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By Father Roger LandryReligion & Spirituality Christianity

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October 19, 2024Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, October 19, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Twenty- Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, B, Vigil
October 19, 2024

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
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The following text guided the homily:
This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday, when we will eavesdrop on the dialogue Jesus has with the apostles James and John and, then, with all of the other apostles, on the subject of ambition.
The brothers James and John with great chutzpah ask 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. But 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 reorient it, pushing them 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. This Sunday we focus with Jesus on that last Christian ambition.
Jesus 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 would lead and love from below, from serving, from sacrificing, from even dying for others. Then he gives the reason: “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 it over” others but “under” others. To be great, in other words, would come not principally through sharing Christ’s power, but by sharing 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 Gospel Jesus told his disciples, “Follow me!,” and in this Sunday’s Gospel Jesus was telling us that the path to greatness is to do what he himself was doing: “For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his 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 heavenly 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.” This safe-abasing loving service is the root of Christ’s greatness.
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 real metamorphosis, a total transformation of their worldly ambition into Christ-like ambition. This was obviously 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 gave their lives, like 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.
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. 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 as a whole, 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 several recent popes including Pope Francis have reminded us, the Church and each of us do just have a mission, but are a mission. Our whole Christian existence is tied to the saving mission of Jesus Christ, just as much as the lives of the first apostles. Some members of the Church are going to be on the front line, like the apostles originally, and like missionary priests, religious and lay people today. But everyone in the Church has a role in the missions through prayer, sacrifices, and generosity for those on the front lines, and through basic witness close to home. 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. As the new National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies, I thank you in advance for your prayers for the Church’s missions throughout the world this Sunday and for whatever you can generously give to help us help those in the 1,100 missionary territories around the world we support in spreading the Gospel and in building Churches, Catholic schools, seminaries and convents to help young Christian communities grow and become strong.
The Lord calls us to be great through becoming the servant of the rest. The greatest means Jesus gives us to help us become great in this way occurs at Mass. 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 he hopes we will respond with as much trust and zeal as John and James did. Jesus, in giving himself in ransom for us in the Eucharist, wants us to make that type of love the path of our life. He simplifies everything he’s taught us about the path to true greatness in the words he will say again to us on Sunday: “Do this in memory of me!” This is the source of the Church’s mission in every age.

The Gospel passage on which this homily was based was:
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 Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, October 19, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
10 min
October 18, 2024Telling the Story of Christ With Pen, Keyboard and All Means Possible, Feast of St. Luke, October 18, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Feast of St. Luke, Evangelist
October 18, 2024
2 Tim 4:10-17, Ps 145, Lk 10:1-9

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.18.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following text guided today’s homily:
Today, on the feast of St. Luke the Evangelist, it’s worthwhile to ponder the life of this secondary author of a quarter of the entire New Testament. He was a young doctor, very likely in Antioch in Syria. St. Paul calls him a “beloved physician” (Col 4:14). At some point, however — it seems to have occurred at Troas — he began to accompany St. Paul, based on when he started to use the word “we” in the Acts of the Apostles (16:11). He gave up his medical career in order to become a “co-worker” (Philemon 24) of St. Paul. He loyally stayed with St. Paul until the end, being the sole coworker in prison in Rome with the apostle at the end of his life when St. Paul wrote his second letter to St. Timothy, today’s first reading. There’s no indication at all that he was a leading light during St. Paul’s missionary journeys. He was simply a companion and a helper. But after St. Paul died, he wrote down for a friend — “Theophilos,” who could have been one person, or could have been representing all of us, as a “God-lover” — what he remembered. Little did St. Luke know when he was writing his orderly account for Theophilos that billions of people would eventually read it. As a continuation of the 72 lay “non-apostle evangelizers” Jesus sent out in the Gospel, St. Luke just wanted to share the faith — and God did the rest. “Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the word have handed them down to us,” he wrote in the introduction to the Gospel that bears his name, “I too have decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to write it down in an orderly sequence for you, most excellent Theophilos, so that you may realize the certainty of the teachings you have received.” Then he continued the story with a second book, a sequel, about how the Holy Spirit came down on the apostles and the early Church to continue Jesus’ mission, what eventually became entitled the Acts of the Apostles.
St. Luke wanted to write things down so that we would be certain about the things of the faith. Without his efforts, so many aspects of Jesus’ teaching we may never have learned. We wouldn’t know the details about John the Baptist’s conception and birth or the drama of the scenes of the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple and the Finding of Jesus in the Temple. We wouldn’t know of the beautiful scene of the raising of the only son of the widow of Nain. We wouldn’t know of today’s Gospel and the mission of the seventy-two disciples. We wouldn’t have entered Bethany with Jesus to hear Jesus’ words to Martha and Mary about choosing the better part and the one thing necessary. We wouldn’t have the Parable of the Good Samaritan. We wouldn’t have the scene of the healing of the ten lepers, the encounter with Zacchaeus, Jesus’ interrogation by Herod, or two of Jesus’ seven last words. We wouldn’t have the scene of Emmaus, which is in some sense summarizes all that Jesus continues to want to do in the Church. So today we thank God for the great gift that he has given us through the faithful cooperation of the beloved physician who became St. Paul’s coworker faithfully to the end.
But we should focus in a particular way about how his “orderly account” is all about how Christ has come as the Divine Physician to share his healing mercy with us. In Zechariah’s Benedictus the point is how the “Lord … has visited and brought redemption to his people,” has come “to show mercy to our fathers” and how John would “go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give his people knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God by which the daybreak from on high will visit us to shine on those who sit in darkness and death’s shadow, to guide our feet into the path of peace.” We see a similar expression of mercy in Mary’s Magnificat, where Mary exclaims that God’s “mercy is from age to age to those who fear him” and that he has “helped Israel his servant, remembering his mercy, according to his promise to our fathers.” We see his mercy in his tender care for the widow of Nain, in his love for the sinful woman in Simon the Pharisee’s house who loved much because she had been forgiven much, as Jesus illustrated in a summary of the Parable of the Two Debtors he said to Simon. We see his mercy in the Parables of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin and the Lost Son, all unique to Luke. We see the importance of mercy in the blithe omissions of the rich man with Lazarus at his gates. We see Jesus’ will to forgive seen in the scenes with the grateful leper, with Zacchaeus, and with the Good Thief. We hear it in his crying out from Calvary, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Many scholars of the third Gospel have said that St. Luke’s orderly account is entirely directed toward expressing the Lord’s mercy, helping us see our need for it, and encouraging us to come to receive it. The earthly physician wrote his account to show the mercy and healing of the Divine Physician.
On this day, we can’t stop at merely venerating St. Luke and thanking God for him and for his orderly account. God wants us in our own way to become St. Lukes to our age. No matter what our profession, God wants us to accompany him and his apostles. He wants us first to become the coworkers of the successors of the apostles, because we’re all supposed to work together for the coming of Christ’s kingdom. But then having learned from them, he wants us to use whatever skills we have to pass on the faith. In the Responsorial Psalm, we prayed, “Your friends make known, O Lord, the glorious splendor of your kingdom.” God’s “faithful ones bless” him, they “discourse of the glory of [his] kingdom and speak of [his] power.” If we’re truly friends of God, then we can’t help but speak of him to the Theophiloi of our own day. Pope Francis, in a beautiful passage in his exhortation on the “Joy of the Gospel,” said, “What kind of love would not feel the need to speak of the beloved, to point him out, to make him known?” He added that we’re convinced from “personal experience that it is not the same thing to have known Jesus as not to have known him, not the same thing to walk with him as to walk blindly, not the same thing to hear his word as not to know it, and not the same thing to contemplate him, to worship him, to find our peace in him, as not to. …We know well that with Jesus life becomes richer and that with him it is easier to find meaning in everything. This is why we evangelize.” On this feast of St. Luke, it’s important for us, as friends of Jesus, to seek to make him known and loved, to speak of his splendor, of his love, of his grace, and the difference it makes in our life.
How do we do that? We do it through ordinary means. We do it through our conversation with fellow students, family, friends, coworkers and strangers. We do it through writing, as St. Luke did, in letters to others, or emails, articles, or books. We do it through phone calls, Skype, Zoom, FaceTime and WhatsApp conversations. Today we can do it through social media posts on FaceBook, Instagram, X and TikTok. We do it with the means and circumstances God has given us. But it’s important for us not just to do it, but do it with a certain tone. We are all among the 12 and the 72. Jesus’ instructions in today’s Gospel are important. He tells us that there’s a certain “envelope” for the “letter” of good news we’re bringing to people. He says that we have to be walking the walk, enfleshing what we proclaim for it to be credible. He says, “Carry no money bag, no sack, no sandals. … Into whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this household.’ … Stay in the same house and eat and drink what is offered to you. … Do not move about from one house to another. … Cure the sick in it and say, ‘The Kingdom of God is at hand for you.’” Jesus’ essential point in these instructions is that we can’t be preaching about God’s providence and living the first beatitude — “blessed are the poor in Spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God” — if we’re carrying around money bags and worrying about provisions. We can’t preach his peace unless we’re living with that peace. We can’t preach that God loves everyone infinitely if we’re constantly looking for better accommodations and treating one group of people as second class. We can’t be preaching the good news unless we realize that all of it, in fact, is good news. What Jesus is basically indicating is that if we’re going to proclaim the Kingdom, we need to do so first in our body language so that our words will be credible. We’ve got to be living in the kingdom if we’re ever going to invite others effectively to enter into it with us. This is something that St. Luke grasped and wrote about. He was a faithful friend of the Lord, extolling the glorious splendor of that Kingdom and, through his writing, inviting so many billions of others over the last 2,000 years to respond to the King’s invitation.
In St. Luke’s orderly account of Jesus’ saving life, he made sure to include a lengthy description of the Last Supper. Like Matthew and Mark, he described Jesus’ meticulous preparations and how he “took the bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which will be given for you; do this in memory of me,’” and how he then took the cup after they had eaten and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which will be shed for you” (Lk 22:19-20). But St. Luke was the only one to record what Jesus said at the beginning of the celebration of the Eucharist, “I have eagerly to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (Lk 22:15). Jesus has indeed eagerly desired to eat this Passover with us, to fill us with himself. May we receive this Eucharist as fruitfully as St. Luke used to receive Jesus’ body and blood from the hands of St. Paul and the other early apostles. May we investigate everything about Jesus accurately and anew and then use all the talents we have to make known the glorious splendor of his kingdom, especially through the way we live in his kingdom and the way we give an orderly account of this good news to all those who will receive our letters, emails, posts, phone calls, dinner invitations and door knocks. And who knows, maybe billions of people in 2,000 years will be praising God for what we’ve done in passing on to others the most glorious splendor of all!

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 2 tm 4:10-17b
Beloved:
Demas, enamored of the present world,
deserted me and went to Thessalonica,
Crescens to Galatia, and Titus to Dalmatia.
Luke is the only one with me.
Get Mark and bring him with you,
for he is helpful to me in the ministry.
I have sent Tychicus to Ephesus.
When you come, bring the cloak I left with Carpus in Troas,
the papyrus rolls, and especially the parchments.
Alexander the coppersmith did me a great deal of harm;
the Lord will repay him according to his deeds.
You too be on guard against him,
for he has strongly resisted our preaching.
At my first defense no one appeared on my behalf,
but everyone deserted me.
May it not be held against them!
But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength,
so that through me the proclamation might be completed
and all the Gentiles might hear it.
Responsorial Psalm ps 145:10-11, 12-13, 17-18
R. (12) Your friends make known, O Lord, the glorious splendor of your Kingdom.
Let all your works give you thanks, O LORD,
and let your faithful ones bless you.
Let them discourse of the glory of your Kingdom
and speak of your might.
R. Your friends make known, O Lord, the glorious splendor of your Kingdom.
Making known to men your might
and the glorious splendor of your Kingdom.
Your Kingdom is a Kingdom for all ages,
and your dominion endures through all generations.
R. Your friends make known, O Lord, the glorious splendor of your Kingdom.
The LORD is just in all his ways
and holy in all his works.
The LORD is near to all who call upon him,
to all who call upon him in truth.
R. Your friends make known, O Lord, the glorious splendor of your Kingdom.
Gospel lk 10:1-9
The Lord Jesus appointed seventy-two disciples
whom he sent ahead of him in pairs
to every town and place he intended to visit.
He said to them,
“The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few;
so ask the master of the harvest
to send out laborers for his harvest.
Go on your way;
behold, I am sending you like lambs among wolves.
Carry no money bag, no sack, no sandals;
and greet no one along the way.
Into whatever house you enter,
first say, ‘Peace to this household.’
If a peaceful person lives there,
your peace will rest on him;
but if not, it will return to you.
Stay in the same house and eat and drink what is offered to you,
for the laborer deserves payment.
Do not move about from one house to another.
Whatever town you enter and they welcome you,
eat what is set before you,
cure the sick in it and say to them,
‘The Kingdom of God is at hand for you.’”
The post Telling the Story of Christ With Pen, Keyboard and All Means Possible, Feast of St. Luke, October 18, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
20 min
October 17, 2024God’s Choosing Us Before the Foundation of the World, 28th Thursday (II), October 17, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Thursday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Ignatius of Antioch, Bishop and Martyr
October 17, 2024
Eph 1:1-10, Ps 98, Lk 11:47-54

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.17.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in today’s homily:
Today we begin two weeks of study of St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, which is one of the most uplifting and synthetic of all the great apostle’s teaching of the early Church, in which he makes plain God the Father’s plan and will to bring all things into a union of love through the work of Christ his Son continued and carried out in his body the Church. At the very beginning of the letter, which we have today, St. Paul describes what God has done for us and what he asks of us. It’s important for us to ponder these truths often, especially when we are having a bad day or are tempted to forget who we are.
St. Paul begins by reminding us of how blessed we are to be Christians: the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has “blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens.” God held nothing back. There are no blessings we haven’t been given. And we’ve been given those blessings not just through Christ but in Christ, who is the greatest blessing of all.
He then reminds us of our vocation: God chose us in Christ, “before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him.” Before God said, “Let there be light” and “Let us make man in our image,” he not only had us in mind but chose us and he gave us the vocation to be saints, to be holy and immaculate before him. If he’s given us this vocation, he will provide the means, and those means are the every spiritual blessing in Christ his Son.
He then reminds us of our filiation and inheritance: “In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ, in accord with the favor of his will, for the praise of the glory of his grace that he granted us in the beloved.” In St. Paul’s day, when someone was adopted, he was treated identically to a biologically child; if he were older than the oldest biological child, he received all the rights of primogeniture. For St. Paul to talk about our being adopted, he means that we have received the full inheritance of Jesus! How can we not praise the glory of this grace?
But obviously we’re sinners and fallen, but God has taken that into consideration as well from before the creation of the world. “In Christ, we have redemption by his Blood, the forgiveness of transgressions, in accord with the riches of his grace that he has lavished upon us.” He has lavished his mercy upon us in Christ as part of every spiritual blessing.
And he has also made plain his plan so that we can cooperate freely and fully with it: “In all wisdom and insight, he has made known to us the mystery of his will in accord with his favor that he set forth in him as a plan for the fullness of times, to sum up all things in Christ, in heaven and on earth.” The mystery is now an open secret: God wants to bring us into communion, communion with God, communion with each other. He wants us to grasp that all of creation is part of God’s plan of love. Christ’s mission is to restore to unity the various divisions that entered through sin.
That’s God’s blessing, calling, help, mercy and plan, but he has made us free and each of us needs to respond to that plan by embracing it and letting our whole life develop in accordance with it. As we prayed in today’s Psalm, “The Lord has made known his salvation,” but we’re called to “sing a new song to the Lord for he has done wondrous deeds.” That’s obviously what the saints do, letting God’s blessing in Christ develop within them so that, redeemed and forgiven by his blood, they might become holy and immaculate. But unfortunately not everyone has received the Lord’s love in that way. Others have rejected it.
We glimpse that rejection in the way the scribes and Pharisees in today’s Gospel responded to Jesus. Jesus says to them, “Woe to you who build the memorials of the prophets whom your fathers killed. Consequently, you bear witness and give consent to the deeds of your ancestors, for they killed them and you do the building.” God never ceases to send prophets, apostles, and messengers to his people in every age to reveal “the mystery of his will,” but God-himself-made-man was saying that the people that he had chosen to be his own, the people he had prepared in order to accomplish his plan in the fullness of time to bring his salvation as a light to the nations, only would honor prophets after they rejected and killed them. A dead prophet was safe; a living prophet was a challenge. In building these memorials, they would delude themselves into thinking they had embraced God and his messenger, whereas they were repeating the same faults as their ancestors, by rejecting those whom God continued to send, something seen in the life of St. John the Baptist and especially in Jesus’ own life as they “began to act with hostility toward him” and “were plotting to catch him at something he might say.” Their lack of receptivity is meant to be a warning to us, lest we just build memorials for the prophets the Jews killed or, worse, just build a static memorial for Jesus — and not receive God’s spiritual blessings, not be holy and without blame before him, not behave as his children, not bathe in his blood, and not enter into communion and let our whole life be summed up by Christ. Do we really follow Jesus or do just have sacred images around our house or dorm room? Do we put just put a Crucifix on the wall or do we deny ourselves, pick up our Cross each day and follow Jesus?
Today we celebrate a saint who, redeemed by Jesus’ blood, eventually become holy and without blemish before him. He did not seek to build a monument to Christ but to become like Christ not just in name but in fact. St. Ignatius of Antioch is one of the greatest human beings who has ever lived. He sought to become pure alms to be given to God and to make up what was lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of his body, the Church. He knew his vocation from before the foundation of the world and strove to become holy, he knew the blessing Christ is and gives, he knew his divine filiation, he was grateful for the redemption of Christ’s blood and sought not only to rejoice in it but help so many others to do so too, and in his preaching he sought to sum up everything in the light of Christ. He learned the Gospel at the feet of St. John the Apostle and that strengthened him to give witness by his life and even by his death. As we read this morning in the breviary from his letter to the Christians in Rome, written as he was being brought to Rome from Syria in order to be executed for the Christian faith: “No earthly pleasures, no kingdoms of this world can benefit me in any way. I prefer death in Christ Jesus to power over the farthest limits of the earth. He who died in place of us is the one object of my quest. He who rose for our sakes is my one desire.” He wasn’t ashamed to die ignominiously in the eyes of the world for the sake of Christ who had died for him. He was sought to becoming a living memorial to Christ’s passion, death and resurrection. He didn’t fear death in the least, as if life in this world were more important than life in the next. He wrote, “I am writing to all the churches to let it be known that I will gladly die for God if only you do not stand in my way. I plead with you: show me no untimely kindness. Let me be food for the wild beasts, for they are my way to God. I am God’s wheat and shall be ground by their teeth so that I may become Christ’s pure bread. Pray to Christ for me that the animals will be the means of making me a sacrificial victim for God. … The time for my birth is close at hand. Forgive me, my brothers. Do not stand in the way of my birth to real life; do not wish me stillborn. My desire is to belong to God. Do not, then, hand me back to the world. Do not try to tempt me with material things. Let me attain pure light. Only on my arrival there can I be fully a human being. Give me the privilege of imitating the passion of my God. If you have him in your heart, you will understand what I wish.” He was aware of the draw of the prince of this world and the spirits of disobedience seeking to draw him to deny the Gospel, to deny Christ. “The prince of this world is determined to lay hold of me and to undermine my will which is intent on God. Let none of you here help him; instead show yourselves on my side, which is also God’s side. Do not talk about Jesus Christ as long as you love this world. Do not harbour envious thoughts. And supposing I should see you, if then I should beg you to intervene on my behalf, do not believe what I say. Believe instead what I am now writing to you. For though I am alive as I write to you, still my real desire is to die. My love of this life has been crucified, and there is no yearning in me for any earthly thing. Rather within me is the living water which says deep inside me: ‘Come to the Father.’ I no longer take pleasure in perishable food or in the delights of this world. I want only God’s bread, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, formed of the seed of David, and for drink I crave his blood, which is love that cannot perish. I am no longer willing to live a merely human life. … Pray for me that I may obtain my desire. I have not written to you as a mere man would, but as one who knows the mind of God.” He saw his martyrdom as the time he would become a Christian not just in name but in deed.
St. Ignatius drew his strength from the Eucharist. He saw his life, as we just noted, as being ground into wheat so that he could become in Christ pure bread, united and transubstantiated in the Eucharistic sacrifice. He called Jesus in the Eucharist God’s great gift and the medicine of immorality, given for the forgiveness of sins, which makes real and eternal life possible. We don’t need lions to grind us into wheat; we have ordinary life. But all of that is meant to be a preparation for this sacrifice. We prepare now not to build for Jesus a memorial of wood or stone, but to enter into his new and eternal memorial, his zikkaron, “do[ing] this in memory of” him. He is the one who is every spiritual blessing in the heavens, the one who transforms us into “sons in the Son,” the one who seeks to redeem us by his precious blood, the one who wishes to bring us in communion and confirm us in our vocation and mission to the praise of his glory. We ask him to send the Holy Spirit so that we will respond like St. Ignatius of Antioch and through the Eucharistic transformation that Jesus wishes to work within us, become holy and without blemish before him and come at last with Ignatius to that place that God has planned for us since before the foundation of the world!

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 EPH 1:1-10
Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God,
to the holy ones who are in Ephesus
and faithful in Christ Jesus:
grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who has blessed us in Christ
with every spiritual blessing in the heavens,
as he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world,
to be holy and without blemish before him.
In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ,
in accord with the favor of his will,
for the praise of the glory of his grace
that he granted us in the beloved.
In Christ we have redemption by his Blood,
the forgiveness of transgressions,
in accord with the riches of his grace that he lavished upon us.
In all wisdom and insight, he has made known to us
the mystery of his will in accord with his favor
that he set forth in him as a plan for the fullness of times,
to sum up all things in Christ, in heaven and on earth.
Responsorial Psalm PS 98:1, 2-3AB, 3CD-4, 5-6
R. (2a) The Lord has made known his salvation.
Sing to the LORD a new song,
for he has done wondrous deeds;
His right hand has won victory for him,
his holy arm.
R. The Lord has made known his salvation.
The LORD has made his salvation known:
in the sight of the nations he has revealed his justice.
He has remembered his kindness and his faithfulness
toward the house of Israel.
R. The Lord has made known his salvation.
All the ends of the earth have seen
the salvation by our God.
Sing joyfully to the LORD, all you lands;
break into song; sing praise.
R. The Lord has made known his salvation.
Sing praise to the LORD with the harp,
with the harp and melodious song.
With trumpets and the sound of the horn
sing joyfully before the King, the LORD.
R. The Lord has made known his salvation.
Alleluia JN 14:6
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
I am the way and the truth and the life, says the Lord;
no one comes to the Father except through me.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel LK 11:47-54
The Lord said:
“Woe to you who build the memorials of the prophets
whom your fathers killed.
Consequently, you bear witness and give consent
to the deeds of your ancestors,
for they killed them and you do the building.
Therefore, the wisdom of God said,
‘I will send to them prophets and Apostles;
some of them they will kill and persecute’
in order that this generation might be charged
with the blood of all the prophets
shed since the foundation of the world,
from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah
who died between the altar and the temple building.
Yes, I tell you, this generation will be charged with their blood!
Woe to you, scholars of the law!
You have taken away the key of knowledge.
You yourselves did not enter and you stopped those trying to enter.”
When Jesus left, the scribes and Pharisees
began to act with hostility toward him
and to interrogate him about many things,
for they were plotting to catch him at something he might say.
The post God’s Choosing Us Before the Foundation of the World, 28th Thursday (II), October 17, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
22 min
October 16, 2024The Fruits of the Spirit and of Love of the Sacred Heart, 28th Wednesday (II), October 16, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Wednesday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque
October 16, 2024
Gal 5:18-25, Ps 1, Lk 11:42-46

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.16.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
Today we come to the end of our reading of St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians and he summarizes everything he’s been saying about the contrast between living while imagining one is saved by the law and external deeds versus living to be saved by God through his grace received and responded to with faith overflowing in love. He does so in describing two totally divergent sets of effects. One he calls the “works of the flesh,” because this is what living focused on the “works of law” produces and is entirely the production of the individual; and the other is called the “fruit of the Spirit,” which like natural fruit is made, requires the cooperation between the one who sows a seed (in this case, God the Holy Spirit) and the one who receives it (in this case, us). The contrast couldn’t be greater. Often when we think of the “works of the flesh” we think first of those living under the three fold concupiscence of the lust of the eyes (materialism), lust of the flesh (carnal sensuality) and the pride of life (a desire for control and dominion). But St. Paul makes clear in context that living according to the works of the law, rather than in communion with the Legislator, can produce these same works of the flesh. He says that the works of the flesh are “obvious”: “immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and the like.” He says that those who do such things “will not inherit the kingdom of God,” not so much because they’ll be punished but because they won’t be interested in and receptive to God’s kingdom after having made other things their god.
In the Gospel, Jesus pronounces a series of “woes” (indications of a cursed life) to those Scribes and Pharisees who, even though they thought they were living the way God wanted them to live were living ultimately according to the flesh. Unless they converted, he said, they’d be doomed, because while they were paying tithes on the smallest of garden herbs they were “pay[ing] no attention to judgment and to love for God.” They focus on the most conspicuous seats and the greetings of others, but are spiritually dead, “like unseen graves over which people unknowingly walk.” To use the words of today’s Psalm, they’re ultimately like the “chaff that the wind drives away.” They impose burdens on others hard to carry, Jesus says, without lifting a finger to help them, the exact opposite of a Good Samaritan. We see the works of the flesh in the way they attacked Jesus and others he had come to save. We see their idolatry of the law. We witness their immorality, hatred, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of anger, acts of selfishness and envy in the way they conspired to have Jesus framed and executed. We see their dissensions and factions in the discussions of the Sanhedrin, to which many of them belonged. On the outside they seemed to be doing the works of God, Jesus was saying, but on the inside they were just doing works of the flesh, refusing to enter the kingdom, and producing only chaff and interior death.
St. Paul calls the Galatians and all of us Christians to another path. In the Psalm, it’s described as the way of the “blessed man” who “delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on his law day and night,” not as a dry document or as an idol but as a means of growing in love with the Lord who gives us the law to train us to love God and others. Such a person, the Psalm says, is “like a tree planted near running water that yields its fruit in due season and whose leaves never fade.” That’s the person who plants himself in the Holy Spirit, “lives” in him, is “guided” by him, and “follows” him. This cooperation with God’s grace in faith yields the type of fruit in every season that St. Paul describes: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” That fruit doesn’t happen as a coincidence; it flows from union with God. If we’re aware of God the Holy Spirit working within us, how can we not experience greater love for God and for all those God loves? How we can not experience the joy that is the infallible sign of God’s presence within, a joy that lasts even in the midst of suffering and contradiction, because how can anything compare with the happiness that flows from God’s presence? How can greater awareness and attentive following of God the Holy Spirit not increase our peace? How can it not help us with patience, for isn’t waiting for whatever we need to happen so much easier when we know we’re waiting consciously and prayerfully with God? How can the consciousness of God within not make us more kind and gentle, seeking the other’s good together with the God who loves them and even correcting them out of love, knowing that the Holy Spirit will help us with the words? How can we not be more generous when the Holy Spirit has been generously poured into us as his temple? How can we not grow to trust God more in faith when he entrusts himself to us? How can it not help us with self-mastery over our lower appetites when the Holy Spirit strengthens — literally confirms — us within?
Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque is someone who showed us how to live according to the Holy Spirit and radiated the fruits of that life in a compelling way. Jesus had said in the Gospel that he would send the Holy Spirit to remind us of everything he taught us and lead us into all truth. St. Margaret Mary Alacoque’s docility to the Holy Spirit prepared her to be a fitting recipient of Jesus’ revelations to her, and through her to the human race, of his Sacred Heart. In this 18-month period in which we are marking the 350th anniversary of Jesus’ appearances to her in Paray-le-Monial France (from December 27, 1673 through June 16, 1675), it is particularly important that we embrace what Jesus said to her about the love beating within his heart for us and the world. In the late 17th century, afflicted by Jansenism, many Christians looked to God as a harsh judge just waiting for an excuse to send us to hell forever, rather than a merciful Father who would sacrifice his only begotten Son in order to save us. Jesus appeared to St. Margaret Mary to reveal the heart that so much loved men that it exhausted itself for our salvation. He came in a particular way to console her as well, allowing her to experience various difficulties precisely so that she would be more receptive to what Jesus wanted to give. After the death of her father when she was a young girl, Margaret Mary and her mother were abused by in-laws. She suffered because of an ulcer on her leg for five years. She suffered from opposition to her vocation. She suffered from various Visitation nuns inside the convent. But she clung to Jesus on the Cross and Jesus chose her to be his instrument to reveal to us the love of his Sacred Heart. In a series of apparitions, Jesus told St. Margaret Mary that he had exhausted himself out of love for us, but from “most” he received only indifference, irreverence, coldness, sacrilege and scorn toward his presence in what he called the “sacrament of love,” the Eucharist. He said he was particularly pained that those consecrated to him treated him in this way. In response to “most” treating him in the “sacrament of love” with indifference by missing Mass as if it makes no difference, Jesus was communicating that he wanted us to treat him in the Mass as the greatest difference-maker in our life, as our true priority, as the “source and summit” of our existence, the fulcrum of our week and day. In response to “most” who treat him with irreverence, who just go through the motions or who even pray Mass poorly as if it doesn’t matter, he wants us to treat him with deep piety. In contrast to “most” who relate to him with coldness and lack of enthusiasm, who come to Mass as bored and distracted spectators rather than ardent participants, he wants us more passionate about him at the Mass than the most fanatical sports fans are during a successful playoff run. Instead of treating him with scorn, he wants us to relate to him with grateful appreciation. And rather than receiving him sacrilegiously, without being in the state of grace, he wants us to receive him with souls fully intent on holiness and cleansed of sin. Those of us, moreover, who are consecrated to him in baptism (not to mention those consecrated to him in the more intimate form of baptismal consecration called the religious life or consecrated to him in the priesthood) have, in a sense, a duty to make reparation for all of those who treat Jesus poorly. If he feels most keenly the lack of love from those who are consecrated, then how much more consoling will be the love of those who are conscious of their special dedication. The best way we train to do so is by receiving Jesus in the Eucharist with precedence, piety, passion, praise and purity — in short, by treating Jesus as he deserves. Every Eucharist, every celebration of the sacrament of his love, Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit, wants to give us a heart transplant. In one of his appearances, Jesus asked St. Margaret Mary to take St. John’s place during the celebration of the Mass, to rest her head on his heart and, not only to sense his love, but to share in it. She felt the Lord mystically take her heart, put it within his own, and return it burning with divine love into her breast, so that her heart, like his, might become a “burning furnace of charity.” Jesus wants, in essence, through the Mass to give us the same type of transplant. He wants us to rest our heart on his as he celebrates in the Upper Room and to receive from him his own heart so that we might love God and others as he loves us. The Sacraments are how Jesus fulfills the prayer Catholics have lifted up for centuries: “O Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make our hearts like unto thine!” The Holy Spirit is the one who makes all of this possible.
Like we see in St. Margaret Mary’s life, the first and greatest way we need to correspond to the Holy Spirit, to let him guide us, live in us so that we may follow him all the way to the Father’s house is here at Mass, where the Holy Spirit comes down to overshadow not just the priest and the altar to transform bread and wine entirely into God the Son in his body, blood, soul and divinity, but seeks to transform us into one body, one spirit of Christ. It’s here where we encounter the source of our love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control and, like St. Margaret Mary, are spurred on to holiness. It’s where where the Holy Spirit seeks to reignite a new Pentecost in which, immersed in the love of the Sacred Heart, we take that love out into the world!

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 gal 5:18-25
Brothers and sisters:
If you are guided by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
Now the works of the flesh are obvious:
immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry,
sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy,
outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness,
dissensions, factions, occasions of envy,
drinking bouts, orgies, and the like.
I warn you, as I warned you before,
that those who do such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God.
In contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, generosity,
faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
Against such there is no law.
Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified their flesh
with its passions and desires.
If we live in the Spirit, let us also follow the Spirit.
Responsorial Psalm ps 1:1-2, 3, 4 and 6
R. (see Jn 8:12) Those who follow you, Lord, will have the light of life.
Blessed the man who follows not
the counsel of the wicked
Nor walks in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the company of the insolent,
But delights in the law of the LORD
and meditates on his law day and night.
R. Those who follow you, Lord, will have the light of life.
He is like a tree
planted near running water,
That yields its fruit in due season,
and whose leaves never fade.
Whatever he does, prospers.
R. Those who follow you, Lord, will have the light of life.
Not so the wicked, not so;
they are like chaff which the wind drives away.
For the LORD watches over the way of the just,
but the way of the wicked vanishes.
R. Those who follow you, Lord, will have the light of life.
Gospel lk 11:42-46
The Lord said:
“Woe to you Pharisees!
You pay tithes of mint and of rue and of every garden herb,
but you pay no attention to judgment and to love for God.
These you should have done, without overlooking the others.
Woe to you Pharisees!
You love the seat of honor in synagogues
and greetings in marketplaces.
Woe to you!
You are like unseen graves over which people unknowingly walk.”
Then one of the scholars of the law said to him in reply,
“Teacher, by saying this you are insulting us too.”
And he said, “Woe also to you scholars of the law!
You impose on people burdens hard to carry,
but you yourselves do not lift one finger to touch them.”
The post The Fruits of the Spirit and of Love of the Sacred Heart, 28th Wednesday (II), October 16, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
23 min
October 15, 2024What Alone Counts: Faith Working Through Love, 28th Tuesday (II), October 15, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Tuesday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Teresa of Avila, Virgin and Doctor of the Church
October 15, 2024
Gal 5:1-6, Ps 119, Lk 11:37-41

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.15.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
There seems to be a serious contradiction in today’s readings. In the Psalm, we expressed a great love for the law of the Lord. “In your ordinances is my hope and I will keep your law continually,” we prayed, “because I seek your precepts. I will delight in your commands which I love, and I will lift up my hands to your commands and meditate on your statutes.” Yet in the first reading St. Paul implies that the law is a “yoke of slavery,” that circumcision, which featured prominently in the law, “does not count for anything,” and that those who are “trying to be justified by law” are “separated from Christ” and “fallen from grace.” In the Gospel, moreover, Jesus scandalized the Pharisee who had invited him to dinner because he didn’t undergo the elaborate hand-washing ritual that the Scribes prescribed had to be done before eating, pouring a one-and-a-half egg-shells worth of water down his folded hands from fingers to wrists, drying the water by making a fist and rubbing the other hand, only to repeat the gesture of another one-and-a-half egg-shells of water poured from wrists to finger tips. Jesus replied by calling the Pharisees “fools.” What is it? Is the law our hope, delight, and the substance of our prayerful meditation or is it worthless and foolish?
This leads us to two central truths that need to be grasped in our faith. The first is the purpose of the law of God. As Jesus would say elsewhere in the Gospel, the entirety of the law and the prophets hangs on the two-fold command to love God with all we are and have and to love our neighbor. The second is that, on occasion in salvation history, some began to look at the law not within this lens of helping us to love God and others, but as an end in itself, almost even an idol. People, like the Scribes and the Pharisees Jesus confronts, and the Judaizers against whom St. Paul battles, began to focus more on the law than on the Legislator and those made in his image and likeness. Over time they began to create a system of interpretations and “fences” around the law (to try to prevent someone from even getting close to breaking it) that often directly opposed love of God and neighbor. We see this often in the Gospel when Jesus is accused of doing evil because he healed people on the Sabbath day, as if the only day we couldn’t love our sick neighbors was on the day of the Lord. The harmony that flows out of the apparent contradiction in today’s readings is that we are called to hope, seek, delight in, love, meditate upon and keep the law of the Lord continuously, but what God means by this is his law of love for God and for all those God loved enough to take on our human nature and die for. Some aspects of the law, like St. Paul described for us last week, were a “tutor” or “disciplinarian” meant to train us out of our fallen nature and help us to love God and neighbor in little things, preparing us to accept what Jesus the Master would come to teach as a fulfillment of that preparation. The law of circumcision, for example, consecrated human generation to God’s plans so that men and women would not forget that human love was meant to be part of the Covenant, but this physical act of consecration was surpassed in the new Covenant by a spiritual dedication: a circumcised heart was far more important than the snipping of foreskins (Deut 10:16; Deut 30:6; Jer 4:4). The dietary laws were likewise meant to consecrate one’s appetite for food to God’s plan, to train them to recognize that it was God who gave animals life (and hence the need to drain them of blood, which symbolizes life) and therefore that they should be slaughtered with a sense of gratitude to God and reverence for the way he has provided, so that even human instinctual behavior would be put into relation to God. After this period of training, Jesus and others would be able to carry out that consecration of food spiritually rather than by the physical draining of blood or the avoidance of certain animals.
The goal of the pedagogy of salvation history, of meditating on the law of the Lord, is to grasp that the law seeks to bring us to what St. Paul says at the end of today’s first reading as “faith working through love,” to a trust in God, to a receptivity to all his gifts, that overflows into deeds of love for God and others. Jesus makes the same point at the end of today’s Gospel when he says, “As to what is within, give alms, and behold everything will be clean for you.” God wants to bring us to a living faith that is operative in love, something that many of the Scribes and Pharisees, because of the way they idolized their traditions surrounding the law, were not doing, as they opposed Christ’s miraculous acts of love on the Sabbath. St. James will tell us in his epistle that “faith without works is dead” (James 2:26). True Christian faith is shown by the way it leads us to try to love like God loves, by the way it makes us patient and kind and all the other attributes St. Paul describes in his Canticle of Love (1 Cor 13), by the way it helps us to sacrifice for God and our brothers and sisters, even to the point of laying down our lives for them. We clean our insides not by rituals of egg-shells of water but by self-giving love, which when done from the heart is the greatest spiritual detergent. Today is a day on which the Lord is calling us to ponder whether our faith bears fruit in generous giving of ourselves and what we have to others, whether our faith leads us to “work” for God and others with loving affection.
Today we celebrate the feast of a saint whose life, like that of all the saints, is a commentary on faith working through love and on the almsgiving of a Christian life lived in communion with God. She showed how a strict religious rule like that by which she lived, especially in the convents she would found in the reformed Carmelite Order, was meant to unleash love, meant to enlarge our soul and communion with God, not restrict it. But her religious life didn’t start out that way. When she entered the Convent at 20, the Convent, in some ways, was like a Christian sorority. The rules of Carmelite conventual life, not to mention the Gospel, were constantly being watered down due to laxity and lukewarmness. There was no need, after all, to be “fanatical” about living the Christian life, some thought. She suffered a lot trying to reform Carmelite monasteries. She sought in particular to bring these houses back into shape so that they might serve as real schools of sanctity. She strived to lead them, as the opening prayer of the Mass attests, on the way of perfection. As Jesus pointed to in the Gospel in reminding the Pharisees that it wasn’t enough to clean the outward appearance of a cup but that they needed to clean the insides as well, so St. Teresa taught that it wasn’t enough to wear the habit of a religious, but one needed to pray, to obey, and to have the heart of a religious.
If we yet haven’t used our freedom for faith working through love, if we haven’t yet lived the commandments of God and precepts of the Church with joy and gratitude, St. Teresa’s life can give us inspiration, because she needed to convert to it later in life. She started off with great desires. When she was seven, she took great pleasure in the lives of the saints, making a little hermitage in her back yard where she could read and pray. One day her younger brother Rodrigo was in the back yard with her and they began to think about the happiness of the saints in heaven and got caught up in the thought of living “forever and ever and ever and ever and ever.” Rodrigo asked how they could get to heaven fastest, and Teresa replied that that would be through martyrdom, because the sufferings of the martyrs were nothing compared with the glory they received immediately upon death. Rodrigo asked how they could become martyrs and she said that they would need to go where the Muslims were in order to be killed by them for the faith. Rodrigo asked where the Muslims were and she told him in Morocco. And so off they went walking toward Morocco, forgetting — we can excuse 7 and 5 year olds! — the small geographical complication that there was the Mediterranean Sea between Spain and northern Africa! They got outside the city walls and as far as the ancient Roman Adaja Bridge when they were met by their Uncle Francisco coming back on his horse from hunting. He asked them where they were headed. When informed they were heading to Africa to be martyred by the Moors, he told them he would give them a ride on his horse. After they hopped on, he took them on a journey that eventually led them back to their home! The episode shows Teresa’s faith, courage and love for God from an early age. She was willing to suffer even earthly tortures — like the stories of the martyrs she read with her brother — for the sake of the Gospel. That deep desire never left her, but over the course of time, it attenuated. She entered the Carmelite monastery when she was 20, but the house was in a spiritual malaise. Some nuns had suites of rooms, with servants and pets. Eventually she succumbed to it herself, spending vast amounts of time entertaining visitors and friends in the parlor, giving herself over to various compromises with worldliness and vanity. It was only two decades later, when she was 39, that God reawakened her from her life according to the flesh, from her spiritual worldliness, from tolerating venial sins, trusting in herself, not valuing God’s grace, to a truly fervent life. She gave herself over to God and allowed herself to be led to reform Carmelite life as a whole. The Holy Spirit revivified her desire for holiness, for happiness, for heaven and he guided her through all the stages necessary to give her a foretaste of heavenly union here on earth through prayer. And her faith working through love changed the Carmelites, the Church, Spain and the whole world.
Her writings described the various stages on which God led her, and leads us, along the way of perfection. She used the image of an Interior Castle with seven “mansions” (each containing many rooms) of prayer and of the spiritual life that leads to it and flows from it. The first mansion begins in the state of grace, but involves a lot of fighting against sin, especially pride. People are pulled by the material world and a desire for possessions, honor and power. The second mansion happens when the person seeks to advance through the castle through daily prayer, thoughts of God, humble recognition of God’s work in the soul, sermons, edifying conversations, good company and other means. The third mansion happens when, moved by grace, the person has a love for God so great that the person has a total aversion to all sin including venial and a desire to do works of love for others for God’s glory. The person begins to have less self-reliance and become more dependent on God. The person has generally reached a high standard of virtue, self-discipline, penance and prudence. These are all stages that are meant to happen in everyone who follows the guidance of the Holy Spirit in ordinary Catholic life. The fourth stage is one of contemplative prayer, when the person no longer seeks to acquire or grow by one’s own efforts but allows God to lead, even in prayer. The person begins to attach lesser importance to the things of this world and far more to God. The person decreases and God increases and experiences many spiritual consolations, like the prayer of Quiet. It no longer shrinks from trials. The fifth mansion initiates a union of wills in which the person develops a complete trust in God’s will. There’s no longer a need to control events or lose much time over petty worries, something that opens the person to receive more and more gifts from God. It’s a spiritual betrothal and the faculties of the soul can often go “asleep” in prayer as the soul is completely possessed by God. The sixth mansion is when the person is torn away from outside afflictions and begins to experience not just a betrothal but a love between Lover and Beloved that lasts for long periods of time full of intimacy. It often involves some intense suffering (physical, spiritual, often misunderstanding from others and occasionally a sense of abandonment comparable to the pains of hell) in which through the Cross one’s union with God and longing for God grows. The person begins to become increasingly occupied in the things of God and can have difficulty in every day practical issues. In the seventh mansion, there is a spiritual marriage in which two candles become one, where there is complete transformation and profound peace, when inadvertent venial sins are still possible but there’s great fruitfulness in prayer and action. The person can now fulfill his or her duties without difficulty because there’s a union with God in doing them, as one is engaged fully in the service of God and others with great calm and self-forgetfulness. St. Teresa considered this way of perfection within the reach of everyone who allows the Holy Spirit to lead. She would encourage us to abandon ourselves to the Holy Spirit and let him lead us through the various rooms of each mansion according to God’s pace until, God-willing, we enter into the mansions where we, with her, will live and love God “forever and ever and ever.”
The great font of her spiritual life, the greatest means of perfection, the way she was strengthened in faith and in the love of God and others was the daily celebration of the Mass. St. Teresa drew her strength from the Eucharist. She was Teresa of Jesus, the Jesus she received within and loved ardently each day. She advised us in her Way of Perfection, “After having received the Lord, since you have the Person Himself present, strive to close the eyes of the body and open those of the soul and look into your heart. For I tell you again, and would like to tell you many times that you should acquire the habit of doing this every time. … Though He comes disguised, the disguise … does not prevent Him from being recognized in many ways, in conformity with the desire we have to see Him. And you can desire to see Him so much that He will reveal Himself to you entirely” (34:12). She wrote in her Meditations on the Song of Songs, “I think that if we were to approach the Most Blessed Sacrament with great faith and love, once would be enough to make us rich. How much richer from approaching so many times as we do. The trouble is we do so out of routine, and it shows” (M 3.13).
Today we come not out of routine, but with hunger to be filled with him, to be filled with his riches to overflowing. To become Roger of Jesus, Madeline of Jesus, Jack of Jesus, Ally of Jesus. At Mass, we come together to meditate upon and delight in the true law of the Lord, which is this law of faith working through love, what St. Paul says alone counts. Jesus comes to help us to cleanse our insides and to inspire us to follow his Eucharistic example, giving the alms of our body and our blood out of love for God and others, so that our insides will be made clean and so that one day we’ll have a chance, by God’s mercy, to enter into friendship with him, with St. Teresa of Jesus and all the saints forever.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
gal 5:1-6
Brothers and sisters:
For freedom Christ set us free;
so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.
It is I, Paul, who am telling you
that if you have yourselves circumcised,
Christ will be of no benefit to you.
Once again I declare to every man who has himself circumcised
that he is bound to observe the entire law.
You are separated from Christ,
you who are trying to be justified by law;
you have fallen from grace.
For through the Spirit, by faith, we await the hope of righteousness.
For in Christ Jesus,
neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything,
but only faith working through love.
Responsorial Psalm
ps 119:41, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48
R. (41a) Let your mercy come to me, O Lord.
Let your mercy come to me, O LORD,
your salvation according to your promise.
R. Let your mercy come to me, O Lord.
Take not the word of truth from my mouth,
for in your ordinances is my hope.
R. Let your mercy come to me, O Lord.
And I will keep your law continually,
forever and ever.
R. Let your mercy come to me, O Lord.
And I will walk at liberty,
because I seek your precepts.
R. Let your mercy come to me, O Lord.
And I will delight in your commands,
which I love.
R. Let your mercy come to me, O Lord.
And I will lift up my hands to your commands
and meditate on your statutes.
R. Let your mercy come to me, O Lord.
Gospel
lk 11:37-41
After Jesus had spoken,
a Pharisee invited him to dine at his home.
He entered and reclined at table to eat.
The Pharisee was amazed to see
that he did not observe the prescribed washing before the meal.
The Lord said to him, “Oh you Pharisees!
Although you cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish,
inside you are filled with plunder and evil.
You fools!
Did not the maker of the outside also make the inside?
But as to what is within, give alms,
and behold, everything will be clean for you.”
The post What Alone Counts: Faith Working Through Love, 28th Tuesday (II), October 15, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
16 min
October 15, 2024 Overview of John Paul II’s Love and Responsibility, Columbia Catholic Ministry, October 14, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Merton Institute for Catholic Life
Columbia Catholic Ministry, New York
October 14, 2024

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10.14.24 Love and Responsibility
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1 hr 31 min
October 14, 2024Using Well The Freedom For Which Christ Has Set Us Free, 28th Monday (II), October 14, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Monday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of Pope St. Callistus
October 14, 2024
Gal 4:22-24.26-27.31.5:1, Ps 113, Lk 11:29-32

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The following points were attempted in the homily:
Today in the first reading, we continue to explore the sharp contrast St. Paul has been making in his Letter to the Galatians between judaized Christians who thought we’re saved by our own efforts to keep all the precepts of the Mosaic Law, and the Christians he worked to form who grasped that we’re saved by God, by our response to the manifold graces he gives us. Using an allegorical style of interpretation he learned in rabbinical school, he described the two spiritualities flowing from Hagar through Ishmael and Sarah through Isaac, respectively, as a “yoke of slavery” versus a “freedom” in response to God’s “promise” (grace through the promised coming of the Messiah and his incarnation, passion and resurrection of Jesus) for which Christ has set us free. The Christians in Galatia were being persuaded by the Judaizers that they couldn’t be good Christians unless they yoked themselves entirely to the Mosaic law like the Scribes and Pharisees did. The law was lived by them not as an experience of freedom to love God and others maximally, but as a straightjacket in which many focused far more on the law — and all of the binding interpretations of the law made by the Scribes — than on God. St. Paul stressed that Christ, in fulfilling the Mosaic law, freed us from that slavery, and in the new and eternal Covenant, he sought to help us live by faith in the freedom of the truth as beloved sons and daughters of God.
These two different spiritualities provide a context for us better to grasp what was happening in today’s Gospel. Many of the Jews who had been influenced by the Scribes and the Pharisees were seeking signs from Jesus, despite the fact that Jesus had been working many signs. Immediately before this scene, as we saw in Friday’s Gospel, Jesus had exorcised a demon from a possessed man, but Jesus’ critics refused to accept that sign as pointing to what it obviously spotlighted, that Jesus was working for God and trying to free people from the domain of the evil one. Instead, they pretended as if the miracle were a sign of another agency, that Jesus was casting out demons by the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons. Likewise these same critics weren’t accepting any of Jesus’ other signs, his many miracles of healing and feeding. They were essentially only looking for signs that corresponded to their preconceived prejudices: if Jesus were the Messiah, then he would work signs that pointed to his liberating them from the Romans and establishing a political renewal of the Davidic Kingdom. If he were the Messiah, then everything he did, they thought, would be signs corresponding to and indeed confirming what they were laying the foundations to establish. The Messiah couldn’t possibly work signs that would contradict what they were expecting, they thought. So they sought miracles, but only those miracles that confirmed what they wanted confirmed. None of Jesus’ miracles seemed to be doing this, which is why they continued to seek signs. They were like children of Hagar, yoked to a slavery of their interpretation of the law and their rigid expectations as to how God would send a Messiah to save them. In contrast, we had on Saturday Jesus’ response to the shout of the anonymous woman, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you,” when the Lord responded about the real thing that makes Mary most blessed of all: “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and observe it.” Jesus was looking for those who would receive the Word of God with faith and act on that saving word. These were children of Sarah … and of Mary.
These two scenes set us up for Jesus’ words today when he says, “This generation is an evil generation; it seeks a sign.” We see just how evil the generation was when they conspired to frame Jesus before the Roman authorities they detested to have him executed for working signs they didn’t want to believe. Jesus replied by saying that no sign would be given to this evil generation except the sign of Jonah. That implies three things (as we’re able to ponder every Wednesday of the First Week of Lent):
First, it implies Jesus’ call to conversion. Jesus said, “At the judgment the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation and condemn it, because at the preaching of Jonah they repented, and there is something greater than Jonah here.” Jonah’s message of conversion, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be destroyed,” got the pagans of that enormously large city to convert, from the king to pets, immediately. They were all in sackcloth and ashes. But Jesus was saying that his message of conversion is a sign to an even deeper conversion that God wanted than at the time of Jonah. But the sign-seekers of the evil present generation were not interested in conversion.
Second, it implies Jesus’ wisdom. Jesus said, “At the judgment the queen of the south will rise with the men of this generation and she will condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and there is something greater than Solomon here.” The Ninevites accepted Jonah’s wisdom as coming from God. The Queen of Sheba journeyed over 1,660 miles over at least three months to hear Solomon’s wisdom, accounting it worth the sacrifice not just of many months round trip but also so much material wealth. Jesus’ wisdom, the wisdom that would have crowds amass to listen to him for hours, was a sign that he was speaking of a way to live, to die and to live forever that was far greater than anything Solomon ever taught. Jesus’ wisdom was a sign that he was not only continuing in the path of Solomon’s wisdom, but was the one to whom Solomon’s wisdom pointed. But the people of the evil generation were not interested in that wisdom.
Third, it implies Jesus’ suffering, death and resurrection, that he would spend three days in the belly of the earth just like Jonah spent three days in the belly of the whale (as St. Matthew’s version makes explicit). Jesus’ crucifixion would be a sign of how corrupt their hearts had become by co-conspiring to bring it about, but also the greatest sign of the love of the Lord who would die because, as Jesus prayed in his first words from the Cross, they didn’t really know what they were doing. Jesus’ resurrection itself would be the sign of the triumph of good over evil, light over darkness, life over death, and sanctity over sin. Jesus’ resurrection is the greatest sign in the history of the world. The crucified and risen One would be what St. Paul called in his first Letter to the Corinthians, the “power and the wisdom of God.” But as we see, even after Jesus’ three days in the belly of the earth and his resurrection, those in the evil and perverse generation didn’t want to accept that either.
Today it’s important for us to become a “good and holy generation” in contrast to the receptivity of those whom Jesus was calling out in today’s Gospel. We’re called not only to accept the signs of Jesus’ call to conversion, his wisdom and his death and resurrection, but to become so united to him that we become signs of Jesus’ death and resurrection, signs of his wisdom, signs of his summons to conversion in the midst of the world. Jesus does that through the great signs he’s left us, signs that not only point to him doing certain spiritual work, but actually bringing that work about. We call those signs the sacraments, signs that affect what they signify. By Baptism, Jesus seeks to unite us to him so that we may become an efficacious sign of God’s presence in the world as his temple. By Confirmation, he fills us with the fire of the Holy Spirit so that we may continue his mission of proclaiming the Gospel of salvation to the whole world. By Reconciliation, he heals us of our sins and sends us out as walking advertisements that Jesus is the Lamb who wishes to take away the sins of others, too. By the Eucharist, Jesus unites us as members of his body, so that we can become one body, one spirit in Him, so that we can become his hands, his feet, his heart bringing his love to the world. By Matrimony, husbands and wives become signs of Jesus’ union with his Bride the Church, so that by their love for each other, Christian couples will remind everyone by the particularity of their mutual love of what Christ loves the Church and the Church loves Christ. By Holy Orders, priests are meant to remind everyone of Christ’s teaching, sanctifying and shepherding his people and are changed so that they might act in Christ’s very person communicating his life, especially through the Sacraments. And by the Anointing, we ponder the sign of Jesus’ healing that actually communicates a healing of the soul and often of the body, helping people to unite themselves to Christ’s own suffering, which is a sign not so much of pain but of the love that bears that pain. To our age and every age, Jesus continues to give us these signs through which he himself brings the reality to which these signs point. And we are called to use the freedom for which he set us free to choose to receive them and to live a genuinely sacramental life.
Today we celebrate the feast of a saint who was a slave in life before he became a true servant of Christ and a servants of the servants of Christ. St. Callistus was a slave who managed his master’s assets. Eventually, either through mismanagement or theft, he lost them and ran away. He was caught, sentenced to manual labor (a particularly hard form of slavery) and sent to the mines. Through various interventions, the Christians in those mines were liberated. Callistus was eventually entrusted by Pope St. Zephyrinus as the steward of Christian cemeteries (the underground catacombs), was ordained a deacon, and after St. Zephyrinus’ death was elected his successor. And because he had made the journey from sin to grace, from slavery to freedom, in deeper contact with the Sign-of-Jonah and Greater-than-Solomon, he sought to make it possible for other to receive that gift. The mercy he showed toward sinners scandalized many of the priests of Rome and beyond as he made it much easier for those who had been misled by sects and heretics to be welcomed back into the fold, for reducing the length of penances necessary for those who had committed sins like murder, abortion, primitive contraception and apostasy to be readmitted to communion, and for recognizing the marriages among different social classes in Rome against Roman law. There were some — among them Hippolytus in Rome and Tertullian in Carthage — who thought he was mistaken to be so lenient, but it seems that they were much more concerned with giving strong penances to show the severity of sin than in recognizing conversion when it had happened and facilitating the life of grace. He also set up diakonia for the poor throughout the city and eventually gave all that he had, giving his life for God and for his people, making himself, freely, a slave to Christ in lovingly enslaving himself to those for whom Christ died. At the beginning of Mass, we asked God, through his intercession and by his example, to strengthen us so that “rescued from the slavery of corruption, we may merit an incorruptible inheritance.” That’s the purpose for which Christ has set us free. That’s the path of conversion to which he never ceases to summon us with urgency. That’s the way to live according to his wisdom.
The Mass is our participation in Jesus’ fulfillment of the Sign of Jonah. We become here one with his call to conversion, one with his wisdom, one with suffering and death, and one with his risen life. With the freedom for which he has set us free, we ask God for the grace that we may recognize that here on the altar we have something far greater than Jonah and Solomon, that we are so blessed to be called to this supper of the Lamb, and that Jesus wants through this efficacious sign to transform us more and more into him, so that we may become through, with and in him, like Pope St. Callistus, living signs in the world calling others, as we prayed in the psalm, to bless the name of the Lord forever.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
gal 4:22-24, 26-27, 31-5:1
Brothers and sisters:
It is written that Abraham had two sons,
one by the slave woman and the other by the freeborn woman.
The son of the slave woman was born naturally,
the son of the freeborn through a promise.
Now this is an allegory.
These women represent two covenants.
One was from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery;
this is Hagar.
But the Jerusalem above is freeborn, and she is our mother.
For it is written:
Rejoice, you barren one who bore no children;
break forth and shout, you who were not in labor;
for more numerous are the children of the deserted one
than of her who has a husband.
Therefore, brothers and sisters,
we are children not of the slave woman
but of the freeborn woman.
For freedom Christ set us free; so stand firm
and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.
Responsorial Psalm
ps 113:1b-2, 3-4, 5a and 6-7
R. (see 2) Blessed be the name of the Lord forever.
or:
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Praise, you servants of the LORD,
praise the name of the LORD.
Blessed be the name of the LORD
both now and forever.
R. Blessed be the name of the Lord forever.
or:
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
From the rising to the setting of the sun
is the name of the LORD to be praised.
High above all nations is the LORD;
above the heavens is his glory.
R. Blessed be the name of the Lord forever.
or:
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Who is like the LORD, our God,
who looks upon the heavens and the earth below?
He raises up the lowly from the dust;
from the dunghill he lifts up the poor.
R. Blessed be the name of the Lord forever.
or:
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
lk 11:29-32
While still more people gathered in the crowd, Jesus said to them,
“This generation is an evil generation;
it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it,
except the sign of Jonah.
Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites,
so will the Son of Man be to this generation.
At the judgment
the queen of the south will rise with the men of this generation
and she will condemn them,
because she came from the ends of the earth
to hear the wisdom of Solomon,
and there is something greater than Solomon here.
At the judgment the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation
and condemn it,
because at the preaching of Jonah they repented,
and there is something greater than Jonah here.”
The post Using Well The Freedom For Which Christ Has Set Us Free, 28th Monday (II), October 14, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
19 min
October 13, 2024How To Become Truly Rich Young Men and Women, 28th Sunday (II), October 13, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
28th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B
October 13, 2024
Wis 7:7-11, Ps 90, Heb 4:12-13, Mk 10:17-30

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The following text guided the homily:
One of the characteristics of being young is that we can live to some degree “in” and “for” the future. We dream about what we’ll do when we’re older, where we’ll go to school, what profession we’ll choose, where we’ll live, whether and with whom we’ll marry, and lots of similar questions. As we mature, we begin to make our questions more precise, our dreams more concrete, and our values clearer. And we get to the point where we begin increasingly to have to choose a path, to say yes to one school and no to all of the others, to select one field of study and no to many other interests, to say yes to one person and no to all other suitors. At this stage, some get overwhelmed by the cancer of optionitis: they try to keep all of their options open as long as possible, avoiding definite commitments out of fear of missing out on something, only to discover later that they have missed out on many of the most important joys of human life, which come only through making tough choices and firm commitments. That mature, however, recognize that they cannot have everything, but have to prioritize what’s really important and then act according to those priorities. They know they have to choose, and sometimes those choices are tough.
Today’s readings are about young people making choices and they contain a great deal of divine wisdom to help us examine what we value most. The questions they raise are valuable to people no matter what their age, but they are particularly relevant for young people to examine what they really aspire to in life and ultimately to which God they want are going to serve. Let’s together enter into the drama that concerns not just these Biblical figures but you and me and everyone who will ever live.
In the first reading, we encounter the thoughts ascribed to the young King Solomon. When he was the age of a Columbia freshman, beginning his reign as king over the Lord’s people, he pleased God very much. One night God appeared to him and told him to ask anything of him and he would grant it (1 Kings 3:4-15). Solomon could have requested for anything whatsoever, but he did not appeal for power, money, health, a long life, or even a beautiful queen. He knew he was, he said, “a mere youth, not knowing at all how to act,” and so he asked for “an understanding heart to judge [God’s] people and to distinguish right from wrong.” He asked, in short, for wisdom. In tonight’s first reading, Solomon tells us, “I preferred [wisdom] to scepters and thrones, and I accounted wealth as nothing in comparison with her. … I loved her more than health and beauty, and I chose to have her rather than light, because her radiance never ceases.” He valued wisdom more than political power, than all the money in the world, than physical vigor and looks, even than light. He wanted help from God to make right judgments, to choose well, to order his personal and political decisions on earth in accordance with the way things really are, the way God made them. How much do we prioritize divine wisdom? Do we value it more than robust health and world-class athletic abilities? Would we sell it divine wisdom — and become a fool — in order to obtain Elon Musk’s fortune? Would we sacrifice divine wisdom if it proved an obstacle to getting a coveted job or entering into a desired relationship? Do we really seek and treasure the truth or, even at a university in which we are supposed to live by the motto to see all things in divine light (Ps 36:10), do we treat divine wisdom — and the God who gives it — only as instrumental goods?
In today’s Psalm, we all echoed Solomon’s request. We begged God, “Teach us to number our days aright that we may gain wisdom of heart.” We asked him for the grace not to forget that we will die, that we do not have all the time in the world to get things right, and therefore to learn the wisdom of heart, the prudence of desires, to prioritize what’s most important. We then ask for a particular type of wisdom that is not of the world. “Make us glad,” we prayed, “for the days when you afflicted us, for the years when we saw evil.” We’re asking for the wisdom to see even our sufferings in the light of God. This type of wisdom would reach its culmination, St. Paul will tell us later, in “Christ Crucified,” who was a “stumbling block for Jews and foolishness for Gentiles, but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Christ Crucified would become the wisdom of God and he would call us to follow him along that cruciform path of wisdom. He would beckon us, “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself, take up his Cross daily, and follow me” (Lk 9:23). Jesus wants us, like Solomon, to prefer this wisdom to scepters and thrones, to wealth and the things of the world, to health and beauty, even to light. God wants to give us this wisdom of heart, flowing from numbering our days on earth aright. But this wisdom doesn’t come on the cheap. We have to treat it like the pearl of great price, the treasure buried in a field, worth sacrificing all we have to get it — because this relationship with God and the way it changes us is worth far more than everything else in the world.
These thoughts about the importance of divine wisdom and our need to seek it, pray for it, and try to according to it, helps us to understand better the other great drama of a young man with God that the Church has us ponder tonight: Jesus’ encounter in the Gospel with the figure tradition has called the Rich Young Man. He was a virtuous youth. He had kept the commandments of the Lord from a young age. And when he was thinking, like young people do, about the future, he was considering in the deepest and most long-lasting way possible. He ran up to Jesus, knelt down before him in homage, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what good must I do to inherit eternal life?” He kneelings shows how much he really wanted to know the answer to that question. His calling Jesus, “Good Teacher,” showed as Jesus noted that he saw in Jesus something more than an ordinary rabbi, but a reflection of the divine, since God alone is ontologically and morally worthy of that adjective. Jesus first told him something that’s important for all of us to know. He told him to keep the commandments, especially those about love of neighbor, since we can never love our neighbor and the God who loves our neighbor if we’re dishonoring those through whom God gave us life, if we’re killing or hating others, if we’re lying to them, stealing from them, being unfaithful to our spouses or taking advantage of them sexually. The young man noted that he had kept all of these commandments from the time he first started making moral decisions, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t take him at his word. But he knew that despite all his material wealth and moral uprightness, there was something missing in his life. His heart yearned for more and greater. He grasped that the life God intended for us had to consist in so much more than merely not breaking the second tablet of the Decalogue. And so he asked in St. Matthew’s account of the same scene, “What do I lack?” Jesus, St. Mark tells us, looked at him with love and gave him the challenging, brutally honest, direct answer to his question, “You lack one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me!” It was a highly paradoxical answer. Jesus was telling him that what he lacked was precisely that he had too much. He lacked total detachment from substitutes so that he could attach himself to the Absolute. He had previously lived a good life, but Jesus was now calling him to greatness. He was calling him to an upgrade in faith, a radical choice for, and total commitment to, God. He was summoning him to do more than not sin against others, but to love them to the point of using all his possessions to care for them and then to love God enough to dedicate his whole life to following him along the path of total-self-giving love.
There’s a key lesson here not just for spiritual growth but for all of human life. St. Therese of Lisieux, the great 19th century, French, young adult doctor of the Church, who never attended university or even high school — and therefore a tremendous example of one who was enriched with a wisdom from God that you can’t learn by devouring even all the titles in the New York Public Library — taught us that we grow in the spiritual life by subtraction, not by addition. Once when a novice sighed with exasperation in her presence, “When I think of everything I still have to acquire!,” the Little Flower replied, “You mean, to lose! Jesus takes it upon himself to fill your soul in the measure that you rid it of its imperfections. … You want to climb a great mountain and the good God is trying to make you descend it; he is waiting for you at the bottom in the fertile valley of humility.” The Rich Young Man needed to learn this lesson of addition by subtraction. He looked at the path of holiness, happiness and heaven as something he could add on to what he already had, whereas Jesus was indicating that the cure of his sense of emptiness would happen only through self-emptying, precisely so that in that emptiness Christ could fill him. The Lord is always asking us to let go even of many of his gifts in order to help us to recognize that the greatest gift of all, and the one to whom we should cling, is the God the Giver.
The Rich Young Man got the answer to the question that was erupting from the depths of his being about what he needed to do not just to inherit eternal life but to have it all in life, but he didn’t like it. He wasn’t mature enough for the challenge that spiritual perfection requires. Mark tells us, “His face fell and he went away sad, for he had many possessions.” In the second reading, the Letter to the Hebrews says that the “word of God is … sharper than a two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.” The word of God pierced right into the young man’s heart and exposed what, in the ultimate analysis, was its treasure. And unfortunately it wasn’t yet God. When given a choice, like the rich young Solomon, between Wisdom Incarnate and his money, the young man in the Gospel chose the money, and went away sad, because he was still lacking something that, despite his wealth, left him consciously imperfect and incomplete. He couldn’t give up his wealth to follow the Creator of every earthly treasure. He thought he could both have his money and acquire what he was lacking. But Jesus taught emphatically at another time, “You cannot serve two masters. You will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money” (Mt 6:24). The Rich Young Man wanted to know the path to eternal life. He wanted to have it all. He came to Jesus and asked. Jesus with love answered his question exactly. But he didn’t have the trust, he didn’t have the courage, he didn’t have the detachment to do what Jesus indicated. He went away crestfallen. And how can we not share that sadness at his failure to seize the incredible invitation Jesus was giving him? How can we not share the sadness whenever anyone, of whatever age, makes a similar choice?
To do what Jesus indicates in the Gospel today, to make the choice that the Rich Young Man somehow thought he couldn’t, is challenging. Jesus uses the image of a needle and says that we’ll never be able to pass through the eye of the needle into the kingdom of heaven as long as we’re still clutching onto the things of this world. It’s not that material wealth or possessions are bad in themselves; in fact they’re blessings. The harm comes when we start to become attached to them, when they begin to own us rather than our stewarding them as gifts of God. St. Paul teaches elsewhere, not that money is the root of all evil, but “the love of money is the root of all evil and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains” (1 Tim 6:10), like we see in the sadness of the young man in today’s Gospel. He calls greed “idolatry” (Col 3:5). Money, in other words, can easily become our anti-god, which we can begin to worship. Our faith, hope and love — which should always be directed to God — can be transferred to money. “Everything is possible for the one with money,” we can begin to believe. We can start to place our security and our heart in earthly mammon. Such a person who puts his treasure in possessions, like the Rich Young Man, isn’t necessarily evil. He can be good, he can keep the ten commandments from his earliest days, he might even consider God really important, but for him, God is not yet God. God is not yet the most important reality in his life. Like with the Rich Young Man, when it comes to the time he has to make a choice, to part with his money or to serve Christ, he chooses his money. He chooses to sell off Christ and give his time, his talents and his energies to storing up for himself an earthly treasure. And, like the Rich Young Man, he will remain sad, because happiness is something that not even all the money in the world can buy.
So what are we to do? All of us, including those on welfare in the United States, are rich in relation to the vast majority of people in the world not to mention in human history. Do any of us have a chance for eternal life, or for human perfection, or are we like camels before a microscopic hole? St. Mark tells us that Jesus’ disciples were “exceedingly astonished” at the severity of Christ’s statement and asked, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus says in the Gospel that God makes it possible for all of us to be saved. Jesus shows us the way, but those looking for an easy way are going to be disappointed: “Go, sell what you have, give the money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”
Some preachers have done harm to faithful by trying to water-down the stark and challenging three-fold command of Jesus, as if Jesus didn’t mean what he said to the Rich Young Man. If Jesus didn’t mean what he said, however, it would have been cruel to allow him to depart so sad and just told him he was exaggerating. Jesus did indeed to challenge him in the way he did and we, too, need to confront the two-edged sword of Jesus’ word. If we see to be perfect, to be holy, to have it all, Jesus calls us to use our money — as well as our intelligence and all our gifts — in the service of God and others. It’s wrong to water down the radicality of the call. Other preachers, however, have perhaps done just as much harm to people, by interpreting what Jesus said in a univocal way, stating that what the Lord is asking of us, no matter our vocation and responsibilities, is to go down to the local pawn shop, hock of all our stuff, and then go give it in lump sums to individual poor people, or the St. Vincent de Paul Society, the parish Food Pantry, or the Missionaries of Charity. The proper interpretation of the passage comes down to what the Lord means by “selling what you have.” The universal application he’s getting at is placing our money and resources at the loving service of others. There are many ways to give this money away. Parents give it away when they use it to support — not spoil — the members of their family. Business owners give it away when they use their capital to create jobs so that as many as possible can have work to support themselves and their loved ones, or when they pay not just a fair wage but a generous wage, so that their employees can make ends meet more easily. Catholics give it away when they give it to the Church Jesus founded in order to support the works of the faith, especially the spread of our faith through the Missions, the support of Catholic education, and the care for the needy. Customers give it away when they see that their overworked waitress is pregnant and give her an extremely generous tip. We all give it away, when we prioritizing seeking out Christ in the disguise of the poor and needy around us, those in the streets, those families struggling financially to survive, those worthy causes that every month wonder how they’re going to pay their bills. But the summons that Jesus gives is not just to give “something” to others, but to make a commitment to use for others basically everything of which he has made us a steward. It’s a call to empty ourselves of all greed, to give ourselves and what God has given us out of love to others, that we become capable of receiving what the Lord wants to give us. It is only then that we can sing in truth what we chanted in today’s Responsorial Psalm, “Fill us with your love, O Lord, and we will sing with joy.” We can only be filled with the Lord’s love when we have emptied ourselves of placing our faith, hope and love in mammon.
Is what Jesus is asking of us hard to do? Yes, indeed. But with his help it’s certainly possible. We see that every time a young person responds to the vocation to enter seminary or the convent, placing God above a worldly career, above the goods of human marriage and family, above being in control of their own life. We see it in every FOCUS missionary, who have given up lots of other possibilities, and all the money they might earn, to dedicate themselves for two years or more to spreading faith on campus and raise their own sustenance. We see it in many converts to Christ and the Catholic faith, who sometimes are disowned by their family and, in some countries, even have to endure death threats. We see it in faithful Catholic employees who refuse to violate their conscience, even at the risk of losing their job. I saw it with two of the pilgrims with me this summer who walked with me across the country. One had asked her Catholic employer to give her two months off without pay so that she could travel with the Eucharistic Jesus, but the employer denied the request. It was a tough choice, but she sensed that Jesus was drawing her onto this journey and so she, trusting in him, said yes and came. Another pilgrim was a 2024 Columbia Law School grad and recent convert whose family and friends urged her to spend the summer like all her colleagues studying for the bar exam at the end of July. She had spent five years of her life preparing to be a lawyer and certainly part of her thought it wise to spend May through July preparing to pass the bar, but the other part felt Jesus calling her to come follow him from New Haven to Indianapolis. She chose to go with Jesus and to trust in his help to pass the bar. Toward the end of our pilgrimage, at a night for young adults in rural Indiana, she gave a witness that I can’t forget. She said that when she was young girl she had heard the story of the Rich Young Man and was saddened by his choice and hoping that if she were ever confronted by a similar dilemma, she would choose Jesus. She said she would hope to choose Jesus as the pearl of great price in her life, as the one for whom it would be fitting, like Mary of Bethany, to crack open an alabaster jar and anoint his feet with a year’s salary’s worth of precious aromatic nard. And by this choice to go on the Eucharistic pilgrimage, she said she was doing so, and that it had filled her with enormous joy. She urged her fellow young adults to make a similar choice for Jesus. She would, I’m sure, urge all of her fellow Columbians here to make the same.
I’d like to bring up one last inspiring example. Yesterday the Church celebrated the liturgical memorial of Blessed, soon to be Saint, Carlo Acutis, who died 18 years ago yesterday in 2006 at the age of 15. He was a indeed a Rich Young Man, from a wealthy Milanese family, but he got right what the youth in today’s Gospel got wrong. Blessed Carlo is most famous for the ardor of his Eucharistic love, dubbing the Eucharist “My highway to heaven,” living a truly Eucharistic life, and trying to bring his friends, classmates, neighbors and even the whole world to appreciate the wondrous gift of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. But he recognized that a truly Eucharistic life is not just one that prioritizes daily Mass and Eucharistic adoration. It also features intense Eucharistic charity. Carlo sought to pattern his life on the Lord’s love in the Eucharist, giving his body, blood and his possessions away to others. “Life is a gift,” the young Carlo said, “because as long as we are on this planet, we can increase our charity.” When he was very young, he brought his whole piggy bank to school to give to students who needed it more. He would turn down the offer for new clothes or sneakers and ask that the money instead go to the poor. To the homeless, he would spend his allowance buying them sleeping bags, blankets and thermoses so that he could fill them with warm drinks and bring them to them. He used every opportunity to use what God, his parents and others had given him to love those around him. “Money is nothing more than shredded paper,” he said. “What counts in life is the nobility of the soul, that is, the way we love God and neighbor.” He’s praying for us to adopt with him this Eucharistic form of Christian life. If he were still alive, he would be only 33 years old. I’m personally convinced because of his Eucharistic love, that he would be a brother priest. And if he were here, preaching, I believe he’d tell all of us that we should not be striving to be a rich young man according to worldly standards, but according to divine. To be truly rich, he would say, we have to be holy, to be rich in what matters, to be rich in the way we love God and neighbor. To be rich means to be Christ-like.
The best place for us to become rich in this way is here at Mass. Here we receive the greatest wisdom of all, the wisdom that comes not just from the Word of God but from Christ crucified himself, who calls us to follow him along the path that leads here to this altar and from the altar to giving our body and blood, and our time, talents, and treasure out of love for others (1 Cor 1:22-24). In every Mass, the Lord gives us a choice between his wisdom and worldly wisdom, between an earthly treasure and an eternal treasure that moths can’t destroy, rust corrode, or the IRS can’t tax or take, between leaving here sad or full of joy. He places before us the call to be perfect, to be holy, to be like him. As St. Paul told us, “Though he was rich, [he] became poor for [our] sake so that by his poverty [we] may become rich” (2 Cor 8:9). He wants us to be rich in what really matters. As we see in the second part of today’s Gospel, the apostles trusted in what Jesus said and left everything to follow him, putting their whole lives at his service. When St. Peter asked out of shock and self-interest what awaited those who had left everything for him, Jesus gave them the greatest promise of all time: “one hundred times more now in this present age … and eternal life in the age to come.” That’s what Jesus in fact bestows when he gives himself to us in Holy Communion, which is far more valuable than 100 times what we would ever give up, and is the foremost foretaste of the eternal life. What Jesus gives us here is something far greater than what Solomon even dared to dream. This is the down payment of what awaits us if we structure our life on his wisdom and value it more than power, money, physical strength, looks, and even light. This is what we will receive if we make our own Jesus’ cruciform, loving, self-emptying way of life. This is what will be ours forever if we maturely decide, tonight, to heed Jesus’ words to go, to make our life a radical gift to God and others, and then, freely, to follow him all the way along this path of love, of holiness, of true and lasting riches, and of eternal life.

The readings for tonight’s Mass were:
Reading I
Wis 7:7-11
I prayed, and prudence was given me;
I pleaded, and the spirit of wisdom came to me.
I preferred her to scepter and throne,
and deemed riches nothing in comparison with her,
nor did I liken any priceless gem to her;
because all gold, in view of her, is a little sand,
and before her, silver is to be accounted mire.
Beyond health and comeliness I loved her,
and I chose to have her rather than the light,
because the splendor of her never yields to sleep.
Yet all good things together came to me in her company,
and countless riches at her hands.
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 90:12-13, 14-15, 16-17
R. (14) Fill us with your love, O Lord, and we will sing for joy!
Teach us to number our days aright,
that we may gain wisdom of heart.
Return, O LORD! How long?
Have pity on your servants!
R. Fill us with your love, O Lord, and we will sing for joy!
Fill us at daybreak with your kindness,
that we may shout for joy and gladness all our days.
Make us glad, for the days when you afflicted us,
for the years when we saw evil.
R. Fill us with your love, O Lord, and we will sing for joy!
Let your work be seen by your servants
and your glory by their children;
and may the gracious care of the LORD our God be ours;
prosper the work of our hands for us!
Prosper the work of our hands!
R. Fill us with your love, O Lord, and we will sing for joy!
Reading II
Heb 4:12-13
Brothers and sisters:
Indeed the word of God is living and effective,
sharper than any two-edged sword,
penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow,
and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.
No creature is concealed from him,
but everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of him
to whom we must render an account.
Alleluia
Mt 5:3
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Mk 10:17-30 or 10:17-27
As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up,
knelt down before him, and asked him,
“Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus answered him, “Why do you call me good?
No one is good but God alone.
You know the commandments: You shall not kill;
you shall not commit adultery;
you shall not steal;
you shall not bear false witness;
you shall not defraud;
honor your father and your mother.”
He replied and said to him,
“Teacher, all of these I have observed from my youth.”
Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him,
“You are lacking in one thing.
Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor
and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”
At that statement his face fell,
and he went away sad, for he had many possessions.
Jesus looked around and said to his disciples,
“How hard it is for those who have wealth
to enter the kingdom of God!”
The disciples were amazed at his words.
So Jesus again said to them in reply,
“Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle
than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
They were exceedingly astonished and said among themselves,
“Then who can be saved?”
Jesus looked at them and said,
“For human beings it is impossible, but not for God.
All things are possible for God.”
Peter began to say to him,
“We have given up everything and followed you.”
Jesus said, “Amen, I say to you,
there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters
or mother or father or children or lands
for my sake and for the sake of the gospel
who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age:
houses and brothers and sisters
and mothers and children and lands,
with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come.”
The post How To Become Truly Rich Young Men and Women, 28th Sunday (II), October 13, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
37 min
October 13, 2024Choosing to Follow Jesus on the Road of Wisdom and Perfection, 28th Sunday (B), October 13, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
28th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B
October 13, 2024
Wis 7:7-11, Ps 90, Heb 4:12-13, Mk 10:17-30

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below:
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The following text guided the homily:
As a young king of the Lord’s people, Solomon pleased the Lord very much. One night God appeared to him and told him to ask for whatever he wanted (1 Kings 3:45-15). Solomon could have requested, and likely received, anything he asked for. Solomon did not appeal for power, or money, or health, or a long life, or even a beautiful queen, but for a “an understanding heart to judge [God’s] people and to distinguish right from wrong.” He asked for wisdom. In today’s first reading, Solomon shows us that, to some degree, he was already wise in asking for what he did. “I preferred [wisdom] to scepters and thrones, and I accounted wealth as nothing in comparison with her. … I loved her more than health and beauty, and I chose to have her rather than light, because her radiance never ceases.” He valued wisdom more than political power, than all the money in the world, than physical vigor and looks, even than light. He wanted help from God to make right judgments, to choose well, to order his decisions on earth in accordance with the way things really are, the way God made them.
This is the prayer we all asked for in the responsorial psalm today. We begged God, “Teach us to number our days aright that we may gain wisdom of heart.” We asked him for the grace to help us see how, even on our hardest days, God has been there, forming us, helping us, passing on to us a wisdom not of this world. “Make us glad,” we asked, “for the days when you afflicted us, for the years when we saw evil.” This type of wisdom would reach its culmination, St. Paul would tell us, in “Christ Crucified,” who is a “ stumbling block for Jews and foolishness for Gentiles, but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Christ Crucified would become the wisdom of God and he would call us to follow him along that cruciform path of wisdom. He would beckon us, “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself, take up his Cross daily, and follow me” (Lk 9:23). Jesus wants us, like Solomon, to prefer this wisdom to scepters and thrones, to wealth and the things of the world, to health and beauty, even to light. God wants to give us this wisdom. But this wisdom doesn’t come on the cheap. We have to treat it like the pearl of great price, the treasure buried in a field, worth sacrificing all we have to get it — because this relationship with God and the way it changes us is worth far more than everything else in the world.
This helps us to understand the great drama taking place in today’s Gospel in Jesus’ encounter with the Rich Young Man. He was a virtuous youth. He had kept the commandments of the Lord from a young age. He was concerned about the deepest and most important questions, like the one he asked Jesus, “What good must I do to inherit eternal life?” He already had some faith in Jesus, coming to him not just as a rabbi who knew a lot but as a “Good Teacher,” whose whole bearing intrigued him as someone who gave signs of the divine and inspired him to approach and ask about the way he should live in order to live for ever. The young man also recognized that, despite all his material wealth and moral uprightness, there was something missing in his life. His heart yearned for more and greater. He grasped that the life God intended for us had to consist in so much more than merely not breaking the second tablet of the Decalogue. And so he asked in St. Matthew’s account of the same scene, “What do I lack?” Jesus, St. Mark tells us, looked at him with love and gave him the challenging, brutally honest, direct answer to his question, “You lack one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me!” It was a highly paradoxical answer. Jesus was telling him that what he lacked was precisely that he had too much. He lacked total detachment from substitutes so that he could attach himself to the Absolute. He had previously lived a good life, but Jesus was now calling him to greatness. He already had some faith in Jesus as a “good Teacher” who was reflecting the goodness of God alone, but Jesus was now calling him to an upgrade in faith, a radical choice for, and total commitment to, God. He had previously kept the “second tablet” of the Ten Commandments, all about love of neighbor, but now Jesus was calling him to a much more radical following of both tablets: to love his neighbor to the point of using all his possessions to care for them and to loving God to the point of accounting him more valuable that all his possessions and following him on the path of total-self-giving love.
Therese of Lisieux, the great doctor of the Church who never even attended high school — and therefore a tremendous example of one who was enriched with a wisdom from God that you can’t learn by devouring even all the titles in the New York Public Library — taught us that we grow in the spiritual life by subtraction, not by addition. Once when a novice said with exasperation in her presence, “When I think of everything I still have to acquire!,” the Little Flower replied, “You mean, to lose! Jesus takes it upon himself to fill your soul in the measure that you rid it of its imperfections. … You want to climb a great mountain and the good God is trying to make you descend it; he is waiting for you at the bottom in the fertile valley of humility.” The Rich Young Man needed to learn this lesson of addition by subtraction. He looked at the path of holiness, happiness and heaven as something he could add on to what he already had, whereas Jesus was indicating that the cure of his sense of emptiness would happen through self-emptying, precisely so that Christ could fill him. Unfortunately the Rich Young Man wasn’t ready yet for the challenge that spiritual perfection requires, because his many possessions owned him. The Lord is always asking us to let go even of many of his gifts in order to help us to recognize that the greatest gift of all, and the one to whom we should cling, is the Giver.
The Rich Young Man got the answer to the question that was erupting from the depths of his being, but he didn’t like it. In fact, St. Mark tells us, “His face fell and he went away sad, for he had many possessions.” In the second reading, the Letter to the Hebrews says that the “word of God is … sharper than a two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.” The word of God pierced right into the young man’s heart and exposed what, in the ultimate analysis, was its treasure. And unfortunately it wasn’t yet God. When given a choice, like the rich young Solomon, between Wisdom Incarnate and his money, the young man in the Gospel chose the money, and went away sad, because he was still lacking something, something that, despite his wealth, left him consciously imperfect and incomplete. He couldn’t give up his wealth to follow the Creator of every earthly treasure. He thought he could both have his money and acquire what he was lacking. But Jesus said very clearly at another time, “You cannot serve two masters. You will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money” (Mt 6:24). He wanted to know the path to eternal life. He wanted to have it all. He came to Jesus and asked. Jesus with love answered his question exactly. But he didn’t have the trust, he didn’t have the courage, he didn’t have the detachment to do what Jesus indicated. He went away crestfallen. And how can we not share that sadness at his failure to seize the incredible invitation Jesus was giving him? How can we not share the sadness whenever anyone makes a similar choice?
To do what Jesus indicates in the Gospel today, to make the choice that the Rich Young Man somehow thought he couldn’t, is challenging. Jesus uses the image of a needle and says that we’ll never be able to pass through the eye of the needle into the kingdom of heaven as long as we’re still clutching onto the things of this world. It’s not that material wealth or possessions are bad in themselves; in fact they’re blessings. The harm comes when we start to become attached to them, when they begin to own us rather than our stewarding them as gifts of God. St. Paul says, not that money is the root of all evil, but “the love of money is the root of all evil and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains” (1 Tim 6:10). He calls greed “idolatry” (Col 3;5). Money, in other words, can easily become our anti-god, which we can begin to worship. Our faith, hope and love — which should always be directed to God — can be transferred to money. “Everything is possible for the one with money,” one can begin to believe. One can start to place his security and his heart in earthly mammon. Such a person who puts his treasure in possessions, like the Rich Young Man, isn’t necessarily evil. He can be good, he can keep the ten commandments from his youth, he might even consider God really important, but for him, God is not yet God. God is not yet the most important reality in his life. Like with the Rich Young Man, when it comes to the time when he has to make a choice, to part with his money or to serve Christ, he chooses his money. He chooses to sell off Christ and give his time, his talents and his energies to storing up for himself an earthly treasure. And, like the Rich Young Man, he will remain sad, because happiness is something that even all the money in the world cannot buy.
So what is a rich man to do? And frankly, so many of those even on welfare in the United States are rich in relation to the vast majority of people in the world not to mention in human history, so what Jesus says in today’s Gospel applies to so many people we know. Jesus’ disciples were “exceeding astonished” at the severity of Christ’s statement and asked, “Then who can be saved?” We ourselves can ask, “Do any of us have a chance, or are we like camels before a microscopic hole?” Jesus says in the Gospel that God makes it possible for us to be saved. Jesus shows us the way, but those looking for an easy way are going to be disappointed: “Go, sell what you have, give the money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”
Some preachers have done harm to people by trying to water-down the stark and challenging three-fold command of Jesus. But other preachers have perhaps done more harm, because they have interpreted what Jesus said in a univocal way, saying that what the Lord is asking of us, with all our responsibilities, is to go down to the local pawn shop, get rid of all our stuff, and then go give it in lump sums to individual poor people, or the St. Vincent de Paul Society, the parish Food Pantry, the Salvation Army or the Missionaries of Charity. It all comes down to what the Lord means by “selling what you have.” The universal application he’s getting at is placing our money and resources at the service of love of others. There are many ways to give this money away. Parents give it away when they use it to support — not spoil — the members of their family. Business owners give it away when they use their capital to create jobs so that people can have work and support themselves and their loved ones, or when they pay not just a fair wage but a generous wage to their loyal employees, so that they can make ends meet more easily. Catholics give it away when they give it to the Church Christ founded to support the apostolic works of God, especially like the spread of our faith through the Missions or through the support of Catholic education. Customers give it away when they see that their overworked waitress is pregnant and give her an extremely generous tip. And all of us give it away, when we make it a priority in life to seek out Christ in the disguise of the poor and needy around us, those in the streets, those families struggling financially to survive, those worthy causes that every month wonder how they’re going to pay their bills. It is by emptying ourselves of all greed, of giving ourselves and what God has given us out of love to others, that we become capable of receiving what the Lord wants to give us. It is only then, when we’re no longer attached to any earthly idols that we can sing in truth what we chanted in today’s Responsorial Psalm, “Fill us with your love, O Lord, and we will sing with joy.”
But it’s important to stress the decision of those who like you, Sisters, live a radical poverty. St. John Paul II stressed in Vita Consecrata, his exhortation on the consecrated life, that the virtue and vow of “poverty proclaims that God is man’s only real treasure. When poverty is lived according to the example of Christ who, ‘though he was rich … became poor’ (2 Cor 8:9), it becomes an expression of that total gift of self which the three Divine Persons make to one another.” In response to the materialism of the age that craves possessions and makes the heart indifferent to the needs and sufferings of the weakness, he says, “The replyof the consecrated life is found in the profession of evangelical poverty. … Even before being a service on behalf of the poor, evangelical poverty is a value in itself, since it recalls the first of the Beatitudes in the imitation of the poor Christ. Its primary meaning, in fact, is to attest that God is the true wealth of the human heart. Precisely for this reason evangelical poverty forcefully challenges the idolatry of money, making a prophetic appeal as it were to society, which in so many parts of the developed world risks losing the sense of proportion and the very meaning of things.”Saint Teresa of Calcutta said that poverty was one of the Church’s greatest gifts to the Missionaries of Charity, a help to overcome the temptations to which the Rich Young Man succumbed. Poverty, she said, is a free choice that allow us better to serve the poor Christ and his impoverished people. It is what enables us to instantiate what we sang in today’s Alleluia acclamation: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.” The poor in spirit are those who put their treasure in God, place their hearts at the service of God’s kingdom.
The best place for us to begin to become poorer in spirit, to treasure ever more effectively God’s kingdom, is here at Mass. In the Mass, we see behold, participate in, and receive the greatest wisdom of all, the wisdom that comes from Christ crucified who calls us to follow him along the path that leads here to this altar and from the altar to giving our body and blood, and our time, talents, and treasure out of love for others (1 Cor 1:22-24). At this Mass, as in every Mass, the Lord gives us a choice, a choice between his wisdom and worldly wisdom, between an earthly treasure and an eternal treasure that moths can’t destroy, rust corrode, or the IRS can’t tax or take. He places before us the call to be perfect. The apostles trusted in what Jesus said and left everything to follow the Lord, putting their whole lives at God’s service. Saint Teresa of Calcutta and so many saints have followed suit. At the heart of the Christian vocation is Christ’s summons to live spiritual poverty in a radical way united to his, to go, place all that God has given us at the service of others and to come follow him who, “though he was rich, became poor for [our] sake so that by his poverty [we] may become rich” (2 Cor 8:9).
Today as we prepare to receive him, we recommit ourselves to our vow of poverty, to our promise of simplicity of life, or to the Christian summons to be poor in spirit because our treasure is the kingdom of God (Mt 5:3). With loving trust, total surrender and cheerfulness, we rededicate ourselves wholeheartedly and freely to the service of others, especially those in most need. And we seek to learn from what the Rich Young Man got wrong, and the apostles got right, and make the wisest choice of all: to give ourselves to God, as we beg him to give us in return not just a wise and understanding heart, which is itself worth far more than power, money, health, beauty, and light, but to give us what he promised in the Gospel, 100-fold in this life and eternal life in the age to come. That’s what he in fact bestows when he, Wisdom incarnate, gives himself to us in Holy Communion, which is far more valuable than 100 times what we’ve given away and is the foremost foretaste of the eternal life that awaits all those who not only ask what we must do to inherit eternal life but follow what Jesus says.

The readings for Today’s Mass were:
Reading I
Wis 7:7-11
I prayed, and prudence was given me;
I pleaded, and the spirit of wisdom came to me.
I preferred her to scepter and throne,
and deemed riches nothing in comparison with her,
nor did I liken any priceless gem to her;
because all gold, in view of her, is a little sand,
and before her, silver is to be accounted mire.
Beyond health and comeliness I loved her,
and I chose to have her rather than the light,
because the splendor of her never yields to sleep.
Yet all good things together came to me in her company,
and countless riches at her hands.
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 90:12-13, 14-15, 16-17
R. (14) Fill us with your love, O Lord, and we will sing for joy!
Teach us to number our days aright,
that we may gain wisdom of heart.
Return, O LORD! How long?
Have pity on your servants!
R. Fill us with your love, O Lord, and we will sing for joy!
Fill us at daybreak with your kindness,
that we may shout for joy and gladness all our days.
Make us glad, for the days when you afflicted us,
for the years when we saw evil.
R. Fill us with your love, O Lord, and we will sing for joy!
Let your work be seen by your servants
and your glory by their children;
and may the gracious care of the LORD our God be ours;
prosper the work of our hands for us!
Prosper the work of our hands!
R. Fill us with your love, O Lord, and we will sing for joy!
Reading II
Heb 4:12-13
Brothers and sisters:
Indeed the word of God is living and effective,
sharper than any two-edged sword,
penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow,
and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.
No creature is concealed from him,
but everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of him
to whom we must render an account.
Alleluia
Mt 5:3
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Mk 10:17-30 or 10:17-27
As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up,
knelt down before him, and asked him,
“Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus answered him, “Why do you call me good?
No one is good but God alone.
You know the commandments: You shall not kill;
you shall not commit adultery;
you shall not steal;
you shall not bear false witness;
you shall not defraud;
honor your father and your mother.”
He replied and said to him,
“Teacher, all of these I have observed from my youth.”
Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him,
“You are lacking in one thing.
Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor
and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”
At that statement his face fell,
and he went away sad, for he had many possessions.
Jesus looked around and said to his disciples,
“How hard it is for those who have wealth
to enter the kingdom of God!”
The disciples were amazed at his words.
So Jesus again said to them in reply,
“Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle
than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
They were exceedingly astonished and said among themselves,
“Then who can be saved?”
Jesus looked at them and said,
“For human beings it is impossible, but not for God.
All things are possible for God.”
Peter began to say to him,
“We have given up everything and followed you.”
Jesus said, “Amen, I say to you,
there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters
or mother or father or children or lands
for my sake and for the sake of the gospel
who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age:
houses and brothers and sisters
and mothers and children and lands,
with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come.”
The post Choosing to Follow Jesus on the Road of Wisdom and Perfection, 28th Sunday (B), October 13, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
25 min
October 12, 2024 Alexandra Landry, St. Frances Cabrini and Mission, Columbia Catholic Ministry Retreat, Cabrini Shrine, October 12, 2024
Alexandra Landry
Shrine of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, Washington Heights, New York
Retreat Talk for Columbia Catholic Ministry
October 12, 2024
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.12.24_Ally_Landry_St._Francis_Cabrini_and_Mission_1.mp3

The post Alexandra Landry, St. Frances Cabrini and Mission, Columbia Catholic Ministry Retreat, Cabrini Shrine, October 12, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
29 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.