Catholic Preaching

By Father Roger LandryReligion & Spirituality Christianity

Catholic Preaching episodes

October 08, 2024Following the Lord’s Guidance Along the Everlasting Way, 27th Tuesday (II), October 8, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Tuesday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
October 8, 2024
Gal 1:13-24, Ps 139, Lk 10:38-42

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.8.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
Yesterday Jesus gave us the Parable of the Good Samaritan, praising the one who made the effort to take care of another in contrast to those who did nothing. In several other places in the Gospel he praised service of others: he said that he himself had come among us as one who serves (Lk 22:27); he washed his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper and told them to do the same (Jn 13:12-14); he promised to gird himself with an apron and wait on those at the heavenly banquet (Lk 12:37); and he said that the greatest among us would be the one who serves the rest (Mt 23:11). And so in today’s Gospel, Jesus was clearly not castigating Martha for her loving service. What he was saying to her, however, was that none of those efforts was strictly-speaking essential, that therefore there was no reason to get worked about them, and that there was something more important, something that Mary realized and that Martha as yet hadn’t.
Both Martha and Mary loved Jesus very much. As an expression of that love, Martha worked very hard to prepare a meal for him, something that was much more time-consuming in the ancient world without stoves, or refrigerators, or blenders or ready-made cooking supplies than it is today. She likely also cleaned her house, which, too, was much more challenging in the age before vacuum cleaners, running water, and so forth. It’s natural that she would have been exasperated doing all of this work while her sister Mary seemed to be doing nothing. After she complained to Jesus, however, Jesus corrected not Mary but Martha, telling her that she was anxious and concerned about many small things but only one was necessary. Mary had chosen the better part, the one thing necessary — Jesus himself — and it was not going to be taken away from her to focus on relatively less important things. What Mary grasped that Martha didn’t is that Jesus had come to their home primarily to feed and not to be fed, to serve rather than to be served, and it was Mary who understood this and sat at his feet as he not only fed her with the nourishment of his word and presence but cleaned her interior house by his own purity. The welcome he sought most was their time, their friendship, their love, their open ears and receptive hearts. Mary intuitively grasped this and sat at Jesus’ feet listening to him as if nothing in the rest of the world really mattered — because, in fact, Jesus implies, nothing in the rest of the world really does matter anywhere near as much. Jesus once said in a parable, “The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it” (Mt 13:45-46). Jesus was for Mary that pearl of great price more valuable than everything else in the jewelry collection of her life. Mary showed how much she understood the practical consequences of Jesus’ value when he and his apostles visited their home again, about a week before his death. St. John gives us the scene: “Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served [some things never change!], and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume” (Jn 12:1-8). The aromatic nard would have cost Mary almost a full year’s salary, but she spent it entirely on Jesus because she knew he was worth every ounce of it and more. Jesus was her treasure and worth everything she owned. Jesus was the “better part,” better than anything or anyone else. He was the one thing necessary. To sit at his feet was to anoint them with love.
Jesus called Martha to a conversion through that conversation, from trying to do things for him to permitting him first to do things for her. We see a similar conversion in the first reading with St. Paul. On the surface, we see that Paul’s conversion was from “persecut[ing] the Church of God beyond measure and [trying] to destroy it” to “proclaim[ing] him to the Gentiles,” from killing disciples to making them. He summed up this aspect of his conversion at the end of the reading today, when he, speaking about the Christians of Judea, said, “they only kept hearing that ‘the one who once was persecuting us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.’ So they glorified God because of me.” Our constant conversion should be a means by which others are able to glorify God, seeing the wonders of his mercy in our own flesh. But such a look at St. Paul’s conversion would only be superficial. As Pope Benedict used to point out, St. Paul’s conversion wasn’t really from a “bad” life as a murderer to a “good” life as a Christian and apostle, but from a false notion of a holy life to a true one, from an erroneous conception of what was pleasing to God to a real one. He previously thought that he would be saved by his own acti0ns in fidelity to the Mosaic law, whereas afterward he recognized he was saved by Christ, by God’s grace, by his Mercy. His conversion was, in some ways, similar to the conversion to which Christ was calling Martha: to convert his zeal into allowing God to use him as his chosen instrument to the Gentiles rather than trying to love and serve him on his own terms. He eventually realized that to live was Christ. And what did Paul do after the Lord met him on the road to Damascus, after he was baptized, after he had begun to preach so powerfully that he himself was now being hunted down like he had previously tormented the Christians? He went into Arabia, into the desert, not to make tents but to pray. He went to sit at the Lord’s feet. He went to be fed by the Lord.
Today at this Mass Jesus wants to help us advance along the exodus of our own continued conversion. As we pray to the Lord, “Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way,” we know that that is the way of conversion to sharing in Christ’s cruciform love, receiving it like Mary of Bethany and passing it on with all we are and have. He who is the Way not only sets us in the right direction, but indicates to us what the conclusion of that path will be, by his words and deeds in interaction with the two sisters in Bethany. So let’s get practical, because each of us wants one day to have Jesus say of us what he said of Mary in today’s Gospel, that we have chosen the better part and we won’t be separated from that Better Part even into eternity. Let’s ponder three applications.
The first is our hospitality toward Jesus. Like the sisters of Bethany, each of us is called to welcome Christ into our homes, both our physical homes and the spiritual abode of our hearts and souls. Do we welcome Jesus and sit at his feet in prayer? Christ knocks on the doors of each of our hearts and homes wanting to come in, but how often and how much do we invite him in?
Second, we’re called to imitate Mary in choosing the better part and truly allowing Jesus to feed us as he desires to do. It’s not enough for us to know what our priority should be. We also have to choose it. It’s not enough just to know where the treasure is buried, we need to make the choice to sell off other things that own us so that we can buy the field. That means reorienting our life to make Jesus truly its center. To choose Jesus as the best part of all was Mary of Bethany’s great wisdom and we will be wiser the more we imitate her. And that is a choice we’re called to renew each day.
The last application is to Martha. Martha often gets a bad rap in Church history in comparison to her sister because many interpret what Jesus said to her as a spiritual smack down, somehow denigrating the loving service Martha was doing for him in the kitchen. Jesus wasn’t at all minimizing the importance of what Martha was doing; he was focusing, rather, on how she was doing it. The last thing Jesus would want would be for all of us merely to sit at his feet and allow everyone else to work to serve us. That’s certainly not the Christian way or the way Jesus adopted. Like Martha, we are called to work hard serving others but we’re supposed to do it with the spirit of Mary. That’s what the sanctification of our work is all about, to have Martha’s hands and Mary’s contemplative heart, so that we won’t be distracted by many other things, but so focused on and united with Jesus in work, at school and in family life that we’ll be getting fed by him in action and be better equipped to feed others not just by our work but with the One working within us. Each of us is called to work as hard as Martha, out of love for God and others, in setting an eloquent, attractive example like Mary, the example of a life with Jesus at the center. This last thought is particularly evocative for me today, on the 26th anniversary of my ordination as a deacon. The very word deacon means servant and we are ordained in the image and the person of the one who came to serve not to be served. But when we look at the ordination of the first deacons, they were men chosen not fundamentally because of their strong work ethic, efficiency, stamina and practical know how — all good things — but rather they were men “filled with Holy Spirit and wisdom” and “the Holy Spirit and faith” (Acts 6:4-5). They were prayerful, faithful men who could see things the way God saw them. The Church wants her servants always to be those who collaborate with God within, who work differently than the rest, because they work through, with, in, and for the Better Part and One Thing Necessary.
At today’s Mass, in the modern Bethany of this Church, we, too, have a chance to welcome Jesus into our life as he deserves and wishes to be welcomed. During the Liturgy of the Word, we sit at Jesus’ feet listening to him. During the Liturgy of the Eucharist, even though we are not worthy to receive him under our roof, he comes to feed us with what he knows we need. Jesus is the one thing necessary. With Mary, we choose him here as the Better Part. We ask Saints Martha and Mary to intercede for us before Jesus’ feet in heaven for the grace to imitate their choice today, tomorrow and forever in such a contagious way that we might help the whole world reprioritize.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 GAL 1:13-24
Brothers and sisters:
You heard of my former way of life in Judaism,
how I persecuted the Church of God beyond measure
and tried to destroy it,
and progressed in Judaism
beyond many of my contemporaries among my race,
since I was even more a zealot for my ancestral traditions.
But when he, who from my mother’s womb had set me apart
and called me through his grace,
was pleased to reveal his Son to me,
so that I might proclaim him to the Gentiles,
I did not immediately consult flesh and blood,
nor did I go up to Jerusalem
to those who were Apostles before me;
rather, I went into Arabia and then returned to Damascus.
Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to confer with Cephas
and remained with him for fifteen days.
But I did not see any other of the Apostles,
only James the brother of the Lord.
(As to what I am writing to you, behold,
before God, I am not lying.)
Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia.
And I was unknown personally to the churches of Judea
that are in Christ;
they only kept hearing that “the one who once was persecuting us
is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.”
So they glorified God because of me.
Responsorial Psalm PS 139:1B-3, 13-14AB, 14C-15
R. (24b) Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.
O LORD, you have probed me and you know me;
you know when I sit and when I stand;
you understand my thoughts from afar.
My journeys and my rest you scrutinize,
with all my ways you are familiar.
R. Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.
Truly you have formed my inmost being;
you knit me in my mother’s womb.
I give you thanks that I am fearfully, wonderfully made;
wonderful are your works.
R. Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.
My soul also you knew full well;
nor was my frame unknown to you
When I was made in secret,
when I was fashioned in the depths of the earth.
R. Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.
Alleluia LK 11:28
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Blessed are those who hear the word of God
and observe it.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel LK 10:38-42
Jesus entered a village
where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him.
She had a sister named Mary
who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak.
Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said,
“Lord, do you not care
that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving?
Tell her to help me.”
The Lord said to her in reply,
“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things.
There is need of only one thing.
Mary has chosen the better part
and it will not be taken from her.”
The post Following the Lord’s Guidance Along the Everlasting Way, 27th Tuesday (II), October 8, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
23 min
October 07, 2024The Gospel of Charity That Mary Helps Us Ponder and Live, 27th Monday (II), October 7, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Monday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary
October 7, 2024
Gal 1:6-12, Ps 111, Lk 10:25-37

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.7.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
Today as we celebrate the Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary, I can’t help but ponder Michelangelo’s image of the Rosary in his famous Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. He depicts it as a lifeline lifting the children of God up to Jesus’ eternal right. By means of the Holy Rosary, we enter into the contemplation of the life of Christ through the contemplative perspective of Mary herself, so that we may “imitate what [the mysteries] contain and obtain what they promise.” They promise ultimately union with her Son, a union that is meant to last forever. They seek to help us, as we pray in the Salve Regina to conclude the Rosary, come, “after this our exile,” to behold “the blessed fruit of [Mary’s] womb.” They ultimately are meant to lift us up to heaven.
Today in the Gospel, Jesus describes the path to heaven. A scholar of the law approaches to test Jesus about what he needs to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus flips the question around and asks the scribe what he thinks the answer is from his study of the law. He gives the same synthetic answer that Jesus gave elsewhere (Mt 22:34-40): to love God with all we have and to love our neighbor like we love ourselves. Jesus told him that he had answered correctly, but he added something else: “Do this and you will live.” It was clear that the scholar knew what needed to be done, but Jesus, seeing his heart, recognized that the struggle for this scribe would be to practice what he knew. Salvation isn’t dependent so much on our intelligence, on what we know, but who we are, and our character is forged by our action. We see how right Jesus was in the scribe’s follow-up question. Wishing to justify himself, he asked, “And who is my neighbor?” At first glance, the question might seem one of sincere curiosity, but behind it is the premise that there are some people who are his neighbors and some who are not. The typical Jews of the time thought that they were to love their neighbor and hate their enemy (Mt 5:43), that they were supposed to care for those Jews who followed the law, but cut themselves off from sinners, from Samaritans, from Gentiles and from basically everyone who didn’t toe the line. The scribe wanted to be justified in not loving certain of his neighbors. That’s why Jesus told him the Parable of the Good Samaritan to teach him who really loves his neighbor, before adding, “Go and do the same.”
Jesus changed the way that he looked at loving his neighbor from “objectively” seeking to define who was and was not his neighbor that he should treat with love, to “subjectively” becoming a neighbor to everyone, to being willing to love and treat with mercy whoever one meets. St. John Paul II wrote in Love and Responsibility that a human being is someone to whom the only worthy response is love. That’s what it means to become a neighbor: a person who sees everyone as someone to whom one should show love and mercy, someone who recognizes everyone is in his neighborhood. This is what Jesus did to us, drawing close to us when we were dying, left in a ditch, mugged by the evil one, left for dead. He bound our wounds, carried us on his shoulders, poured his precious blood into us, brought us to the inn of the Church and promised to repay everyone who is kind to us at his second coming. And he as a Good Samaritan continues to come to us with all our wounds every morning. He wants us to follow him in loving like this.
Insofar as we, too, need not just to love God with all we are but to become Good Samaritans to all in order to inherit eternal life, it’s important for us to enter more deeply into this parable of Jesus. Jesus describes a mugged man left in a ditch dying. A priest and a Levite journey by that route — two people who were religious, who should have been living by God’s command to love their neighbor — but, seeing the dying man, pass by the other side. Perhaps they were late for an appointment at the temple. Perhaps they didn’t want to become ritually impure by touching the man’s blood, which would mean that they would have to inconvenience themselves by taking a ritual bath. But they failed to approach. Finally a Samaritan saw him, drew near, inconvenienced himself, bathed and nursed his wounds, brought him to an inn where he cared for him all night, then paid the inn-keepers to continue caring for him promising that he would return to see whether they did so and to pay them anything extra they had spent. If Jesus were giving this parable today, instead of “Samaritan” he would have substituted “pimp” or “drug dealer” or “mobster” or “terrorist.” The Samaritan was the last person a Jew would have anticipated would have drawn near because of the centuries long mutual antipathy between Jews and Samaritans. Yet he did. The implication would be that if a sinful loser like a Samaritan drew near, we should all do so. When Jesus asked the scribe who proved himself to be a neighbor to the Samaritan, he responded, “The one who treated him with mercy,” and Jesus told him to go and do the same, to treat everyone with mercy whenever we encounter someone in need. That’s the path to heaven, precisely because it’s the path of Jesus. To be a Christian means to be a Good Samaritan. It means to draw near. It means to cross the road. It means to act with mercy. The Kingdom of God Christ came to establish is a Kingdom of Good Samaritans in which we recognize we’re our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers, and readily — not just out of duty but out of genuine, sincere neighborly love — tend to the wounds those around us have. The more we ponder Jesus’ own wounds in his sacred humanity, the more straightforward this becomes. The Rosary helps us precisely to do this. In his beautiful exhortation, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, St. John Paul II spoke about the way pondering Jesus helps us to love him in others. The pope wrote in a section on peace — highly relevant today as we pray for peace in the Holy Land on the first anniversary of the horrible terrorist attacks by Hamas — “The Rosary is also a prayer for peace because of the fruits of charity which it produces. When prayed well in a truly meditative way, the Rosary leads to an encounter with Christ in his mysteries and so cannot fail to draw attention to the face of Christ in others, especially in the most afflicted. How could one possibly contemplate the mystery of the Child of Bethlehem, in the joyful mysteries, without experiencing the desire to welcome, defend and promote life, and to shoulder the burdens of suffering children all over the world? How could one possibly follow in the footsteps of Christ the Revealer, in the mysteries of light, without resolving to bear witness to his ‘Beatitudes’ in daily life? And how could one contemplate Christ carrying the Cross and Christ Crucified, without feeling the need to act as a ‘Simon of Cyrene’ for our brothers and sisters weighed down by grief or crushed by despair? Finally, how could one possibly gaze upon the glory of the Risen Christ or of Mary Queen of Heaven, without yearning to make this world more beautiful, more just, more closely conformed to God’s plan?” The Rosary, in short, should help us day by day, decade by decade, become Good Samaritans. If it isn’t, we’re not yet praying it right.
The Parable of the Good Samaritan is at the heart of the Gospel. St. Paul in his letter to the Galatians — which we begin today and will ponder over the next nine weekdays — calls us not to forsake this Gospel Christ has announced for “another Gospel.” He calls us not to water down the call, not to pretend as if we can just love those we choose to be our neighbors, not to pretend as if we can love “enough.” Jesus, who summons us to be true neighbors to those in need, to cross the road, to be filled with compassion, doesn’t leave us on our own to do so, but wants to strengthen us and help us from within to “go and do the same.” He’s already strengthened us by his teaching but now he wants to fortify us by his very presence within so that we can become ever more the hands, feet and heart of the Mystical Body crossing the road with him to care for all those whom he loved so much to die for. To “go and do the same” is to “do this in memory of him.” The Lord remembers his Covenant forever, as prayed in today’s Psalm, and as we prepare to receive Him who is the New and Eternal Covenant we ask him to help us to love Him as we deserves — with our life, our soul, our all — and to love our neighbor just as he does, so that we may offer our body, our blood, our lives to lift them from the Road to Jericho and accompany them all the way to the celestial Jerusalem. This is what our Lady is praying for. This is why she extends to us the Rosary beads by which she seeks through contemplation with her in her school to lift us up!

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
gal 1:6-12
Brothers and sisters:
I am amazed that you are so quickly forsaking
the one who called you by the grace of Christ
for a different gospel (not that there is another).
But there are some who are disturbing you
and wish to pervert the Gospel of Christ.
But even if we or an angel from heaven
should preach to you a gospel
other than the one that we preached to you,
let that one be accursed!
As we have said before, and now I say again,
if anyone preaches to you a gospel
other than the one that you received,
let that one be accursed!
Am I now currying favor with human beings or God?
Or am I seeking to please people?
If I were still trying to please people,
I would not be a slave of Christ.
Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters,
that the Gospel preached by me is not of human origin.
For I did not receive it from a human being, nor was I taught it,
but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ.
Responsorial Psalm
ps 111:1b-2, 7-8, 9 and 10c
R. (5) The Lord will remember his covenant for ever.
or:
R. Alleluia.
I will give thanks to the LORD with all my heart
in the company and assembly of the just.
Great are the works of the LORD,
exquisite in all their delights.
R. The Lord will remember his covenant for ever.
or:
R. Alleluia.
The works of his hands are faithful and just;
sure are all his precepts,
Reliable forever and ever,
wrought in truth and equity.
R. The Lord will remember his covenant for ever.
or:
R. Alleluia.
He has sent deliverance to his people;
he has ratified his covenant forever;
holy and awesome is his name.
His praise endures forever.
R. The Lord will remember his covenant for ever.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Gospel
lk 10:25-37
There was a scholar of the law who stood up to test Jesus and said,
“Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law?
How do you read it?”
He said in reply,
“You shall love the Lord, your God,
with all your heart,
with all your being,
with all your strength,
and with all your mind,
and your neighbor as yourself.”
He replied to him, “You have answered correctly;
do this and you will live.”
But because he wished to justify himself, he said to Jesus,
“And who is my neighbor?”
Jesus replied,
“A man fell victim to robbers
as he went down from Jerusalem to Jericho.
They stripped and beat him and went off leaving him half-dead.
A priest happened to be going down that road,
but when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side.
Likewise a Levite came to the place,
and when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side.
But a Samaritan traveler who came upon him
was moved with compassion at the sight.
He approached the victim,
poured oil and wine over his wounds and bandaged them.
Then he lifted him up on his own animal,
took him to an inn, and cared for him.
The next day he took out two silver coins
and gave them to the innkeeper with the instruction,
‘Take care of him.
If you spend more than what I have given you,
I shall repay you on my way back.’
Which of these three, in your opinion,
was neighbor to the robbers’ victim?”
He answered, “The one who treated him with mercy.”
Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
The post The Gospel of Charity That Mary Helps Us Ponder and Live, 27th Monday (II), October 7, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
22 min
October 06, 2024God’s Solution to Loneliness, 27th Sunday (B), October 6, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx
27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
October 6, 2024
Gen 2:18-24, Ps 128, Heb 2:9-11, Mk 10:2-16

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.6.24_MCs_Homily_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
We are experiencing today a crisis of loneliness. Last year, the Surgeon General of the United States, Dr. Vivek Murthy, wrote a stunning report entitled Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation, in which he said that social isolation and loneliness are among the biggest health concerns facing the country. He stated that many are going through life alone, thinking they have to shoulder all life’s burdens by themselves, and that if they die, most or no one will ever notice. Before Covid, he said, 50 percent of Americans reported regular loneliness and Covic made it worse. He wrote, “Loneliness is far more than just a bad feeling — it harms both individual and societal health. It is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death. The mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, and even greater than that associated with obesity and physical inactivity. And the harmful consequences of a society that lacks social connection can be felt in our schools, workplaces, and civic organizations, where performance, productivity, and engagement are diminished.” As a society, he urged, we must make the same investments in addressing social connection as we do in tackling the problems of tobacco use, obesity and addiction. If we don’t, he said, “we will pay an ever-increasing price in the form of our individual and collective health and well-being. And we will continue to splinter and divide until we can no longer stand as a community or a country.” That’s because, he said, “social connection is a fundamental human need, as essential to survival as food, water and shelter.”
Social connection is a fundamental human need because we have been made in the image and likeness of God. That’s why what God reveals to us in today’s readings is so important and why, when our society fails to take these truths seriously, and structure our lives on them, we can’t help but hurt ourselves, in the various ways that Dr. Murthy notes and in many others.
In today’s first reading from the Book of Genesis, we read that after God had created the heavens and the earth and all in it, after he had pronounced that “it was good… it was good … it was good … it was good … it was good … it was good” and with the creation of the human person, “it was very good,” he finally thundered, “It is not good for man to be alone!” It is not good for the human person to be isolated. It is contrary to our nature, having been made in the image and likeness of God who is a loving communion of persons. God said this truth about the evil of loneliness, however, only after man had come to the same conclusion. Adam was created on perfect terms with God, he had named all of creation, but something was missing, and he knew it. God was too far above him; the animals were too far below him. In order to experience the joy of living, in order to become and behave fully human, he needed a fitting partner. To remove his existential loneliness, God could have easily cloned him an identical twin. He could have just created another guy for him to hang out with. But the suitable partner God knew Adam needed was a wife. After Eve was created, we see Adam rejoice for the first time. He clung to her and, as we read, they became one flesh. They began to live in a communion of persons, in love, which helps to overcome original solitude and prepares them for an even greater means to lift them out of existential loneliness. Through their marriage, Adam and Eve also grew ever more into the image of God, who is love. Marriage is the primordial sacrament of love, when a man and woman make a committed, lifelong, nuptial gift of themselves to each other. And it’s through the human love of marriage that Adam and Eve learned how to exist in loving communion with God, to receive his gift of love and give of themselves back to him in love. And it was this love that made them rejoice. It was this love that alone could satisfy their human hearts. Because it was not good for man to be alone, God, in the very beginning, gave man and woman the gift of marriage to help them, as suitable partners united in one flesh to each other, learn how to live in loving communion, with each other and with him, and become ever more human and more and more the image of God himself. God who is love created us not for loneliness but in love for love and that’s why marriage is so important. And if marriage is so important, among other things to overcome our existential loneliness and form us more and more into the image of the divine communion of persons, then it’s obvious why the evil one would want to attack marriage. By so doing, he will not only try to obscure the image of God and destroy love between a man and a woman, but he will also lead individuals to become more and more isolated, and therefore vulnerable to his machinations.
That is the proper context to understand today’s Gospel, when the Pharisees came to Jesus to ask him about divorce. “Is it lawful for man to divorce his wife?” This remains a very contemporary question. But as we have just seen, the question is more than one of law or even of moral right and wrong: it is ultimately a question of human anthropology. If God has created us for loving communion — epitomized by the marriage of man and woman, but likewise seen in the nuptial gifts to God and his people, the Church, constituted by the vocations of the priesthood and of religious life — the question of divorce becomes one about human nature, human happiness and human flourishing. It’s a question with enormous relevance not just to human health, as we can see in the Surgeon General’s report, but also to the good of society and the Church. We are now living in an age in which many experts say that the greatest vocations crisis facing the Church is not to the priesthood or to religious life but to the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony. Many young people no longer sense a divine calling, or even naturally aspire, to marriage and to family, and both the Church and most developed societies are struggling as a result. Far fewer are getting married. Those who do are having much smaller families. Recent surveys among the young have shown that between 70-80 percent say their job will be essential to their future happiness, but only 20-30 percent think marriage and family will be. St. John Paul II once said that the future of humanity passes by way of the family and, hence, the marriage and family crisis is a great threat to civilization. That’s why we need to listen to Jesus’ words about marriage todaywith fresh ears.
When the Pharisees approached Jesus to ask him about marriage, it wasn’t a sincere question to learn or even one of curiosity. St. Mark tells us, “They were testing him.” They were in the area across the Jordan from the Holy Land where John the Baptist had been preaching and baptizing. To ask Jesus about the lawfulness of marriage and of divorce there was to ask him a political question for which John the Baptist had already been executed by Herod Antipas. John had told Herod that it was not lawful for him to be married to the wife of his brother Philip, not just because this incest by affinity was contrary to God’s plan, not just because Herodias was his niece, but for the basic reason that marrying another person’s wife certainly was certainly contrary to God’s law. Herod had already begun to think that Jesus was John the Baptist risen from the dead. To ask Jesus about marriage and divorce, therefore, was to invite him to criticize the same king and potentially, the Pharisees hoped, suffer the same consequence the Baptist had.
Jesus responded not only by citing the Book of Genesis, but invoking, in a sense, his own memory of how things were at the dawn of creation. Since, as Genesis teaches, God in the beginning had created man, male and female, in his image and likeness and joined them in one flesh, Jesus taught, “Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate.” Divorce is objectively something that not only ruptures the bond between an individual man and woman but, since God designed marriage to help us to discover who we are in his image and likeness and to reflect by analogy God’s own relationship with his people, divorce leads to a fundamental misunderstanding of what marriage is, but also of who we are, who God is, and how we’re called to live as God’s image and likeness.
But the question of divorce is just one type of challenge made to the truth and importance of marriage today. Jesus said that because of the hardness of heart among many of God’s people, Moses had “permitted” — never approved of — divorce. But today we have various forms of hardness of heart, and head, to the divine plan for marriage, and each one of these can attack our living in God’s image and likeness, undercut our desire for lasting happiness, and lead to an increase in social isolation and loneliness.
One challenge come from those who try to say that marriage is irrelevant and unnecessary, who argue that marriage is just a piece of paper and that one can all the goods of marriage, including happiness, without the binding commitment. Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees today says otherwise. Man, he says, is called to leave his father and mother and cling not to a girlfriend, not to just anyone he pleases, but to his wife, to someone with whom he has been joined in a one-flesh union by God and to whom he has made a life-long, exclusive commitment. Those who claim that marriage is simply a piece of paper often want some of the goods of marriage — like sex and accompaniment — without wanting selflessly to make the commitment that true love, true happiness, and true communion, demands. For that reason, as long as the situation persists, they will probably never fully experience love, which is based on a total exchange of self-gifts; they will probably never truly discover who they really are and the greatness of their dignity, which comes only through the selfless gift of self to God and others; and they will probably never truly understand or experience the love of God, which becomes intelligible by God’s design mainly through the experience of true human love
The second challenge comes from those who say that God’s plan for marriage, as revealed in the Bible, is too demanding, that, as the divorce rate of over 40 percent attests, to be married to one person until death is an unrealistic expectation. In order to overcome loneliness, one should therefore be eligible to a series of softer committed relationships, whether serial cohabitations, civil marriages, or the like. But these can never deliver. Jesus reminds us today that once God joins a man and a woman in marriage, they are bound to each other until God separates them through death. For that reason, he says, it’s divorce — not marriage — that is nothing more than a piece of paper, a human legal declaration that cannot change one’s marital status before God. Therefore, Jesus underlines, remarriage is adultery and seriously sinful. Notice that Jesus does not say that divorce per se is sinful, but only “whoever divorces his wife and marries another,” what we would call divorce-and-remarriage. The Church Jesus founded to carry on his mission has always recognized that sometimes, for the protection of one spouse from the other or for the welfare of children, some legal sanction may be necessary against one of the parties. It is not divorce itself that the Jesus opposes, but thinking and acting as if divorce severs the one-flesh bond that God has brought about through marriage. The Church wants always to remain close to those who have experienced the pain of divorce and help them recover. It wants to help them remain faithful to God and to the promises they have made. If they think that something was defective in their consent on the day of their marriage, the Church also seeks to help them to determine whether their marriage was valid or null. But while it might seem that a second, or a third, or a fifth marriage may be the response to the loneliness one feels, it will only do so on a superficial level. Adultery, or sin, may be the answer for Hollywood, but it is never what the human being ultimately needs, because sin voluntarily cuts us off from communion with others and from the deepest communion of all, with God.
The third challenge comes from those who say that marriage is bigoted because it excludes two people from the same sex from marrying; to make marriage require a husband and a wife is to base it, they assert, on biology rather than love. Some who make this argument claim that Jesus himself never spoke out in opposition to same-sex marriage. They’re right in terms of Jesus’ explicit words, but that’s only because to have done so would have been absurd in the Jewish context of his time. In his response to the Pharisees, however, Jesus gives all of the principles that are necessary for us to know why Jesus would absolutely have opposed this radical revolution in the meaning of marriage. I go through this not to be polemical or to hurt or offend anyone, but to get at the truth about marriage to which Jesus witnesses. Jesus said that in the beginning God made the human person male and female, not male and male or female and female. For this reason, he continued, a man leaves not his two moms or two dads, but his mother and father, and clings, not to whomever he wants, not to his best man, but to his wife, and they become one flesh. This one flesh union is not simply the ephemeral contact a man and a woman have in the act of making love, but the incorporation of both of their flesh in a new child, who is the instantiated fruit of their union and a means by which their love will grow. This type of union is obviously impossible to those of the same sex. We can go so far as to say that the whole purpose of the differentiation of the sexes by God in the beginning is to allow for procreation, which is deepening of the image of God as man and woman together participate in God’s continual act of the creation of new men and new women, a sign of their love and a means by which their love will grow. Finally, Jesus says, what God has joined, man must not divide. This refers, I think, to more than merely the union of a particular man and a particular woman in marriage, but to the union of man and woman in marriage in general. God has created man and woman with this complementarity and for that reason marriage can never in truth be a husband-less or a wife-less institution.
These truths about marriage are not easy for everyone to live. But the consequences of not living them can be huge. And we should not be oblivious to the fact that the evil one wants us not to take Jesus’ words seriously and accept watered down substitute arrangements for marriage, or a culture of divorce and remarriage, or even a redefinition of the essential building blocks of marriage. Anything that weakens marriage, anything that fosters sinful behavior, will increase human unhappiness by separating us from God, from others, and even within ourselves, and our sense of isolation and loneliness will grow. That’s why today we need to thank God for the gift of marriage and pray for all those whom he has given the vocation to marriage, that they may believe in love, human and divine, and structure their live according to its objective qualities.
But there’s one more application to marriage that we need to make from today’s Gospel, because it similarly is central to the subject of human happiness and our living according to the image and likeness of God. Right after Jesus’ words about marriage in the Gospel, he turns to children. It’s not by coincidence. When disciples were trying to rebuke parents who were trying to bring their children to Jesus, as if the children would both Jesus, he rebuked his disciples and said, “Let the children come to me!,” embraced them, blessed them and placed his hands upon them. He stressed that heaven belongs to those like children and said unless we accept the kingdom of God like them we will never enter into it. Jesus wants children to come to him. He wants us to learn from children essential aspects of our living as sons and daughters of God. And because children are so important in God’s plan, as the fruit of the loving communion between husband and wife, it’s no surprise that the evil one wants to go after the kids.
On the first Sunday of October each year, the Church in the United States marks Respect Life Sunday, on which we pray in a special way for pregnant moms and for children and commit ourselves to help them. One of the most important things we need to do for moms and kids is to promote marriage, which recent statistics have shown is the best protector of unborn children. Four percent of babies conceived in marriage will be aborted compared to 40 percent — ten times more — of children conceived outside of marriage. 13 percent of women who have abortions are married, while 87 percent are unmarried. As Ryan Anderson has argued in a recent article, sex outside of marriage “is the main cause of abortion. Marriage is the best protector of unborn human life.” And so if we’re going to change our culture in a pro-life direction after the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, Anderson argues, it will happen through a culture of marriage and of chaste continence outside of marriage. Within our discussion of loneliness and from the devil’s perspective that it is good for the man to be alone, we can also take a deeper look at the purpose of abortion in the devil’s plans. As the pseudo-sacrament of the culture of death, abortion is a great promoter of loneliness in the world. Through abortion we are voluntarily choosing to end the lives of those with whom we are summoned to live in communion. Children growing in the womb exist already in an umbilical communion with their moms. This is probably the greatest human bond that exists after the communion of husband and wife. And just as divorce attacks the good of the one-flesh communion of husband and wife made in God’s image and likeness, so abortion attacks the good of the one-flesh communion between mother and child, modeled on God’s fatherly communion with all of us. That’s why to build a culture of life, of love, of communion and of happiness, we must restore that communion between parents and children that abortion attacks. That’s what we pray for on this Respect Life Sunday. That’s what we commit to work for. Love is the solution to loneliness and abortion is the exact opposite of love.
To the questions man and woman have in every epoch about marriage, Christ provides the answer. By going back to the beginning, Christ cuts across particular fads and misunderstandings flowing from our hardened hearts that so often are prone to substitute lust for love, selfishness for sacrifice, and fleeting pleasure for faithful permanence. With precision and clarity, Christ sketches for us the deep and abiding beauty of the great institution and sacrament of marriage to guide us and through us to guide the world. Unlike the Pharisees who came to test Jesus, we come today ready to hear him with gratitude, to follow him, and to become his echoes in the world of the beauty of human love and the call to communion in the divine plan. We come ready to have him address our existential loneliness as we enter into loving communion with him, God-with-us, at the altar. And we ask him through this bond to take us, not just back to the beginning, but to a future in the Father’s house where we will enter into the eternal loving communion of Christ and his bride, the Church, which is anticipated in the one-flesh union of holy communion we now so eagerly renew.
The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 GN 2:18-24
The LORD God said: “It is not good for the man to be alone.
I will make a suitable partner for him.”
So the LORD God formed out of the ground
various wild animals and various birds of the air,
and he brought them to the man to see what he would call them;
whatever the man called each of them would be its name.
The man gave names to all the cattle,
all the birds of the air, and all wild animals;
but none proved to be the suitable partner for the man.
So the LORD God cast a deep sleep on the man,
and while he was asleep,
he took out one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.
The LORD God then built up into a woman the rib
that he had taken from the man.
When he brought her to the man, the man said:
“This one, at last, is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
this one shall be called ‘woman, ‘
for out of ‘her man’ this one has been taken.”
That is why a man leaves his father and mother
and clings to his wife,
and the two of them become one flesh.
Responsorial Psalm PS 128:1-2, 3, 4-5, 6
R. (cf. 5) May the Lord bless us all the days of our lives.
Blessed are you who fear the LORD,
who walk in his ways!
For you shall eat the fruit of your handiwork;
blessed shall you be, and favored.
R. May the Lord bless us all the days of our lives.
Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine
in the recesses of your home;
your children like olive plants
around your table.
R. May the Lord bless us all the days of our lives.
Behold, thus is the man blessed
who fears the LORD.
The LORD bless you from Zion:
may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem
all the days of your life.
R. May the Lord bless us all the days of our lives.
May you see your children’s children.
Peace be upon Israel!
R. May the Lord bless us all the days of our lives.
Reading 2 HEB 2:9-11
Brothers and sisters:
He “for a little while” was made “lower than the angels, ”
that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
For it was fitting that he,
for whom and through whom all things exist,
in bringing many children to glory,
should make the leader to their salvation perfect through suffering.
He who consecrates and those who are being consecrated
all have one origin.
Therefore, he is not ashamed to call them “brothers.”
Alleluia 1 JN 4:12
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
If we love one another, God remains in us
and his love is brought to perfection in us.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel MK 10:2-16
The Pharisees approached Jesus and asked,
“Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?”
They were testing him.
He said to them in reply, “What did Moses command you?”
They replied,
“Moses permitted a husband to write a bill of divorce
and dismiss her.”
But Jesus told them,
“Because of the hardness of your hearts
he wrote you this commandment.
But from the beginning of creation,
God made them male and female.
For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother
and be joined to his wife,
and the two shall become one flesh.
So they are no longer two but one flesh.
Therefore what God has joined together,
no human being must separate.”
In the house the disciples again questioned Jesus about this.
He said to them,
“Whoever divorces his wife and marries another
commits adultery against her;
and if she divorces her husband and marries another,
she commits adultery.”
And people were bringing children to him that he might touch them,
but the disciples rebuked them.
When Jesus saw this he became indignant and said to them,
“Let the children come to me;
do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to
such as these.
Amen, I say to you,
whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child
will not enter it.”
Then he embraced them and blessed them,
placing his hands on them.
The post God’s Solution to Loneliness, 27th Sunday (B), October 6, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
19 min
October 05, 2024Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, October 5, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, B, Vigil
October 5, 2024

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.5.24_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday, when we will be eyewitnesses of and participants in the dialogue Jesus had with the Pharisees, when they approached him and asked him a question about marriage. We are now living in an age in which many experts say that the greatest vocations crisis facing the Church is not to the priesthood or to religious life but to the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony. Many young people no longer sense a divine calling, or even naturally aspire, to marriage and to family. Far fewer are getting married. Those who do are having much smaller families. Both the Church and many of our societies are struggling as a result. St. John Paul II once said that the future of humanity passes by way of the family and the marriage and family crisis is threatening civilization. That’s why Jesus’ words about marriage this Sunday are so important and urgent.
When the Pharisees approached Jesus to ask him about marriage, it wasn’t a question to learn or even of curiosity. St. Mark tells us, “They were testing him.” They were in the area across the Jordan from the Holy Land where John the Baptist had been preaching and baptizing. To ask Jesus about the lawfulness of marriage and of divorce there was to ask him a political question for which John the Baptist had already been killed by Herod Antipas. John had told Herod that it was not lawful for him to be married to the wife of his brother Philip, not just because this incest by affinity was contrary to God’s plan but because marrying another person’s wife certainly was. Herod thought that Jesus was John risen from the dead. To ask Jesus about marriage and divorce was to invite him to criticize the same king and potentially suffer the same consequence.
Jesus responded not only by citing the Book of Genesis, but invoking, in a sense, his own memory of how things were at the dawn of creation. “In the beginning,” Genesis teaches, “God created man in his image and likeness; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Man is most fully in God’s image and likeness when he is united to the woman in a communion of persons in love. Just as in God, the mutual love of the Father and the Son eternally generated the Holy Spirit, so the mutual love of husband and wife can generate a third person, who is both a living fruit of their love and a means for that love to grow. In God’s plan, marriage is a singular sign and participation in God’s image and likeness. “Therefore, what God has joined together,” Jesus adds, “no human being must separate.” Marriage is part of God’s wisdom from the beginning to bring us into the loving union of the Trinity.
In recent years, however, we know that the wisdom of God’s plan with regard to marriage and divorce been getting challenged from both inside and outside the Church. Many have begun to question openly whether God’s plan for marriage, taught courageously and consistently by the Church since Christ founded her, is true and relevant. These doubts or confusions about marriage are fraught with enormous consequences: for since God designed marriage to help us to discover who we are in his image and likeness and to reflect by analogy God’s own relationship with his people, if we misunderstand what marriage is, we will misunderstand who we are, who God is, and how we’re called to live our life in God’s image and likeness.
I think there are three main categories of challenges about marriage that our contemporaries raise. The first comes from those who try to say God’s plan for marriage shown in the Bible is irrelevant, that marriage is not necessary. The second comes from those who say that God’s plan for marriage is too demanding and, as the divorce rate of over 40 percent attests, to be married to one person until death is an unrealistic expectation. The third comes from those who say that marriage is bigoted because it excludes two people from the same sex from marrying; to make marriage require a husband and a wife is to base it on biology rather than love, they argue, and this is just an effect of “heteronormative bias.”
How would Jesus respond to these three categories of challenges? I think he would do the same thing he did 2,000 years ago, by taking us back to what marriage really means and then applying it to the particular questions. As he did in this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus would challenge our contemporaries to overcome the “hardness of heart” due to sin that clouds our judgment on marriage. Then I think he would repeat the same words about the origin, meaning and mystery of marriage he said to the Pharisees. The three sentences of this Sunday’s Gospel contain, in nucleus, Jesus’ response to the questions of modern man.
To those who think marriage is only a piece of paper, Jesus tells us that marriage is a part of God’s plan for man and woman from the beginning. Man, he says, is called to leave his father and mother and cling not to a girlfriend, not to just anyone he pleases, but to his wife, to someone with whom he has been joined in a one-flesh union by God and to whom he has made a life-long commitment. Those who claim that marriage is simply a piece of paper want some of the goods of marriage — like sex and accompaniment — without wanting selflessly to make the commitment that true love demands. For that reason, as long as the situation persists, they will probably never fully experience love, which is based on a total exchange of self-gifts; they will probably never truly discover who they really are and the greatness of their dignity, which comes only through the selfless gift of self to God and others; and they will probably never truly understand or experience the love of God, which becomes intelligible by God’s design mainly through the experience of true human love.
To those who think that the indissolubility of marriage in God’s plan is too hard, Jesus states clearly that once God joins a man and a woman in marriage, they are bound to each other until God separates them through death. For that reason, he says, divorce is nothing more than a human legal declaration that cannot change one’s marital status before God, and therefore remarriage is adultery and seriously sinful. Jesus does not say that divorce itself is sinful, but only “whoever divorces his wife and marries another,” what we would call divorce-and-remarriage. The Church Jesus founded to carry on his mission has always recognized that sometimes, for the protection of one spouse from the other or for the welfare of children, some legal sanction may be necessary against one of the parties. It is not divorce itself that the Church always opposes, but thinking and acting as if divorce severs the one-flesh bond that God has brought about through marriage. The Church wants always to remain close to those who have experienced this pain and help them recover. It wants to help them remain faithful to God and to the promises they have made. If they think that something was defective in their consent on the day of their marriage, the Church also seeks to help them to determine whether their marriage was valid or null.
To the final group of challengers, who think that marriage traditionally has been a form of bigotry, we sometimes hear the claim that Jesus never spoke out in opposition to same-sex marriage. That’s because to do so would have been absurd in the Jewish context of his time. In his response to the Pharisees, however, Jesus gave all of the principles that are necessary for us to know why Jesus would absolutely have opposed this radical revolution in the meaning of marriage. I go through this not to be polemical or to offend anyone, but to get at the truth about marriage to which Jesus witnesses. Jesus said that in the beginning God made the human person male and female, not male and male or female and female. For this reason, he continued, a man leaves not his two mommies or two daddies, but his mother and father, and clings, not to whomever he wants, not to his best guy friend, but to his wife and they become one flesh. This one flesh union is not simply the ephemeral contact a man and a woman have in the act of making love, but the incorporation of both of their flesh in a new child, who is the instantiated fruit of their union and a means by which their love will grow. This type of union is obviously impossible to those of the same sex. We can go so far as to say that the whole purpose of the differentiation of the sexes by God in the beginning is to allow for procreation, which is man’s and woman’s participation in God’s continual act of the creation of new men and new women. Finally, Jesus says, what God has joined, man must not divide. This refers, I think, to more than merely the union of a particular man and a particular woman in marriage, but the heterosexual union of man and woman in marriage in general. God has created man and woman with this complementarity and for that reason marriage should never be allowed to a man-less or a woman-less institution.
Permit me to share one more thought. On the first Sunday of October, the Church in the United States always marks Respect Life Sunday, on which we pray in a special way for pregnant moms and for children and commit ourselves to help them. Marriage is so important in the fight against the destruction of innocent human life in the womb. Recent statistics have shown that marriage is the best protector of unborn children. Four percent of babies conceived in marriage will be aborted compared to 40 percent of children conceived outside of marriage. Meanwhile, 13 percent of women who have abortions are married, and 87 percent are unmarried. As Ryan Anderson argued in a recent article, “Nonmarital sex is the main cause of abortion. Marriage is the best protector of unborn human life.” And so if we’re going to change our culture in a pro-life direction after the Dobbs decision, it will happen through a culture of marriage and of chastity outside of marriage. We can pray for that as we come to Mass this Sunday.
To the questions man and woman have in every epoch about marriage, Christ provides the answer. By going back to the beginning, Christ cuts across particular fads and misunderstands flowing from our hardened hearts that so often are prone to substitute lust for love, selfishness for sacrifice, and fleeting pleasure for faithful permanence. With precision and clarity, Christ sketches for us the deep and abiding beauty of the great institution and sacrament of marriage to guide us and through us to guide the world. Unlike the Pharisees who came to test Jesus, let’s come this Sunday ready to hear him with gratitude, follow him, and become his echoes in the world of the beauty of human love in the divine plan. God bless you.

The Gospel passage on which the homily was based was:
Gospel
Mk 10:2-16 or 10:2-12
The Pharisees approached Jesus and asked,
“Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?”
They were testing him.
He said to them in reply, “What did Moses command you?”
They replied,
“Moses permitted a husband to write a bill of divorce
and dismiss her.”
But Jesus told them,
“Because of the hardness of your hearts
he wrote you this commandment.
But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.
For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother
and be joined to his wife,
and the two shall become one flesh.
So they are no longer two but one flesh.
Therefore what God has joined together,
no human being must separate.”
In the house the disciples again questioned Jesus about this.
He said to them,
“Whoever divorces his wife and marries another
commits adultery against her;
and if she divorces her husband and marries another,
she commits adultery.”
And people were bringing children to him that he might touch them,
but the disciples rebuked them.
When Jesus saw this he became indignant and said to them,
“Let the children come to me;
do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to
such as these.
Amen, I say to you,
whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child
will not enter it.”
Then he embraced them and blessed them,
placing his hands on them.
The post Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, October 5, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
10 min
October 04, 2024Responding to the Grace of the Call to Conversion, 26th Friday (II), October 4, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Friday of the 26th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Francis of Assisi
October 4, 2024
Job 38:1.12-21;40:3-5, Ps 139, Lk 10:13-16

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.4.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
“Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.” Today the Lord responds to that prayer for guidance we repeated several times in the Responsorial Psalm. He does so, first, by calling us back to the way through the gift of conversion, which is what we encounter in the Gospel, in the Lord’s conversation with Job in the first reading, and in the feast of the great saint we celebrate today, Francis of Assisi. He does so continuously and definitively now for us as Jesus calls us to follow him who is the Way, beckoning us to receive his work, words and will, and responding to him with reverence, faith and perseverance. And then he seeks to transform us so that we can be his heralds trying to help others get onto that narrow way that leads to everlasting life.
In the Gospel, Jesus reproves Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum for their failure to respond profoundly to all that he did among them, saying that if what he did in those cities had been done in the debauched pagan cities of Tyre and Sidon — and, according to a similar passage in St. Matthew, in Sodom and Gomorrah — the inhabitants would all have repented. He didn’t find, however, profound conversion in the three cities of Galilee and threatened that they would go to Hell rather than be exalted. In St. Matthew’s Gospel, which is either a more detailed account of the same words or the description of a similar scene, Jesus said that the Queen of Sheba had come 1600 miles to hear Solomon’s wisdom, and the Ninevites had repented immediately at the preaching of Jonah, but there was a greater than Solomon and Jonah among them, and yet they hadn’t received the wisdom and repented. They didn’t recognize who was among them.
This is something God taught Job in today’s first reading. After Job finally succumbed to his grief and to his physical suffering and began to question God’s wisdom and goodness, God spoke to him reminding him that he was the commander of the morning, who holds the ends of the earth, who has entered the depths of the sea and knows the breadth of the earth. God almost seems to joke with Job asking how old he is compared to God himself. Job, having heard God speak, responded with humility, putting his hand over his mouth and listening to what God had said verbally and through his works, rather than seeking to lecture God. He converted profoundly and returned to the type of holiness that God had ascribed to him at the beginning when the devil wanted to test him.
Job’s conversion and the conversion to which the Lord summons those in Chorazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum, and New York City, brings us to the Alleluia verse and the end of today’s Gospel. “If today you hear [God’s] voice,” we sang, “harden not your hearts” (Ps 95). Jesus described the spiritual hardening of the arteries at the end of today’s Gospel in terms of what happens to him and what will likewise happen to us. Either God’s word will be received or rejected. “Whoever listens to you listens to me,” Jesus says. “Whoever rejects you rejects me. And whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.” Jesus is calling all of us to ponder whether we really listen to him or reject him, especially as he speaks to us through his emissaries, the apostles, their successors and others, and as he speaks to us through the evangelists and apostles who have been the Holy Spirit’s instruments to give us God’s word. Do we harden our hearts to God’s indications or do we respond with a clean heart?
The theme of conversion is very important today on the memorial of St. Francis of Assisi, one of the greatest converts in the history of the Church. For the first 25 years of his life, he responded with a hardened heart to what the Lord was asking. In his Testament at the end of his life, he said he regarded the first 25 years of his life as a time when he was “in sin,” living a care-free life in which he was head of the fraternity, or as his friends called him, the “king of feasts.” But the Lord never stopped calling him, and he called him through four great stages. When Pope Benedict went to Assisi in 1207, he pondered the four stages of Francis’ conversion. The way he responded to those graces can inspire us today toward a conversion just as profound so that we can follow Francis following Christ all the way along the everlasting way.
The first stage of his conversion happened through charity and compassion. It took place when he was riding his horse outside the city and met a leper who came out from a leper colony to ask him for an alm. Francis dropped him something and sped away, not being able to stand the sight and smell of the leper and also phobic about catching the disease. But a short distance away he was pierced to the heart by his lack of genuine love. He turned around, sped to the leper, dismounted, and then embraced him and kissed the hands he wouldn’t touch earlier when dropping coins. It was a conversion to charity. “After 25 years of a mediocre life full of dreams, spent in the pursuit of worldly pleasures and success,” Pope Benedict described, Francis “opened himself to grace, came to his senses and gradually recognized Christ as the ideal of his life.” Each of us is called to open our senses in a similar way to find Christ in disguise.
The second stage of conversion happened in the Church of St. Damian on the slope of Assisi. As Francis was praying in front of the Crucifix in the run down Church, Jesus spoke to him from the Cross and summoned him, “Francis, rebuild my Church which you can see is falling into ruin.” Francis, at first, took the Lord literally and, selling some of his father’s precious fabrics, began to reconstruct the dilapidated house of God with the proceeds. But the Lord had a far bigger building project in mind. Later Pope Innocent III had a dream in which he saw Francis, whom he would meet for the first time the following day, holding up the Cathedral of St. John Lateran, the Pope’s principal Church, a sign that the renovation project God had in mind was the Church as a whole, which is not built of marble, wood, bricks and glass, but men, women, boys and girls, living stones built on Christ the cornerstone. That’s the building project Francis would undertake for God, one living stone at a time, beginning with his Franciscan brothers, and then the Poor Clares, and then the lay Franciscans, and through them in the Church as a whole. St. Clare would run away from home at 18 to “live according to the manner of the holy Gospel,” and that type of evangelical living is precisely what the Lord was asking for, what Francis would eventually inspire. That was the second stage of his conversion and calling. Each of us is called in a similar way to participate in that constant renovation project which is the Church.
The third stage of his conversion happened in the courtyard of the bishop’s residence after Francis’ father had denounced him to the bishop for stealing his fabrics to sell them to rebuild the Church. What Pietro Bernardone was really hoping for was far more than the restitution of his sold property, but the restitution of his son whom he thought was losing his mind as he sought to unite himself to Christ in radical poverty, chastity and obedience. When Pietro told Bishop Guido what his son had done, Francis readily confessed, promised to return the money, but then grasped that the clothes he was wearing were also the fruit of his father’s generosity. So he stripped naked in the bishop’s courtyard, gave the clothes back to his Father, and then said he was finally able to live fully dependent on the generosity of his Father in heaven to whom he prayed, “Padre nostro, che sei nei coeli,” “Our Father, who art in heaven.” That was the third stage, to take Jesus’ words seriously, that just as the Father takes care of the lilies of the field and the birds of the sky, so he will always care for our food, drink, clothing and housing. He was to live totally by God’s providence and mercy. That’s a call to every Christian.
And the fourth and final stage of his metanoia happened when the Lord appeared to him once more from a Crucifix, a Crucifix in LaVerna, two years before he died, and from his wounds pierced Francis’ hands, feet and side with his Sacred stigmata, so that Francis could bear in his own flesh Christ’s wounds. We marked the 800th anniversary of this event on September 17, just over two weeks ago. This was the culmination, so to speak, of his journey of conversion and holiness, which was, as Pope Benedict said in 2007, a “daily effort to put on Christ.” This itinerary was crowned with the appearance of the stigmata, which enabled him to experience fully what St. Paul wrote to the Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20). Before he had received the visible wounds of Christ in his body, Pope Benedict stressed, Francis had received the wounds of Christ on his heart. He had been touched by the way his own sins had offended the Lord and had been moved with the same love for God and others that pierced Christ’s heart. This was his total conversion to Christ, “to the point that he sought to be ‘transformed’ into him, becoming his total image.” The Lord calls us, too, to become other Christ’s.
Responding to the call to conversion and holiness, to do what those who had witnessed Jesus’ miracles and heard his preaching around the Sea of Galilee didn’t do, is the chief lesson of Francis’ life. It was the call to love Christ above all. As Pope Benedict said in the Basilica of St. Francis in 2007, “Today, everything here speaks of conversion. … Speaking of conversion means going to the heart of the Christian message, and at the same time to the roots of human existence. … Since the time when the faces of lepers, loved through love of God, made him understand in a certain way the mystery of kenosis (cf. Phil 2: 7) – the humbling of God in the flesh of the Son of Man -, from the time when the voice of the Crucifix in San Damiano put in his heart the program for his life, ‘Go, Francis, repair my house’ (2 Cel I, 6, 10), his journey was none other than the daily effort to put on Christ. … What was the life of the converted Francis if not a great act of love? This is revealed by his passionate prayers, rich in contemplation and praise, his tender embrace of the Divine Child at Greccio, his contemplation of the Passion at La Verna, his living ‘according to the form of the Holy Gospel’ (2 Test. 14), his choice of poverty and his quest for Christ in the faces of the poor. This was his conversion to Christ, to the point that he sought to be ‘transformed’ into him, becoming his total image; and this explains his typical way of life by virtue of which he appears to us to be so modern. … May Francis of Assisi obtain the grace of an authentic and full conversion to the love of Christ!”
Each of us is called to “relive the interior journey of Francis.” Each of us is called to hear the Lord’s voice to repair his Church, parts of whose living stones in every generation “falling into ruins” through sin. Each of us is called to let Christ fully come alive in us through being “crucified with Christ,” which means denying ourselves, picking up whatever hardships or crosses we are given, and following Christ (see Mt 16:24). Each of us is called, in short, to offer our lives in love for God and for others. “In a word,” Pope Benedict summarized, “Francis was truly in love with Jesus.” That love for Jesus shone throughout his converted life and still shines 800 years later. It is a love that was so strong as to rebuild the Church. It is a love that is still powerful enough to rebuild the Church in our time, if we are able to experience that love through a conversion as profound as Francis’. To strengthen us in this continued assimilation of the life of Christ, Jesus is going to do something even greater for us than he did for Francis in the cave of LaVerna. We’re not just going to receive in our flesh his sacred stigmata, but we’re going to receive within his whole body, blood, soul and divinity, something that will help us from the inside to live a converted life, to live according to the manner of the Holy Gospel, so that others, in seeing our response to Christ’s perpetual call to repent and believe, might seek to imitate us like we imitate Francis and journey together, guided by the Lord, along the everlasting way!

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 JB 38:1, 12-21; 40:3-5
The LORD addressed Job out of the storm and said:
Have you ever in your lifetime commanded the morning
and shown the dawn its place
For taking hold of the ends of the earth,
till the wicked are shaken from its surface?
The earth is changed as is clay by the seal,
and dyed as though it were a garment;
But from the wicked the light is withheld,
and the arm of pride is shattered.
Have you entered into the sources of the sea,
or walked about in the depths of the abyss?
Have the gates of death been shown to you,
or have you seen the gates of darkness?
Have you comprehended the breadth of the earth?
Tell me, if you know all:
Which is the way to the dwelling place of light,
and where is the abode of darkness,
That you may take them to their boundaries
and set them on their homeward paths?
You know, because you were born before them,
and the number of your years is great!
Then Job answered the LORD and said:
Behold, I am of little account; what can I answer you?
I put my hand over my mouth.
Though I have spoken once, I will not do so again;
though twice, I will do so no more.
Responsorial Psalm PS 139:1-3, 7-8, 9-10, 13-14AB
R. (24b) Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.
O LORD, you have probed me and you know me;
you know when I sit and when I stand;
you understand my thoughts from afar.
My journeys and my rest you scrutinize,
with all my ways you are familiar.
R. Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.
Where can I go from your spirit?
From your presence where can I flee?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I sink to the nether world, you are present there.
R. Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.
If I take the wings of the dawn,
if I settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
Even there your hand shall guide me,
and your right hand hold me fast.
R. Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.
Truly you have formed my inmost being;
you knit me in my mother’s womb.
I give you thanks that I am fearfully, wonderfully made;
wonderful are your works.
R. Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.
Alleluia PS 95:8
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
If today you hear his voice,
harden not your hearts.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel LK 10:13-16
Jesus said to them,
“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida!
For if the mighty deeds done in your midst
had been done in Tyre and Sidon,
they would long ago have repented,
sitting in sackcloth and ashes.
But it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon
at the judgment than for you.
And as for you, Capernaum, ‘Will you be exalted to heaven?
You will go down to the netherworld.’
Whoever listens to you listens to me.
Whoever rejects you rejects me.
And whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”

The post Responding to the Grace of the Call to Conversion, 26th Friday (II), October 4, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
25 min
October 03, 2024Proclaiming that Our King and Vindicator Lives, 26th Thursday (II), October 3, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Thursday of the 26th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Mother Theodore Guerin
October 3, 2024
Job 19:21-27, Ps 27, Lk 10:1-12

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.3.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
On Tuesday, we pondered the fulcrum of St. Luke’s Gospel (Lk 9:51), in which we read how Jesus fixed his face on Jerusalem, on Calvary, on his redemptive passion, and how everything thereafter in St. Luke’s Gospel is meant to be understood with that focus in mind, a focus he wants us to share. That’s what grounds today’s commission of the 72 to proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom. Jesus was heading toward his coronation (with thorns). They were to be the heralds of the Kingdom, which means that that King is present, the King is alive, the King provides, the King brings peace. All of the instructions Jesus gives come with that in mind. There’s an urgency to the task: they’re to pray for fellow laborers for the harvest, because the harvest is ripe; they’re to greet no one along the way, but be focused on completing their mission; they’re being sent not as assassins but as lambs, to announce meekly to the freedom of others, rather than compel them; they’re to show their trust in God’s providence by not taking money, a sack of food, a second pair of sandals; they’re to announce the peace that the Prince of Peace has brought through the forgiveness of sins; they’re to eat whatever is set before them, whether served by Pharisees or by publicans, whether kosher or not, because the King created it all and it’s not a forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; they’re to stay in the same place, grateful to God and to their hosts, and not looking for a better one; they’re to cure the sick as a sign of the cure of the soul that the King is bringing about. All of these flow from a living relationship with the King who would sacrifice all for us.
We see the same relationship with a living King in Job. After his friends failed to persuade him that his sufferings were a result of sin, after his arguments likewise failed to persuade them, as he was experiencing profound pain and sorrow, he made an extraordinary profession of faith: Even should he die and return to the dust from which he came, he said, “I know that my Vindicator lives and that he will at last stand forth upon the dust.” He knew that his Redeemer, God, is alive and would live on after his death — and not only that but “I myself shall see Him … with my own eyes … from my flesh,” something that filled his inmost being with longing. As body was in agony, his innards were longing not for “relief” but for his Redeemer!
That type of faith, trust and love in the living Lord, the Redeemer of the human person, is what characterized the faith of St. Mother Theodore Guerin, the foundress of the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana, who was baptized on this day back in 1798 in France. (She died on May 14 in 1856, but May 14 is the Feast of St. Matthias and so the Church celebrates the day of her baptism). As a young girl she distinguished herself by her love for God and those God had made her neighbor. When she made her first communion at the age of 10, she confided to the priest that she was being called to religious life, but after her father was murdered by bandits when she was 15, she cared for her mother for the next ten years. Her mother didn’t want her to leave her side and young Anne-Therese (her baptismal name) was patient and kind with her. Eventually, seeing her daughter’s devotion, Isabelle Guerin permitted her daughter to follow her vocation. She entered the Sisters of Providence of Ruille-sur-Loir and taught in schools and visited the poor and the sick. Eventually, when she was 42, her community responded to the request of the Bishop of Vincennes, Indiana, to send sisters to teach the children in the woods of Indiana. She was asked to be the superior. Even though she had signed up to be a teaching sister, she was now being asked to be a missionary and the head of a group of missionaries. She prayed about it for a long time, before recognizing that she had committed herself to a Constitution that said, “The Congregation being obliged to work with zeal for the sanctification of souls, the sisters will be disposed to go to whatsoever part of the world obedience calls them,” and that convinced her to answer the call to go to America. It was a real Cross for her, but she set her heart resolutely on the will of God and followed Christ to her Calvary in Indiana. After a four-month journey she arrived, founded the new Congregation (since they wouldn’t be able to communicate back with France) and began the work, bringing people the Gospel, an education, loving mercy in founding orphanages and even medicine in establishing various pharmacies. There are still 300 Sisters of her order in Indiana, who are continuing to proclaim that Christ, our King and Redeemer, lives, and that the Kingdom of God is at hand. On her feast day we turn to the Master of the Harvest and ask him to send out many more laborers for his harvest like St. Mother Theodore and the Sisters of Providence of Saint-Mary-of-the-Woods.
As we prepare to behold with our own eyes the Lamb of God, to see God from our flesh, with our inmost being consumed with longing to receive our living Redeemer in Holy Communion, we ask him to fill us with the zeal of St. Theodore to be numbered among the “72” hardworking laborers sent out like lambs trusting in Providence to take in the Lord’s abundant harvest.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 JB 19:21-27
Job said:
Pity me, pity me, O you my friends,
for the hand of God has struck me!
Why do you hound me as though you were divine,
and insatiably prey upon me?
Oh, would that my words were written down!
Would that they were inscribed in a record:
That with an iron chisel and with lead
they were cut in the rock forever!
But as for me, I know that my Vindicator lives,
and that he will at last stand forth upon the dust;
Whom I myself shall see:
my own eyes, not another’s, shall behold him,
And from my flesh I shall see God;
my inmost being is consumed with longing.
Responsorial Psalm PS 27:7-8A, 8B-9ABC, 13-14
R. (13) I believe that I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living.
Hear, O LORD, the sound of my call;
have pity on me, and answer me.
Of you my heart speaks; you my glance seeks.
R. I believe that I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living.
Your presence, O LORD, I seek.
Hide not your face from me;
do not in anger repel your servant.
You are my helper: cast me not off.
R. I believe that I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living.
I believe that I shall see the bounty of the LORD
in the land of the living.
Wait for the LORD with courage;
be stouthearted, and wait for the LORD.
R. I believe that I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living.
Alleluia MK 1:15
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The Kingdom of God is at hand;
repent and believe in the Gospel.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
GospelLK 10:1-12
Jesus appointed seventy-two other 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 his 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.’
Whatever town you enter and they do not receive you,
go out into the streets and say,
‘The dust of your town that clings to our feet,
even that we shake off against you.’
Yet know this: the Kingdom of God is at hand.
I tell you,
it will be more tolerable for Sodom on that day
than for that town.”
The post Proclaiming that Our King and Vindicator Lives, 26th Thursday (II), October 3, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
19 min
October 02, 2024Gratitude for Our Guardian and Guide, Memorial of the Guardian Angels, October 2, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Memorial of the Guardian Angels
October 2, 2024
Ex 23:20-23, Ps 90, Mt 18:1-5.10

To listen to the audio recording of this homily, please click here:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.2.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
What an incredible gift it is that God has sent an angel before us, as we read in the Book of Exodus, to guard us on the way and bring us to the place he has prepared! At the beginning of Mass we prayed that God who is pleased to send his holy Angels to guard us, may hear our supplication that we may “always be defended by their protection and rejoice eternally in their company.” It’s to that eternal, celestial company to which God has sent them to guide us.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “The whole life of the Church benefits from the mysterious and powerful help of angels. … In her liturgy, the Church joins with the angels to adore the thrice-holy God. She invokes their assistance. … From its beginning until death, human life is surrounded by their watchful care and intercession. ‘Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life’ (St. Basil the Great). Already here on earth the Christian life shares by faith in the blessed company of angels and men united in God” (CCC 334-336).
The reality we have to confront, however, is that many of us are oblivious in day-to-day life to the presence of our guardian angels. This is a larger problem of scientism, or the rationalistic, materialistic understanding that the only thing we can know we can observe with our senses or with scientific instruments. And so many of us go about our life without an awareness of the supernatural realm, of angels on the one hand, of the devil and his fallen angels on the other. While we theoretically believe they exist or at least could exist, we live as if they don’t. Today’s feast is an opportunity for us to open up to the truth that reality is much broader than we ordinarily think and begin to live it better in all its practical circumstances.
Today God tells the Israelites about the angel sent to guard them: “Be attentive to him and heed his voice. Do not rebel against him. … If you heed his voice and carry out all I tell you, I will be an enemy to your enemies and a foe to your foes.” God calls us to acknowledge that he has sent his angel in front of us, to be attentive to him, to heed his voice, and to carry out all he tells us through him. But how we do that? None of us wants to disobey what God commands us through them, but how can we follow someone we cannot see, how can we heed someone whose voice doesn’t register on a decibel meter, how can we can we observe commands that are not communicated in ways that up until this point at least we haven’t been able to perceive?
The first thing we need to be is to be aware of our guardian angel’s presence. To acknowledge him. To recognize we’re not alone. Even if we can’t perceive him with our five senses, to recognize that he is nevertheless there as the biggest supporter we’ve ever had, seeking to help us.
Second we need trustingly to ask for his help. Today we can ponder how to do that with regard to certain fundamental aspects of our life.
First, with regard to our prayer. We can pray to our guardian angel. There’s a great prayer that many of us learned as children that we should pray with fervor. It’s based on what we ponder in Sacred Scripture today: “Angel of God, my guardian dear, to Whom His love commits me here, ever this day be at my side to light and guard to rule and guide. Amen.” We can also rely on his prayers for us before God’s throne, because he is “always looking upon the face of the Heavenly Father,” and interceding for us. We can also ask our guardian angel to help us to pray and pray better. We can ask him to pray alongside of us — when we’re aware of our guardian angel, we’re always praying in communion! — and then to teach us how to pray better. We know that there are five “forms” of prayer, four types of prayer we make to God, and our guardian angel can help us with all five.
The first and most important form of prayer is praise, when we give God honor for who he is and how lovable he is. No one can teach us how to do this better than the angels who have been praising God before his throne since the foundation of the all. We wish to make our own the words we pray in the Psalms, “In the sight of the angels, I will sing your praises, O Lord!”
The second form of prayer is thanksgiving, and our guardian angels can help us not only to thank God for the graces of which we’re aware but of the vast many more of which we’re unaware. For example, our guardian angels are aware of the many times we may have died if God through their work hadn’t intervened to keep someone off the road who may have collided with us. They can fill us with thanksgiving for every grace, seen or unseen.
Third, they can help us pray for forgiveness with great contrition, examine our consciences and prepare us for the Sacrament of Confession. Our guardian angels know of every sinful thought, every lie or bad word, every sinful action, every time we should have been the Good Samaritan but walked by the other side. They were commissioned by God to protect us from those sins, but they can’t control our will, they need our cooperation, and for that reason how much shame we’ve brought them through our sins! But at the same time, how much joy we’ve brought them when we’ve responded to the graces they’ve sought to bring us to conversion, to confession, and to a new life.
And fourth and fifth, they help us in our prayer of intercession for others and petition for ourselves. They’re constantly interceding for us and for our good intentions for others before God’s throne. They teach us similarly how to pray without losing heart.
With our work and daily life, they can really help us. Many times when I’m faced with work I’m unenthusiastic to do, I ask my own guardian angel’s help to do it well, quickly and in a holy way, offering it to God and others. When I need to do something that I find hard, to solve a problem I can’t figure out,  I ask my guardian angel’s help to find a way toward a solution. When I’m waiting on hold on the phone, I pray through my guardian angel to guardian angels of the employees on the other line, asking for them to come more quickly rather than go for another cup of coffee or waste time. When I’ve been looking for a parking spot in order to be able to bring someone Holy Communion or anoint someone, I regularly ask his assistance through somebody else’s guardian angel to have someone in the neighborhood to remember to run an errand so that I can find a place and head into the home. They want to help us and guide us in all our ways and they’re not upset to be asked for this help for things that will help us to do what God is asking us to do.
With our mission of spreading the faith to others, the guardian angels are particularly helpful. How many preachers have the pious custom of invoking the guardian angels of all those who are about to listen to their homily! When we’re seeking to have a conversation with someone about an aspect of the faith, we can pray to the guardian angel of the other to help open the person up to receive well what our own guardian angel wants to help us to say. I’d encourage everyone to get into the habit of recognizing that everyone to whom we speak has a guardian angel and not only to acknowledge that reality but to greet the guardian angel. St. Josemaria Escriva, whom God asked to found Opus Dei 96 years ago today on the feast of the Guardian Angels, had the habit of always secretly greeting the guardian angel of the person who had come to see him — the “big shot” or personaje! — before he even greeted the person. In our apostolate, especially in doing something that the Lord is asking us to do, it’s never a one-on-one conversation, but often a three-on-one, with our guardian angel and the other’s guardian angel assisting us in that conversation. So we should never be afraid. Especially when we’re seeking the conversion of someone on a particular point or in general, we should never cease invoking the help of the guardian angel of that person, who is so happy we’re willing to collaborate with him to bring about the conversion of the person in that guardian angel’s charge.
I’d like to finish by pondering how our guardian angel seeks to get us to pray the Mass. Several years ago when I was preaching a retreat in a seminary, I came across a magazine containing a story of the mystical reflections of a Bolivian woman, Catalina Rivas, that seem to be quite plausibly true. As Catholics we’re never obliged to accept private revelations given to others, but the reason why private revelations are given is to help us to remember something in the full public revelation or to apply it better. And her reflections have always helped me to open up to what I believe does in fact take place at Mass. At the time of the offertory, she said this is what she saw and heard Mary explain to her: “Suddenly some characters, whom I had not seen before, began to stand up. It was as if from the side of each person present in the Cathedral, another person emerged, and soon the Cathedral became full of young, beautiful people. They were dressed in very white robes, and they started to move into the central aisle and, then, went towards the Altar. Our Mother said: ‘Observe. They are the Guardian Angels of each one of the persons who are here. This is the moment in which your guardian angel carries your offerings and petitions before the Altar of the Lord.’ At that moment, I was completely astonished, because these beings had such beautiful faces, so radiant as one is unable to imagine. Their countenance was very beautiful with almost feminine faces; however, the structure of their body, their hands, their height were masculine. Their naked feet did not touch the floor, but rather they went as if gliding. That procession was very beautiful. Some of them were carrying something like a golden bowl with something that shone a great deal with a golden-white light. The Virgin Mary said: ‘They are the Guardian Angels of the people who are offering this Holy Mass for many intentions, those who are conscious of what this celebration means. They have something to offer the Lord.’ Offer yourselves at this moment; offer your sorrows, your pains, your hopes, your sadness, your joys, your petitions. Remember that the Mass has infinite value. Therefore, be generous in offering and in asking.’ Behind the first Angels came others who had nothing in their hands; they were coming empty handed. The Virgin Mary said: ‘Those are the angels of the people who are here but never offer anything. They have no interest in living each liturgical moment of the Mass, and they have no gifts to carry before the Altar of the Lord.’ At the end of the procession came other angels who were rather sad, with their hands joined in prayer but with their eyes downcast. ‘These are the Guardian Angels of the people who are here, but do not want to be, that is to say, of the people who have been forced to come here, who have come out of obligation, but without any desire to participate in the Holy Mass. The angels go forth sadly because they have nothing to carry to the Altar, except for their own prayers.’ Do not sadden your Guardian Angel.  Ask for much, ask for the conversion of sinners, for peace in the world, for your families, your neighbors, for those who ask for your prayers. Ask, ask for much, but not only for yourselves, but for everyone else. Remember that the offering which most pleases the Lord is when you offer yourselves as a holocaust so that Jesus, upon His descent, may transform you by His own merits.”
Today our Guardian Angels have guided us to Mass and are so pleased we’re here. But they want to help us truly to pray and to live the Mass. They want us to prepare for them “golden bowls” to carry our offerings to the Lord — our sufferings, our work, our prayers, our whole lives. Let’s ask their help to assist us every day to form those bowls, so that we may join them in praising God in this world and rejoice in their company praising God forever.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
Ex 23:20-23
Thus says the LORD:
“See, I am sending an angel before you,
to guard you on the way and bring you to the place I have prepared.
Be attentive to him and heed his voice.
Do not rebel against him, for he will not forgive your sin.
My authority resides in him.
If you heed his voice and carry out all I tell you,
I will be an enemy to your enemies and a foe to your foes.”
My angel will go before you and bring you to the
Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites,
Canaanites, Hivites, and Jebusites;
and I will wipe them out.”
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 91:1-2, 3-4ab, 4c-6, 10-11
R.   (11) The Lord has put angels in charge of you, to guard you in all your ways.
You who dwell in the shelter of the Most High,
who abide in the shadow of the Almighty,
Say to the LORD, “My refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust.”
R.   The Lord has put angels in charge of you, to guard you in all your ways.
For he will rescue you from the snare of the fowler,
from the destroying pestilence.
With his pinions he will cover you,
and under his wings you shall take refuge.
R.   The Lord has put angels in charge of you, to guard you in all your ways.
His faithfulness is a buckler and a shield.
You shall not fear the terror of the night
nor the arrow that flies by day;
Nor the pestilence that roams in darkness,
nor the devastating plague at noon.
R.   The Lord has put angels in charge of you, to guard you in all your ways.
No evil shall befall you,
nor shall affliction come near your tent,
For to his angels he has given command about you,
that they guard you in all your ways.
R.   The Lord has put angels in charge of you, to guard you in all your ways.
Alleluia
Ps 103:21
R.   Alleluia, alleluia.
Bless the LORD, all you angels,
you ministers, who do his will.
R.   Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Mt 18:1-5, 10
The disciples approached Jesus and said,
“Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven?”
He called a child over, placed it in their midst, and said,
“Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children,
you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven.
Whoever humbles himself like this child
is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.
And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.”
See that you do not despise one of these little ones,
for I say to you that their angels in heaven
always look upon the face of my heavenly Father.”
The post Gratitude for Our Guardian and Guide, Memorial of the Guardian Angels, October 2, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
25 min
October 01, 2024Resolutely Determining to Follow Jesus On the Way of Trust and Love, 26th Tuesday (II), October 1, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Tuesday of the Twenty-Sixth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, Doctor of the Church
October 1, 2024
Job 3:1-3.11-17.20-23, Ps 88, Lk 9:51-56

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.1.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the email:
Yesterday in the Gospel Jesus spoke to us about the path to greatness in receiving little children — those who can’t repay — in his name and in so doing, receive him and God the Father who sent him. We were able to focus on the general spirituality of receptivity to all God gives, including to suffering, to the gifts given to others, and to the Word of God. Today we confront the reality that, rather than being received, Jesus is often rejected, not just in the person of children not received, but straight out, something that sheds light not just on our relationship with him but on the fact that often we, too, will be and feel rejected.
St. Luke tells us that Jesus had “resolutely determined” or literally “fixed his face” on Jerusalem to complete his salvific mission, which is really the fulcrum of his entire Gospel. Before he would do that, however, he was going to try to include the Samaritans more intimately in that saving mission. He had already been to Samaria before, where he met the woman at the well. The end of that scene had the Samaritans all exclaiming in Sychar around the well of Jacob, “We have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world.” But because Jesus was planning to head on to Jerusalem, with whom the Samaritans had been in a theological war for centuries, “they would not welcome him.” They put their disagreement with the Jews above their receiving their Savior! And when the Boanerges brothers — the Sons of Thunder, John and James — sought to call down fire from heaven on the Samaritans as God had once destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, we see that they, too, had taken their eyes off of Jerusalem and Jesus’ salvific will. So Jesus, rather than rebuking the Samaritans (which he easily could have), rebuked James and John. The failure of both the Samaritans and the sons of Zebedee teaches us a valuable lessons: many times we can put our own grievances, our own petty scores to settle, above God and the work of salvation he wants to accomplish. We can take our eyes off of Jesus and off of where Jesus has set his eyes. We can put conditions on God’s saving work, like the Samaritans tried: “We’ll allow you, the Savior of the World, to enter our village provided that you promise that you won’t go to Jerusalem!” Even though all of us recognize how silly it is when the Samaritans of yesteryear do it, we need to become more conscious of the way we likewise refuse welcoming Jesus. We see it when we refuse the Cross, like St. Peter and the apostles initially did when they reprimanded Jesus after he said that he would be betrayed in Jerusalem, suffer at the hands of the religious and civil leaders, be beaten, scourged and murdered. Still today many do not want to embrace Jesus’ determined vision about the way he wishes to be with us, united with us on the path of sacrificial love we call the way of the Cross. They seek Christ without the Cross, a Christianity without suffering, The Cross remains a scandal and a folly for many today, just as it was for many at the time of the apostles. What happened in Samaria in today’s Gospel is simply one more illustration of what St. John described in the prologue to his Gospel, that Jesus “came to his own and his own received him not.”
Sometimes we, too, can feel rejected, abandoned, all alone in misery. That’s what Job felt in today’s first reading. It was tough enough when he lost his cattle, sheep, camels, children, and house, but now he was covered with boils and in such misery and pain that he wished he had never been born. It was a little foretaste of what Jesus himself would experience in his fourth word on the Cross when he would cry out, in the words of Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” But as we see at the end of the Psalm, Jesus continued to trust, and we know how the story ends, which provides hope for us when we are in difficult circumstances. Just like the story of Job has become a sign of hope to so many in suffering, so God sometimes permits us to feel abandoned, rejected, so that we may like Job because signs of more credible hope to others of trust in God as we seek to welcome him even in suffering.
The positive moral of both the Gospel and Job is to keep our eyes fixed on what God wants, and not to become so distracted by others rejecting God and what he sends. Someone who kept her eyes fixed on Jesus all the way and followed him to Calvary and through Calvary to heaven is the great saint we celebrate today, St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face. She has become a doctor of the Church even though she never attended high school, because she has helped everyone, through her little way of trust and love, often called her little way of spiritual childhood, come to keep their eyes determinedly on God and his will. It’s so important for us to learn this little way of sanctity. At the beginning of Mass today, we prayed, “O God, who open your Kingdom to those who are humble and to little ones, lead us to follow trustingly in the little way of Saint Therese, so that through her intercession we may see your eternal glory revealed.” Her little way, she described, is one of “trust and love,” one that trusts in God the Father, his providence and merciful love, one that cooperates with the Holy Spirit in exulting in our divine filiation, one that is humble and is content with who God created us to be, one that finds God in the little things of every day, including trying to sanctify one’s heart beats, one that it all in for God rather than seeks to become “half a saint.” She famously linked two passages about the kingdom of God together to arrive at an important truth. The first is that unless we convert and become like little children, we cannot enter the kingdom of God. The second is the first of the beatitudes, that to the poor in spirit is the kingdom of God. Becoming childlike and becoming poor in spirit are basically synonymous. As Therese made spiritual childhood her own, so she made her own poverty of spirit. She aspired to be nothing more than “a poor little child” who looks to her Father for everything and who obtains everything from Him because of this same poverty. She kept her eyes on Christ who, though he was rich made himself poor, so that in his poverty we might become rich. And with him, she kept her focus on the generosity of God the Father.
When she was searching for what her vocation was, she saw that it was to be “love in the heart of the Church [her] mother.” She sought, therefore, to unite herself to Christ’s sacrificial love shown for us on the Cross. St. Therese’s way of spiritual childhood encompasses this path of love and trust that we see in Jesus upon the Cross. It’s an entrance into Jesus’ own filiation, his own trust in the Father’s goodness, his own entrusting of his soul and all he was to the Father. When we look at St. Therese’s poetry, we see just how central sharing Christ’s love on the Cross is to all that she teaches us as a doctor of the Church.
In one poem, she writes: “To live of love, ’tis not to fix one’s tent / On Tabor’s height and there with Thee remain. / ‘Tis to climb Calvary with strength nigh spent. / And count Thy heavy cross our truest gain.” The little way means not trying to build booths to keep the consolation of the Transfiguration, but entering with Jesus on Calvary and build our booth together with Jesus on the Cross. She continues, ” In heaven, my life a life of joy shall be / The heavy cross shall then be gone for aye. / Here upon earth, in suffering with Thee, Love! let me stay.” She begs to stay with Jesus in this crucified love in order to enter into Jesus’ eternal joy.
In a second poem, she stressed her desire to be crucified to the world to share in Jesus’ saving will. “I long for suffering; and the cross / With strong desire my heart doth crave. / A thousand deaths were gain, not loss, / If but one soul I help to save!” In the mosaics of the Crypt chapel in Lisieux where she is buried, there’s the expression that she recognized as a young novice, “To love is to give all, it’s to give oneself.” She made that self-gift, holding nothing back, and wants to help and encourage us to do the same.
In a third poem, she builds on this notion to desire and love the Cross, because one desires and loves what Jesus loves. “Remember Thou that amorous complaint / Escaping from Thy lips on Calvary’s tree: / ‘I thirst!’ Oh, how my heart like Thine doth faint. / Yes, yes! I share Thy burning thirst with Thee. / The more my heart burns bright with Thy great Heart’s chaste fires, / The more I thirst for souls, to quench Thy Heart’s desires./ That with such love always I burn, by night, by day. Remember Thou!” She thirsted for what Jesus thirsts, which is the salvation of every person. That was what burned her insides, to share that love. That’s where she kept her gaze. Likewise, with us, we need to begin with a love, with a hunger, for God so strong that it makes us want we he wants and makes us capable, by his grace, of sacrificing for it as we see so often with the martyrs.
In a final poem, St. Therese teaches us very practically how to walk this way of the Cross. “O Jesu! O my Love! Each eve I come to fling / Before Thy sacred Cross sweet flowers of all the year. By these plucked petals bright, my hands how gladly bring, I long to dry Thine every tear! To scatter flowers! — that means each sacrifice, / My lightest sighs and pains, my heaviest, saddest hours, / My hopes, my joys, my prayers, — I will not count the price. / Behold my flowers! / With deep, untold delight Thy beauty fills my soul. / Would I might light this love in hearts of all who live! / For this, my fairest flowers, all things in my control, How fondly, gladly I would give! / To scatter flowers! — behold my chosen sword / For saving sinners’ souls and filling heaven’s bowers. / The victory is mine: yes, I disarm Thee, Lord, With these my flowers!” Everything in her day she treated as a flower with which she would adorn Jesus with love on the Cross. All the little sacrifices of every day could be sanctified as an act of love, and that’s what she tried to do. That’s what she’d like to help us try to do. That’s the way we keep our sights determinedly fixed on Calvary, with Jesus.
To set our face on Jerusalem, on Calvary, on the Cross, is all about love. The way St. Therese grew in cruciform love most was not just through the physical sufferings she endured with terrible tuberculosis at the end of her life and an unexplained lengthy illness at the beginning of her life. It wasn’t just through the death of her mother at the age of four and her father’s getting dementia at the end of his days. It wasn’t merely through the dark night of the soul that tormented her over the last couple of years of her existence. It was mostly through the Mass. This is where the love of God, shown for us on the Cross, met her and renewed her vision each day. This is where we behold the Lamb of God, the Savior of the World, who can’t keep his eyes off of us. This is where we learn to trust in God’s providing everything, because if he doesn’t spare his own Son, he will give us everything besides. This is where we cry out with trust for his mercy, for if he has become so small for us, we cannot be intimidated. This is where the Holy Spirit helps us to cry out with Jesus, “Abba, Father!” This is where we, like Therese, learn humility. This is where we unite all the ordinary things of every day. This is where God seeks to make us holy, so that we may spend our time and eternity doing good. Let us ask Jesus, as we prepare to receive his Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, to “lead us trustingly in the little way of Saint Therese,” so that through her intercession, Jesus may give us his eyes, so that we might keep our eyes always on the target he has set and on the Father in heaven, where we hope, with St. Therese, to behold him always in the beatific vision and “see [his] glory revealed!”

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
jb 3:1-3, 11-17, 20-23
Job opened his mouth and cursed his day.
Job spoke out and said:Perish the day on which I was born,
the night when they said, “The child is a boy!”
Why did I not perish at birth,
come forth from the womb and expire?
Or why was I not buried away like an untimely birth,
like babes that have never seen the light?
Wherefore did the knees receive me?
or why did I suck at the breasts?
For then I should have lain down and been tranquil;
had I slept, I should then have been at rest
With kings and counselors of the earth
who built where now there are ruins
Or with princes who had gold
and filled their houses with silver.
There the wicked cease from troubling,
there the weary are at rest.Why is light given to the toilers,
and life to the bitter in spirit?
They wait for death and it comes not;
they search for it rather than for hidden treasures,
Rejoice in it exultingly,
and are glad when they reach the grave:
Those whose path is hidden from them,
and whom God has hemmed in!
Responsorial Psalm
ps 88:2-3, 4-5, 6, 7-8
R. (3) Let my prayer come before you, Lord.
O LORD, my God, by day I cry out;
at night I clamor in your presence.
Let my prayer come before you;
incline your ear to my call for help.
R. Let my prayer come before you, Lord.
For my soul is surfeited with troubles
and my life draws near to the nether world.
I am numbered with those who go down into the pit;
I am a man without strength.
R. Let my prayer come before you, Lord.
My couch is among the dead,
like the slain who lie in the grave,
Whom you remember no longer
and who are cut off from your care.
R. Let my prayer come before you, Lord.
You have plunged me into the bottom of the pit,
into the dark abyss.
Upon me your wrath lies heavy,
and with all your billows you overwhelm me.
R. Let my prayer come before you, Lord.
Gospel
lk 9:51-56
When the days for Jesus to be taken up were fulfilled,
he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem,
and he sent messengers ahead of him.
On the way they entered a Samaritan village
to prepare for his reception there,
but they would not welcome him
because the destination of his journey was Jerusalem.
When the disciples James and John saw this they asked,
“Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven
to consume them?”
Jesus turned and rebuked them,
and they journeyed to another village.
The post Resolutely Determining to Follow Jesus On the Way of Trust and Love, 26th Tuesday (II), October 1, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
27 min
September 30, 2024Becoming Great Through Receiving God and What He Gives, 26th Monday (II), September 30, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Monday of the 26th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Jerome, Doctor of the Church
September 30, 2024
Job 1:6-22, Ps 17, Lk 9:46-50

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.30.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
Today’s Gospel reading from St. Luke incorporates the passages we have had a chance to ponder at Sunday Mass yesterday and a week ago, both about the path to greatness as well as how we should respond, not with jealousy or defensiveness but joy and delight when others are doing great things for God. These considerations are important for young people at a great university, because this is an environment in which one finds, as expected, a lot of ambition. The Lord doesn’t seek to eliminate human ambition — he’s instilled within us a desire for greatness! — but to purify it. Today in the Gospel, immediately after he told his disciples a second time of the betrayal, suffering and death he would endure, he overhears the disciples speaking not with compassion or concern toward him but with self-interest concerning which of them was the greatest. He takes advantage of what could have been a tremendously awkward moment by describing for them an essential condition for greatness. He says, “The one who is least among all of you is the one who is the greatest,” and he illustrated the means to be the least. He took a child, placed the child by his side, and said, “Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.” We become the least — and therefore paradoxically grow in Christian greatness — by receiving children and, in receiving them, receiving Christ and God the Father. Greatness is shown ultimately by receiving God, and one of the greatest ways God is received is through receiving with love, with purity, with sacrifice, those whom God sends. The reason why Jesus likely describing receiving children is because children couldn’t repay, they couldn’t engage in a quid pro quo, they couldn’t likely even say thanks. In highlighting such a child, Jesus was saying, as he did elsewhere, that the greatest would be the one who serves the rest, the one who would care for others not expecting anything in return. It’s a powerful rebuttal to the way that they were jockeying for position as the greatest in worldly categories. They were trying to get something out of their discipleship and apostolate, their friendship, with Jesus. Jesus wanted to help them see that greatness comes from receiving God — including receiving his passion, death and resurrection! — and not trying to “get” anything, but rather to “receive” and to “give.” God will never cease to try to make us great by sending us people to love, and in caring for them, we express our love for God, and the more we love God in this way, the greater we become.
That’s what connects the first part of this Gospel to the second. There’s a very curious phrase. After Jesus talks about receiving a child, St. Luke tells us, “The John said in reply,” and described the situation that we encountered in yesterday’s Gospel at Sunday Mass, the apostles’ catching red-handed someone doing exorcisms in Jesus’ name and trying to stop him. The “in reply” is mysterious. How the two were connected for St. John is unclear. Perhaps John thought that this unaffiliated exorcist was trying to become great and famous through working unauthorized exorcisms in Jesus’ name. But it likely flowed from jealousy. Worldly desires for greatness always involve wanting to be exalted over others. And when St. John saw someone else casting out demons in Jesus’ name, rather than rejoicing that there was an exorcism and someone being freed from the devil’s clutches, he seemed to think about what that might mean for him and his ordinal position in Jesus’ service. But just as Jesus sought to get John and the others to seek greatness through receiving children, and in receiving them, receiving God, so Jesus tried to do the same with this anonymous exorcist: receiving him and God who was working through him. Jesus reminded him and the others that whoever is not against them is with them and they should not only be focused on the service of others more than on who’s doing the serving, but on receiving God in others, especially when they’re doing God’s work.
To receive God and whom he sends is the secret of greatness. We similarly see it at the beginning of the Book of Job in the first reading. Job was like no one on earth, God said. After Job lost oxen, asses, sheep, shepherds, camels, sons and daughters and his house, rather than curse or blame God, he replied, “Naked I came forth from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I go back again. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!” He was great because he received God however God wanted to be received. He received God when God gave him so many earthly blessings; he received God when God took them away. He recognized that he deserved nothing. Everything was a gift. He didn’t consider himself the owner of anything. He valued his relationship with God far more than any of the things that God gave him. He shows us how to bless the Lord’s name in this way. That’s the path to greatness, to accept everything seemingly adverse and propitious in such a way to receive God himself, the true treasure.
We see this lesson of the path of greatness coming from receiving God through loving receiving what God gives us, from children, to exorcists, to material goods or their removal, illustrated in the life of St. Jerome, the saint that the Church celebrates today. He once sought worldly greatness, but after his profound conversion, he sought true greatness through receiving what God gives, especially through receiving him in his holy word. St. Jerome was a brilliant student born in Dalmatia (modern day Croatia/Bosnia) who went to study under a famous pagan orator in Rome. There his childhood faith became lukewarm as he immersed himself in the Greco-Roman classics. Once, when he was on a study trip with two close friends, both of them died because of a disease they caught and he, too, became deathly ill. During his sickness he had a dream in which he was at his judgment. When he said he was a Christian, Jesus replied that he was, rather, a Ciceronian, because he knew far more about Cicero and his writings than he did about Christ and what he said. He was trying to become great as a scholar of worldly things rather than what mattered. His identify was far more linked to the famous Roman orator and consul than it was to Christ. Jesus’ words in the dream struck Jerome to the core. He needed to seek greatness in another way. So he used the brilliance God had given him to begin to study the Scriptures, learning Hebrew as a penance to gain self-mastery in his fight to have a pure heart. Eventually coming to Rome, Pope St. Damasus made him his secretary and asked him to translate the Bible from its original languages into the common (or “vulgar”) language of the people, Latin, which he did. After St. Damasus’ death, because by his pungent personality and writing he had alienated many, he went to Bethlehem to pray, translate and write, surrounded by a bunch of women who were in essence proto-religious women, who built a monastery for men and two for women next to the place where Christ was born. In all of his work, St. Jerome recognized an essential point, one that has become a key Christian teaching. To receive Christ is to welcome God’s word and Christ as the Word made flesh. It’s to imitate the Blessed Virgin Mary in receiving the Word of God so deeply that it can take on our flesh. His most famous quotation, “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ,” means that we cannot really know the Lord Jesus unless we know his world. And so St. Jerome urges us, and Christians of every age, to become great in knowing the Lord through encountering him in divine revelation. Such an intimate knowledge of Christ through Sacred Scripture is the means by which St. Jerome became great. And that same path is open for us. At the beginning of Mass today, we turned to God and asked Him that just as he “gave the priest St. Jerome a living and tender love for Sacred Scripture,” he would likewise grant that we “be ever more fruitfully nourished by your Word and find in it the fount of life.” We confess that we need a living and tender love, not a dead and cold one. We likewise acknowledge that Jesus has the words of eternal life and to know him through Sacred Scripture is the source of eternal greatness. We’ll pray at the end of Mass today about how Christ seeks to lead us to greatness through what he teaches us through his holy word and through his becoming one with him in the Word made flesh: “May these holy gifts we have received, O Lord, as we rejoice in celebrating Saint Jerome, stir up the hearts of your faithful so that, attentive to sacred teachings, they may understand the path they are to follow and, by following it, obtain life everlasting!” Jesus shows us the path of greatness through receiving purely God and everything God gives, through welcoming children and others who cannot pay us back, through embracing with joy and without jealousy what others are doing for God, through receiving the Word of God as words to be lived. Like any Father, like anyone who loves another, God wants us to become truly great and shows us the way.
One of the most famous paintings of Saint Jerome is found in Rome. At the altar of St. Jerome where, now, Pope St. John XXIII is buried, we see the Viaticum of St. Jerome, as he longs to receive Jesus for the last time from a bishop in the Holy Land. Emaciated, old, and physically frail, but with the heart of a lion, and with the hunger that comes only through decades of ascetical fasting, he knees with reverence as he prepares to receive the Lord with love. That’s a summary of his whole post-converted life. Naked he came into the world and almost naked he was about to leave. The Lord had given him life and, in worldly eyes, the Lord was about to take it away. But he knew through viaticum, he was receiving what he translated into Latin from John 6, the food that would help him live forever. As we prepare to receive that same Lord here, let us ask for the great to do it with as much devotion as St. Jerome. May we learn from him how to be truly Christians and follow him in following Christ along the path of Christian greatness.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 JB 1:6-22
One day, when the angels of God came to present themselves before the LORD,
Satan also came among them.
And the LORD said to Satan, “Whence do you come?”
Then Satan answered the LORD and said,
“From roaming the earth and patrolling it.”
And the LORD said to Satan,
“Have you noticed my servant Job,
and that there is no one on earth like him,
blameless and upright, fearing God and avoiding evil?”
But Satan answered the LORD and said,
“Is it for nothing that Job is God-fearing?
Have you not surrounded him and his family
and all that he has with your protection?
You have blessed the work of his hands,
and his livestock are spread over the land.
But now put forth your hand and touch anything that he has,
and surely he will blaspheme you to your face.”
And the LORD said to Satan,
“Behold, all that he has is in your power;
only do not lay a hand upon his person.”
So Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD.
And so one day, while his sons and his daughters
were eating and drinking wine
in the house of their eldest brother,
a messenger came to Job and said,
“The oxen were ploughing and the asses grazing beside them,
and the Sabeans carried them off in a raid.
They put the herdsmen to the sword,
and I alone have escaped to tell you.”
While he was yet speaking, another came and said,
“Lightning has fallen from heaven
and struck the sheep and their shepherds and consumed them;
and I alone have escaped to tell you.”
While he was yet speaking, another messenger came and said,
“The Chaldeans formed three columns,
seized the camels, carried them off,
and put those tending them to the sword,
and I alone have escaped to tell you.”
While he was yet speaking, another came and said,
“Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine
in the house of their eldest brother,
when suddenly a great wind came across the desert
and smote the four corners of the house.
It fell upon the young people and they are dead;
and I alone have escaped to tell you.”
Then Job began to tear his cloak and cut off his hair.
He cast himself prostrate upon the ground, and said,
“Naked I came forth from my mother’s womb,
and naked shall I go back again.
The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away;
blessed be the name of the LORD!”In all this Job did not sin,
nor did he say anything disrespectful of God.
Responsorial Psalm PS 17:1BCD, 2-3, 6-7
R. (6) Incline your ear to me and hear my word.
Hear, O LORD, a just suit;
attend to my outcry;
hearken to my prayer from lips without deceit.
R. Incline your ear to me and hear my word.
From you let my judgment come;
your eyes behold what is right.
Though you test my heart, searching it in the night,
though you try me with fire, you shall find no malice in me.
R. Incline your ear to me and hear my word.
I call upon you, for you will answer me, O God;
incline your ear to me; hear my word.
Show your wondrous mercies,
O savior of those who flee
from their foes to refuge at your right hand.
R. Incline your ear to me and hear my word.
Alleluia MK 10:45
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The Son of Man came to serve
and to give his life as a ransom for many.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel LK 9:46-50
An argument arose among the disciples
about which of them was the greatest.
Jesus realized the intention of their hearts and took a child
and placed it by his side and said to them,
“Whoever receives this child in my name receives me,
and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.
For the one who is least among all of you
is the one who is the greatest.”
Then John said in reply,
“Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name
and we tried to prevent him
because he does not follow in our company.”
Jesus said to him,
“Do not prevent him, for whoever is not against you is for you.”
The post Becoming Great Through Receiving God and What He Gives, 26th Monday (II), September 30, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
27 min
September 29, 2024All Hands Fully On Deck, 26th Sunday (B), September 29, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
26th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B
September 29, 2024
Numbers 11:25-29, Ps 19, James 5:1-6, Mk 9:38-43.45.47-48

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
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The following text guided today’s homily:
Sometimes we can approach the things of the faith as if they’re complicated. Especially when we’re young, trying to discern why God made us and what is the special task he has before us, we can believe we have to work very hard to try to decipher what God is asking. When we hear the Word of God at Mass, for example, we can sometimes labor to determine its principal message and how to apply it to our life. But I believe that everything God tells us can be broken down as a two-fold summons: to be a devout disciple and an ardent apostle. The Lord wants to help us grow in our communion with him and to prepare us to help others grow in communion with him, too. He wants to strengthen us in personal holiness and equip us to continue his saving mission. This Sunday’s readings are no exception. In them, God is reminding us, first, that he wants all hands on deck, that he desires to incorporate everyone’s efforts into channeling his grace into the world; and, second, that he wants us fully on board, not partially, uniting ourselves wholly to him so that we might indeed be effective instruments to draw people to communion with him rather than drive them away. In these readings, he is pouring out wisdom on us not only how to live well the gift of our time at Columbia, but also to order our life toward its fundamental two-fold purpose. As we prayed in the Psalm, what the Lord teaches us is perfect, refreshes the soul, true and trustworthy, wise and just, pure and enduring. Let’s, therefore, let God’s word this afternoon to renew us as followers of Christ and as fishers of men.
In today’s Gospel, we encounter a big contrast and a huge surprise. The contrast is between those who are working for God and those who are not. As Jesus says, some are “for” Him; others are “against” Him. The surprise is that those who seem to be working for the Lord in fact might not be, and those who seem not to be laboring with and for Him in fact may be. Insofar as all of us are here at Mass because we desire to be working for the Lord, because all of us want to hear him one day say to us, “Well done, my good and faithful servant,” we need to examine what the Lord Jesus says today and see whether we are really on his side.
In tonight’s Liturgy of the Word, we see that sometimes those on the Lord’s team aren’t wearing the team uniforms and those who bear the team colors are often not actually helping the team win. In the first reading, Eldad and Medad were not present in the desert tent with the other 68 elders chosen to prophesy in the name of the Lord to the Israelites when the Spirit of God descended upon them. But the Lord filled them with his Spirit anyway and they began to proclaim God’s word throughout the camp. The still young and immature Joshua, who would become Moses’ successor, objected with panic, “Moses, stop them!” Let’s not miss what Joshua was doing. He wanted to have them stop preaching about the Lord! He wanted them not to cooperate with the Spirit! He preferred that the people not hear about God than about Eldad and Medad do it! We have to ask: who was working for the Lord here and who was not? Moses told Joshua there was no reason to be jealous. “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets!,” he exclaimed. And by all he meant all. God wants us all to proclaim him, to spread his truth, to invite all others into the circle of his incredible love. While it’s better, of course, when things are done together, when there’s communion and coordination, the most important thing is not who is proclaiming but that God is being proclaimed. Even those we think are not the ones chosen by the Lord to be his ambassadors might in fact be important emissaries and coworkers in the end. We shouldn’t be jealous when others begin working for the Lord, but joyous.
We learn the same lesson from the Gospel. Soon after the failure of the disciples to cast out a demon from a young boy (while the Lord was being transfigured before Peter, James and John on the mountain) and after the Lord had castigated their generation for its lack of faith, the disciples caught someone who wasn’t among their number casting out demons in Jesus’ name. St. John told Jesus that he and the other disciples had tried to stop him. They tried to stop him from casting out devils who were attacking, infesting or possessing other human beings. Who was working for the Lord in this Gospel scene and who was working for the evil one? It’s a particularly poignant question on the traditional feast day of Saint Michael the Archangel, whom we invoke to cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. The disciples were the ones who were supposed to be the Lord’s collaborators, but like Joshua 13 centuries before, they still hadn’t figured out God’s ways. Jesus had come to set prisoners free, to defeat Satan once and for all, but his still-immature disciples wanted to stop someone from doing exorcisms because, essentially, they were more concerned with what they thought were their exclusive prerogatives in God’s kingdom than in accomplishing his work. None of us should ever think we have a monopoly on the name, mission, message and power of Jesus. We should never find God’s action in others a threat, but rather something to marvel at and praise him for. We should of course want to help others to come to the fullness of the truth about God revealed to us by Christ in His Church, but we should rejoice whenever others, at whatever stage of revelation they’ve received, are corresponding to the gentle breeze of the Holy Spirit, trying to oppose the devil and do the Lord’s work. Today the whole Church repeats with Moses, “Would that all God’s people were prophets!”
In his gentle correction of one of the “sons of thunder,” Jesus gives St. John and all of us two important principles about how not to oppose the divine desire for all people to be prophets. The first thing he says is “There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name who can at the same time speak ill of me.” The Lord sometimes permits people to do things like exorcisms to help them learn how to speak well of him and to give them a prominent pulpit. The second thing he says is, “Whoever is not against us is for us.” We live in a society hyper-polarized by politics and a Church rent with so many tragic divisions going back to the fights among the apostles over who was the greatest, to the disputes in Corinth about which apostle they like the most, to the various schisms that have wounded Christ’s Body the Church over the centuries. Those divisions, the choice between being for and with Christ versus against him, begin in our hearts. There’s a temptation, even and perhaps especially among many serious believers, to focus so much on what distinguishes us from others that we lose what unites us. Focusing on such differences, we can pull ourselves, and push others, away. In our interactions, we often begin with what we criticize rather than what we admire. We fault others for what they don’t get right rather than focus on what they do. Despite the redwood forests impeding our vision, we obsess about the specks in others’ eyes. We see this tendency in the Gospel with many of the Pharisees, literally the “separated ones,” who were constantly distinguishing themselves from others so that they really lost the capacity to unite. Like one of their number in Jesus’ parable about prayer, they proudly and condescendingly gave thanks that they were not like all the rest, who were guilty of various types of notorious sins. Jesus wants us to recognize and prioritize in others those parts that are united with him. He wants us not only not to stop them, but to encourage and assist them. He tells us today that anyone who gives us a cup of water to drink because we belong to him is ultimately cooperating with grace, is corresponding to the work and life of the kingdom, and is, in short, somehow with and for him and therefore with and for us. It’s important for us to grasp this point. At a time in which some of our leading national personalities, in politics, in social media, and sometimes in the Church, are constantly trying to divide and conquer people, Christ wants us as his disciples to be signs and agents of communion. On a campus in which some try to label and cancel those with whom they disagree, the Prince of Peace wants us to be peacemakers and therefore true children of God. At a time in which so many are lost, the Good Shepherd wants us, like him, to gather rather than scatter his flock.
Even though God wants all to be prophets and to recognize that those who are not against him are for him, it’s important for us not to miss the fact that not all God’s people are in fact prophets. Jesus says quite strongly that there are those who are “against” Him, those who not only do not work for and with him, but actively oppose him. We see many of these adversaries in the Gospels: Satan in the desert; various of the Scribes and Pharisees during Jesus’ public ministry; Herod the Great at Jesus’ birth; Herod Antipas and Pontius Pilate at Jesus’ death; even, for a very short time, St. Peter, whom Christ called Satan and told to get behind him when he rejected the possibility that the Lord would suffer. Those, however, were not the ones Jesus specified in this episode as those who were “against” him. He referred, rather, to those who give scandal. Those who are against Jesus are the false prophets, who teach others, especially the young, not about how to know, love and serve the Lord but rather how to sin. Such is Jesus’ love for his children that he passionately warns everyone who harms through scandal those still being formed in the faith to know what punishment they should expect: “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and thrown into the sea.” They would be better off drowning in the ocean, he suggests, than having to answer to him face-to-face. The word “scandal” in the Greek original means two things: something that causes another to fall and something that is an obstacle to someone’s doing good. Applied to the matters of faith, scandal is something that either causes another to sin against God or that prevents the access of another to the kingdom of God. We can easily call to mind those whose deeds lead others astray. We can think of bishops and priests who haven’t walked the walk, as we witnessed in the terrible scandals of sexual abuse and the failure of those in positions of authority to eradicate them. We can think of celebrities from the world of music, movies and sports whose example draws the young into drugs, into using others in relationships, or into the worship of status. We can call to mind educators who teach young people in public schools confusing ideas about what it means to be a boy or a girl or who promote sinful sexual activities, abortion and other practices totally contrary to what God wants. We can think of politicians who, rather than trying to unite and serve all, demagogically try to turn some groups against others in order to score political points or solicit votes by appealing to baser interests or fears. St. James today in the second reading describes the scandal of wealthy Christians who were living in luxury and splendor while so many were going without, who were withholding wages from workers, and who were basically living in a selfish way rather than loving their neighbor as Christ had loved them; this is a pattern that repeats itself among some Christians in every age, who rather than being a steward of God’s blessings, rather than using what they’ve received to help others and build up Christ’s kingdom, were using it fundamentally for themselves while so many all around them are in need. We can likewise think about Catholic parents who don’t pray, who don’t go to Mass, who don’t live by the commandments who lead their children not to follow Christ but imitate their own bad behavior. We can also call to mind practicing Catholics who, rather than lifting those around them up, become bad leaven, whose pessimism, foul language, worldliness, pride, disobedience, drug and alcohol dependence and other bad habits lower the standards of those around them, make it easier for them to sin and harder for them to be virtuous. If it were possible to buy stock in a millstone business, now would be the time to buy big. But Jesus leaves us the unforgettable image of a huge millstone not principally to threaten us but to call to conversion. With similarly striking metaphors of plucking out eyes and chopping off hands and feet, he is urging us to be brutal in cutting out of our life not only what leads us to sin but what leads others to sin. He is summoning us urgently to eradicate from our life what hinders our being faithful disciples or effective apostles. And sometimes it’s precisely the fear of scandalizing others that can get us finally to cut sin out of our own life.
In my priestly life, including here on campus, I’ve had many conversations, for example, with those who are involved in sexual sins with others. Sometimes they don’t really have a horror for what a mortal sin is when it comes to their own relationship with God. They don’t realize that their sins, like every sin, led to Jesus’ crucifixion on Calvary. They don’t have much of a desire to stop sinning, because, at least at this point in their life, they like the sins they’re committing more than they love the Lord. But then I ask them, gently but with fatherly firmness, “Do you actually care for your girlfriend?” When they reply, “Yes,” then I ask, “Then how could you be so cavalier in leading her into sin? Do you grasp that in sinning together, you are essentially murdering her soul for your pleasure? Rather than protecting her, you’re essentially handing her soul over to the devil. Rather than being willing to sacrifice your life for her, you’re sacrificing her for your gratification. How is that consistent with the care and love you say you have for her?” I’ve witnessed some dramatic conversions when people in such situations have begun to grasp that leading people into sin is contrary to the type of person they want to be, and, once they awaken to what sin could do to the soul of someone they care about, they begin to take more seriously what sin does to their own soul and begin to get the courage metaphorically to pluck out eyes, or chop off hands or feet, to eliminate the sins that harm themselves and others and avoid the near occasions of sin. In the midst of a culture in which we’re often hypercritical of others and soft on ourselves, Jesus wants to help us to do the opposite, receiving his mercy and strength to become truly holy disciples so that we might be his powerful prophets in the midst of the world he came to redeem.
It’s key for us to grasp that Jesus is calling us to do far more than just excise metastatic moral cancers. He wants us to be prophets, those who announce his words and encourage people to imitate and follow him. He wants us, by our words and actions, to inspire others to live off every word that comes from his mouth, to treat his law — as we pray in today’s psalm — as perfect, trustworthy, wise, refreshing, pure, and just. He wants us to show what’s really important in life, to encourage others to pray, to love the Mass, to be grateful for confession, to learn our faith better, to sacrifice ourselves to care for the poor and needy, to use appropriate language, to be honest, to see the good in others, to forgive and give people second chances, to be faithful to the Lord in everything, to strive to become saints, and to love God with all their mind, heart, soul and strength. Rather than being fitted for millstones fit for drowning by dragging others into the depths of sin, he wants us to become through virtuous behavior like hot air balloons helping everyone to rise up to God. He wants to help us to be with and for him, so that we can be his instruments to help others enter into far deeper communion too. He wants us all to be true and holy prophets in action. The best way to learn to do so is from the Master himself. At Jesus’ time there was a lot of hypocrisy. He pointed to it when he said that his contemporaries should listen to the teachings of the scribes and Pharisees who sit on Moses’ seat, but not follow their example, because their example was a clear violation of the words of God they spoke. Jesus, on the other hand, was integrity incarnate. He never merely said, “Do what I say,” but always, “Follow me.” And he set his goal, his eyes, on always doing the will of the Father who sent him, of leading others on the way of sanctity, which is the way of the Cross, all the way to heaven. In order to be the type of true prophet that God wants us to be, we, too, need not merely to mouth the words of the faith, but to be able to say to others, especially those who might look to us, “Follow me!,” by living not for worldly goals and ambitions but progressing resolutely on the clear path set out by Jesus and the Church he founded. We need to toss from our lives whatever is not fitting for that journey, so that others, in following our footsteps, may come to God. We begin every Mass by calling to mind all those parts of us that are not yet in communion with God, that we need to pluck out or chop off. We ask the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Michael and all the angels and saints to pray for not just for ourselves but for all those whom God wants to be with us, that he might have mercy on us, help us to eliminate those actions and habits from our life, and grow to become truly like him. That’s the preparation we need in order to receive on good and fruitful soil the seeds of the Word of God that are implanted in the readings from Sacred Scripture. That’s the way we become reading to enter into a Holy Communion with Jesus, present for and before us in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist. That’s the way we will be transformed to become God’s instruments to bring others to full communion with him and us.
“Would that all God’s people were prophets!” The Lord would not be calling us to be his prophets in word and deed unless he were planning to give us all the help we need to live up to that vocation and mission. He gives us that help today. After having heard him in Sacred Scripture, he commissions us to be his living echoes in the world. Through worthily receiving His body and blood inside us, we become one with him and with others, the source of the spirituality that reinforces that those who are not against us are with us. Through the intercession of St. Michael, we ask the Lord Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, to heal our wounded eyes, or sinful hands, or scandalously wayward feet, so that every part of us — and the lives of those whom he has entrusted to us — may be “with Him” in this life and in the next. We ask him to send the Holy Spirit upon us, like he did among the seventy elders, so that we might all be true prophets on the Columbia campus, so that we can help everyone, as the university’s motto attests, see all things in the light of Christ (Ps 36:100). We ask him to send us not just seeking to give others a cup of water, but bring them with us here, to lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 NM 11:25-29
The LORD came down in the cloud and spoke to Moses.
Taking some of the spirit that was on Moses,
the LORD bestowed it on the seventy elders;
and as the spirit came to rest on them, they prophesied.
Now two men, one named Eldad and the other Medad,
were not in the gathering but had been left in the camp.
They too had been on the list, but had not gone out to the tent;
yet the spirit came to rest on them also,
and they prophesied in the camp.
So, when a young man quickly told Moses,
“Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp, ”
Joshua, son of Nun, who from his youth had been Moses’ aide, said,
“Moses, my lord, stop them.”
But Moses answered him,
“Are you jealous for my sake?
Would that all the people of the LORD were prophets!
Would that the LORD might bestow his spirit on them all!”
Responsorial Psalm PS 19:8, 10, 12-13, 14
R. (9a) The precepts of the Lord give joy to the heart.
The law of the LORD is perfect,
refreshing the soul;
the decree of the LORD is trustworthy,
giving wisdom to the simple.
R. The precepts of the Lord give joy to the heart.
The fear of the LORD is pure,
enduring forever;
the ordinances of the LORD are true,
all of them just.
R. The precepts of the Lord give joy to the heart.
Though your servant is careful of them,
very diligent in keeping them,
yet who can detect failings?
Cleanse me from my unknown faults!
R. The precepts of the Lord give joy to the heart.
From wanton sin especially, restrain your servant;
let it not rule over me.
Then shall I be blameless and innocent
of serious sin.
R. The precepts of the Lord give joy to the heart.
Reading 2 JAS 5:1-6
Come now, you rich, weep and wail over your impending miseries.
Your wealth has rotted away, your clothes have become moth-eaten,
your gold and silver have corroded,
and that corrosion will be a testimony against you;
it will devour your flesh like a fire.
You have stored up treasure for the last days.
Behold, the wages you withheld from the workers
who harvested your fields are crying aloud;
and the cries of the harvesters
have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.
You have lived on earth in luxury and pleasure;
you have fattened your hearts for the day of slaughter.
You have condemned;
you have murdered the righteous one;
he offers you no resistance.
Alleluia CF. JN 17:17B, 17A
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Your word, O Lord, is truth;
consecrate us in the truth.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel MK 9:38-43, 45, 47-48
At that time, John said to Jesus,
“Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in your name,
and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us.”
Jesus replied, “Do not prevent him.
There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name
who can at the same time speak ill of me.
For whoever is not against us is for us.
Anyone who gives you a cup of water to drink
because you belong to Christ,
amen, I say to you, will surely not lose his reward.
“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin,
it would be better for him if a great millstone
were put around his neck
and he were thrown into the sea.
If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.
It is better for you to enter into life maimed
than with two hands to go into Gehenna,
into the unquenchable fire.
And if your foot causes you to sin, cut if off.
It is better for you to enter into life crippled
than with two feet to be thrown into Gehenna.
And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out.
Better for you to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye
than with two eyes to be thrown into Gehenna,
where ‘their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.’”

The post All Hands Fully On Deck, 26th Sunday (B), September 29, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
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About Catholic Preaching

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