Catholic Preaching

Catholic Preaching

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Catholic Preaching episodes

  • Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, September 21, 2024

    Fr. Roger J. Landry

    Conversations with Consequences Podcast
    Homily for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, B, Vigil
    September 21, 2024

     

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

    https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.21.24_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. It’s one of the saddest dialogues in the Gospel. Repeating what we heard in last week’s Gospel, Jesus tells the apostles, “The Son of Man is to be handed over to men and they will kill him, and three days after his death the Son of Man will rise.” Rather than consoling him, they start arguing about which one of them is the greatest. Whenever Jesus spoke about his upcoming crucifixion, it always seemed to bring out the worst in them. We saw last week that when Jesus told them about it for the first time, St. Peter took him aside and tried to rebuke him. On a third occasion, James’ and John’s mother approached and immediately asked Jesus to appoint her two sons to the chief positions in his Messianic reign. If there were ever any greater illustration of the evil of what Saint James will call in this Sunday’s second reading “selfish ambition,” this is it. To get a sense of the ugliness of the apostles’ egocentric jockeying for position, imagine that your father came to you and told you that the doctor had just given him two weeks to live and, instead of consoling him, instead of even caring about him, you immediately shifted your attention to who would get the house or the car, or to ask him before it would be too late to help you get a promotion at work. That’s what was happening in these scenes. It’s sad, ridiculous and rather disgusting.
    • But Jesus never tried to eliminate his followers’ ambition, but to purify it and direct it toward true greatness. He told them the path, which would be his path, the path of cruciform love: “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.” To be great we must excel in loving service. And to illustrate exactly what he was describing, lest we interpret it according to our comforts, he took a child and said, “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.” An infant is someone who cannot choose to reward us, with whom we cannot engage in a quid pro quo. A little child is not even able to thank us. While it’s true that whenever we love, we receive more than we give and that those who love children receive so many blessings in return, Jesus’ point is that we need to love those who cannot return the favor. That’s the type of service we’re called to give. That’s the kind of ambition to which we’re supposed to aspire.
    • Sometimes in the Church people are trained to regard all ambition and aspirations to greatness almost as sinful violations of humility, as if every ambition is what Saint James calls “selfish ambition.” But there’s a huge difference between a passion for self-aggrandizement, an ego-indulging hunger for riches, honor and power, or a desire not just to be the best but to be acknowledged as the best, and a holy zeal for the things of God and his kingdom. Saint Paul told us in his first Letter to the Corinthians, “Strive eagerly for the greatest spiritual gifts,” and said that they were not things like prophetic gifts, the ability to move mountains, heroic feats of enduring suffering, but faith, hope and especially a charity that is patient, kind, not arrogant or rude. We think about how ambition worked in the life of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits. Prior to the Battle of Pamplona, where he had his leg shattered by a cannon ball, he vainly sought worldly honor on the battlefield and in the courts of royals. After convalescing for many months, studying the life of Christ and reading the lives of saints, he was filled with a sacred ambition and asked, “Why can’t I do what” what Saint Dominic and Saint Francis have done?
    • In the Gospels, Jesus spoke several times about true greatness and described the characteristics of Christian greatness. Let’s examine five things he wants us to become truly great in:
    • First, Jesus wants us to be great in faith. He praised the Syro-Phoenician mother and the Roman Centurion for their great faith and longed that all in Israel would emulate it.
    • Second, Jesus wants us to be great in humility. In response to the disciples’ question, “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven?,” Jesus called a child over and said, “Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.” To be great in humility is not contradictory, just paradoxical. Just like a child is totally dependent on his or her parents, so Jesus wants us to become great in our filial dependence on all God wants to give. The temptation is for us to think we don’t need God, that we’re self-sufficient. The chief sin of the prodigal son was to treat the Father as superfluous, basically as if he were already dead, to get the inheritance now, forgetting that a far more important treasure than half the father’s wealth was the relationship with the Father. Jesus indicates for us that the path to greatness is to become great in recognizing our need for, and receiving with gratitude, all God wants to give.
    • Third, Jesus wants us to be ambitious in our total imitation of his self-sacrificial love. “Whoever would be first among you must be the servant of all,” he tells us. “For the Son of Man also came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Jesus wants us to receive his grace to grow in the desire to give our life to ransom others from slavery and death.
    • Fourth, Jesus wants us to be ambitious to be saints. “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect,” Jesus said, echoing the prophets’ call for us to be holy as the Lord, our God, is holy, to be merciful as our Father is merciful, so that we might fully become the image and likeness of the God who created us.
    • Fifth, Jesus wants us to be great in living by his truths and passing them on to others. “Whoever keeps these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called great in the Kingdom of heaven,” he tells us in the Sermon on the Mount. He wants us to excel as missionaries, sharing the faith by our example and by our words. We think of great missionaries like Saint Paul and Saint Francis Xavier, the North American Martyrs, and others. We think about religious sisters who taught so selflessly generations of Catholic school students instilling within them the knowledge and love of God. We think about so many lay catechists who patiently pass on the faith to children, teens, and adults. We think about parents, grandparents and godparents, who make it their priority to pass on the faith. We think about truly apostolic friends who seek to share with those they care about the faith they care about the most.
    • We can ask whether we have the ambition truly to become great in faith rather than remain mediocre, to become great in humility rather than thinking ourselves too great on our own or too small despite God’s abundant grace, to become great in self-sacrificial love or average, to become great in holiness rather than just remain a good person, to be great in passing on our love for Jesus rather than keeping this treasure to ourselves.
    • The reality is that, just like to the apostles at the beginning of this Sunday’s Gospel passage, Jesus has told us over and again that he will be betrayed, mocked, tortured, and ignominiously crucified and on the third day raised. In anticipation of what he would endure, how ugly it was for them to elbow each other for worldly advancement, ignoring the reality and meaning of his passion, death and resurrection. I would argue, knowing what Jesus has endured for us and our salvation, that it much uglier for us now to remain only at the level of worldly desires. The Son of God became man not so that we might ambitiously seek the things of this world while just doing the minimum of coming to Mass, supporting the Church and not committing mortal sins. Please. He died and rose so that we might live new lives, in the world but not of it, seeking first the kingdom of God and God’s holiness, recognizing that everything else of true value would be given us besides.
    • The great way we recalibrate our ambitions is to live a truly Eucharist life, something we cannot consider enough during the ongoing Eucharistic Revival of the Church in the United States. In the Holy Eucharist, Jesus goes beyond what he did on Calvary. He humbles himself so much as to become our very spiritual nourishment, seeking to transform us on the inside so that with him we may give our body and blood, our sweat and tears, all we are and have out of love for God the Father and for others. When we seek what Jesus gives and teaches us in the Eucharist, when we receive him as he deserves and desires to be received, God can make us great. Saint John Vianney once lamented that if his parishioners received Holy Communion more often and more deeply, they would become saints. The Eucharist is where we learn to receive Jesus with love and in receiving him to recognize and receive him in children and everyone else he sends us. This Sacrament of Love teaches us how to love. And so, as we prepare for Sunday Mass, and prepare to receive the fruits of Jesus’ betrayal, suffering, death and resurrection, let us ask the Lord for the grace to be filled with a desire for what really matters and for all the help he knows we need to act on that holy ambition. Praised be Jesus Christ!

      •  

      The Gospel reading on which the homily was based was: 

      Gospel
      Mk 9:30-37
      Jesus and his disciples left from there and began a journey through Galilee,
      but he did not wish anyone to know about it.
      He was teaching his disciples and telling them,
      “The Son of Man is to be handed over to men
      and they will kill him,
      and three days after his death the Son of Man will rise.”
      But they did not understand the saying,
      and they were afraid to question him.

      They came to Capernaum and, once inside the house,

      he began to ask them,
      “What were you arguing about on the way?”
      But they remained silent.
      They had been discussing among themselves on the way
      who was the greatest.
      Then he sat down, called the Twelve, and said to them,
      “If anyone wishes to be first,
      he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.”
      Taking a child, he placed it in their midst,
      and putting his arms around it, he said to them,
      “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me;
      and whoever receives me,
      receives not me but the One who sent me.”

       

       

      The post Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, September 21, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

      10 min
    • The Proper Dispositions to Receive Jesus, 24th Monday (II), September 16, 2024

      Fr. Roger J. Landry

      Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
      Monday of the 24th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
      Memorial of SS. Cornelius and Cyprian
      22nd Anniversary of the death of the Venerable François Xavier Nguyen van Thuan
      September 16, 2024
      1 Cor 11:17-26.33, Ps 40, Lk 7:1-10

       

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

      https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.16.24_Homily_1.mp3

       

      The following text guided the homily: 

      • Today in the Gospel, we have a chance to focus on the dispositions with which we try to receive the Lord Jesus. We see of some religious leaders who approached Jesus without reverence, more or less as a favor granter. We also see the humility and reverence with which a pagan leader treats Jesus. It provides an opportunity for us to do an examination of conscience as to how we prepare to receive him especially in the Holy Eucharist, something that today’s first reading focuses on and someone whose death the Church remembers today can help us learn how to do better.
      • Let’s begin with the Gospel. The Roman centurion loved his slave and was desperate for help. There was no doctor who could help him, but he heard of Jesus the miracle worker. Even though he was a powerful military leader, he didn’t think he was worthy to approach Jesus himself, and so he sent the local Jewish leaders. They were not as humble as he. They approached Jesus and said, “He deserves to have you do this for him, for he loves our nation and he built the synagogue for us.” They were pretending as if the man merited a miracle and that Jesus was somehow obliged But a miracle is always a gift from God. Jesus, nevertheless, humbly went with them. While he was on his way, the Centurion humbly sent word that he didn’t think he was worthy to have Jesus visit his house, but asked simply that Jesus command from where he was the life-threatening illness of his servant to depart. He believed that even at a distance Jesus could command and that even sicknesses would obey, in a way similar to how he commanded soldiers. Jesus was amazed at the man’s faith. He turned to the crowd and said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” Not among the disciples, not among the apostles, not even, it seems, in his Mother had he found faith like that in his power to command at a distance. What an extraordinary witness of trust in the reach of God’s power and love! Jesus normally worked physical miracles as preludes to the greater miracle of faith he desired to give those healed, but in this case, Jesus didn’t need to meet the man to help him grow in faith because his faith was already remarkable.
      • Throughout this ongoing Eucharistic Revival and more, the Church wants to help us to grow to have the humility and faith of the Centurion as we prepare to receive the Lord. A few weeks ago I was asked to do a blessing of a new apartment here in New York City. Because I didn’t have a public Mass that day, I asked whether the person would want to have a Mass celebrated there and invite some friends. She eagerly accepted. When it came time for the prayer after the “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those called to the Supper of the Lamb,” the new apartment owner said with devotion, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, but only say the word and my [soul] shall be healed.” She told me later what an awesome privilege it was for her to receive Jesus literally under the roof of her apartment and, then, before I even had to bring it up, what an even more incredible gift it is to receive him under our palate. The question for us is whether we receive the Lord with worthy dispositions. Do we have awe? Do we have faith that Jesus can and wants to heal our soul like he healed the Centurion’s slave and make us truly worthy of him? Do we have the same humility before the “res mirabilis” (the awesome reality) of the Eucharist, or do we somehow proudly think we deserve Him and God’s other gifts?
      • In today’s first reading, St. Paul calls the Corinthians to the carpet for, among other things, their lack of humility, reverence and faith for Jesus in the Eucharist and for the miracle he was wishing to accomplish coming under their collective roofs. The apostle says something astonishing: “Your meetings,” meaning their Eucharistic assemblies on Sundays, “are doing more harm than good.” The Sunday was structured with a Mass and then an agape meal that they would share as a family. But rather than sharing, rather than loving, Paul says, “when you meet as a Church there are divisions among you.” Therefore, he said, “When you meet in one place, then, it is not to eat the Lord’s Supper,” because, referring to the post-Mass reception, “in eating, each one goes ahead with his own supper, and one goes hungry while another gets drunk.” They were becoming selfish instead of selfless, focused on their own desires rather than becoming united. Having received the Lord’s love at Mass, they were refusing that love to others. St. Paul says they were showing “contempt for the Church of God and mak[ing] those who have nothing feel ashamed.” After describing that Jesus gave his Body and Blood for us in the Lord’s Supper, and that we celebrate it “in remembrance of him,” they weren’t remembering him at all, because their Masses were dividing rather than uniting, leading to factions rather than genuine agape.
      • That’s why St. Paul went on to say, in a passage unfortunately and embarrassingly excised from today’s reading, that they needed to examine themselves to make sure they were not eating and drinking condemnation on themselves in receiving the Lord unworthily, without charity, unhealed by the Lord’s saving word. “Therefore,” he wrote, “whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord. A person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are ill and infirm, and a considerable number are dying.” To receive the Lord under our roof worthily is to do so apart from sin, full of love for God and others. St. Paul was saying we need to examine our consciences and do so in particular with regard to sins against unity. If we, like the Corinthians, come to Mass not wanting unity with our brothers and sisters, not loving them and receiving them as we would Christ, we would be eating and drinking condemnation rather than salvation. The “Bread of Life,” as St. Thomas Aquinas wrote in his Lauda Sion Salvatorem, would become for us the “bread of death.” We need to “discern the body,” and this means not only humbly to reverence Christ’s Body in the Eucharist, but at the same time how Christ wants to make believers through communion with Him one Body, one Spirit in him. St. Thomas wrote that the res tantum (ultimate result) of the Sacrament of the Eucharist is not the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into Jesus’ Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, but the transformation of us, by the power of the same Holy Spirit through Holy Communion, into one Body, one Spirit. If we come to Mass not seeking loving communion with each other, if we’re not saying “Amen!” to the reality of Christ’s real presence and to what he wants to do in us, then we’re not receiving worthily. That’s why Jesus, for example, says that if we come to the altar and recognize that our brother has something against us, that we are first to go reconcile and then to come, because if we harboring the lack of reconciliation, we’re not really open to what Jesus wants to do. And if he can heal a servant at a distance of a life-threatening illness, then he can heal us, too, of the grudges we may hold. This is the means by which Jesus’ prayer during the Last Supper — that we may be one as the Persons of the Blessed Trinity are one — can come to fruition. This is the means by which, through Holy Communion, we may be strengthened within to love others as he has loved us. To celebrate Mass truly in “remembrance” of the Lord, making him and his love present, and entering worthily into holy communion with Him and his love, are all key parts of the Eucharistic Revival.
      • Today the Church celebrates the memorial of Saints Cornelius and Cyprian, two stalwart leaders of the early Church — one a pope, the other bishop of Carthage — martyred during the persecution of Valerian in 258. They are great witnesses to Church unity and to the strength each received from Jesus in the Holy Eucharist and imparted to others. Since early in my priesthood, however, I have always celebrated on this day a Mass of the Dead, in honor of the Venerable Cardinal François Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, who died on this day in 2002. I was privileged to have him call me a friend from the time I spent with him in Rome during his years as the Vice-President and then President of the Council for Justice and Peace in the Vatican (which has now been merged into the Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development).
      • Soon after he was appointed co-adjutor Archbishop of Saigon in 1975, he was arrested and whisked away by the communists to prison, where he remained for 13 years, 9 in solitary confinement. It was an excruciating time for him, especially at the beginning, when he was kept all alone in difficult conditions often with no light and almost no human contact. He wondered why the Lord would have permitted him to be a bishop and then kept in prison far away from his people. He wondered what good his life was, as he felt useless in his incarceration. But the Lord then helped him to ponder the Gospel scene of the young boy with five loaves and two fish and how, placed into Jesus’ hands, it became a vast feast that fed a great multitude. He saw then that he might not be able to do much in prison, but he would offer whatever bread, whatever fish, he would be able to muster on a given day. He would provide for the Lord and his Church, like the women in the Gospel (Lk 8:1-4), out of the resources he still had. He still had faith, hope, love, an education and at least bursts of lucidity. So he began to pray with much greater hope for his people; if he couldn’t draw near them physically from prison, he would at least draw near them in the Lord. With the help of a young Catholic boy named Quang who would pass by his prison cell, he would scribble a spiritual thought or two a day on old rip-off daily calendars and have Quang bring them to his parents, who would copy them into a notebook and then eventually publish them all as “The Road to Hope,” a series of aphorisms that buoyed the entire Vietnamese Church under brutal persecution. And he would draw near to his guards, seeking to befriend them, to teach them foreign languages, to share with them something of the joy and hope that would flow from his relationship with Jesus. Over the course of time, his human warmth and love was converting so many of his communist guards that the communists stopped giving him new ones lest he convert them, too.
      • What I want to focus on, however, is what he teaches us about the dispositions we should have toward Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, dispositions like the Centurion and St. Paul and not like many in Corinth. I think he is one of the greatest Eucharistic witnesses of modern times and had a profound impact on me as a seminarian and young priest. His priestly vocation was discovered as a young boy participating in the various activities of the Eucharistic Crusade movement in his hometown of Hue, Vietnam. Later, as a seminarian, priest, seminary professor, rector and bishop, his Eucharistic faith and piety grew. But it was during his years of imprisonment that he gave an extraordinary testimony to the power of the Mass, the reality of the Lord’s presence, and the gift of Eucharistic adoration. When he was arrested in 1975, one of his greatest concerns was, “Will I be able to celebrate the Eucharist?” The day after his arrest, his captors permitted him to write his family for necessities. He asked for the obvious, like clothes and toiletries, but then added, “Please send me a little wine as medicine for my stomachache,” confident that they would understand the code: the raw materials for the celebration of Mass, which he needed to fill his greatest hunger. When they sent the materials, they put wine in a medicine bottle marked “Medicine for Stomachaches.” They also sent hosts hidden in a flashlight. Each day during his years of isolation, around 3 pm when Jesus died on the Cross, he would celebrate Mass from memory, putting three drops of wine and a drop of water on the palm of his hand together with some crumbs of the hosts. His hand became an altar. His cell became a cathedral. “These were the most beautiful Masses of my life!,” he said to me with great devotion each time he would recount the story. It was during those Masses that he joined his sufferings to Christ’s on Calvary. He would extend his hands in the form of the Cross so as better to become one with the Crucified Jesus. As he lapped up the precious blood consecrated in his hand, he would ask for the grace with Jesus to drink the bitter chalice and to unite himself to Christ’s shedding of blood. When he was moved to a reeducation camp, he was in a crowded room with 50 other prisoners. He would wait until lights were extinguished at 9:30 pm and then would bow over his bed to celebrate Mass. Then he would distribute tiny pieces of the hosts to Catholics present under a mosquito net. He would also wrap some tiny consecrated particles in aluminum from cigarette packs to preserve the Blessed Sacrament, so that he and the other prisoners could have the Lord with them always and adore him. One tiny cigarette-paper tabernacle he would keep in his shirt pocket. Others he would pass to faithful Catholic prisoners, who, during indoctrination sessions, would surreptitiously distribute them to Catholics in other groups. At night, in each of the locations, prisoners would take turns for adoration.
      • Hearing these incredible stories as a seminarian preparing for priestly ordination was life-changing. Praying about his celebrating Mass on the altar of his hand in the total darkness of his isolation hut or among the crowded prisoners taught me indelibly invaluable lessons about how to celebrate Mass well. I never looked at even the tiniest particles of the Host the same way and grew in appreciation for the gift and priority of Eucharistic adoration. In the book of aphorisms he was able to publish with the help of Quang and his parents, called, The Road to Hope: A Gospel From Prison, he unsurprisingly include many spiritual maxims about the Eucharistic Jesus, nourished by his experience in prison, which can help us prepare well to receive Jesus under our roof and never take him for granted.
        • “If you appreciate the value of the Eucharistic Celebration, you will participate in it no matter how far away or difficult it is. The greater the sacrifice involved, the more evident is your love for God.” His sacrifice was enormous, as was his love.
        •  “The whole of the Lord’s life was directed toward Calvary. The whole of our life should be oriented toward the Eucharistic celebration.” His clearly was.
        • “If you are all alone in some remote place or in the darkness of a prison, turn your mind toward the altars of the world where our Lord Jesus Christ is offering his sacrifice. Unite yourself to the Eucharistic sacrifice. Then your heart will be filled to overflowing with consolation and courage.” That was the autobiographical underpinning of his heroism.
        • “If you have lost everything but still have the Blessed Sacrament, you actually still have everything, because you have the Lord of heaven present here on earth.” That’s what enabled him to live his 13 years of imprisonment with evangelical joy.
        • “The Eucharist shapes Christians.” It obviously formed his whole life and apostolate.
        • “As the drop of water put into the chalice mingles with the wine, so your life should become one with Christ’s.” His life, like the water and wine on his palm, was commingled with Christ’s as he sought to give himself to others together with the Eucharistic High Priest.
        • Finally: “Holy people are those who continue to live the Eucharistic celebration throughout the day.” The root of Cardinal Van Thuan’s palpable sanctity was that he made his whole life a Mass.
        • The 22nd anniversary of his death gives us all an opportunity to ponder the Eucharistic message of his life and to learn from him how to find in the Holy Eucharist the Road to Hope no matter how forlorn one’s earthly circumstances. That is the way to ensure that our assemblies always do far more good than harm, as we eat the Lord’s supper, consuming Christ’s body given for us and imbibing the new covenant in his blood in remembrance of him. We’re not worthy to receive this gift under our roof, but Christ wishes to make us worthy. May we seek to receive him today with the same love with which Cardinal Van Thuan received him, and may our communion with Jesus shape our whole life, and in particular, they way we reverence and treat eat other after Mass.

          •  

          The readings for today’s Mass were:

          Reading 1 1 COR 11:17-26, 33
          Brothers and sisters:
          In giving this instruction, I do not praise the fact
          that your meetings are doing more harm than good.
          First of all, I hear that when you meet as a Church
          there are divisions among you,
          and to a degree I believe it;
          there have to be factions among you
          in order that also those who are approved among you
          may become known.
          When you meet in one place, then,
          it is not to eat the Lord’s supper,
          for in eating, each one goes ahead with his own supper,
          and one goes hungry while another gets drunk.
          Do you not have houses in which you can eat and drink?
          Or do you show contempt for the Church of God
          and make those who have nothing feel ashamed?
          What can I say to you? Shall I praise you?
          In this matter I do not praise you.
          For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you,
          that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over,
          took bread and, after he had given thanks,
          broke it and said, “This is my Body that is for you.
          Do this in remembrance of me.”
          In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying,
          “This cup is the new covenant in my Blood.
          Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
          For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup,
          you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.
          Therefore, my brothers and sisters,
          when you come together to eat, wait for one another.
          Responsorial Psalm PS 40:7-8A, 8B-9, 10, 17
          R. (1 Cor 11:26b) Proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes again.
          Sacrifice or oblation you wished not,
          but ears open to obedience you gave me.
          Burnt offerings or sin offerings you sought not;
          then said I, “Behold I come.”
          R. Proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes again.
          “In the written scroll it is prescribed for me,
          To do your will, O my God, is my delight,
          and your law is within my heart!”
          R. Proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes again.
          I announced your justice in the vast assembly;
          I did not restrain my lips, as you, O LORD, know.
          R. Proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes again.
          May all who seek you
          exult and be glad in you
          And may those who love your salvation
          say ever, “The LORD be glorified.”
          R. Proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes again.
          Alleluia JN 3:16
          R. Alleluia, alleluia.
          God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son,
          so that everyone who believes in him might have eternal life.
          R. Alleluia, alleluia.

          Gospel LK 7:1-10

          When Jesus had finished all his words to the people,

          he entered Capernaum.
          A centurion there had a slave who was ill and about to die,
          and he was valuable to him.
          When he heard about Jesus, he sent elders of the Jews to him,
          asking him to come and save the life of his slave.
          They approached Jesus and strongly urged him to come, saying,
          “He deserves to have you do this for him,
          for he loves our nation and he built the synagogue for us.”
          And Jesus went with them,
          but when he was only a short distance from the house,
          the centurion sent friends to tell him,
          “Lord, do not trouble yourself,
          for I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof.
          Therefore, I did not consider myself worthy to come to you;
          but say the word and let my servant be healed.
          For I too am a person subject to authority,
          with soldiers subject to me.
          And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes;
          and to another, ‘Come here,’ and he comes;
          and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
          When Jesus heard this he was amazed at him
          and, turning, said to the crowd following him,
          “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”
          When the messengers returned to the house,
          they found the slave in good health.

          The post The Proper Dispositions to Receive Jesus, 24th Monday (II), September 16, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

          23 min
        • Who Do We Say Jesus Is?, 24th Sunday (B), September 15, 2024

          Fr. Roger J. Landry

          Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
          Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
          September 15, 2024
          Is 50:5-9, Ps 116, James 2:14-18, Mk 8:27-35

           

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

          https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.15.24_CCM_Homily_1.mp3

           

          The following text guided the homily: 

          • Today in the Gospel Jesus asks his closest followers two related questions that are among the most important for students and any of us to get right. The first question is, “Who do people say that I am?” The apostles were eager to respond to this poll of what other people were thinking and saying. They informed Jesus that the multitudes were numbering him among the greatest Jewish heroes of all time, like the prophets Elijah and Jeremiah, and, more recently, John the Baptist. Some, of course, like many of the Scribes and Pharisees, were of a different opinion. They thought he was a blasphemer, a drunkard, a friend of sinners and even diabolical, working miracles by the power of the prince of demons. Others, like the Romans and their collaborators among the Sadducees and Herodians, thought Jesus was a dangerous man, perhaps a revolutionary. But none of these answers was the right one. Truth is not determined by polls, or by what people believe. Jesus was far greater than Elijah, Jeremiah and John the Baptist. He was greater than Abraham, Moses, David and Solomon. And it wasn’t enough for him to have scores of “fans” and “admirers,” because he hadn’t come into the world to be a celebrity followed by millions but as a savior, and the first step in that salvation was for people to relate to him as he truly was.
          • Similarly in our day, there remains great confusion about who Jesus is. Who do people say that Jesus is today? Most everyone knows about him. About 2.5 of the 8 billion people alive profess to be his followers. Muslims think he was just a prophet, like the other famous prophets in Jewish history. Many of the leading Jews, then and now, deem him, their fellow Jew, a heretic, blasphemer and leader of a schismatic sect. Most of the human race considers him a famous moral teacher, alongside Confucius, Buddha, Socrates, certain Hindu gurus, and various figures in own age like Ghandi, Martin Luther King and others. Various secularists, like the ancient Romans, thought he was a maverick rebel. Some regard him, out of dislike for his teaching, as a bad man, a loser, a judgmental misogynist, homophobe and transphobe, proto-Marxist, a pacifist, and rebel. As I mentioned last week, one Columbia professor in Contemporary Civilizations believes Jesus is a psychopath like Hitler or Lenin. Even among Christians, there are many who, rehearsing the Christological heresies of the first centuries, deny or underemphasize Jesus’ divinity or humanity leading to all types of issues at the level of faith and morals.
          • That’s why it’s never enough to remain at the level of what others say. It’s never enough for us to consult Wikipedia or ChatGPT. It’s never enough for us even to echo what the Catechism teaches, or the Doctors of the Church, Popes, Bishops, and saints have said, or what our parents, grandparents and godparents have taught us. All of that is helpful, but it’s not sufficient. Just like Jesus does in the Gospel with his first followers, so he wants to do with us: to pass from the informative, “Who do people say that I am?,” to the highly personal and consequential query, “Who do you say that I am?” We Christians are those who profess that Christ is more than just a holy and good man, more than an inspiring prophet who announces ethical, even divine, words and ways. We are the people who confess, with Peter and the Church built on him, who Jesus really is, who Jesus himself says he is. This is the faith that brings us together: Jesus is not merely the long-awaited Messiah come to set us free, but the Son of God, who not only announces the words of God, but is their Author. As C.S. Lewis made famous in his classic Mere Christianity, it’s really not sustainable that Jesus can remain just a great moral teacher, because he claimed to be the Son of God. This realization assisted in his own conversion from atheism to the Christian faith. Either Jesus is who he says he is, or he is a lunatic who crazily considered himself divine, or he is a diabolical liar who tried to pretend he was divine. Lewis writes, “You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can … kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” The great Oxford don concludes, “It seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.”
          • When Jesus asked his second question in the Gospel, however, all but one of the apostles seemed to have come up with a case of sudden onset laryngitis. Whereas everyone was willing to share the results of the survey as to how others were identifying Jesus, in response to the question as to who each of them thought Jesus was, all but one lacked the courage to say anything out loud. I’ve always been stunned that Nathaniel, a.k.a Barthlomew, didn’t speak up. In his first conversation with Jesus, after Jesus said he had seen him under the fig tree, he exclaimed, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God, you are the King of Israel” (Jn 1:49). The latter meant he was the Messiah, the son of David the King; the former meant far more than the Messiah. But this time he timidly kept his mouth shut. Simon Peter, however, put out into the deep. God the Father had led him to recognize that Jesus was indeed much more even than what the others were saying and had the guts to be the first to say it. “You are the Christ!,” he said. Christ, the Greek word for Messiah, communicated that Jesus was the long awaited one foretold by all the prophets. In St. Matthew’s version of the scene, the former tax collector recalls Peter’s also confessing Jesus, like Nathaniel, to be the very own Son of God. To make that admission was to bring into the foreground a whole series of expectations. The Messiah was to be the one who would bring back the Kingdom of David, who would kick out all foreign powers, who would return Israel to prominence. And as we see in other parts of the Gospel, Jesus’ closest followers were all ambitiously hoping to receive choice positions in Jesus’ messianic administration.
          • That’s why, as soon as Peter enunciated Jesus’ true identity, Jesus began to teach them what type of Messiah he would be, how he would inaugurate his kingdom, and how they were share in and announce it. It blew their mind — and not in a good way. Rather than uniting the Jews and defeating and expelling the Romans, rather than leading the twelve tribes to triumph, he would instead suffer greatly, be rejected by the chief priests, the scribes and the elders and be publicly executed. He would fulfill the prophecies of the Suffering Servant Songs in Isaiah, which we heard in the first reading, in which he would give his back to those who beat him, his cheeks to those who plucked his beard, his face to those who would buffet him and spit on him. Jesus told them all of this “openly,” St. Mark tells us, so that there would be confusion or misinterpretation, but that they would all know it clearly. To get a sense of their shock, it would be like someone who had just won a Presidential election in his victory speech saying that, rather than lead his supporters and the country to prosperity, power and peace as they hoped, he would instead be seized by members of his party in conspiracy with the opposing parties and various foreign powers, be humiliated, tortured, and finally hung from the most famous national monument in the capital.
          • But Peter, emboldened by his previous affirmation and obviously desiring not only to be the principal advisor of the Messiah but chief bodyguard, took Jesus aside and “began to rebuke him.” “God forbid anything like this should happen to you!,” he said, according to St. Matthew’s eyewitness account. He couldn’t fathom that a Messiah would be rejected and killed rather than conquer. It was totally incompatible with Jewish Messianic expectations for the long-awaited one to suffer in this way. But Jesus wanted to help him and all of the apostles recognize that, yes, he was the Messiah, but his kingdom and the liberation he was bringing were far different than what they were expecting. He tells Peter not, “Get away from me!” but, “Get behind me!” Jesus wasn’t ridding himself of Peter, but he was pointing out what Peter had been trying to do: lead the Lord rather than followthe Lord. To tell him to get behind him was to make him a disciple rather than a roadblock. Jesus also told him the reason why he was behaving like an obstacle: “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” Peter was seeing only with human eyes, from human political aspirations and personal ambitions, rather than with the eyes of faith, the eyes that God seeks to give us. Peter at first grasped what the crowds didn’t, that Jesus wasn’t just one of the prophets of old, but rather the Messiah. But Jesus was helping him to realize the type of Messiah he really is, rather than just Peter imagined he would be, so that Peter — and all the others — would be able to confess him in far greater depth.
          • So Jesus called them all together and said that not only would he suffer, but if we sought to remain with him, we must suffer, too. These are among the most challenging words in the Gospel and therefore among those we are most tempted to water down and ignore. “Whoever wishes to come after me,” he said, whoever wants to share in his kingdom and reign with him, “must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” As if that is not challenging enough, he adds: “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel, will save it.” To use the analogy given before, Jesus was saying that anyone who wanted to support him would have to say no to worldly goals, pick up his own noose, and follow him to the national monument to be hung alongside him. But as the Church pondered and celebrated yesterday on the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross, the cross Jesus is asking us to assume is not fundamentally an instrument of torture, pain and suffering but a sign and means of the love that can make even that much pain and suffering bearable. Instead of being principally an instrument of torture, humiliation and death, for Christ and the Christian, the cross is a weapon of holiness, a sign of victory over selfishness, sin and the death to which they lead.
          • Let’s get to the practical applications of this dramatic encounter Jesus had with the apostles in Caesarea Philippi and has with each of us today at Columbia.
          • The first lesson is we have to know our faith. In the context of so many who misidentify Jesus, we need to know that Jesus is not who most in the crowds today think he is. We need to know our faith well enough not to lose it in conversation with them, or in the classroom, or when someone with a religious studies doctorate pronounces the latest recycled heresy du jour. We likewise need to know our faith well enough to be able, like C.S. Lewis did at Oxford, and so many have done in other circumstances, patiently to show how such assertions don’t cohere, are inadequate to the facts, and more.
          • The second lesson is that we need to do more than know correctly who Jesus is and believe in him. We also need to have the courage, like St. Peter, to profess that faith publicly: to announce that Jesus is the long-awaited one, the eternal Son of God, savior, Lord, Good Shepherd, Good Samaritan, the Way, the Truth, the Resurrection and the Life, and the King of the Universe who has come to invite us into that eternal kingdom. It’s hard sometimes to go on the record. In the midst of a cancel culture in which those who want to eliminate others have intimidated them in general to live as cowards, to betray Jesus and his teachings and in the process betray what’s deepest about themselves, the Lord wants us to be the first, like Peter, to step up in his defense. Not to wait until someone else says it first, or until many say it, or until 50.1 percent of people say it. But in response to the grace of God who has helped us to see this most important truth in life, to say it so that others may come to know it and profess it, too. Jesus said in the Gospel, “Everyone who acknowledges me before others, I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father” (Mt 10:32). He wants us not just to believe in him, not just to be a secret disciple, but to acknowledge him! St. Paul wrote to the first Christians in Rome that it wasn’t enough just to believe in Jesus in our heart, but he said we need to “confess with [our] mouth that Jesus is Lord” (Rom 10:9). Jesus wants us, he’s counting on us, to do that here on campus. We know so many people who need Jesus just as much as we do, who are suffering without his light, who are doubling down on bad decisions, trying to seek solace, happiness and meaning down paths that will never lead there. They need the Divine Physician and are just waiting for us to make a persuasive referral. They know they need saving but they don’t know yet where and how and to Whom to turn. That’s one of the reasons why Jesus gave us the talents needed to get into Columbia, that’s why we are alive and here right now. But Jesus doesn’t want us just to say to him who we know he is, but to confess him to others, so that they might come to know him at the depth he out of love wants to be known.
          • The third application is to put our confession into action. Our faith in Christ, however, must be more than something we believe in our heart and say on our lips. It must be something we proclaim by the way we live. That’s why Jesus speaks to us about conforming our life to his, getting behind him rather than trying to lead him, thinking as he thinks rather than the crowds. Rather than affirming ourselves, Christ calls us to deny ourselves. Rather than fleeing from suffering, Christ tells us to seize the Cross and die out of love for God and others. Rather than doing our own thing, he tells us to follow him all the way. Rather than seeking to save our life by our own wits, he tells us that the only way to save it is to lose it in loving service of God and others, perhaps even to the point of death. That’s the type of life St. James points to in today’s second reading, when he distinguishes between living faith in Jesus and dead faith with no power to save. Our confession can’t remain, he implies, just interior or verbal. It must translate into our body language. The apostle underlines, “Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” If faith remains simply a thing of the head and doesn’t affect the heart, the hands, the feet, and our choices, then it is powerless. If faith is alive, then it produces works of faith, it overflows into deeds of love (see Gal 5:6; 1 Cor 13:2). That’s why St. James gets very practical, to help us to determine if our faith is alive, if our confession is consistent. “If a brother or sister,” he states, “is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” It’s not enough, he’s saying, that we be “concerned” for others, that we sympathize or even empathize with those in difficult situations. We must act on that concern and compassion by doing what we can to help those in need. To have living faith we need to do more than know and approve of Jesus’ statement, “Love one another as I have loved you,” but to put that Christ-like love into practice. There are people around us who do not have proper clothing, who lack daily food. There are many more people who are not “clothed in Christ” (Gal 3:27), who are malnourished and starving for the word of God. The question for us is: What are we trying to do about it? The same Lord who asks us, “Who do you say that I am?,” then tells us, “I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you gave me welcome, naked and you gave me clothing, ill and you gave me comfort, in prison and you visited me.” Our faith, if it is alive, must translate into the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. Every time we do, we are confessing that Jesus, the Messiah and Son of God, lives. Every time we don’t even try, we may be confessing that our faith is dying or dead. As Jesus says today, we must “lose” ourselves to gain life. We must die to ourselves and allow God to raise us from the dead. We must unselfishly give ourselves for others. This is Christianity. This is the Gospel.
          • So the question recurs. Jesus asks each of us: “Who do you say that I am?” Who do we say he is on Sunday? Who do we say he is on Friday and Saturday nights? Who do we say he is when we go to bed and wake up? Who do we say he is in the classroom, or the sports field, or at our internships? Who do we say he is with our friends? Who do we say he is on Instagram and social media? Who do we say he is when we meet him in the distressing disguise of the poor and needy? Who do we say he is when we’re underdoing temptations? Together with God the Father, Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to help us profess him, with integrity and consistency, at all times of our life, to make our whole life a response to his question. There have been times of course in each of our lives when we haven’t lived up to professing Jesus as he deserves, but tonight is a chance for us to renew our commitment to proclaim our faith in him full-time, with boldness, just like Peter and the other apostles did after Pentecost. Our cooperation with the grace of God tonight to commit to that is one way for us to know if our faith is truly alive.
          • Every Mass we’re given the opportunity to confess who Christ is. Here we profess that he has the words of eternal life as we listen to him speak to us in the Liturgy of the Word. Here we likewise have the awesome gift to be able to proclaim him in the Holy Eucharist. During this Eucharistic Revival, it’s important for us to grasp that our response to Jesus in the Eucharist manifests our reply to the question he poses in the Gospel. If we confess the Eucharistic Jesus to be the Messiah and Son of God, then we will seek to order our whole life to the fulfillment of the Last Supper, Calvary and the Empty Tomb, which is our Eucharistic communion with him. To live a Eucharistic life is to imitate Jesus’ outpouring on Calvary, to stop thinking as human beings do but as Jesus does, and to stop acting like all the rest, but to imitate Jesus, to follow Jesus, and to collaborate with him for the salvation of the world. When Jesus is lifted up at the consecration, when he’s shown as the Lamb of God, hear him tonight whispering to you, “Who do you say that I am?,” and respond interiorly in preparation for responding publicly, “You are the Christ! You are the Son of the Living God! You are my Savior! You are my Good Shepherd! You are my Way, my Truth, my Life!” Blessed indeed are those called to the Supper of the Lamb!

            •  

            The readings for today’s Mass were: 

            Reading 1 IS 50:5-9A
            The Lord GOD opens my ear that I may hear;
            and I have not rebelled,
            have not turned back.
            I gave my back to those who beat me,
            my cheeks to those who plucked my beard;
            my face I did not shield
            from buffets and spitting.The Lord GOD is my help,
            therefore I am not disgraced;
            I have set my face like flint,
            knowing that I shall not be put to shame.
            He is near who upholds my right;
            if anyone wishes to oppose me,
            let us appear together.
            Who disputes my right?
            Let that man confront me.
            See, the Lord GOD is my help;
            who will prove me wrong?
            Responsorial Psalm PS 116:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9
            R. (9) I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.
            or:
            R. Alleluia.
            I love the LORD because he has heard
            my voice in supplication,
            because he has inclined his ear to me
            the day I called.
            R. I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.
            or:
            R. Alleluia.
            The cords of death encompassed me;
            the snares of the netherworld seized upon me;
            I fell into distress and sorrow,
            and I called upon the name of the LORD,
            “O LORD, save my life!”
            R. I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.
            or:
            R. Alleluia.
            Gracious is the LORD and just;
            yes, our God is merciful.
            The LORD keeps the little ones;
            I was brought low, and he saved me.
            R. I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.
            or:
            R. Alleluia.
            For he has freed my soul from death,
            my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling.
            I shall walk before the Lord
            in the land of the living.
            R. I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.
            or:
            R. Alleluia.
            Reading 2 JAS 2:14-18
            What good is it, my brothers and sisters,
            if someone says he has faith but does not have works?
            Can that faith save him?
            If a brother or sister has nothing to wear
            and has no food for the day,
            and one of you says to them,
            “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well, ”
            but you do not give them the necessities of the body,
            what good is it?
            So also faith of itself,
            if it does not have works, is dead.Indeed someone might say,
            “You have faith and I have works.”
            Demonstrate your faith to me without works,
            and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works.

            Alleluia GAL 6:14

            R. Alleluia, alleluia.

            May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord
            through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.
            R. Alleluia, alleluia.

            Gospel MK 8:27-35
            Jesus and his disciples set out
            for the villages of Caesarea Philippi.
            Along the way he asked his disciples,
            “Who do people say that I am?”
            They said in reply,
            “John the Baptist, others Elijah,
            still others one of the prophets.”
            And he asked them,
            “But who do you say that I am?”
            Peter said to him in reply,
            “You are the Christ.”
            Then he warned them not to tell anyone about him.He began to teach them
            that the Son of Man must suffer greatly
            and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes,
            and be killed, and rise after three days.
            He spoke this openly.
            Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
            At this he turned around and, looking at his disciples,
            rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan.
            You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”He summoned the crowd with his disciples and said to them,
            “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,
            take up his cross, and follow me.
            For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
            but whoever loses his life for my sake
            and that of the gospel will save it.”

            The post Who Do We Say Jesus Is?, 24th Sunday (B), September 15, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

            36 min
          • Faithfully Confessing and Following Christ All The Way, 24th Sunday (B), September 15, 2024

            Fr. Roger J. Landry

            Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
            Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
            September 15, 2024
            Is 50:5-9, Ps 116, James 2:14-18, Mk 8:27-35

             

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

            https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.15.24_MCs_Homily_1.mp3

             

            The following text guided today’s homily: 

            • There’s great confusion today about who Jesus Christ is. Most everyone knows about him. About 2.5 of the 8.0 billion people alive profess themselves to be his followers. Muslims think he was just a prophet, like the other famous prophets in Jewish history. Many of the leading Jews, then and now, deem him a heretic and a blasphemer. The ancient Romans thought he was a revolutionary. Most people today consider him a famous moral teacher, alongside Confucius, Buddha, Socrates, certain Hindu gurus, and various figures in own age like Ghandi, Martin Luther King and others. Even among Christians, there are many who, rehearsing the Christological heresies of the first centuries, deny or underemphasize Jesus’ divinity or humanity leading to all types of issues at the level of faith and morals. That’s why what Jesus does for his first followers is so important for each of us today. He first surveys, “Who do people say that I am?” and then he asks each of us, “Who do you say that I am?” We are the people who say that Christ is more than just a holy and good man, more than an inspiring prophet who announces ethical, even divine, words and ways. We are the people who confess, with Peter and the Church built on him, who Jesus really is. This is the faith that brings us together: Jesus is not merely the long-awaited Messiah come to set us free, but the Son of God, who not only announces the words of God, but is their Author. Our faith in Christ, however, must be more than something we say on our lips. It must be something we confess by the way we live. And that’s what Jesus today is going to help us to do, because many of us make the same mistakes the people of Jesus’ day, even his followers, did.
            • In response to the first question, the poll of what other people were saying, the disciples were eager to respond. They informed Jesus that the people were numbering him among the greatest Jewish heroes of all time, like the prophets Elijah and Jeremiah, and, more recently, John the Baptist. But Jesus didn’t stop with those results. First, because it wasn’t enough to rest on what the surveys said, on what others believed, despite the exalted circles into which people were placing Jesus. Second, because the assessments weren’t true. Jesus was far greater than Elijah, Jeremiah and John. He was greater than Abraham, Moses, David and Solomon. Third, because Jesus hadn’t come so that people would merely remain “fans” or “admirers” of him because that would not lead to their salvation; he had come to set them on the path on which he had come into the world to lead them.
            • And so he asked the second question, “Who do you say that I am?” At this point, all but one of the disciples remained mute. It was easy to communicate what the crowds were saying, but to put oneself on the line, to make a personal, public confession, required courage and conviction. I’ve always found it somewhat surprising that Nathaniel, or Barthlomew, didn’t speak up. In his first conversation with Jesus, after Jesus said he had seen him under the fig tree, he exclaimed, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God, you are the King of Israel” (Jn 1:49). The latter meant he was the Messiah; the former far more than the Messiah. But this time he timidly kept his mouth shut. Simon Peter, however, put out into the deep. God the Father had led him to recognize that Jesus was indeed much more even than what the others were saying and had the guts to be the first to say it. “You are the Christ!,” he said. Christ, the Greek word for Messiah, communicated that Jesus was the long awaited one foretold by all the prophets. In St. Matthew’s version of the scene, he recalls Peter’s also confessing Jesus, like Nathaniel, to be the very own Son of God. To make that admission was to bring into the foreground a whole series of expectations. The Messiah was to be the one who would bring back the Kingdom of David, who would kick out all foreign powers, who would return Israel to prominence. And as we see in other parts of the Gospel, Jesus’ closest followers were all ambitiously hoping to receive choice positions in Jesus’ messianic administration.
            • That’s why, as soon as Peter enunciated Jesus’ true identity, Jesus began to teach them what type of Messiah he would be, how he would inaugurate his kingdom, and how they were share in and announce it. It blew their mind. Rather than uniting the Jews and defeating and expelling the Romans, rather than leading the twelve tribes to triumph, he would instead suffer greatly, be rejected by the chief priests, the scribes and the elders and be killed. He would fulfill the prophecies of the Suffering Servant Songs in Isaiah, which we heard in the first reading, in which he would give his back to those who beat him, his cheeks to those who plucked his beard, his face to those who would buffet him and spit on him. Jesus told them all of this “openly,” St. Mark tells us, so that they would know it clearly. To get a sense of their shock, it would be like someone who had just won a Presidential election in his victory speech saying that rather than lead his supporters and the country to greatness, he would instead be seized by members of his party in collaboration with the opposing parties and various foreign powers, be humiliated, tortured, and finally hung from a national monument.
            • But Peter, emboldened by his previous affirmation and obviously desiring not only to be the principal advisor of the Messiah but bodyguard, took Jesus aside and “began to rebuke him.” “God forbid anything like this should happen to you!,” he said, according to St. Matthew’s eyewitness account. He couldn’t fathom that a Messiah would be rejected and killed rather than conquer. It was totally incompatible with Jewish Messianic expectations for the long-awaited one to suffer in this way. But Jesus wanted to help him and all of the apostles recognize that, yes, he was the Messiah, but his kingdom and the liberation he was bringing were far different than what they were expecting. He tells Peter not, “Get away from me!” but, “Get behind me!” Jesus wasn’t ridding himself of Peter, but he was pointing out what Peter had been trying to do: lead the Lord rather than followthe Lord. To tell him to get behind him was to make him a disciple rather than a roadblock. He also told him the reason why he was behaving like an obstacle: “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” Peter was seeing only with human eyes, from human political hopes, rather than with the eyes of faith, the eyes that God seeks to give us. Peter at first grasped what the crowds didn’t, that Jesus wasn’t just one of the prophets of old, but rather the Messiah. But Jesus was helping him to realize the type of Messiah he really is, rather than just Peter imagined he would be, so that Peter — and all the others — would be able to confess him in far greater depth.
            • So Jesus called them all together and said that not only would he suffer, but if we sought to remain with him, we must suffer too. “Whoever wishes to come after me,” he said, whoever wants to share in his kingdom and reign with him, “must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” As if that is not challenging enough, he adds: “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel, will save it.” To use the analogy given before, Jesus was saying that anyone who wanted to support him would have to say no to worldly ambitions, pick up his own noose, and follow him to the national monument. But as we pondered and celebrated yesterday on the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross, the cross Jesus is asking us to assume is not fundamentally an instrument of torture, pain and suffering but a sign and means of the love that can make even that much pain and suffering bearable. It’s a weapon of holiness, a sign of victory precisely over selfishness, sin and the death to which they lead.
            • Let’s bring the conversation around. Jesus asks each of us, individually and constantly, what he asked his first followers. “Who do you so that I am?” It’s not enough for us to rest on what others say, on what the Catechism teaches, about what the Doctors of the Church, or the Pope, or Bishops, or founders, superiors or novice mistresses, or our parents, grandparents and godparents have said. All of that is helpful, but it’s not sufficient: we all must make a consequential admission, to state clearly who Jesus is, and not just as an intellectual assertion, but to confess in such a way as to conform our life to that truth, getting behind Jesus, thinking as God does, denying ourselves, picking our own cross daily and following him. It’s obvious that this is a very challenge reality, because, just like at Peter’s time, these commands go against worldly ways. Rather than affirming ourselves, Christ calls us to deny ourselves. Rather than fleeing from suffering, Christ tells us to seize the Cross and die out of love for God and others. Rather than doing our own thing, he tells us to follow him. Rather than seeking to save our life by our own wits, he tells us that the only way to save it is to lose it in loving service of God and others, perhaps even to the point of death.
            • This is what St. James points to in today’s second reading when he distinguishes between living faith in Jesus and dead faith with no power to save. “Faith by itself, if it has no works,” the apostle underlines, “is dead.” If faith remains simply a thing of the head and doesn’t affect the heart, the hands, the feet, and our choices, then it is powerless. If faith is alive, then it produces works of faith, it leads to works of love (see Gal 5:6; 1 Cor 13:2). That’s why St. James gets very practical, to help us to determine if our faith is alive. “If a brother or sister,” he states, “is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” It’s not enough, he’s saying, that we be “concerned” for others, that we sympathize with those in difficult situations. We must act on that concern and sympathy by doing what we can to help those in need. To have living faith we need to do more than know and approve of Jesus’ statement, “Love one another as I have loved you,” but to put that Christ-like love into practice. There are people around us who do not have proper clothing, who lack daily food. There are many more people who are not “clothed in Christ” (Gal 3:27), who are “spiritually poor” as St. Teresa of Calcutta said, who are malnourished and starving for the word of God. The question for us is: What are we trying to do about it? Our faith, if it is alive, must translate into the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. Thanks, Sisters, for giving the whole Church an example of a truly living faith overflowing in love.
            • What Jesus is doing is to trying to lead us along the path of salvation, along the narrow way he himself was charting, along the Way of the Cross. We live in a self-affirming age and Jesus calls us to self-denial so that we might have self-mastery and be capable of self-gift. We live in a hedonistic age that is addicted to pleasure and phobic about pain and Jesus calls us to take up or seize (rather than just reluctantly accept) the Cross, the instrument on which we will die to ourselves, so that he in turn may live. Then he calls us to follow him as he gives his life for others’ salvation, as he washes other people’s feet and calls each of us to love others as he has loved us first. He asks us, “Who do you say that I am?,” and then reminds us, “I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you gave me welcome, naked and you gave me clothing, ill and you gave me comfort, in prison and you visited me.” To confess Jesus is, therefore, something we do not just with our lips, but with our life, as we choose to have among ourselves the same attitude Jesus did, who, as St. Paul reminds us, “though he was in the form of God, … emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, [and]  humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.” The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council stressed this when they said, “Christ fully reveals man to himself and makes his supreme calling clear,” and indicated that we are called to follow him on the path of cruciform self-giving love: “Man cannot find himself except in the unselfish gift of himself to others” (Gaudium et Spes, 22, 24). We must “lose” ourselves to gain life. We must die to ourselves and allow God to raise us from the dead. We must unselfishly give ourselves for others. This is Christianity. This is the Gospel.
            • Today, on September 15, the Church normally marks the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows and we see in the Blessed Mother, the perfect disciple, how to have truly living faith and embrace the holy way Jesus puts before all of us today. Mary never hesitated to confess who her Son was and gave him in response her loving trust and total surrender, with cheerfulness even amidst her maternal tears. She followed her Son faithfully, denying herself, picking up her motherly cross, and following him to Calvary as co-redeemer. She’s given to us as a model of how to confess her Son through entering into his passion. As we pray in the famous hymn Stabat Mater that is sung as a sequence before the Gospel on the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows, we ask her to help us imitate her unforgettable confession. “O sweet Mother! font of love, touch my spirit from above, make my heart with yours accord. Make me feel as you have felt; make my soul to glow and melt with the love of Christ, my Lord. Holy Mother, pierce me through, in my heart each wound renew of my Savior crucified. Let me share with you his pain, who for all our sins was slain, who for me in torments died. Let me mingle tears with thee, mourning him who mourned for me, all the days that I may live. By the cross with you to stay, there with you to weep and pray, is all I ask of you to give. Virgin of all virgins blest! Listen to my fond request: let me share your grief divine.Let me to my latest breath, in my body bear the death of that dying Son of yours.” Today we ask her for the grace to imitate her in having the same mind of Christ, in sharing his love for us and the whole human race, in his capacity to deny himself, pick up his cross and perfect the greatest love that lays down one’s life for one’s friends. We seek, like Mary, to bear in our body the self-denial and cruciform death of Jesus, so that we may experience his risen life and joy.
            • Every Mass we’re given the opportunity to confess who Christ is when the Church proclaims, “The Gospel of the Lord” and “The Body of Christ.” We’re supposed to listen to Jesus’ words just like the apostles tried in Caesarea Philippi and elsewhere. We’re called to receive him with the faith of Mary at the Annunciation, St. John at the Last Supper and Mary herself did in the apostles’ post-Ascension Masses. We’re called to be transformed by both the Word of God and the Word made Flesh to put this faith into action as we, like Mary at Calvary, enter by means of the Eucharistic sacrifice, into his passion, death and resurrection. In this Eucharistic Revival, it’s important for us to grasp that our response to Jesus in the Eucharist manifests our reply to the question he places in the Gospel. It manifests whether we have living or dead faith. If we confess the Eucharistic Jesus to be the Messiah and Son of God, then we will seek to order our whole life to the fulfillment of the Last Supper, Calvary and the Empty Tomb, which is our Eucharistic communion with him. To live a Eucharistic life is to imitate Jesus’ outpouring on Calvary, to stop thinking as human beings do but as Jesus does, and to stop acting like all the rest, but to imitate Jesus, to follow Jesus, and to collaborate with Jesus and all those he calls to be his collaborators, becoming broken, like the sacred host, for the world. And Jesus here strengthens us so that our faith will overflow into extreme love in imitation and communion with his. “Who do you say that I am?” As we, with all the Church, confess Jesus today as Messiah and Son of God, and as we prepare to receive him within in Holy Communion, let us ask him for the grace that in all actions we may witness to him, by the faithful, courageous way we, with him, faithfully lose our lives to give them out of love for him and others.

              •  

              The readings for today’s Mass were: 

              Reading 1
              Is 50:5-9a
              The Lord GOD opens my ear that I may hear;
              and I have not rebelled,
              have not turned back.
              I gave my back to those who beat me,
              my cheeks to those who plucked my beard;
              my face I did not shield
              from buffets and spitting.

              The Lord GOD is my help,

              therefore I am not disgraced;
              I have set my face like flint,
              knowing that I shall not be put to shame.
              He is near who upholds my right;
              if anyone wishes to oppose me,
              let us appear together.
              Who disputes my right?
              Let that man confront me.
              See, the Lord GOD is my help;
              who will prove me wrong?

              Responsorial Psalm
              Ps 116:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9
              R. (9) I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.
              or:
              R. Alleluia.
              I love the LORD because he has heard
              my voice in supplication,
              because he has inclined his ear to me
              the day I called.
              R. I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.
              or:
              R. Alleluia.
              The cords of death encompassed me;
              the snares of the netherworld seized upon me;
              I fell into distress and sorrow,
              and I called upon the name of the LORD,
              “O LORD, save my life!”
              R. I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.
              or:
              R. Alleluia.
              Gracious is the LORD and just;
              yes, our God is merciful.
              The LORD keeps the little ones;
              I was brought low, and he saved me.
              R. I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.
              or:
              R. Alleluia.
              For he has freed my soul from death,
              my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling.
              I shall walk before the Lord
              in the land of the living.
              R. I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.
              or:
              R. Alleluia.
              Reading 2
              Jas 2:14-18
              What good is it, my brothers and sisters,
              if someone says he has faith but does not have works?
              Can that faith save him?
              If a brother or sister has nothing to wear
              and has no food for the day,
              and one of you says to them,
              “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well, ”
              but you do not give them the necessities of the body,
              what good is it?
              So also faith of itself,
              if it does not have works, is dead.

              Indeed someone might say,

              “You have faith and I have works.”
              Demonstrate your faith to me without works,
              and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works.

              Alleluia
              Gal 6:14
              R. Alleluia, alleluia.
              May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord
              through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.
              R. Alleluia, alleluia.
              Gospel
              Mk 8:27-35
              Jesus and his disciples set out
              for the villages of Caesarea Philippi.
              Along the way he asked his disciples,
              “Who do people say that I am?”
              They said in reply,
              “John the Baptist, others Elijah,
              still others one of the prophets.”
              And he asked them,
              “But who do you say that I am?”
              Peter said to him in reply,
              “You are the Christ.”
              Then he warned them not to tell anyone about him.

              He began to teach them

              that the Son of Man must suffer greatly
              and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes,
              and be killed, and rise after three days.
              He spoke this openly.
              Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
              At this he turned around and, looking at his disciples,
              rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan.
              You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

              He summoned the crowd with his disciples and said to them,

              “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,
              take up his cross, and follow me.
              For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
              but whoever loses his life for my sake
              and that of the gospel will save it.”

              The post Faithfully Confessing and Following Christ All The Way, 24th Sunday (B), September 15, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

              24 min
            • Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, September 14, 2024

              Fr. Roger J. Landry

              Conversations with Consequences Podcast
              Homily for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, B, Vigil
              September 14, 2024

               

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

              https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.14.24_Landry_ConCon.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 eavesdrop and participate in perhaps the most pivotal dialogue in the Gospel, when Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” and “Who do you say that I am?”
              • In response to the first question, the poll of what other people were saying, the disciples were eager to reply. They informed him that the people were numbering Jesus among the greatest Jewish heroes of all time, like the prophets Elijah and Jeremiah, and, more recently, John the Baptist. But Jesus wasn’t going to stop at that preliminary question. First, because it wasn’t enough to rest on what the surveys said, to rely on what others believed, despite the exalted circles into which people were placing Jesus. Second, because the assessments weren’t true. Jesus was far greater than Elijah, Jeremiah and John. He was greater than Abraham, Moses, David and Solomon. Third, because Jesus didn’t want those with him merely to remain “fans” or “admirers” of him because that would not set them on the path on which he had come into the world to lead them.
              • And so he asked the second question, “Who do you say that I am?” All but one of the disciples remained mute. It was easy to communicate what the surveys said, but to put oneself on the line, to make a personal, public confession, required courage and conviction. I have always been amazed that Nathaniel, a.k.a. Bartholomew, didn’t say anything, since the first time he met Jesus, he cried out that Jesus was the “Son of God” and “King of Israel,” but for some reason now he lacked the chutzpah to say it again. Likewise many of the apostles by this point were trying to jockey to be the greatest in the messianic administration they expected Jesus to inaugurate, but none had the courage to speak up. Simon Peter, however, put out into the deep. God the Father had led him to recognize that Jesus was indeed far greater than what the others were saying, and he had the guts to be the first to say it. “You are the Christ!,” he declared. Christ, the Greek word for Messiah, communicated that Jesus was the long awaited one foretold by all the prophets. In St. Matthew’s version of the scene, he recalls Peter’s also confessing Jesus to be more than the Messiah, but the very own Son of God. To make such an admission was to bring into the foreground a whole series of expectations. The Messiah was to be the one who would bring back the Kingdom of David, who would kick out all foreign powers, who would return Israel to prominence.
              • But lest they jump to that confusion, Jesus, as soon as Peter had enunciated his true identity, began to teach them what type of Messiah he would be, how he would inaugurate his kingdom, and how they were share in and announce it. It blew their mind. Rather than uniting the Jews to defeat and expel the Romans, rather than leading the twelve tribes to triumph, he would instead suffer greatly, be rejected by the chief priests, the scribes and the elders and be killed. Jesus told them all of this, St. Mark tells us, “openly,” so that they would know it clearly. To get a sense of their shock, it would be like someone who had just won a Presidential election in his victory speech saying that rather than lead his supporters and the country to greatness, he would instead be seized by members of his party in collaboration with the opposing parties and various foreign powers, be humiliated, tortured, and finally hung from a national monument.
              • But Peter, emboldened by his previous affirmation and obviously desiring not only to be the principal advisor of the Messiah but bodyguard, took Jesus aside and “began to rebuke him.” “God forbid anything like this should happen to you!,” he said, according to St. Matthew’s eyewitness account. He couldn’t fathom that a Messiah would be rejected and killed rather than conquer. It was totally incompatible with Jewish Messianic expectations for the long-awaited one to suffer in this way. But Jesus wanted to help him and all of the apostles recognize that, yes, he was the Messiah, but his kingdom and the liberation he was bringing were different than what they were expecting. He tells Peter not “Get away from me!” but “Get behind me!” Jesus wasn’t ridding himself of Peter, but he was pointing out what Peter had been trying to do: lead the Lord rather than follow the Lord. To tell him to get behind him was to make him a disciple rather than a roadblock. He also told him the reason why he was behaving like an obstacle: “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” Peter was seeing only with human eyes, from human political hopes, rather than with the eyes of faith, the eyes that God seeks to give us. Peter at first saw what the crowds didn’t, that Jesus wasn’t just one of the prophets of old, but rather the Messiah. But Jesus was helping him to see the type of Messiah he really was, rather than just Peter imagined he would be, so that Peter — and all the others — would be able to confess him in far greater depth.
              • Jesus continued the consequential conversation by calling the apostles together and saying that not only would he suffer, but if we sought to remain with him, we must suffer, too. It’s a challenging message that we shouldn’t water down. “Whoever wishes to come after me,” Jesus said, whoever wants to share in my kingdom and reign with me, “must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” As if that is not demanding enough, he adds: “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel, will save it.” To use the analogy given before, Jesus was saying that anyone who wanted to support him would have to say no to worldly ambitions, pick up his own noose, and follow him to the public hanging.
              • Let’s bring the conversation around. Jesus asks each of us, individually and constantly, what he asked his first followers. “Who do you so that I am?” It’s not enough for us to rest on what others say, on what the Catechism teaches, about what the Doctors of the Church, or the Pope, or the Bishops, or our parents, grandparents and godparents have said. All of that is helpful, but it’s not sufficient: we all must make a consequential and personal admission, to state clearly who Jesus is and to conform our life to that truth. How would we answer that question if we were asked it today? The great philosopher and apologist Peter Kreeft recently wrote, “The question Jesus asked his Apostles is the same question he asks us: ‘Who do you say that I am?’ Am I just a holy messenger, just a prophet, like John the Baptist or Elijah? Or am I your Mister Fix-It, your Superman, your superhero? Or am I your obedient servant to all your foolish and fallen desires? Or am I Mr. Nice Guy, or Super Social Worker, or Mr. Political Correctness?” C.S. Lewis famously said that Jesus is either a lunatic, a liar, or Lord: a lunatic who crazily believed he was God incarnate; a liar who knew he wasn’t but claimed to be; or truly Son of God, divine, the Savior, the King of the Universe.
              • Who do we say Jesus is? If we confess him to be who he really is, then that means, as Jesus describes in the Gospel, getting behind him, thinking as God does, denying ourselves, picking our own cross daily and following him. It’s obvious that this is a very taxing reality, because, just like at Peter’s time, these commands go against worldly ways. Rather than affirming ourselves, Christ calls us to deny ourselves. Rather than fleeing from suffering, Christ tells us to seize the Cross and die out of love for God and others. Rather than doing our own thing, he tells us to follow him. Rather than seeking to save our life by our own wits, he tells us that the only way to save it is to lose it in loving service of God and others, perhaps even to the point of death. We live in a self-affirming age and Jesus calls us to self-denial so that we might have self-mastery and be capable of self-gift. We live in a hedonistic age that is addicted to pleasure and phobic about pain and Jesus calls us to take up or seize (rather than just reluctantly accept) the Cross, the instrument on which we will die to ourselves, so that he in turn may live. Then he calls us to follow him as he gives his life for others’ salvation, as he washes other people’s feet, as he calls us to love others as he has loved us first. He asks us, “Who do you say that I am?,” and then reminds us, “I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you gave me welcome, naked and you gave me clothing, ill and you gave me comfort, in prison and you visited me.” To confess Jesus is, therefore, something we do not just with our lips, but with our life, as we choose to have among ourselves the same attitude Jesus did, who, as St. Paul reminds us, “though he was in the form of God, … emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, [and] humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.” The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council stressed this when they said, “Christ fully reveals man to himself and makes his supreme calling clear,” and indicated that we are called to follow him on the path of cruciform self-giving love: “Man cannot find himself except in the unselfish gift of himself to others” (Gaudium et Spes, 22, 24). We must “lose” ourselves to gain life. We must die to ourselves and allow God to raise us from the dead. We must unselfishly give ourselves for others. This is Christianity. This is the Gospel.
              • We have a chance to reply to the question, “Who do you say that I am?,” at every Mass, in response to Jesus’ real presence. From the altar, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the Lord, asks us, “Who do you say that I am?,” and we have the privilege to proclaim our faith in him, echoing with wonder the words of the centurion that despite our unworthiness the Messiah and Son of God desires to come under our roof. As we prepare to make our confession on Sunday with the whole Church, let us ask him for the grace to model our life on the mystery of his passion, death and resurrection and give witness to him by the faithful, courageous way we, with him, lose our lives to give them out of love for him and others.

                •  

                The Gospel passage on which the homily was based was: 

                Gospel
                Mk 8:27-35
                Jesus and his disciples set out
                for the villages of Caesarea Philippi.
                Along the way he asked his disciples,
                “Who do people say that I am?”
                They said in reply,
                “John the Baptist, others Elijah,
                still others one of the prophets.”
                And he asked them,
                “But who do you say that I am?”
                Peter said to him in reply,
                “You are the Christ.”
                Then he warned them not to tell anyone about him.He began to teach them
                that the Son of Man must suffer greatly
                and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes,
                and be killed, and rise after three days.
                He spoke this openly.
                Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
                At this he turned around and, looking at his disciples,
                rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan.
                You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”He summoned the crowd with his disciples and said to them,
                “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,
                take up his cross, and follow me.
                For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
                but whoever loses his life for my sake
                and that of the gospel will save it.”

                The post Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, September 14, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                10 min
              • Becoming Disciplined Disciples and Fully-Trained Trainers, 23rd Friday (II), September 13, 2024

                Fr. Roger J. Landry

                Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
                Friday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
                Memorial of St. John Chrysostom
                September 13, 2024
                1 Cor 9:16-19.22-27, Ps 84, Lk 6:39-42

                 

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

                https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.13.24_Homily_1.mp3

                 

                The following points were attempted in the homily:

                • In today’s Gospel, Jesus gives us an indication of what he hopes we will become: “When fully trained,” he said, “every disciple will be like his teacher.” Every rabbinical student desired to imitate his rabbi and Jesus wants us to become like him, to love as he has loved, to live as he has lived. The essence of human life and of Christian existence is to become “fully trained.” God provides this training, through his Word, through his Church, even through the suffering he permits. In the Gospel, in the powerful parable of the splinter and the wooden beam, Jesus indicates to us that he wants us paying attention to the ways that we need to grow, to those aspects of our own conduct that still need to be trained, rather than to obsess about others’ faults and flaws, so that we might see clearly, virtuously, charitably and be better trained to help our neighbor.
                • St. Paul in the first reading today likewise talks about the training necessary to become saints, to become like Jesus. He makes an analogy to the training of championship athletes. “Do you not know that the runners in the stadium all run in the race, but only one wins the prize? Run so as to win. Every athlete exercises discipline in every way. They do it to win a perishable crown, but we an imperishable one.” We need to learn how to exercise discipline in every way, because discipline literally makes disciples. As disciples of Jesus, we seek not to call our own shots but to live by Jesus’ discipline. In doing so, St. Paul leads the Corinthians and us by example. He says, “Thus I do not run aimlessly; I do not fight as if I were shadowboxing. No, I drive my body and train it, for fear that, after having preached to others, I myself should be disqualified.” He was taking out his own logs from his life and that’s why he was able to see so clearly to assist others. He was striving to unite himself to Christ crucified so that he could then help others learn how to live in the same way. He wanted everyone to become fully trained disciples through exercising discipline in every way. He made himself “a slave to all so as to win over as many as possible.” He became “all things to all, to save at least some.” His love for others and his recognition of God’s love for them because the driving force of his zeal. He wasn’t doing it for money or for earthly compensation, but because of an interior obligation to share the joy of what he himself had received. “Woe to me,” he says today, “if I do not preach the Gospel!” He recognized he had been given a treasure of which he had been made a steward and sought to pass on free of charge what he himself had received. A Christian spiritual athlete fully formed will have that same holy woe.
                • Today we celebrate one such great spiritual athlete who was filled with the same interior woe to share the faith. St. John Chrysostom is the patron saint of preachers because, having been trained to be like Jesus and disciplined to be a faithful disciple, he used his “golden mouth” (literally, Chryso-stom) as a means to train many others. After he was baptized between the age of 18-22 (scholars disagree), he began to live a truly different life ordered to Christ. He was the greatest student of the rhetorician Libanius, who wanted John to succeed him, but instead John left the world for a time to become a better student of Jesus and fill his mind with the things of God. He spent two years as a hermit continually standing, scarcely sleeping, and learning the Bible — God’s thoughts given to us — by heart. He was so zealous in fasting and other forms of ascetical training that he damaged his stomach and kidneys and needed to return for reasons of health. There the Patriarch of Antioch ordained him a deacon and then a priest and allowed him to begin to preach publicly, and his sermons quickly became famous and his eloquence — speaking about the things of God, calling people to enroll in Christ’s school and become like the Master — reverberated throughout the empire. In 397, he was elected Patriarch of Constantinople, another Patriarchal see at the center of the empire, and there he went. He quickly became a sign of contradiction through his intense conformity to Christ and suffered, being exiled many times. But that didn’t shake him, because he knew it would happen for anyone who modeled his life and preaching after Christ. His example inspired so many of his day to sanctity and to seek the things of God by the way of the beatitudes. The sermon taken from this morning’s Office of Readings was preached when he was about to be exiled again. It shows how full trained he was. “The waters have risen and severe storms are upon us, but we do not fear drowning, for we stand firmly upon a rock. Let the sea rage, it cannot break the rock. Let the waves rise, they cannot sink the boat of Jesus. What are we to fear? Death? Life to me means Christ, and death is gain. Exile? The earth and its fullness belong to the Lord. The confiscation of goods? We brought nothing into this world, and we shall surely take nothing from it. I have only contempt for the world’s threats, I find its blessings laughable. I have no fear of poverty, no desire for wealth. I am not afraid of death nor do I long to live, except for your good. … If Christ is with me, whom shall I fear? Though the waves and the sea and the anger of princes are roused against me, they are less to me than a spider’s web. … For I always say Lord, your will be done; not what this fellow or that would have me do, but what you want me to do. That is my strong tower, my immovable rock, my staff that never gives way. If God wants something, let it be done! If he wants me to stay here, I am grateful. But wherever he wants me to be, I am no less grateful.” We prayed in the Collect of the Mass to be able to imitate him in his imitation of Christ: “O God, strength of those who hope in you, who willed that the Bishop John Chrysostom should be illustrious by his wonderful eloquence and his experience of suffering, grant us, we pray, that instructed by his teachings, we may be strengthened through his example.”
                • The greatest spiritual training of all takes place through the Mass, in which we enter into Jesus’ own passion, death and resurrection. He gives us the chance here not only to become “like” him but to enter into communion with him, so that the Master can continue to teach and train us, his disciples, from the inside. This is the means by which we learn from him how to give our lives, our own body, blood and soul, for the salvation of others, to save as many as possible. Hearing the Word of God zealously proclaimed, we’re moved to receive God’s blessing at the end of Mass and to “go and proclaim the Gospel of the Lord.” Examining our consciences before Mass, we confess to God and to others that we’re sinners with logs in our eyes but that we’re turning together with them to the Lord so that we may likewise see and experience his mercy to such a degree that with our eyes healed we may help others to see by faith. This is where we receive a foretaste of the imperishable wreath with which God one day seeks to crown us, as he did St. Paul and St. John Chrysostom. The Lord’s dwelling place is indeed lovely, as we prayed in the Psalm, and he seeks to make his dwelling place in us and in all those to whom he wishes to send us, as he sent Paul and John Chrysostom before us. May we receive Jesus’ help to become as fully trained as they!

                  •  

                  The readings for today’s Mass were:

                  Reading 1 1 COR 9:16-19, 22B-27
                  Brothers and sisters:
                  If I preach the Gospel, this is no reason for me to boast,
                  for an obligation has been imposed on me,
                  and woe to me if I do not preach it!
                  If I do so willingly, I have a recompense,
                  but if unwillingly, then I have been entrusted with a stewardship.
                  What then is my recompense?
                  That, when I preach, I offer the Gospel free of charge
                  so as not to make full use of my right in the Gospel.
                  Although I am free in regard to all,
                  I have made myself a slave to all
                  so as to win over as many as possible.
                  I have become all things to all, to save at least some.
                  All this I do for the sake of the Gospel,
                  so that I too may have a share in it.
                  Do you not know that the runners in the stadium all run in the race,
                  but only one wins the prize?
                  Run so as to win.
                  Every athlete exercises discipline in every way.
                  They do it to win a perishable crown,
                  but we an imperishable one.
                  Thus I do not run aimlessly;
                  I do not fight as if I were shadowboxing.
                  No, I drive my body and train it,
                  for fear that, after having preached to others,
                  I myself should be disqualified.
                  Responsorial Psalm PS 84:3, 4, 5-6, 12
                  R. (2) How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord, mighty God!
                  My soul yearns and pines
                  for the courts of the LORD.
                  My heart and my flesh
                  cry out for the living God.
                  R. How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord, mighty God!
                  Even the sparrow finds a home,
                  and the swallow a nest
                  in which she puts her young—
                  Your altars, O LORD of hosts,
                  my king and my God!
                  R. How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord, mighty God!
                  Blessed they who dwell in your house!
                  continually they praise you.
                  Blessed the men whose strength you are!
                  their hearts are set upon the pilgrimage.
                  R. How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord, mighty God!
                  For a sun and a shield is the LORD God;
                  grace and glory he bestows;
                  The LORD withholds no good thing
                  from those who walk in sincerity.
                  R. How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord, mighty God!
                  Alleluia SEE JN 17:17B, 17A
                  R. Alleluia, alleluia.
                  Your word, O Lord, is truth;
                  consecrate us in the truth.
                  R. Alleluia, alleluia.

                  Gospel LK 6:39-42

                  Jesus told his disciples a parable:

                  “Can a blind person guide a blind person?
                  Will not both fall into a pit?
                  No disciple is superior to the teacher;
                  but when fully trained,
                  every disciple will be like his teacher.
                  Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye,
                  but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own?
                  How can you say to your brother,
                  ‘Brother, let me remove that splinter in your eye,’
                  when you do not even notice the wooden beam in your own eye?
                  You hypocrite! Remove the wooden beam from your eye first;
                  then you will see clearly
                  to remove the splinter in your brother’s eye.”

                  The post Becoming Disciplined Disciples and Fully-Trained Trainers, 23rd Friday (II), September 13, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                  21 min
                • Loving by Christ’s Measure, As St. John Paul II and Mary Did and Teach, 23rd Thursday (II), September 12, 2024

                  Fr. Roger J. Landry

                  St. John Paul II National Shrine, Washington, DC
                  Tertio Millennio Seminar on the Free Society Reunion
                  Thursday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
                  Memorial of the Holy Name of Mary
                  September 12, 2024
                  1 Cor 8:1-7.11-13, Ps 139, Lk 6:27-38

                   

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

                  https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.12.24_TMS_Homily_1.mp3

                   

                  The following text guided the homily: 

                  • In today’s Gospel, Jesus describes for us the high standards he has for us as his disciples and apostles. “The measure with which you measure,” he instructs us, “will be measured out to you,” and describes for us the measure to which he wants us to aspire and resolve with his grace to achieve. He calls us to be and behave as “children of the Most High,” to be merciful like God the Father, to do to others first what we would hope to receive, to give rather than seek to receive, to turn the other cheek, to go the second mile, to give not just our winter coats but also our shirts, to love not just those who love us but even those who have made themselves our enemies.
                  • This is, of course, the standard Jesus himself lived. On Good Friday, we see how he loved those who didn’t love him and blessed those who were cursing him, giving himself to the extreme and pleading to the Father to forgive his executioners, those who were mocking him, and all those whose sins were bringing about his death. When the soldiers of the High Priest or the Roman guards slapped him on one cheek, Jesus could have easily annihilated them by his divine power, but he didn’t fight back, because he loved and didn’t want to harm those who were harming him. When they bid him to carry his Cross on the road to Calvary, he resiliently kept getting up walking the metaphorical second mile. When they stripped him of his cloak, he allowed them to strip him of his tunic as well as his loincloth. In all of this, Jesus, now with a glorious scarred hand, turns and summons us, “Come, follow me!,” calling us to respond to evil with good, cursing with prayer, hatred with love. The word for love he uses is agape, which means unconquerable benevolence: that no matter what others do to us, we keep loving, we don’t descend to others’ hatred by vengeance, but seek to unite the experience to God and to respond with and like God. Jesus is telling us never to stop wishing others well, never to stop doing them good, never to stop praying for them and their conversion, and never to cease asking God to forgive them when they behave in the image of Cain rather than of God.
                  • This was a standard, of course, to which St. John Paul II sought to live. The most iconic scene of his papacy occurred on December 27, 1983, when he went to Rome’s Rebibbia prison to forgive in person Mehmet Ali Agca, who two-and-a-half years prior had sought to murder him in Saint Peter’s Square. This was what led to the magnanimity and virtue with which he treated even the communists who had made themselves his mortal adversaries and the enemies of the Polish people. This was what led him to treat with Christian love those who opposed the theological reforms of his papacy. And this was the demanding standard to which he, with words and witness, called all of us.
                  • In 1986, as he was making an apostolic pilgrimage to New Zealand, St. John Paul made clear the moral meaning of our divine filiation gratuitously bestowed on us in baptism. Basing himself on today’s Gospel, he preached to the throngs in Christchurch, “[Jesus] is the Way to the Father. … He teaches us to conduct ourselves as ‘children of our Father in Heaven.’ We do this by following the command of Jesus: ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you . . . Be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ … Jesus puts … this challenge to you and to me. The standard that is set before us is not merely [justice,] to give to each one his due. The standard for the followers of Jesus Christ is ‘to be perfect’ as God himself is perfect. …[Christ] challenges his hearers and all of us to seek a deeper and richer justice by becoming perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, by making his justice, his mercy, his righteousness the measure and the standard of our own.”
                  • Fifteen years later, in his Lenten Message for 2001, he spoke directly to those who might be tempted to water down that high evangelical standard or shrink from the courageous and persevering exertion to live up to it entails. “There are Christians,” he declared, “who think they can dispense with this unceasing spiritual effort, because they do not see the urgency of standing before the truth of the Gospel. Lest their way of life be upset, they seek to take words like ‘Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you’ (Lk6:27) and render them empty and innocuous. For these people, it is extremely difficult to accept such words and to translate them into consistent patterns of behavior. They are in fact words that, if taken seriously, demand a radical conversion.” St. John Paul II, by his words and body language, calls us to that conversion and to that high standard of ordinary Christian living, which is part of the universal call to holiness. The God who, as we prayed in the Psalm, formed our inmost being, who knit us us together in our mother’s womb and wonderfully made us knows that with his help we are capable of this high measure.
                  • Over the last 32 years, the Tertio Millennio Seminar on the Free Society has tried to form us, through the thought of St. John Paul II, the sources that informed him and the abundant fruits that have flowed from his enormous magisterial legacy, to seek to live by the standards of the Gospel and to become salt, light, leaven to help form the vibrant moral culture without which a free society cannot be formed or sustained. That vibrant moral culture requires justice but also more than justice. It demands the type of love that Jesus today describes. In John Paul II’s apostolic letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente preparing for the great Jubilee of 2000, he stated that the “crisis of civilization must be countered by the civilization of love.” Those emerging from explicitly atheistic environments in central and eastern Europe, as well as those confronting a militant secularism in the west, are facing ultimately those want to deny the incarnation and force a practical atheism upon the public square. The remedy to that assault, John Paul II indicated, is to show that God-with-us is really still with us — and the most compelling way to do that is through the example of Christian love, which is not a quid pro quo, loving only those who love us, but something that loves others first, that forgives others like God forgives us, and that therefore communicates that God is real, that God is love, and that it is possible to live according to his image and likeness. Paul, in today’s first reading, urged the Corinthians to this higher standard of love. In the context of care for those with consciences sensitive to eating meat sacrificed to pagan idols, he stated, “Love builds up,” and said he was willing to do anything for others because he sees each one as a “brother for whom Christ died.” That’s the type of constructive love that Christ has summoned us to bring to all our milieu where, free moral choice by free choice, we build up an agapic, fraternal and familial civilization.
                  • That’s the type of love by which the Blessed Mother lived. Today the Church celebrates the Memorial of the Holy Name of Mary, a liturgical observance that St. John Paul II restored to the Roman Missal in 2003. When we call upon her holy name 56 times a day in the Rosary and Angelus or more — “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners” — we are beseeching her prayers so that her Son’s love may be as consequential in us as it was in her. In his beautiful exhortation on Mary as Mother of the Redeemer, St. John Paul II said that Mary was not just the first witness to God the Father’s love for the world that led him to give us his only Son, but that she embraced that love and united herself to it with a total virginal, spousal and maternal commitment. Her life, he stated, is the fruit of the ‘new’ love Jesus brought into the world via her heart and womb, the love that came to definitive maturity on Calvary when she shared in the definitive outpouring of her Son’s redeeming love. And as she there received the beloved disciple and became the spiritual mother of us all in Christ, she made a commitment to love us by that higher standard of Christian love, the type of affective and effective love she showed at Cana of Galilee, in Lepanto and like she showed 341 years ago yesterday, when she interceded for Polish King Jan Sobieski III as he, with 76,000 troops defended not just Vienna but Christian Europe from the invading Muslim Turks with 300,000 troops. It’s from Mary that young Father Karol Wojtyla learned how to love according to Christ’s demanding standard. As his future papal motto attested, he was all hers, all he had was hers, and like St. John he accepted her into the totality of his being, as he begged her each day, with the words of St. Louis de Montfort, “Praebe mihi cor tuum,” “Give me your heart,” a heart that could receive and strive to reciprocate the divine and human standard of love her Son brought into the world. John Paul II would urge us to imitate his consecration to Mary, so that we might imitate her total loving consecration to her Son.
                  • When Jan Sobieski triumphantly entered Vienna on this day in 1683, he invoked and revised Julius Caesar’s famous words, stating, “Veni, vidi, Deus vicit,” “I came, I saw, God conquered.” Those of us who participate in the Tertio Millennio Seminar all have a particular connection to Sobieski, because we formally begin the Seminar attending Mass in the presence of his mortal remains, interred in a beautiful sarcophagus in the crypt chapel of St. Leonard in Wawel Cathedral, where St. John Paul II celebrated his first three Masses of Thanksgiving on All Souls Day 1946. How fitting it is, and doubtless pleasing to St. John Paul II, that we would begin this Reunion the way we always begin the Seminar, with Mass: what he reiterated during the climatic final year of his papacy as the “source and summit” of the Christian life but also “the full manifestation of [Jesus’] boundless love,” “the center of the Church’s life,” the “Church’s entire spiritual wealth” and the “magnetic pole” of Christian existence. The Eucharist is the alpha and omega of the Seminar, the starting point and goal of its intense intellectual, cultural, communal, and spiritual pillars. It’s the school in which the Eucharistic Jesus not only shows us the standard of his love, but invites us into his total sacrificial giving and transforms us from within to love others as he has first loved us. John Paul told us in his exhortation for the Year of the Eucharist, “The Eucharist not only provides the interior strength needed for [our] mission, but is also —in some sense—its plan. For the Eucharist is a mode of being, which passes from Jesus into each Christian, through whose testimony it is meant to spread throughout society and culture.” The Eucharist is meant to become the Christian way of life. “All who take part in the Eucharist,” he said, must be “committed to changing their lives and making them in a certain way completely ‘Eucharistic.’” The Eucharist, he believed, is the source of the renewal of the world. “In the Eucharist,” he declared, “our God has shown love in the extreme,” overturning all those criteria of power, reciprocal justice or even conditional love “that too often govern human relations and radically affirming the criterion of service” and makes it possible, when we make our lives commentaries on the words of consecration, to be “recognized as true followers of Christ.” The “criterion by which the authenticity of our Eucharistic celebrations [will be] judged,” he stated, will be how the Eucharist spurs us on to love by Christ’s standard.
                  • St. John Paul II said that every Mass he celebrated, from his initial triduum of celebrations at St. Leonard’s chapel, to those celebrated on top of canoes in the Tatras Mountains, to St. Peter’s in the Vatican, and to the National Shrine and the Mall here in the nation’s capital, was “always in some way celebrated on the altar of the world. It unites heaven and earth and permeates all creation.” That’s what our Mass today here does, as we celebrate a Votive Mass invoking his intercession for the continued fruit of the Tertio Millennio Seminar, for its 1,050 alumni and all those whom the Lord wants to form through it in upcoming years. As we live out the missionary phase of the Eucharistic Revival here in the United States, we remember that the Eucharist, just like the Seminar, is intrinsically missionary, as Christ calls us here to be with him so that he may send us out, to build up society in love and help it to become and stay free and virtuous. Mary, whose holy name we invoke today, whom St. John Paul II called “a woman of the Eucharist in her whole life” and “the perfect model of love toward God and neighbor” — and to whom he said the Church looks as a “model to imitate in her relationship with this most holy mystery” — wants to help us, just like she helped the first Christians after the Ascension, to live this truly Eucharistic life, which is the fulfillment of the standard to which the blessed Fruit of her womb calls us in today’s Gospel. It’s here that Jesus gives not just his cloak and tunic, not just his right and left cheeks, but all his body and blood. It’s here where the Redeemer of man daily shows us, who cannot live without love, the infinite love he has for us, reveals us fully to ourselves, makes our supreme vocation clear, and helps us to discover ourselves in the unselfish, truly Eucharistic, gift of ourselves to others. It’s here where he bids us to bring the full measure of our mind, heart, soul and strength, as he seeks to guide us in time, and through us so many others, along the everlasting way. It’s here, finally, that Mary reminds us, “Do whatever he tells you” as we commit to “do this in memory of him” in liturgy and life. It’s where we pray, as we will at the end of the Mass today, that through the Sacrament we will receive, God will “stir up in us that fire of charity

                    • with which Saint John Paul the Second burned ardently as he gave himself unceasingly for [Christ’s] Church.” St. John Paul II, pray of us!

                     

                    The readings for today’s Mass were: 

                    Reading 1
                    1 COR 8:1B-7, 11-13

                    Brothers and sisters:

                    Knowledge inflates with pride, but love builds up.
                    If anyone supposes he knows something,
                    he does not yet know as he ought to know.
                    But if one loves God, one is known by him.

                    So about the eating of meat sacrificed to idols:

                    we know that there is no idol in the world,
                    and that there is no God but one.
                    Indeed, even though there are so-called gods in heaven and on earth
                    (there are, to be sure, many “gods” and many “lords”),
                    yet for us there is one God, the Father,
                    from whom all things are and for whom we exist,
                    and one Lord, Jesus Christ,
                    through whom all things are and through whom we exist.

                    But not all have this knowledge.

                    There are some who have been so used to idolatry up until now
                    that, when they eat meat sacrificed to idols,
                    their conscience, which is weak, is defiled.

                    Thus, through your knowledge, the weak person is brought to destruction,

                    the brother for whom Christ died.
                    When you sin in this way against your brothers
                    and wound their consciences, weak as they are,
                    you are sinning against Christ.
                    Therefore, if food causes my brother to sin,
                    I will never eat meat again,
                    so that I may not cause my brother to sin.

                    Responsorial Psalm
                    PS 139:1B-3, 13-14AB, 23-24
                    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.
                    Probe me, O God, and know my heart;
                    try me, and know my thoughts;
                    See if my way is crooked,
                    and lead me in the way of old.
                    R. Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.

                     

                    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
                    LK 6:27-38

                    Jesus said to his disciples:

                    “To you who hear I say, love your enemies,
                    do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you,
                    pray for those who mistreat you.
                    To the person who strikes you on one cheek,
                    offer the other one as well,
                    and from the person who takes your cloak,
                    do not withhold even your tunic.
                    Give to everyone who asks of you,
                    and from the one who takes what is yours do not demand it back.
                    Do to others as you would have them do to you.
                    For if you love those who love you,
                    what credit is that to you?
                    Even sinners love those who love them.
                    And if you do good to those who do good to you,
                    what credit is that to you?
                    Even sinners do the same.
                    If you lend money to those from whom you expect repayment,
                    what credit is that to you?
                    Even sinners lend to sinners,
                    and get back the same amount.
                    But rather, love your enemies and do good to them,
                    and lend expecting nothing back;
                    then your reward will be great
                    and you will be children of the Most High,
                    for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.
                    Be merciful, just as also your Father is merciful.

                    “Stop judging and you will not be judged.

                    Stop condemning and you will not be condemned.
                    Forgive and you will be forgiven.
                    Give and gifts will be given to you;
                    a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing,
                    will be poured into your lap.
                    For the measure with which you measure
                    will in return be measured out to you.”

                    The post Loving by Christ’s Measure, As St. John Paul II and Mary Did and Teach, 23rd Thursday (II), September 12, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                    18 min
                  • Courageously Living for Eternity in Time, 23rd Wednesday (II), September 11, 2024

                    Fr. Roger J. Landry

                    Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, New York
                    Wednesday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
                    September 11, 2024
                    1 Cor 7:25-31, Ps 45, Lk 6:20-26

                     

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

                    https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.11.24_Homily_1.mp3

                     

                    The following points were attempted in the homily: 

                    • On this day on which we mark the 23rd anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, on which many people boarded planes and went to work at the Twin Towers and the Pentagon like they did every day, not knowing that it would be the last day of their life, St. Paul’s words to the Corinthians and us today are particularly poignant: “I tell you brothers, the time is running out. … The world in its present form is passing away.” The world is in the midst of a “present distress.” These words don’t mean that St. Paul was predicting the imminent end of the world, but rather that he was describing the urgency of reordering our priorities for the eternal rather than the ephemeral because we never know just how short-lived the ephemeral will be. The biggest trick in the devil’s arsenal, if he can’t convince us that he doesn’t exist, is to persuade us that there’s plenty of time “later” for us to get our act together, that there’s no urgency for us to make big choices for God now. Today St. Paul is continuing to teach both us and the Christians in Corinth the path to true wisdom, which is also the path by which we’ll be considered foolish by those who are worldly. But he’s not just indicating the path: he’s also urging us to choose to live by that path.
                    • There’s no greater illustration of the choice we’re called to make for what’s everlasting instead of what’s evanescent than what Jesus mentions in the Gospel today. This is St. Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, taken from Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain. The fact that there are differences between this version and what Jesus says in Matthew 5-7 in the Sermon on the Mount is a clear sign that Jesus returned to his central messages often and developed different nuances. Rather than the eight beatitudes he proclaimed on the mountain, today in the plain he focuses on four and contrasts them clearly to four “woes.” But his essential teaching remains the same: that the real path to happiness, the way to have life to the full forever, is not just different, but in fact opposed, to what those infected by spiritual worldliness often presume.
                    • Jesus makes four contrasts today.
                      • The first is, “Blessed are you who are poor, for the Kingdom of God is yours,” and “Woe to you are rich, for you have received your consolation.” It is simply revolutionary — not just in Jesus’ age, not just in our era, but in every epoch — to believe that we’ll be happier if we’re poor than if we’re rich. Jesus says that the “rich” are to be pitied because they have already received their consolation in their money and possessions, whereas the poor are blessed because they are therefore able to seek God and his kingdom with hope. Material wealth is what those who live for the present age often believe will bring them happiness, but God’s kingdom is the hope and the treasure of those who know that time is running out and eternity is about to begin. Today many people, including Christians, spend more time nourishing their hope to win the lottery rather than to win heaven through seeking the things that are above, and Jesus says that these people are “woeful” because they think that the monopoly money and temporary houses on Park Avenue are more valuable that the Father’s House and treasure.
                      • The second is, “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be satisfied,” versus, “Woe to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry.” Like at Paul’s time with the Epicureans, there are many people today who have made pleasure their deity. St. Paul says in his letter to the Christians in Philippi that the “enemies of the Cross” have made their “bellies their god.” There are people who live to satiate their bodily appetites, obsessing about fine meals at restaurants, storing up precious wines in wine cellars, all living with their hearts set on earthly banquets and often, like the Rich Man in Jesus’ parable about Lazarus the poor man (Lk 16), ignoring those who don’t even have crumbs on which to eat each day. Jesus warns them with a “woe” that even though they are now filled and fattened, one day they will hunger for the things that matter most, just like the Rich Man in the parable whom Jesus describes. Those who are blessed, on the other hand, are those who are hungry for the eternal wedding banquet, hungry for God, hungry for what God hungers. They are people who are hungry to receive Jesus in the Eucharist more than they do sumptuous breakfasts, filet mignon and lobster. They are people who hunger and thirst for holiness more than they do for victuals and sweets. This is a hunger that allows them to put off the “junk food” of the present world for the food of eternal life.
                      • The third is, “Blessed are you who are now weeping for you will laugh” versus “Woe to you who laugh now, for you will grieve and weep.” There are always people who want to make fun their god, who make a joke out of life, who go from diversion to diversion, party to party, who don’t take life seriously because they’re living for the present moment unaware that the present moment is passing away. They try to escape from reality, seeking to insulate themselves from sadness and suffering as much as they can. They even make fun on occasion of those who are saddened by their own or other’s vicissitudes. They don’t realize that there will be a time when the music will stop, when all the lights will be turned on, and when they’ll come face to face with their Creator needing to give an account of how they’ve invested the talent of their time, either in caring for others or in carousing (Mt 24). These people are woeful, even though those of the present age consider them blessed. The blessed, on the other hand, are those who weep now: weep over their and others’ misfortune, weep over their and others’  sins that have brought so much suffering and death into the world, weep over seeing Christ be crucified for the forgiveness of these sins, weep over so many who live as if God doesn’t exist, as if life has no direction or meaning, as if there’s not going to be a final exam of life. These are the people who weep like St. Monica, weep like Our Lady of LaSalette, weep like Martha and Mary of Bethany at the death of their brother, weep like Mary Magdalene at the tomb, weep like Jesus over Jerusalem. Jesus says they’re blessed because one day they will laugh, not just the “last laugh” but a laugh that will endure. They will laugh at how God has brought good out of evil. They will laugh at how what seemed so foolish in the perspective of eternity now seems so wise. They will laugh with the Good Thief and so many others who seemed so unlikely to reign forever with God eternally. They will laugh with those who successfully bet Pascal’s wager and won an eternal jackpot.
                      • The last is, “Blessed are you when people hate you, … exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man” versus “Woe to you when all speak well of you.” Jesus contrasts the fate of each group in this world and in the next by comparing them to the true and false prophets. Here in this passing world the real prophets were persecuted and many of them even killed, whereas the false prophets, those who told the people what they wanted to hear, those who manipulated their position to ingratiate themselves to their listeners rather than proclaiming to them God’s word even when unpleasant, were those who were praised and rewarded. But in the world that endures, it’s the true prophets who “rejoice and leap for joy” and who have in store a “great reward in heaven,” whereas the false prophets will be “grieving and weeping” either at having lost their souls in order to gain the esteem of kings and crowds or, if by God’s mercy some repented and made it, “grieving and weeping” at how many were lost because they turned the signs pointing to heaven around and led many into dead ends. Jesus says for us we’re blessed when we’re persecuted, when our lives and our speech are prophetic, and when we announce to people God’s revelation, both the consolations and the castigations. Such witness is called in Greek “martyrion” for a very good reason, because it is a challenge to worldly ways of living and will bring us, to some degree, to share in Christ’s own suffering to bring us the Good News. Jesus meant it when he said that if they hated him, they would hate us, too, and we see that when we live conformed to Jesus. We’re called misogynists supposedly declaring war on women because we say with Jesus that no one, mothers included, should have the right to take the lives of their children in or out of the womb. We’re called homophobic bigots — despite our love for those with same-sex attractions for whom Jesus died — for defending Jesus’ teaching on marriage as the life-long, fruitful, faithful union of one man and one woman. We’re called socialists or communists because of our defense of the poor together with Jesus. We’re called anti-American for reminding everyone that immigrants, both legal and illegal, are our brothers and sisters — are in fact, Christ in disguise (Mt 25) — and ought to be embraced with love like we would embrace Christ or natural siblings. People threaten to cancel anyone who fails to bow to the spirit of the age. To be a Christian, however, is to be a prophet, and to be a prophet is to suffer for the Gospel when the message of the Gospel is not in conformity with the spirit of the age. There are many false prophets who try to water down or change the Gospel to accommodate “modern times” and other false prophets who by their behavior proclaim something other than the Gospel as the way to happiness and the path to please God. Jesus is essentially saying “Blessed are the true prophets” who live for God and for eternity and “Woe to the false prophets” who live for being praised by the mobs today rather than by God and the saints forever.
                      • Saint Paul’s teaching on how “time is running out,” how “the world in its present form is passing away,” and how about the “present distress” influences very much the “opinion” he gives in today’s passage, which has been misinterpreted often over the course of the centuries. His essential advice is, because the time is short, everyone should sanctify their present situation, “to remain as he is,” rather than look to change its externals. Those married should remain married, those not married should remain unmarried. This is not saying that people should not or cannot morally marry, but simply that we don’t have to, on account of the passing nature of the present world. We should not focus too much, he says, on earthly joys and sorrows, on purchases and possessions, or getting the most out of the world, but rather focus on God and living these moments fully for him, like Paul, so that we might live eternally. This teaching is always relevant. We know neither the day nor the hour. Jesus promises to come like a thief. And so we should live always ready, like a wise virgin with lamp lit and flasks full of oil. We can sanctify every situation, like marriage or virginity for the sake of the kingdom, and should not be looking to change our exterior so much as our interior. He makes clear that changing our exterior is not sinful, and we should, if we become convinced in the present that that is what God is asking of us, calling us to marry or to consecrate ourselves to him in apostolic chaste celibacy. But the key is living in the present with God, grounding ourselves on the eternal rock as the present world is passing away.
                      • Today on the anniversary of 9/11, as we pray for all those who died, for their families still grieving for them, and for the conversion of all terrorists from their diabolic plots against the innocent, it’s likewise important for us to remember the many heroes of the day, and how they showed us a different way to live, a way consistent with what Jesus and St. Paul are telling us today. I can’t help but think of Todd Beamer and all those on United 93 who, knowing that their time on earth was about to pass away, risked and gave their lives to save others on the ground. We recall the many first responders who ran into rather than from danger, with many giving their lives trying to rescue others. We recall how others, knowing they had little time left, used expensive airplane phones to call their loved ones and tell them once more how grateful they were for them or used the time even to pray with random phone operators. Conscious that they didn’t have all the time in the world left, so many reprioritized according to the most important values and virtues, and prayed and loved. And we pray that they laugh now satiated at the eternal wedding banquet, rich in the reward of God’s eternal love.
                      • Every Mass we have the privilege to focus on becoming anxious for the affairs of the Lord, to prioritize God and resolve to live as if we don’t have all the time in the world left. We come here poor to receive Jesus’ richness, hungry to be fed, sorrowful and desiring to do reparation for our sins and those of the world, and seeking the strength to remain true even when we should have to suffer on account of our faith. Jesus comes to meet us and to him we listen, see and bend not just our ear but our whole being!

                        •  

                        The readings for today’s Mass were: 

                        Reading 1
                        1 cor 7:25-31
                        Brothers and sisters:
                        In regard to virgins, I have no commandment from the Lord,
                        but I give my opinion as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy.
                        So this is what I think best because of the present distress:
                        that it is a good thing for a person to remain as he is.
                        Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek a separation.
                        Are you free of a wife? Then do not look for a wife.
                        If you marry, however, you do not sin,
                        nor does an unmarried woman sin if she marries;
                        but such people will experience affliction in their earthly life,
                        and I would like to spare you that.
                        I tell you, brothers, the time is running out.
                        From now on, let those having wives act as not having them,
                        those weeping as not weeping,
                        those rejoicing as not rejoicing,
                        those buying as not owning,
                        those using the world as not using it fully.
                        For the world in its present form is passing away.
                        Responsorial Psalm
                        ps 45:11-12, 14-15, 16-17
                        R. (11) Listen to me, daughter; see and bend your ear.
                        Hear, O daughter, and see; turn your ear,
                        forget your people and your father’s house.
                        So shall the king desire your beauty;
                        for he is your lord, and you must worship him.
                        R. Listen to me, daughter; see and bend your ear.
                        All glorious is the king’s daughter as she enters;
                        her raiment is threaded with spun gold.
                        In embroidered apparel she is borne in to the king;
                        behind her the virgins of her train are brought to you.
                        R. Listen to me, daughter; see and bend your ear.
                        They are borne in with gladness and joy;
                        they enter the palace of the king.
                        The place of your fathers your sons shall have;
                        you shall make them princes through all the land.
                        R. Listen to me, daughter; see and bend your ear.
                        Gospel
                        lk 6:20-26
                        Raising his eyes toward his disciples Jesus said:
                        “Blessed are you who are poor,
                        for the Kingdom of God is yours.
                        Blessed are you who are now hungry,
                        for you will be satisfied.
                        Blessed are you who are now weeping,
                        for you will laugh.
                        Blessed are you when people hate you,
                        and when they exclude and insult you,
                        and denounce your name as evil
                        on account of the Son of Man.
                        Rejoice and leap for joy on that day!
                        Behold, your reward will be great in heaven.
                        For their ancestors treated the prophets
                        in the same way.
                        But woe to you who are rich,
                        for you have received your consolation.
                        But woe to you who are filled now,
                        for you will be hungry.
                        Woe to you who laugh now,
                        for you will grieve and weep.
                        Woe to you when all speak well of you,
                        for their ancestors treated the false
                        prophets in this way.”

                        The post Courageously Living for Eternity in Time, 23rd Wednesday (II), September 11, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                        22 min
                      • Responding with Fidelity to Our Sacred Calling, 23rd Tuesday (II), September 10, 2024

                        Fr. Roger J. Landry

                        Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
                        Tuesday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
                        Votive Mass for Vocations to Religious Life
                        September 10, 2024
                        1 Cor 6:1-11, Ps 149, Lk 6:12-19

                         

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

                        https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.10.24_Homily_1.mp3

                         

                        The following points were attempted in the homily: 

                        • On September 10, there’s no liturgical feast or memorial of a saint to celebrate, but, because of my work with the Missionaries of Charity, there’s always been something special to mark, what they call “Foundation Day,” because on September 10, 1946, on a train from Calcutta to Darjeeling to make a retreat, Jesus revealed his thirst to St. Teresa of Calcutta and asked her to found for him the Missionaries of Charity. She always referred to it as her “call within a call,” since she had already responded to her vocation to be a religious of the teaching Sisters of Loreto. It’s  a good day for all of us to focus on the meaning of our Christian calling from baptism to be a saint and a sanctifier, of our call within that call as priests, religious, consecrated, married and whatever particular callings or professions we may have within those secondary vocations. In today’s readings we see several important elements for us to grasp about our Catholic vocation to live in, and our mission to spread, Christ’s kingdom.
                        • The first lesson is that our vocation, our life, is a direct result of the prayer of the Lord Jesus. We see him at the beginning of the Gospel go up a mountain and spend all night in prayer to his Father. He who is the second Person of the Blessed Trinity was praying all night. What an example about the importance of prayer for us who are not God! Jesus seems to have been praying in discernment about whom he should choose from among his disciples to be his apostles and praying in intercession for those whom he was about to choose. We should never forget that Jesus likewise prays for us. He’s ascended into heaven in order to intercede for us. For that reason, we should never really be afraid of living up to the vocation that God has given us, because just as much as Jesus prayed for the apostles, prayed for Peter that his faith may not fail but that after his conversion he would strengthen his brothers (Lk 22), he prayed to the Father for all those who would hear the Gospel through the work of the Apostles (Jn 17), he prays for us still!
                        • The second thing we see in this Gospel episode is what he did at dawn. From among his disciples, he selected twelve apostles. It says he “called [them] to himself” and “named [them] Apostles,” another way of saying what St. Mark describes: “he called them to be with him and so that they might be sent out” (Mk 3:14). We come here face-to-face with the mystery of divine election. God calls us all to him, but among all of us he chooses some for more intensely intimate cooperation with him. Out of all people he chose the Jews; out of all the Jews, some became his disciples; out of all those disciples, 12 became apostles; out of all 12, he chose three (Peter, James and John) to be with him in many of the most pivotal moments of his public life (healing the daughter of Jairus, the Transfiguration, the Agony in the Garden); and out of the three, he chose one, Peter, on whom to build his Church. Likewise we can say that Jesus calls all 8 billion alive today to come to the knowledge of the truth, but only 2.5 out of 8 is Christian and only 1.3 of 8 are Catholic. These facts don’t make us better than anyone else, but we should certainly be grateful. And just as the apostles responded to Jesus’ invitation and left other things to be with him and made themselves available to be sent out on mission, so we are called to do likewise according to our states in life. To do so is a response to Jesus’ prayer and doubtless something that gives him great joy.
                        • The third thing we see in the Gospel is the way Jesus trained the twelve to carry on his mission. He taught the crowds, he healed them of their diseases and cured them of demonic possession. Everyone, St. Luke tells us, wanted to touch him “because power came forth from him and healed them all.” The mission of the Church is to continue to teach as Jesus’ mystical body, to continue to heal through the sacraments and through charity, and to continue to make it possible for people to touch Jesus and be touched by him. For this to occur, we need to “be with Jesus,” by praying in union with him, by teaching in union with him, and by acting in union with him. Jesus calls us to himself so that he can send us out together, in union, with him, to be, as St. Teresa of Avila once beautifully commented, his hands, feet, eyes, ears and mystical body in the world.
                        • We see in today’s first reading how many of the Christians in Corinth had ceased doing this, and how St. Paul out of love reminds them forcefully about how far they had fallen. We need to persevere in our vocation. We recall that even among the 12 whom Jesus called after intense prayer, after an initially positive response, there was Judas Iscariot, who would betray him in many small ways before betraying him unto death. A similar thing was happening among the recently baptized in Corinth. St. Paul castigates them for something they were doing that he said was totally antithetical to their Christian identity: bringing suits against each other before civil tribunals. He asks, “How can any one of you with a case against another dare to bring it to the unjust for judgment instead of to the holy ones?” We saw a few years ago the ugly case of the fight over the remains of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen when the Diocese of Peoria sued the Archdiocese of New York in the New York Supreme Court trying to get the body of Archbishop Sheen to be translated to the Cathedral in Peoria. It was as if no one in Peoria had read 1 Cor 6 or took it seriously. Couldn’t we find one person in the whole Church who could fairly adjudicate this situation? But we’ve also seen in the United States many cases in which mothers sue their sons, daughters sue their parents, brothers and sisters dragging each other into civil court. All of us instinctively know that the love of God isn’t present in such familial disputes, that the family members aren’t truly living in Christ’s kingdom, when they’re putting, for example, financial concerns or inheritances above their familial bonds and often above God. St. Paul says that familial bonds are supposed to be even stronger among us as spiritual brothers and sisters in the Church; therefore, any time Christians were suing each other in civil courts, it was a scandal to others since Christ prayed that we would all be one like the members of the Trinity and seek first his kingdom. St. Paul makes two points. The first is that when there are inevitable disagreements, he wants us to bring it to a mutually agreed upon arbiter with good judgment who can help settle the dispute consistent with Christian faith. “Can it be that there is not one among you wise enough to be able to settle a case between brothers?,” St. Paul asks. The second is that it’s better for us to lose a suit than to lose a spiritual sibling, lose the kingdom and scandalize others. “Why not rather put up with injustice?,” he continues. “Why not rather let yourselves be cheated? Instead, you inflict injustice and cheat, and this to brothers.” Even if we win the lawsuit, he is saying, we lose. Then he immediately goes on to remind them that it is possible to lose everything, declaring that the “unjust will not inherit the Kingdom of God.” He describes what they were doing as akin to the sins of fornication, idolatry, adultery, prostitution, sodomy, theft, greed, drunkenness and robbery, saying all will exclude us from the kingdom. We can’t be seeking to live in God’s kingdom, St. Paul insists, and at the same time suing each other in civil court as if we were combatants instead of spiritual siblings. We should be filled with shame over such behavior — first embarrassed, but then mindful of why we should be embarrassed, because we’re called to something greater and better by God. These words are just as relevant today as they ever were. St. Paul calls us to a higher standard, the standard of the kingdom, saying that we were once sinners, excluded from the kingdom, but we have been “washed,” “sanctified,” and “justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” But we’ve got to live and act in the name of the Lord and in accordance with the Spirit.
                        • This leads to good news we see in the Responsorial Psalm, which at daily Masses “responds” to what we heard in the first reading. Today it easily could have been, for example, Psalm 51, “Have mercy on us, O Lord, for we have sinned!” Instead, it’s, “The Lord takes delight in his people.” It shows us the lesson of today’s Gospel, that not only despite our sins but even through them, God has called us, forgiven us, sanctified us, and sent us out to try to bring others to conversion. He calls us to be with him in his mercy and sends us out with his mercy so that others can learn about it, touch it, and have the demons that want us to reject or take that mercy for granted expelled. The Lord takes delight in us. As we pray this Mass today, we recognize that Jesus is teaching us in the Gospel and through his apostle Paul that he seeks to heal, wash, sanctify and justify us, that he calls us to himself, that he wants us to touch him on the inside through Holy Communion, and then he wants to send us out not to live a litigious but a liturgical life, transforming our whole existence into the praise of God and the consistent proclamation of his kingdom in “deeds and in truth” so that others may learn from us how to seek the things of Jesus Christ, to love others and to live in accordance with our vocation to the kingdom.

                          •  

                          The readings for today’s Mass were: 

                          Reading 1
                          1 cor 6:1-11
                          Brothers and sisters:
                          How can any one of you with a case against another
                          dare to bring it to the unjust for judgment
                          instead of to the holy ones?
                          Do you not know that the holy ones will judge the world?
                          If the world is to be judged by you,
                          are you unqualified for the lowest law courts?
                          Do you not know that we will judge angels?
                          Then why not everyday matters?
                          If, therefore, you have courts for everyday matters,
                          do you seat as judges people of no standing in the Church?
                          I say this to shame you.
                          Can it be that there is not one among you wise enough
                          to be able to settle a case between brothers?
                          But rather brother goes to court against brother,
                          and that before unbelievers?Now indeed then it is, in any case,
                          a failure on your part that you have lawsuits against one another.
                          Why not rather put up with injustice?
                          Why not rather let yourselves be cheated?
                          Instead, you inflict injustice and cheat, and this to brothers.
                          Do you not know that the unjust will not inherit the Kingdom of God?
                          Do not be deceived;
                          neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers
                          nor boy prostitutes nor sodomites nor thieves
                          nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor robbers
                          will inherit the Kingdom of God.
                          That is what some of you used to be;
                          but now you have had yourselves washed, you were sanctified,
                          you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ
                          and in the Spirit of our God.
                          Responsorial Psalm
                          ps 149:1b-2, 3-4, 5-6a and 9b
                          R. (see 4) The Lord takes delight in his people.
                          Sing to the LORD a new song
                          of praise in the assembly of the faithful.
                          Let Israel be glad in their maker,
                          let the children of Zion rejoice in their king.
                          R. The Lord takes delight in his people.
                          Let them praise his name in the festive dance,
                          let them sing praise to him with timbrel and harp.
                          For the LORD loves his people,
                          and he adorns the lowly with victory.
                          R. The Lord takes delight in his people.
                          Let the faithful exult in glory;
                          let them sing for joy upon their couches;
                          Let the high praises of God be in their throats.
                          This is the glory of all his faithful. Alleluia.
                          R. The Lord takes delight in his people.
                          Gospel
                          lk 6:12-19
                          Jesus departed to the mountain to pray,
                          and he spent the night in prayer to God.
                          When day came, he called his disciples to himself,
                          and from them he chose Twelve, whom he also named Apostles:
                          Simon, whom he named Peter, and his brother Andrew,
                          James, John, Philip, Bartholomew,
                          Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus,
                          Simon who was called a Zealot,
                          and Judas the son of James,
                          and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.
                          And he came down with them and stood on a stretch of level ground.
                          A great crowd of his disciples and a large number of the people
                          from all Judea and Jerusalem
                          and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon
                          came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases;
                          and even those who were tormented by unclean spirits were cured.
                          Everyone in the crowd sought to touch him
                          because power came forth from him and healed them all.

                          The post Responding with Fidelity to Our Sacred Calling, 23rd Tuesday (II), September 10, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                          25 min
                        • The Integral Unity Between Worship and Charity, 23rd Monday (II), September 9, 2024

                          Fr. Roger J. Landry

                          Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
                          Monday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
                          September 9, 2024
                          1 Cor 5:8, Ps 5, Lk 6:6-11

                           

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

                          https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.9.24_Homily_1.mp3

                           

                          The following text guided today’s homily: 

                          • Jesus’ mission was not just to save and sanctify but to revolutionize, to turn right side up, the way his people had distorted religion, to give us new wineskins to receive new wine. It was to restore true holiness of life, to help us learn how, in an integrated way, to love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength and to love our neighbor as Christ would love us. One distortion was, of course, people who took God for granted and didn’t even care about keeping their end of the Covenant, those who would make material possessions, or pleasure, or power and pride their idols. Another, which we encounter in today’s Gospel, was through the changing of religion from within and trying to apply religious zeal not to the worship of the true God but to essentially a man-made idol. The latter distortion was epitomized by the way some of the Scribes and Pharisees treated the Sabbath, making it a day of extraordinary rules about everything they couldn’t do, rather than a day of loving God with all they had and loving their neighbor. The Scribes and the Pharisees went to the Synagogue on the Sabbath, but they really weren’t going to praise God. St. Luke tells us that their main focus was to “watch Jesus closely to see if he would cure on the Sabbath so that they might discover a reason to accuse him.” The suffering of the man with the withered hand didn’t matter much to them. St. Luke’s term for this man’s hand was that it had “dried up”: in other words, it had once had life in it but no longer did. One of the apocryphal Gospels in describing this scene said that the man was a mason who had been injured on the job and could no longer work and support himself and his family. But such an injured laborer’s plight didn’t concern the Pharisees at all. Even though they would rescue an animal from a trap on a Sabbath, they wouldn’t care for their fellow man, as if restoring him to health would somehow be offensive to God. So Jesus, reading their hearts, asked the question: “Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath rather than to do evil, to save life rather than to destroy it?” It was a poignant question because he was intending to do good and to save life, and they were intending to do evil and destroy life. What Jesus was doing somehow they found objectionable, but what they were doing — focusing themselves on preventing Jesus’ doing good and then conspiring to plot his demise — was somehow licit to do, not only at all but especially on the Lord’s Day. They didn’t answer Jesus’ question for obvious reasons.
                          • Jesus then worked his miracle of mercy, not only to do good to the man with the withered hand and restore his livelihood but do good to his objectors and to all of us by showing us the true meaning of the Sabbath and revealing to us God’s desire to make us whole. He had the man with the injured hand come and stand before everyone, the first of the two steps of faith by which the man would cooperate in his own healing. Then he said to the man, in the second step of faith, “Stretch out your hand!” He was telling someone who hadn’t been able to move his hand for who knows how long to make an act of the will and do the impossible. And St. Luke the beloved physician says something beautiful and noteworthy: not “his hand was restored and he did so,” but, “he did so and his hand was restored.” He first extended himself in faith and that was part of his restoration. As this man was stretching out his hand in response to Jesus’, we can, in a sense, imagine an act of recreation in which, reminiscent of Michelangelo’s scene of creation, God stretched forth his hand as his creature likewise did and it was in that action that the breath and restoration of life was given.
                          • Jesus worked the miracle in today’s Gospel not only on the Sabbath but in a synagogue to show that he had come as Messiah to rehabilitate the meaning of worship, indicating to us that to love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength involves loving our neighbor as he loves them. There is a connection between our worship of God and our reverence of others: As St. Teresa of Calcutta emphasized, the same Jesus who says “This is my Body,” and “This is the chalice of my Blood,” is the one who says, “I was sick and you cared for me.” The worship Christ came to inaugurate and renew involves this union between faith and life, between what we believe and what we do. Our worship of the God of love is meant to transform us more and more into his image so that all of us may make our lives living exegeses of St. Paul’s phrase, “caritas Christi urget nos,” the love of Christ — both subjectively and objectively — compels us (2 Cor 5:14).
                          • These thoughts are very relevant for us to understand what was happening in today’s first reading from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, because there was a clear separation between worship and life. St. Paul had been told that it was widely known among the Church in Corinth that there was “an immorality of a kind not found even among pagans,” an incestuous relationship in which a man was in a relationship with his own stepmother. That was problem enough. But the bigger problem, St. Paul says, was that the Corinthian Christians were “inflated with pride” whereas they should “have been sorrowful.” They should have been humble. They should have recognized their need for God’s mercy and for trying to bring those in their community to recognize their need for that mercy. Rather than being ashamed, rather than mourning the offense against God, the damage being done to both the man and his stepmother, and the scandal that was now widely reported, they responded with proud neglect, as if that sin really didn’t impact them. In Corinth, there was so much debauchery among the pagans that people had easily become used to it, and not only were they not properly scandalized, but they also didn’t love their brother enough to do anything about it. Like the Pharisees’ callous heedlessness of the man with a withered hand, they were indifferent to their fellow believer with the withered soul.  St. Paul needed to show them the way. The man needed to be excommunicated — “expelled from your midst” — and this man needed to be “deliver[ed] … to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord.” The world itself was considered under the dominion of the evil and St. Paul was saying that this man, as medicine, needed to be shown that by his actions he was cutting himself off from grace, from Christ’s body, from the Church and choosing Satan over God, Barabbas in the disguise of his stepmother over Christ, destruction over life. This would be the means by which, hopefully, the man would come to his senses like the Prodigal Son, convert and return to the path of salvation. Such thoughts are clearly relevant to the situation of the Church today. Many in the Church have become desensitized to immorality in our midst, even immorality that honest non-Christians would never engage in. Rather than being ashamed, we tolerate it, and in some circles of the Church even celebrate it as a good. Rather than showing that breaking the sixth commandment and not repenting of it is conduct that separates us from Christ, many still insist that despite such immoral conduct they should still be able to receive communion or celebrate the Eucharist. The lack of integrity, this lack of consistency between faith and life, is harming the Church and through the Church the world, and few shepherds and faithful have the courage to speak out about it like St. Paul. Few love God and others enough even to shame, not to mention medicinally excommunicate, those who are wandering far from Christ and scandalously encouraging others to follow them on that path.
                          • Someone who shows us the type of communion between the worship of God the true, passionate, sacrificial love of neighbor is the spiritual hero the Church celebrates today, St. Peter Claver, the great apostle to the slaves in Colombia. As a young Jesuit, full of love of God and others, St. Peter left his native Spain in order to go to Cartagena to minister to the African slaves when they would disembark after a brutal trans-Pacific journey, be sold and bought. Their condition was execrable. He spent his last 44 years of life as a slave to the slaves, a Good Samaritan, catechizing them by learning their dialects or finding translators, baptizing more than 300,000 of them himself, sharing their life and doing everything he could to introduce them to Christ and to how he has overturned worldly values. He slept in the slaves’ quarters rather than in their masters’ when he came to preach missions to them. And he sought to proclaim the Gospel and bring the message of conversion to the slaveowners, trying to help them recognize that their faith in God was implicated in the way they treated the slaves. In the letter that the Church ponders on his feast day in the Office of Readings, St. Peter Claver shows how everything he sought to do for the slaves culminated in introducing them to the mystery of God’s love on the Cross, so that they may unite their own sufferings to Christ and become truly interior free. “Yesterday, May 30, 1627, on the feast of the Most Holy Trinity,” he wrote to his Jesuit superiors, “numerous blacks, brought from the rivers of Africa, disembarked from a large ship. Carrying two baskets of oranges, lemons, sweet biscuits, and I know not what else, we hurried toward them. … We had to force our way through the crowd until we reached the sick. Large numbers of the sick were lying on the wet ground or rather in puddles of mud. … We laid aside our cloaks, therefore, and brought from a warehouse whatever was handy to build a platform. … There were two blacks, nearer death than life, already cold, whose pulse could scarcely be detected. With the help of a tile we pulled some live coals together and placed them in the middle near the dying men. Into this fire we tossed aromatics. Of these we had two wallets full, and we used them all up on this occasion. Then, using our own cloaks, for they had nothing of this sort, … we provided for them a smoke treatment, by which they seemed to recover their warmth and the breath of life. The joy in their eyes as they looked at us was something to see. This was how we spoke to them, not with words but with our hands and our actions. And in fact, convinced as they were that they had been brought here to be eaten, any other language would have proved utterly useless. Then we sat, or rather knelt, beside them and bathed their faces and bodies with wine. We made every effort to encourage them with friendly gestures and displayed in their presence the emotions that somehow naturally tend to hearten the sick. After this we began an elementary instruction about baptism, that is, the wonderful effects of the sacrament on body and soul. When by their answers to our questions they showed they had sufficiently understood this, we went on to a more extensive instruction, namely, about the one God, who rewards and punishes each one according to his merit, and the rest. We asked them to make an act of contrition and to manifest their detestation of their sins. Finally, when they appeared sufficiently prepared, we declared to them the mysteries of the Trinity, the Incarnation and the Passion. Showing them Christ fastened to the cross, as he is depicted on the baptismal font on which streams of blood flow down from his wounds, we led them in reciting an act of contrition in their own language.” Everything ultimately led to their worship on Christ fastened to the Cross and how the blood and water flowing from his side made Baptism a real share in his passion, death and resurrection. He was showing them how to enter into and participate in Christ’s love which made him capable of bearing such enormous sufferings. He was helping them to recognize Christ could make them rich in their poverty, and to sanctify their hunger, their sufferings, even their dehumanization, for Christ ultimately identified with them in their maltreatment. He preached to everyone he could, even from a stretcher when we was too infirm to walk. He sought to love the slaves with the love with which he sought to love God, because he grasped that whatever he did to them he was doing to Christ himself. That’s the ultimate unity of life between love of God and love of neighbor, between faith and life.
                          • St. Paul says at the end of today’s passage that “a little yeast leavens all the dough.” It’s necessary to clean out the “old yeast … of malice and wickedness,” he said, and “celebrate the feast … with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” The old yeast is the “yeast of the Pharisees” about which Jesus would warn the apostles when they were with him in a boat, but the yeast Jesus would call his Church to become, where one person would be able to lift up his or her whole surroundings toward God. We’re called to be that type of leaven. As we prepare to encounter him in Holy Communion, he says to us, essentially, “Stretch out your lives!” We beg his help to do so in a way that we may live out true worship through our charity — and others may no longer widely report that there is immorality among us not of a kind found even among non-Christians, but rather that there is a morality among us that draws even non-Christians to Christ as its source!

                            •  

                            The readings for today’s Mass were: 

                            Reading 1 1 COR 5:1-8
                            Brothers and sisters:
                            It is widely reported that there is immorality among you,
                            and immorality of a kind not found even among pagans–
                            a man living with his father’s wife.
                            And you are inflated with pride.
                            Should you not rather have been sorrowful?
                            The one who did this deed should be expelled from your midst.
                            I, for my part, although absent in body but present in spirit,
                            have already, as if present,
                            pronounced judgment on the one who has committed this deed,
                            in the name of our Lord Jesus:
                            when you have gathered together and I am with you in spirit
                            with the power of the Lord Jesus,
                            you are to deliver this man to Satan
                            for the destruction of his flesh,
                            so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord.
                            Your boasting is not appropriate.
                            Do you not know that a little yeast leavens all the dough?
                            Clear out the old yeast, so that you may become a fresh batch of dough,
                            inasmuch as you are unleavened.
                            For our Paschal Lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed.
                            Therefore, let us celebrate the feast,
                            not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness,
                            but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
                            Responsorial Psalm PS 5:5-6, 7, 12
                            R. (9) Lead me in your justice, Lord.
                            For you, O God, delight not in wickedness;
                            no evil man remains with you;
                            the arrogant may not stand in your sight.
                            You hate all evildoers.
                            R. Lead me in your justice, Lord.
                            You destroy all who speak falsehood;
                            The bloodthirsty and the deceitful
                            the LORD abhors.
                            R. Lead me in your justice, Lord.
                            But let all who take refuge in you
                            be glad and exult forever.
                            Protect them, that you may be the joy
                            of those who love your name.
                            R. Lead me in your justice, Lord.

                            Alleluia JN 10:27

                            R. Alleluia, alleluia.

                            My sheep hear my voice, says the Lord;
                            I know them, and they follow me.
                            R. Alleluia, alleluia.

                            Gospel LK 6:6-11
                            On a certain sabbath Jesus went into the synagogue and taught,
                            and there was a man there whose right hand was withered.
                            The scribes and the Pharisees watched him closely
                            to see if he would cure on the sabbath
                            so that they might discover a reason to accuse him.
                            But he realized their intentions
                            and said to the man with the withered hand,
                            “Come up and stand before us.”
                            And he rose and stood there.
                            Then Jesus said to them,
                            “I ask you, is it lawful to do good on the sabbath
                            rather than to do evil,
                            to save life rather than to destroy it?”
                            Looking around at them all, he then said to him,
                            “Stretch out your hand.”
                            He did so and his hand was restored.
                            But they became enraged
                            and discussed together what they might do to Jesus.

                            The post The Integral Unity Between Worship and Charity, 23rd Monday (II), September 9, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                            20 min

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

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