instead of the spirit, we were vulnerable to the “ruler of the power of the world and the spirit at work in the disobedient,” namely the devil, and we were children living in anger like everyone else, rather than living with God’s mercy. But God acted. St. Paul describes it: “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ … and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” God has showered us with the abundance of his mercy, raised us from the death to which sin leads, brought us already in embryo to eternal life, and wants through us to manifest the immeasurable riches of his mercy to the world. These are the “good works that God has prepared in advance” for us, this is the reason why we are his “handiwork” and God wants us to “live in them.” We come to life precisely by accomplishing the works of mercy God has created us to accomplish, paying forward the mercy we have received. To be truly rich is to be like God and God is supposed to be our inheritance and our treasure. As we pray in Psalm 16, “You are my inheritance, O Lord!” “I say to the Lord, you are my Lord, you are my only good. … You, Lord, are my allotted portion and my cup. … Fair to me indeed is my inheritance.”
Today we celebrate a saint who took this inheritance seriously, who sought to become rich in what matters, and who sought in the most challenging of circumstances to help others stop “following the wishes of the flesh and the impulses” under the sway of the devil. St. Giuseppe “Pino” Puglisi was a pastor in Palermo, Sicily who pushed and pulled his people in a mafia-dominated neighborhood to live according to their baptism, rejecting Satan, his evil works and empty promises and live by faith in God. There’s great meaning to the fact that his feast day is not on the day he died (Sept. 15, 1993) but on the day he was baptized, since he himself sought to live in a manner worthy of his baptism. Fighting the immorality of the mafia brought him many enemies among his neighbors, parishioners and even the Church hierarchy. One Archbishop of Palermo, Cardinal Ernesto Ruffini, once even infamously asked, when queried about the mafia, whether it was a brand of detergent. Such hypocrisy led Blessed Pino to criticize the Church, but in a holy way, “like a mother,” he quipped, “not a mother-in-law.” With little support, he tried to change the mentality of his parishioners, conditioned by omertà, or a shamed silence, to give leads to authorities about the crimes of the Mafia. He refused mafia-tainted money for the Church and would not allow mafia members in his processions. On Sept. 15, 1993, the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows and his 56th birthday, he was shot outside his rectory, a hit ordered by the local mafia bosses Filippo and Giuseppe Graviano. One of the hitmen later confessed and there recalled what were Don Puglisi’s final words, “I’ve been expecting you.” His murder shocked Italy. Pope St. John Paul II eventually traveled there the following year and called him a “courageous exponent of the Gospel.” Pope Benedict decreed his martyrdom and Pope Francis authorized his beatification in May 2013, calling him, “an exemplary priest and martyr.” Blessed Pino had a famous saying, now inscribed on various walls and posters in Palermo and elsewhere, “Se ognuno fa qualcosa, allora si può fare molto,” which means, “If everyone does something, then much can be done.” If someone places his heart in true riches, if he becomes rich in God, then he can inspire many others to do so. He reminded people that God is rich in mercy and there was another way and many came to be reconciled.
Today, as Blessed Pino did, we turn to Jesus and say, “Give me a share of your inheritance,” a portion and a cup that is not meant to remain in grain bins during our life or after we go, but one that is meant to be shared with others. As St. Paul reminds us at the end of the first reading, “We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them,” and the Mass is the greatest work of all, one that is meant to overflow, as it did in Blessed Pino’s life, into the richest way of life possible.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 eph 2:1-10
Brothers and sisters:
You were dead in your transgressions and sins
in which you once lived following the age of this world,
following the ruler of the power of the air,
the spirit that is now at work in the disobedient.
All of us once lived among them in the desires of our flesh,
following the wishes of the flesh and the impulses,
and we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest.
But God, who is rich in mercy,
because of the great love he had for us,
even when we were dead in our transgressions,
brought us to life with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
raised us up with him,
and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus,
that in the ages to come
he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace
in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
For by grace you have been saved through faith,
and this is not from you; it is the gift of God;
it is not from works, so no one may boast.
For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for good works
that God has prepared in advance,
that we should live in them.
Responsorial Psalm ps 100:1b-2, 3, 4ab, 4c-5
R. (3b) The Lord made us, we belong to him.
Sing joyfully to the LORD all you lands;
serve the LORD with gladness;
come before him with joyful song.
R. The Lord made us, we belong to him.
Know that the LORD is God;
he made us, his we are;
his people, the flock he tends.
R. The Lord made us, we belong to him.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
his courts with praise.
R. The Lord made us, we belong to him.
Give thanks to him; bless his name, for he is good:
the LORD, whose kindness endures forever,
and his faithfulness, to all generations.
R. The Lord made us, we belong to him.
Gospel lk 12:13-21
Someone in the crowd said to Jesus,
“Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.”
He replied to him,
“Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?”
Then he said to the crowd,
“Take care to guard against all greed,
for though one may be rich,
one’s life does not consist of possessions.”
Then he told them a parable.
“There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest.
He asked himself, ‘What shall I do,
for I do not have space to store my harvest?’
And he said, ‘This is what I shall do:
I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones.
There I shall store all my grain and other goods
and I shall say to myself, “Now as for you,
you have so many good things stored up for many years,
rest, eat, drink, be merry!”’
But God said to him,
‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you;
and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?’
Thus will it be for the one who stores up treasure for himself
but is not rich in what matters to God.”
The post Becoming Truly Rich, 29th Monday (II), October 21, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
25 min
October 20, 2024What Do We Want Jesus To Do For Us?, 29th Sunday (B), October 20, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, New York City
29th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B
October 20, 2024
Is 53:10-11, Ps 33, Heb 4:14-16, Mk 10:35-45
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The following text guided the homily:
Today in the Gospel, the young apostles James and John go up to Jesus with a request. It’s a petition that flows straight out of their desires, their hungers, their ambitions for life. With great chutzpah and resolve, they approach Jesus and say, “We want you to do for us whatever we ask of you?” When Jesus asks them, “What do you wish me to do for you?” and they retort, “Grant that in your glory we may sit one at your right and the other at your left.” By this point in their life, even after two years with Jesus, The two young fishermen wanted to be the Messiah’s right and left hand men, his two viceroys or executive vice-presidents, in what they anticipated would be Jesus’ glorious Messianic administration. The other ten apostles all got indignant at James and John, not because of the impudence of the question, but because they all coveted those spots, too, but hadn’t yet ginned up the courage to ask. It should lead each of us to ask: What am I really seeking as a person, as a young Catholic? If Jesus were to say to us what he said to the sons of Zebedee, “What do you want me to do for you?,” what would we ask for?
The setting of this scene is unforgettable and it reveals that sometimes we can have our priorities totally out of whack. Jesus had just announced to the apostles, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and hand him over to the Gentiles who will mock him, spit upon him, scourge him, and put him to death, but after three days he will rise.” Jesus was indicating that he would fulfill the prophecies foretold by Isaiah, part of which we hear in today’s first reading, that God’s suffering servant would be “crushed in infirmity,” “give his life as an offering for sin,” endure “affliction,” and “through his suffering … [bear] their guilt.”
In response to this disturbing prediction, James and John approach Jesus and ask, not how Jesus is handling it or how they might help, but, for the promotion and a blank check. They ask him to do whatever they want and specify they want positions their ambitions covet. To get a sense of the ugliness of the brothers’ jockeying for position, I return to an example I used a month of ago: imagine that your father came to you and told you that the doctor had just given him two weeks to live and, instead of consoling him, instead of even showing that you cared about him, you and your siblings immediately shifted the attention to who would get the house and the car.The behavior of the sons of Zebedee was raw ambition at its most egocentric and egregious. Jesus responded with magnanimity and mercy, “You do not know what you are asking,” and then gave them some of the prerequisites to reign with him in his kingdom: “Can you drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized,” alluding to the chalice of suffering prophesied by Isaiah and the cleansing ablution of blood that would pour forth from his wounds on Good Friday. To his question, the brothers with hubris and impetuosity respond, “We can!” They, of course, would fall alseep and then scamper in the Garden when Jesus prayed to the Father to take that chalice away from him. Jesus, however, foretold that they ultimately would indeed drink that cup of suffering, which is what they were prepared for in their post-Ascension apostolic work and the sufferings they would endure for Christ.
Jesus took advantage of their question and the other ten apostles’ objections to give one of the most important instructions to them and to us about the path to greatness, about the means to become like him, about the way to reign with him and advance his kingdom. The Letter to the Hebrews tells us today, “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has similarly been tested in every way yet without sin.” Jesus was conscious of his apostles’ weaknesses and he himself, who was tested in every way we are, would have somehow been tempted toward human ambition itself without ever giving into it. Knowing the temptation and also how to resist it, Jesus wanted to strengthen the Twelve to resist it. He didn’t seek to suppress their ambition but to reorient it. Jesus, as we talked about last month, wants us to be great, not mediocre, but desires to convert our ambitions so that we will be desirous of truly great things. He wants to transform our hunger for self-aggrandizement to an ambition for souls, from seeking to glorify our own name, establish our fiefdom and do our own thing to trying to hallow God’s name, enter and establish his Kingdom and do his holy will.
So he tells the twelve: “You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them and their great ones make their authority over them felt.” It’s still much the same way today. Greatness seems to be determined by how much power one wields in politics, how much money or influence one has in business, how many magazine covers and social media followers one has in entertainment. Greatness, it seems, is determined by the capacity to command or lead others from above. Jesus says that that’s not the way of his kingdom. “Whoever wishes to be great among you,” he states emphatically, “will be your servant. Whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.” Real greatness would not be determined by fighting for seats at tables, but by fighting for the towel. The highest would not be the one to whom others would lift glasses in toasts but the one who would be able to drink the cup of Christ’s blood and in turn say to others with Christ, “This is my blood, poured out for you.” Christ’s cabinet would be filled not by those who would kiss his butt, but by those who would put their own butts on the line for Him and for others, by being baptized into Christ’s death through their own suffering and death. He summarizes everything by referencing to his own intention and actions as King: “For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” To be great, in other words, would come not principally through coveting and sharing Christ’s power, but by emulating and extending his sacrificial love. That would be the way to sit on his right in his eternal kingdom.
Jesus’ words about the path to greatness have to have a particular resonance here in New York City, which is a city in which so many work so hard to become great by worldly standards on Wall Street, on Broadway, in Madison Square Garden, on Park, Madison and Fifth Avenues and beyond. It’s a city of skyscrapers ascending constantly higher. Jesus today wants to transform that boundless energy toward something truly lasting. It likewise must have a particular echo here on the campus of Columbia, where many of the leaders of future generations will be formed. Columbia Catholics need to be particularly attemptive. If it were ugly for the apostles to try to elbow each other for worldly advancement, ignoring the reality and meaning of Jesus’ upcoming passion, death and resurrection, how much uglier is it for us now to remain only at the level of worldly desires after those predictions have all come true. The Son of God made man was crucified not so that we might zealously seek the things of this world in the same way everyone else does. He died and rose so that we might live a new life, in the world but not of it, seeking first the kingdom of God and God’s holiness, recognizing that everything else of true value will be given us besides. He was murdered on Golgotha and rose not so that we could be mediocre in faith and in life, but so that we could be great. We, therefore, need to learn the same lessons he was teaching James, John and the other original apostles.
Today is World Mission Sunday throughout the Church. One way that Jesus wants us to become truly great is with respect to sharing the treasure of our faith and completing the vocation and mission he has given us to go and proclaim the Gospel to every creature, baptizing them and teaching them everything he has taught us. The theme of World Mission Sunday this year is taken from Jesus’ words in St. Matthew’s Gospel, “Go and invite everyone to the banquet!” (Mt 22:1-24). In a letter he sent to Catholics throughout the world in anticipation of this celebration, Pope Francis said, “Mission is a tireless going out to all men and women, in order to invite them to encounter God and enter into communion with him.” Jesus, the Good Shepherd, is interested in every lost sheep who has wandered from him and his fold. He wants us to share his love. We know that only 2.5 of 8 people on the planet is Christian, and only 1.3 of 8 is Catholic. Of the Catholics in our country, only 1 of 6 comes to worship the Lord each Lord’s day. Here on campus, we probably see about 1 out of 20 baptized Catholics. The vast majority of the human race, 2,000 years after Christ entered the world and gave his life to save ours, is not coming to the banquet Jesus himself hosts here out of love each Sunday. And Jesus is summoning each of us to be passionate, zealous, indeed great in going out to invite everyone to this feast. He wants us to be as fired up as St. Francis Xavier was to convert three whole countries. He wants us to be as committed as St. Isaac Jogues, one of the North American martyrs, the first priest ever on this island, who was willing to suffer so much in order to plant the seeds of the Gospel in New York and who watered those seeds by his own blood. He wants us to be as dedicated as the Little Flower, St. Therese, was in praying and offering her sufferings for the missionary priests she had adopted and the fruitfulness of their work. He wants us to be as stauch as Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati and Blessed Carlo Acutis were in trying to bring their peers to prayer and to Church. He wants, in short, each and every one of us to be as all-in, within our own circumstances, as so many missionaries are in 1,150 missionary territories across the globe, and just as much as the FOCUS missionaries are on our campus or certain students who invite so many people to come with them to Mass or to enroll in OCIA.
What are we called to do practically? First Jesus calls us to pray. He asks us to look out and see that the fields are white and ripe for the harvest and to pray to the Harvest Master for laborers for his harvest. We pray not only for those already on mission, and not just for vocations for future missionaries, but for ourselves that we might all recognize that by our Baptism we and the whole Church are a mission on this earth. We remember that as soon as Jesus asked his disciples to pray to the Harvest Master, he then from those praying called Simon Peter, Andrew, James, John and the others. We’re not just praying for others to do the work, but also for ourselves to respond faithfully and fully to God’s call.
The second thing we’re summoned to do is to live out our mission. In the 16th century, when St. Philip Neri read St. Francis Xavier’s letters describing how much work and fruit he had baptizing people by the tens of thousands in India, he wanted to leave Rome and go help him. But his wise spiritual director told him, “Rome will be your Indies.” And he became the great apostle bringing Rome back to the faith. We need to grasp that, at least for now, Columbia is our Indies, that our classrooms, dorms and apartments, even our sidewalks, subways, coffee shops, parks and gyms, are all meant to be our mission field, and that we need to approach it like St. Francis Xavier appoached, India, Indonesia and Japan, Philip Neri approached Rome, and St. Frances Xavier Cabrini approached the Italian sections of New York City in its infancy.
The third thing is to grasp that this is a mission we live in communion. Jesus didn’t send out the apostles solo, but two-by-two, even though they could have covered twice as much as ground if he said sent them independently. Likewise he gave the great commission to the whole Church, so that we, helped by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, might collaborate in this mission. That means, first, we must grasp that we are being helped in our task by so many others praying for us, strengthening us like here at Mass tonight, and working alongside of us for the Gospel wherever we are and go. But it also means that we need to be conscious of all our co-workers for the Gospel.
World Mission Sunday is directed by The Pontifical Mission Societies, the natural director in the United States I was named in July and the full-time duties of which I will take up in January. They trace their origins to Blessed Pauline Jaricot, a laywoman in France whose brother Phileas was a missionary, who began 202 years ago to gather people together to offer daily prayer and sacrifice weekly a sou, the equivalent of a penny, to support the Church’s missionary work. From the very first collection she took up, she gave a sizeable portion of it to support the then vast Diocese of Louisiana, which stretched from the Florida Keys to Canada, as well as to the missions in Kentucky. Her investment paid great dividends in the support of those spreading the Catholic faith in what would become a huge part of the United States of America. Now U.S. Catholics are being asked, with those in Churches across the globe, to help plant, grow and strengthen the faith in 1,150 territories like the Diocese of Louisiana was two centuries ago. If all you can afford is a penny, the Pontifical Mission Societies will gratefully receive it. If God has blessed you with the capacity to give more than that, I promise you we will be good stewards of your generosity. We will split today’s collection, with half going to that purpose.
What do we really desire in life? What do we really want from the Lord? What does the Lord really want from us? The Lord has implanted within us the desire to be truly great and, knowing our weaknesses and temptations, today he makes clear for us the path to lasting greatness. The Lord wants us be ambitious in the right way, in inviting everyone to the feast by our prayers, by our own missionary apostolate, and by helping make possible the Church’s faithfully fulfilling Jesus’ mandate to go and teach all nations. The greatest means Jesus gives us to become great is the Mass, our participation in time in the eternal offering of Christ in the Last Supper and on Calvary. In the Upper Room, Jesus showed just how much he had come not to be served but to serve by kneeling down to wash his apostles’ feet, but he was just getting started. Later he would abase himself further, changing bread and wine into his body and blood so that we, his servants, could consume him and live off of him. Here he simplifies everything he’s taught us about the path to true greatness in the words he will say again to us in a few minutes: “Do thisin memory of me!,” inviting us to give our body, our blood, our sweat, our tears and even our time, talents and treasure out of love for him and others. And he asks us, “Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink?” As we prepare to lift up this chalice to the Lord on World Mission Sunday, may we, with courage, holy ambition and God’s grace, respond like James and John ultimately did, saying, “We can!,” and leave after Mass with God’s blessing and command to “go and announce the Gospel of the Lord,” as we labor together to invite everyone, starting on campus, to this saving banquet of the Lamb.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 IS 53:10-11
The LORD was pleased
to crush him in infirmity.If he gives his life as an offering for sin,
he shall see his descendants in a long life,
and the will of the LORD shall be accomplished through him.
Because of his affliction
he shall see the light in fullness
of days;
through his suffering, my servant shall justify many,
and their guilt he shall bear.
Responsorial Psalm PS 33:4-5, 18-19, 20, 22
R. (22) Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.
Upright is the word of the LORD,
and all his works are trustworthy.
He loves justice and right;
of the kindness of the LORD the earth is full.
R. Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.
See, the eyes of the LORD are upon those who fear him,
upon those who hope for his kindness,
To deliver them from death
and preserve them in spite of famine.
R. Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.
Our soul waits for the LORD,
who is our help and our shield.
May your kindness, O LORD, be upon us
who have put our hope in you.
R. Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.
Reading 2 HEB 4:14-16
Brothers and sisters:
Since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens,
Jesus, the Son of God,
let us hold fast to our confession.
For we do not have a high priest
who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,
but one who has similarly been tested in every way,
yet without sin.
So let us confidently approach the throne of grace
to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help.
AlleluiaMK 10:45
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The Son of Man came to serve
and to give his life as a ransom for many.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
MK 10:35-45
James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus and said to him,
“Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.”
He replied, “What do you wish me to do for you?”
They answered him, “Grant that in your glory
we may sit one at your right and the other at your left.”
Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking.
Can you drink the cup that I drink
or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?”
They said to him, “We can.”
Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink, you will drink,
and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized;
but to sit at my right or at my left is not mine to give
but is for those for whom it has been prepared.”
When the ten heard this, they became indignant at James and John.
Jesus summoned them and said to them,
“You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles
lord it over them,
and their great ones make their authority over them felt.
But it shall not be so among you.
Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant;
whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.
For the Son of Man did not come to be served
but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
The post What Do We Want Jesus To Do For Us?, 29th Sunday (B), October 20, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
37 min
October 20, 2024 Ambitious to Invite Everyone to the Feast, 29th Sunday (B), October 20, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, New York City
29th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B
October 20, 2024
Is 53:10-11, Ps 33, Heb 4:14-16, Mk 10:35-45

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To watch the homily, please click below:

The following text guided the homily:
Today is World Mission Sunday and what a joy it is to be here in this Cathedral dedicated to St. Patrick, the heroic missionary of Ireland. It’s from this exquisite house of God that vigorous missionary outreach takes place every day to those who live and work in Manhattan as well as to the over five millions of visitors, from various countries, religions and backgrounds, who enter each year. It’s here, today, that we have a chance to focus on the call Jesus gives us in the Gospel today to become truly great through sharing in his mission for the salvation of the world.
My name is Father Roger Landry and I’m the new National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the United States, which includes the Society of the Propagation of the Faith, the Missionary Childhood Association, the Society of St. Peter and the Apostle and the Missionary Union of Priests and Religious. All four are part of the Catholic Church’s global missionary outreach, tasked with spreading our faith through developing in every baptized person a missionary spirit, rooted in prayer, sacrifice and charity. In union with the Holy Father through the Vatican’s Dicastery for Evangelization, we help make possible the Church’s proclaiming the Gospel to those who don’t yet know Jesus Christ or where the Church is too young, too poor, or too persecuted to be self-sufficient.
I’m so grateful to Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the chairman of the Board of the Pontifical Mission Societies USA, for his invitation to preach here from this pulpit where my predecessor for 16 years, the Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, would powerfully proclaim the Gospel not just to New York but to the world. I thank Msgr. Marc Filacchione, the Director of the Archdiocese’s Society of the Propagation of the Faith office, and his entire team for their hard work each year in catalyzing Catholics throughout the Archdiocese of New York to respond so generously in support of the Church’s worldwide missionary efforts. I thank all of you here today for living out your Catholic faith on the Lord’s day and your commitment to help share the Word of God and the Word-made-flesh with people everywhere who need Jesus just as much as we do.
Today in the Gospel, there’s a conversation about ambition. Jesus had just announced to the apostles, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and hand him over to the Gentiles who will mock him, spit upon him, scourge him, and put him to death, but after three days he will rise.” Jesus was indicating that he would fulfill the prophecies foretold by Isaiah, part of which we hear in today’s first reading, that God’s suffering servant would be “crushed in infirmity,” “give his life as an offering for sin,” endure “affliction,” and “through his suffering … [bear] their guilt.”
In response to these disturbing predictions, the apostles James and John approach Jesus and ask, not how Jesus is handling it or how they might help, but, with great chutzpah and self-interest, for a promotion and a blank check: “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” Jesus patiently and nobly indulges them by asking, “What do you wish me to do for you?” And they retort, “Grant that in your glory we may sit one at your right and the other at your left.” The two fishermen wanted to be the Messiah’s right and left hand men, his two viceroys or executive vice-presidents, in what they anticipated would be Jesus’ glorious Messianic administration. To get a sense of the ugliness of the brothers’ selfish jockeying for position, imagine that your father came to you and told you that the doctor had just given him two weeks to live and, instead of consoling him, instead of even showing that you cared about him, you and your siblings immediately shifted the attention to who would get the house and the car. The behavior of the sons of Zebedee was raw ambition at its most disgusting. Jesus responded with magnanimity and mercy, “You do not know what you are asking,” and then gave them yet another indication of the expectation-shattering type of kingdom he had come into the world to establish: “Can you drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized,” alluding to the chalice of suffering prophesied by Isaiah and the cleansing ablution of blood that would pour forth from his wounds on Good Friday. To his question, the brothers impetuously respond, “We can!” Jesus then foretold that they ultimately would indeed drink that cup of suffering, but reminded them that God the Father had already prepared those who would sit at his right and left, which would be the Good and Bad Thief on Golgotha, the sheep and the goats at the General Judgment, and likely Mary and Joseph in heaven.
Hearing this conversation, however, the other ten apostles objected and became angry at James and John, not because of the brothers’ impudence, but out of jealousy: they themselves wanted the positions that the brothers had the guts to request. Their anger gave Jesus the opportunity to give one of the most important instructions to them and to us about the path to greatness, about the means to become like him, about the way to reign with him and advance his kingdom. Jesus knows what is in the human person. As the Letter to the Hebrews tells us today, “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has similarly been tested in every way yet without sin.” And so, conscious of his apostles’ human imperfections, he didn’t seek to suppress their ambition but to reorient it. Jesus wants us to be great, not mediocre, but desires to convert our ambitions so that we will be desirous of truly great things. He wants to transform our hunger for self-aggrandizement to an ambition for souls, between seeking to glorify our own name, establish our fiefdom and do whatever we wish to trying to hallow God’s name, enter and establish his Kingdom, and accomplish his holy will.
So he tells the twelve: “You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them and their great ones make their authority over them felt.” It’s still much the same way today. Greatness is determined by how much power one wields in politics, how much money or influence one has in business, how many magazine covers and social media followers one has in entertainment. Greatness seems determined by the capacity to command or lead others from above. Jesus says that that’s not the way of his kingdom. “Whoever wishes to be great among you,” he states emphatically, “will be your servant. Whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.” Real greatness would not be determined by fighting for seats at tables, but by fighting for the towel. The highest would not be the one to whom others would lift glasses in toasts but the one who would be able to drink the cup of Christ’s blood and in turn say to others with Christ, “This is my blood, poured out for you.” Christ’s cabinet would be filled not by those who would kiss his butt, but by those who would put their own butts on the line for Him and for others, by being baptized into Christ’s death through their own suffering and death. He summarizes everything by referencing to his own intention and actions as King: “For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” To be great, in other words, would come not principally through coveting and sharing Christ’s power, but by emulating and extending his sacrificial love.
Jesus’ words about greatness ought to have a particular resonance here in New York City, which is a place where so many work so hard to become great by worldly standards on Wall Street, on Broadway, in Madison Square Garden, on Park, Madison and Fifth Avenues and beyond. It’s a city of skyscrapers ascending constantly higher. Jesus today wants to transform that boundless energy toward something truly lasting. If it were ugly for the apostles to try to elbow each other for worldly advancement, ignoring the reality and meaning of Jesus’ upcoming passion, death and resurrection, how much uglier it is for us now to remain only at the level of worldly desires after those predictions have all come true. The Son of God made man was crucified not so that we might zealously seek the things of this world in the same way everyone else does. He died and rose so that we might live a new life, in the world but not of it, seeking first the kingdom of God and God’s holiness, recognizing that everything else of true value will be given us besides. He was murdered on Golgotha and rose not so that we could be mediocre in faith and average in life, but so that we could be great.
One way that Jesus wants us to become truly great is with respect to sharing the treasure of our faith and completing the vocation and mission he has given us to go and proclaim the Gospel to every creature, baptizing them and teaching them everything he has taught us (Mt 28:18-20). The theme of World Mission Sunday today is taken from Jesus’ words in St. Matthew’s Gospel, “Go and invite everyone to the banquet!” (Mt 22:1-24). In a letter he sent to Catholics throughout the world in anticipation of this celebration, Pope Francis said, “Mission is a tireless going out to all men and women, in order to invite them to encounter God and enter into communion with him.” Jesus, the Good Shepherd, is interested in every lost sheep who has wandered from him and his fold. He wants us to share his love. We know that only 2.5 of 8 people on the planet is Christian, and only 1.3 of 8 is Catholic. Of the Catholics in our country, only 1 of 6 comes to worship the Lord each Lord’s day. The vast majority of the human race, 2,000 years after Christ entered the world and gave his life to save ours, is not coming to the banquet Jesus himself hosts here out of love each Sunday. And Jesus is summoning each of us to be passionate, zealous, indeed great in going out to invite everyone to this feast. He wants us to be as fired up as St. Francis Xavier was to convert three whole countries. He wants us to be as committed as St. Isaac Jogues — one of the North American martyrs, the first priest ever on this island, whose image is on the front door of this Cathedral — who was willing to suffer so much in order to plant the seeds of the Gospel in New York and who watered those seeds by his own shed blood. He wants us to be as dedicated as the Little Flower, St. Therese, was in praying and offering her sufferings for the missionary priests she had adopted and for the fruitfulness of their work. He wants each and every one of us to be as all-in, within our own circumstances, as so many missionaries are in 1,150 missionary territories across the globe, and just as much as the young FOCUS missionaries are on the university campuses here in this city.
What are we called to do practically? First Jesus calls us to pray. He asks us to look out and see that the fields are white and ripe for the harvest and to pray to the Harvest Master for laborers for his harvest. We pray not only for those already on mission, and not just for vocations for future missionaries, but for ourselves that we might all recognize that by our Baptism we and the whole Church are a mission on this earth. We remember that as soon as Jesus asked his disciples to pray to the Harvest Master, he then from those praying called Simon Peter, Andrew, James, John and the others. We’re, therefore, not just praying for others to do the work, but also for ourselves to respond faithfully and fully to God’s call.
The second thing we’re summoned to do is to live out our mission. In the 16th century, when St. Philip Neri read St. Francis Xavier’s letters describing how much work and fruit he had baptizing people by the tens of thousands in India, he wanted to leave Rome and go help him. But his wise spiritual director told him, “Rome will be your Indies.” And Philip became the great apostle bringing Rome back to the faith. We need to grasp that, for most of us, New York is our Indies, that our workplace, our apartment building, our university, even our sidewalks, subways, coffee shops, parks and arenas, are all meant to be our mission field, and that we need to approach it like St. Francis Xavier appoached, India, Indonesia and Japan, Philip Neri approached Rome, Isaac Jogues approached French Canada upstate New York, and St. Frances Xavier Cabrini approached the Italian sections of New York City in its infancy.
The third thing is to grasp that this is a mission we live in communion. Jesus didn’t send out the apostles solo, but two-by-two, even though they could have covered twice as much as ground if he said sent them independently. Likewise he gave the great commission to the whole Church, so that we, helped by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, might collaborate in this mission. That means, first, we must grasp that we are being helped in our task by so many others praying for us, strengthening us like here at Mass this morning, and working alongside of us for the Gospel wherever we are and go. But it also means that we need to be conscious of all our co-workers for the Gospel.
The Pontifical Mission Societies trace their origins to Blessed Pauline Jaricot, a laywoman in France whose brother Phileas was a missionary, who 202 years ago began to gather people together to offer daily prayer and sacrifice each week a sou, the equivalent of a penny, to support the Church’s missionary work. From the very first collection she took up, she gave a sizeable portion of it to support the then vast Diocese of Louisiana, which stretched from the Florida Keys to Canada, as well as to the missions in Kentucky. Her investment paid great dividends in support of those spreading the Catholic faith in what would become a huge part of the United States of America. Now U.S. Catholics are being asked, with those in Churches across the globe, to help plant, grow and strengthen the faith in 1,150 territories like the Diocese of Louisiana was two centuries ago. If all you can afford is a penny, the Pontifical Mission Societies will gratefully receive it. If God has blessed you with the capacity to give more than that, I promise you we will be good stewards of your generosity. The second collection today will be for that purpose.
The Lord is asking us to be great, to be ambitious in the right way, in inviting everyone to the feast by our prayers, by our own missionary apostolate, and by helping make possible the Church’s faithfully fulfilling Jesus’ mandate to go and teach all nations. May each of us respond to that holy calling and blessed task!
The greatest means Jesus gives us to become great is the Mass, our participation in time in the eternal offering of Christ in the Last Supper and on Calvary. In the Upper Room, Jesus showed just how much he had come not to be served but to serve by kneeling down to wash his apostles’ feet, but he was just getting started. Later he would abase himself further, changing bread and wine into his body and blood so that we, his servants, could consume him and live off of him. Here he simplifies everything he’s taught us about the path to true greatness in the words he will say again to us in a few minutes: “Do this in memory of me!,” inviting us to give our body, our blood, our sweat, our tears and even our time, talents and treasure out of love for him and others. And he asks us, “Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink?” As we prepare to lift up this chalice to the Lord on World Mission Sunday, may we with courage, holy ambition and God’s grace, respond like James and John ultimately did, saying, “We can!,” and go out after Mass with God’s blessing and command to “go and announce the Gospel of the Lord” as we labor together to invite everyone to this saving banquet of the Lamb.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 IS 53:10-11
The LORD was pleased
to crush him in infirmity.If he gives his life as an offering for sin,
he shall see his descendants in a long life,
and the will of the LORD shall be accomplished through him.
Because of his affliction
he shall see the light in fullness
of days;
through his suffering, my servant shall justify many,
and their guilt he shall bear.
Responsorial Psalm PS 33:4-5, 18-19, 20, 22
R. (22) Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.
Upright is the word of the LORD,
and all his works are trustworthy.
He loves justice and right;
of the kindness of the LORD the earth is full.
R. Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.
See, the eyes of the LORD are upon those who fear him,
upon those who hope for his kindness,
To deliver them from death
and preserve them in spite of famine.
R. Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.
Our soul waits for the LORD,
who is our help and our shield.
May your kindness, O LORD, be upon us
who have put our hope in you.
R. Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.
Reading 2 HEB 4:14-16
Brothers and sisters:
Since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens,
Jesus, the Son of God,
let us hold fast to our confession.
For we do not have a high priest
who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,
but one who has similarly been tested in every way,
yet without sin.
So let us confidently approach the throne of grace
to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help.
AlleluiaMK 10:45
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The Son of Man came to serve
and to give his life as a ransom for many.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
MK 10:35-45
James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus and said to him,
“Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.”
He replied, “What do you wish me to do for you?”
They answered him, “Grant that in your glory
we may sit one at your right and the other at your left.”
Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking.
Can you drink the cup that I drink
or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?”
They said to him, “We can.”
Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink, you will drink,
and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized;
but to sit at my right or at my left is not mine to give
but is for those for whom it has been prepared.”
When the ten heard this, they became indignant at James and John.
Jesus summoned them and said to them,
“You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles
lord it over them,
and their great ones make their authority over them felt.
But it shall not be so among you.
Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant;
whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.
For the Son of Man did not come to be served
but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

The post Ambitious to Invite Everyone to the Feast, 29th Sunday (B), October 20, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
24 min
October 20, 2024Following the Lord to Greatness, 29th Sunday (B), October 20, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, New York
29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
October 20, 2024
Is 53:10-11, Ps 33, Heb 4:14-16, Mk 10:35-45

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
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The following text guided today’s homily:
Immediately before the passage in today’s Gospel, while Jesus and his disciples were heading up to Jerusalem from Jericho, Jesus took the 12 apostles aside and told them again what was going to happen to him. “Behold,” he said, “we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and hand him over to the Gentiles who will mock him, spit upon him, scourge him, and put him to death, but after three days he will rise.” Jesus was indicating that he would indeed fulfill the prophecies announced by Isaiah in his suffering servant psalms, part of which he heard in today’s first reading, that he would be “crushed in infirmity,” would “give his life as an offering for sin,” endure “affliction,” and “through his suffering … their guilt he [would] bear.”
What was the reaction of the Twelve? What would your reaction be if your spiritual father, or mentor, or one of your best friends came to you to tell you he was about to be publicly executed? The brothers James and John approached Jesus immediate and with great chutzpah asked Jesus for a blank check: “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” Jesus indulges them by asking, “What do you wish me to do for you?” and they reply, “Grant that in your glory we may sit one at your right and the other at your left.” The two fishermen wanted to be the Messiah’s right and left hand men, his two viceroys or executive vice-presidents, in what they anticipated would be Jesus’ glorious Messianic reign. They were concerned about themselves rather than with Jesus. Their behavior was raw ambition at its ugliest. Jesus responded, “You do not know what you are asking,” and then gave them yet another indication of the expectation-shattering type of kingdom he would be establishing: “Can you drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized,” alluding to the cup of suffering prophesied by Isaiah and the cleansing ablution of blood that would take place on Good Friday. To his question, the brothers impetuously respond, “We can.” Jesus then foretold that they ultimately would indeed drink that cup of suffering, but reminded them that God the Father had already prepared those who would sit at his right and left, which would be the Good and Bad Thief on Calvary, the sheep and the goats at the General Judgment, and likely, dynamically, Mary and Joseph in heaven.
Hearing this conversation, however, the other ten apostles objected and became angry at James and John, not because of the brothers’ impudence, but out of jealousy: they themselves wanted the positions that the brothers had the guts to ask for. Their anger gave Jesus the opportunity to give one of the most important instructions to them and to the whole Church about the path to greatness, about the means to become like him, about the way to reign with him and advance his kingdom. We need to focus carefully and persistently on what Jesus says, because it goes so much against our worldly ways.
Four weeks ago, you may recall, we had an opportunity to focus on ambition and the path to greatness in God’s kingdom. The theme is a common one in St. Mark’s Gospel, because the apostles were so obsessed about which of them would be the greatest and their voracious egocentric hunger came to the surface at least four times, all disgustingly when Jesus spoke about how he would suffer, be betrayed and crucified to establish his kingdom. We spoke then about how Jesus didn’t seek to suppress their ambition but to convert and reorient it. He knows what is in man. As the Letter to the Hebrews tells us today, “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has similarly been tested in every way yet without sin.” Jesus wants us to be ambitious, he wants us to be great, not mediocre, but he wants to convert our ambitions so that we will be desirous of great things. As we discussed a month ago, he wants us to become great in faith, great in humility, great in holiness, great in knowing and transmitting the faith by word and example, and great in sacrificial love. There’s a Pacific ocean between ambition for self-aggrandizement, which is the typical ambition in the world, and ambition for souls, between seeking to glorify one’s name and establish one’s own fiefdom versus trying to hallow God’s name and enter and establish his Kingdom.
He tells the apostles, “You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them and their great ones make their authority over them felt.” It’s still the same way today. Greatness is determined by how much power one wields in politics, how much money or influence one has in business, how many magazine covers and social media followers one has in entertainment. Greatness is determined by the capacity to command or lead others from above. Jesus says that in his kingdom it cannot be that way. “Whoever wishes to be great among you,” he states emphatically, “will be your servant. Whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.” In his kingdom, those who are great will lead and love from below, serving, sacrificing, even dying for others. Then he summarizes everything by his intention and example: “For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Jesus was calling them not to “lord” anything “over” others but “serve” “under” others. To be great, in other words, would come not principally through sharing Christ’s power, but by emulating and extending his love.
Jesus Christ would put these words about serving others rather than being served into action during the celebration of the Last Supper on the night he would be betrayed, when he stood up, took off his outer garment, tied a towel around his waist, and began to wash the filth off his disciples’ feet, a menial task normally done by servants and slaves. The apostles, naturally, resisted Jesus’ debasing himself in this way. After he was finished, Jesus said, “Do you know what I have done for you? You call me teacher and Lord — and rightly so, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.” (Jn 13:5-17). Real greatness in Christ’s kingdom would not be determined by fighting for seats at tables, but by fighting for the towel. The highest would not be the one to whom others would lift glasses in toasts but the one who would be able to drink the cup of Christ’s blood and in turn say to others with Christ, “This is my blood, shed for you.” Christ’s cabinet would be filled not by those who would kiss his butt, but by those who would put their own butts on the line for Him and for others, by being baptized into Christ’s death through their own suffering and death.
The greatness to which Jesus wants us to aspire, therefore, has nothing to do with any type of terrestrial pecking-order. Real greatness, he described, is to become most like him, to share in his form of greatness, in his holiness, in his total self-giving love. Twenty times in the Gospels Jesus told his disciples, “Follow me!,” and today Jesus was telling us that the path to greatness is to do what he himself was doing, to serve to the extreme and give one’s life as a ransom for the many.” St. Paul would later describe to the Philippians (Phil 2:3-11) that Christ’s example was the stairway to eternal exaltation: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross. But because of this God greatly exalted him and bestowed upon him a name above every other name.” Safe-abasing loving service is the root of Christ’s greatness and he wants us to be similarly exalted by getting down to lift others up, to dying to ourselves so that others may live.
John and James and the other apostles were chosen by Jesus because, even though at first they had very human and selfish desires and motivations, they were capable of conversion so that Jesus’ categories would eventually become their own. Once they saw the fulfillment of Jesus’ teaching in his suffering, death and resurrection, they experienced a moral metamorphosis, a total transformation of their worldly ambition into Christ-like ambition. This was not an easy conversion, but 11 of the 12 of them eventually made it. They went from obsessing about themselves to giving their lives to bring Christ and his saving Gospel to the ends of the earth. They offered their mortal existences, as Christ did, to ransom, to rescue, the lives of many others from a life lived without God, a life often lived in darkness, in order to bring them to live as true children of the light. They drank Christ’s cup and were baptized into his death and now are seated at his right in heaven.
The Lord would like us to experience a similar transformation, from a focus on ourselves, from seeking to live by worldly categories of success and greatness, to living according to his own categories and seeking to help others to experience the same liberation. He wants all of us to desire genuine greatness, to trade in our false notions that true prominence means you have a butler and valet, a chauffeur and a pilot, and a whole staff of people serving you at your beck-and-call, to a notion that the greater we are, the more we will in fact serve others. But the notion is not enough. He wants to give us the help to make the choice to follow him on the way to greatness, which is the path of self-emptying loving service. This is the path that after the resurrection the apostles chose. This is the path that the saints chose. This is the path that stands before us today. One of the most important litmus tests as to whether we are living that transformation is our attitude to serving others, and not just in general, but like Jesus and like the converted apostles, by seeking to bring them to salvation. Jesus came to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many, to give his body and shed his blood in order to redeem them. And he wants us to become great by dedicating our life similarly to spreading the news and means of salvation.
This Sunday is World Mission Sunday, when the Church throughout the globe focuses on how each of us, and the Church universal, is summoned by Christ to complete his saving work, going to the whole world, proclaiming the Gospel to every creature, baptizing, and teaching them everything he has commanded us. As Pope Francis and several recent popes have reminded us, the Church and each of us do just have a mission, but are a mission. Our whole Christian existence, just as much as the lives of the first apostles, is tied to the saving mission of Jesus Christ. Some members of the Church are going to be on the front line in challenging circumstances, like the apostles originally, and like missionary priests, religious and lay people today, as you yourselves, Sisters, are carrying out here in the Bronx and across the globe. But everyone in the Church has a role in the missions through basic witness close to home, as well as through prayer, sacrifices, and generosity for those on the front lines. No Christian exists to be served. Every Christian exists to serve in imitation of Christ and to spend our life to ransom others and lead them on the path to salvation.
Christ wants us to be great and today he shows us how. The greatest illustration he gives us of the path to greatness is here in the Mass, our participation in time in the eternal offering of Christ in the Last Supper and on Calvary. When Jesus humbly bent down at the beginning of the Last Supper to wash his followers’ feet, he was just getting started. Later he would abase himself even further, changing bread and wine into his body and blood so that we, his servants, could consume him and live off of him. This is the chalice he places before us to drink, to which offer he hopes we will respond with as much trust and zeal as John and James. He not only wants us to receive his self-gift of loving service in the Eucharist, but he wants us to make it the path of our life. He simplifies everything he’s taught us today about the path to true greatness in the words he will say again to us in a few minutes: “Do this in memory of me!” And he asks us, “Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink?” As we prepare to lift up this chalice to the Lord, may we with courage, holy ambition and God’s grace, respond like James and John ultimately did, saying, “We can!”

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 IS 53:10-11
The LORD was pleased
to crush him in infirmity.If he gives his life as an offering for sin,
he shall see his descendants in a long life,
and the will of the LORD shall be accomplished through him.
Because of his affliction
he shall see the light in fullness
of days;
through his suffering, my servant shall justify many,
and their guilt he shall bear.
Responsorial Psalm PS 33:4-5, 18-19, 20, 22
R. (22) Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.
Upright is the word of the LORD,
and all his works are trustworthy.
He loves justice and right;
of the kindness of the LORD the earth is full.
R. Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.
See, the eyes of the LORD are upon those who fear him,
upon those who hope for his kindness,
To deliver them from death
and preserve them in spite of famine.
R. Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.
Our soul waits for the LORD,
who is our help and our shield.
May your kindness, O LORD, be upon us
who have put our hope in you.
R. Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.
Reading 2 HEB 4:14-16
Brothers and sisters:
Since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens,
Jesus, the Son of God,
let us hold fast to our confession.
For we do not have a high priest
who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,
but one who has similarly been tested in every way,
yet without sin.
So let us confidently approach the throne of grace
to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help.
AlleluiaMK 10:45
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The Son of Man came to serve
and to give his life as a ransom for many.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
MK 10:35-45
James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus and said to him,
“Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.”
He replied, “What do you wish me to do for you?”
They answered him, “Grant that in your glory
we may sit one at your right and the other at your left.”
Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking.
Can you drink the cup that I drink
or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?”
They said to him, “We can.”
Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink, you will drink,
and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized;
but to sit at my right or at my left is not mine to give
but is for those for whom it has been prepared.”
When the ten heard this, they became indignant at James and John.
Jesus summoned them and said to them,
“You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles
lord it over them,
and their great ones make their authority over them felt.
But it shall not be so among you.
Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant;
whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.
For the Son of Man did not come to be served
but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

The post Following the Lord to Greatness, 29th Sunday (B), October 20, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
19 min
October 20, 2024 Women, the Eucharist, and Holiness: How To Live a Vibrant Eucharistic Life and Help Others to Do the Same, Albany Unleashing Love Women’s Conference, October 19, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Diocese of Albany Unleashing Love Women’s Conference
St. Edward the Confessor Church, Clifton Park, New York
October 19, 2024

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The post Women, the Eucharist, and Holiness: How To Live a Vibrant Eucharistic Life and Help Others to Do the Same, Albany Unleashing Love Women’s Conference, October 19, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
50 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.