Catholic Preaching

By Father Roger LandryReligion & Spirituality Christianity

Catholic Preaching episodes

July 01, 2024 Following St. Junipero Serra as Eucharistic Missionaries, St. Brigid Church, Xenia, Ohio, July 1, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Brigid Church, Xenia, Ohio
Eucharistic Holy Hour Reflection
July 1, 2024

To listen to an audio recording of today’s reflection, please click below:
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The post Following St. Junipero Serra as Eucharistic Missionaries, St. Brigid Church, Xenia, Ohio, July 1, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
26 min
July 01, 2024Touching Jesus in the Eucharist With Faith, Thirteenth Sunday (B), June 30, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Cathedral of St. Joseph, Columbus, Ohio
Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
June 30, 2024
Wis 1:13-15.2:23-24, Ps 30, 2 Cor 8:7.9.13-15, Mk 5:21-43

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below. The first 6:33 is in Spanish and the rest in English.
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.30.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
Dear brothers and Sisters, my name is Father Roger Landry. I’m chaplain for the Seton Route of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage. I’m so grateful to Bishop Earl Fernandes for his very warm welcome to me and to my fellow pilgrims to the Diocese of Columbus and for his very generous invitation to preach at this Sunday Mass in the mother Church of the Diocese. Today is the 44th day of our 65 day, 1200 mile journey that I am making with my fellow pilgrims from the Atlantic Ocean in New Haven, Connecticut, to Indianapolis, Indiana, for the upcoming National Eucharistic Congress. Our Catholic life is meant to be a pilgrimage in which we follow the Lord Jesus, our Good Shepherd, as he seeks to lead us through the dark valleys and high mountains of life to the eternal verdant pastures where he has prepared a banquet for us. Jesus does not want us to remain static, but he always says to us, first, “Come,” and then “Follow me,” and finally “Go and proclaim the Gospel to every person. Our faith is fundamentally dynamic. St. John the Evangelist summarizes the Christian life as “walking just as Jesus walked.” And so we are all pilgrims in the pilgrim Church on earth and Jesus accompanies us each day in the Holy Eucharist. In today’s Gospel we see a glimpse of the journey Jesus wants to make with us. Jairus, the synagogue official, makes a difficult journey to Jesus to ask him for a miracle on behalf of his daughter. Because Jesus was unpopular in the synagogue of Capernaum, Jairus’ action was dangerous. He could have lost his job. But he loved his daughter enough to risk everything. Then Jesus began a journey with Jairus to his home, which was not merely a physical journey in the midst of a crowd, but it was also a journey of faith, in which Jairus was asked to continue to trust even after his daughter had died. But Jairus made that journey with Jesus and his faith was rewarded.
We also see in the Gospel the desperate pilgrimage of the woman who had had a hemorrhage for twelve years. Her journey was made on the ground, as she slithered through the crowd to touch the hem of Jesus’ tunic. Hers, too, was a journey of faith, confident that if she merely came into contact with something Jesus was wearing she would receive a great miracle. Jesus likewise journeyed with her. He stopped walking to Jairus’ house, despite the urgency of the situation with Jairus’ daughter, to be able to bring this woman into the light, so that she would be able to advance in her journey of faith, not only with Jesus, but with others from whom she was cut off because of being ritually impure. Jesus likewise wants to stop to meet each of us, in order to help us grow in faith, too. He wants to heal us. He wants to raise us to the fullness of life in this world. And he does so in the Holy Eucharist.
Today at this Mass, as we prepare to make a Eucharistic procession in downtown Columbus, we pray that all of us may do more than merely bump into Jesus or gaze on him with physical eyes, but journey to and with him with the faith of Jesus and this anonymous, bleeding woman. We pray, too, for all those who will encounter Jesus with us along the way, that they, seeing our faith, might come to be touched by Jesus, receive healing, be restored to life, and come to join us on the pilgrimage of earthly life with the Eucharistic Jesus, as he seeks to lead us to the eternal embrace of God the Father in heaven. Jesus has come to Mass to touch us even more powerfully than he touched the girl and woman in the Gospel. Let us open ourselves now to the full power of this Eucharistic miracle of love so that we may learn from the inside how to walk just as Jesus walked as we walk with him today in Columbus.]
[Queridos hermanos y hermanas, me llamo Padre Roger Landry. Soy capellán de la Ruta de Santa Isabel Seton de la Peregrinación Eucarística Nacional. Hoy es el día 44 de nuestro viaje de 65 días y 1200 millas que estoy haciendo con mis compañeros peregrinos desde el Océano Atlántico en New Haven, Connecticut, hasta Indianápolis, Indiana, para el próximo Congreso Eucarístico Nacional.
Nuestra vida católica debe ser una peregrinación en que siguemos al Señor Jesús, nuestro Buen Pastor, mientras él busca guiarnos a través de los valles oscuros y las altas montañas de la vida hacia los verdes pastos eternos donde El ha preparado un banquete para nosotros. Jesús no quiere que nos quedemos estáticos, pero siempre nos dice primero “Vengan,” luego “Síganme” y finalmente “Vayan y anuncien el Evangelio a todos.” Nuestra fe es fundamentalmente dinámica. San Juan Evangelista resume la vida cristiana en “caminar como caminó Jesús.” Por eso todos somos peregrinos en la Iglesia peregrina en la tierra y Jesús nos acompaña cada día en la Sagrada Eucaristía.
En el Evangelio de hoy vislumbramos el camino que Jesús quiere hacer con nosotros. Jairo, el funcionario de la sinagoga, hace un difícil viaje hacia Jesús para pedirle un milagro en favor de su hija. Como Jesús era ya may impopular en la sinagoga de Cafarnaúm, la acción de Jairo fue peligrosa. Podría haber perdido su trabajo. Pero amaba a su hija tanto para arriesgar tudo. Luego Jesús comenzó un viaje con Jairo hacia su casa, que no fue simplemente un viaje físico en medio de una multitud, sino también un viaje de fe, en el que se le pidió a Jairo que continuara confiando incluso después de la muerte de su hija. Pero Jairo hizo ese viaje con Jesús y su fe seria recompensada.
Vemos también en el Evangelio la peregrinación desesperada de la mujer que padecía una hemorragia desde hacía doce años. Su viaje lo hizo en el suelo, mientras se deslizaba entre la multitud para tocar el borde de la túnica de Jesús. El suyo también fue un camino de fe, confiada en que si simplemente entraba en contacto con algo Jesús se vestía, recibiría un gran milagro. Jesús también viajó con ella. Dejó de caminar hacia la casa de Jairo, a pesar de la urgencia de la situación con la hija de Jairo, para poder traer a la luz a esta mujer, para que pudiera avanzar en su camino de fe, no solo con Jesús, sino con los otros de quienes estaba separada por ser ritualmente impura. Jesús también quiere detenerse a encontrarse con cada uno de nosotros, para ayudarnos a crecer también en la fe. Él quiere sanarnos. Él quiere elevarnos a la plenitud de la vida en este mundo. Y lo hace en la Sagrada Eucaristía.
Hoy en esta Misa, mientras nos preparamos para hacer una procesión eucarística en el centro de Columbus, oramos para que todos nosotros podamos hacer más que simplemente toparnos con Jesús o mirarlo con ojos físicos, sino viajar hacia y con él con la fe de Jairo y esta mujer anónima y sangrante. También oramos por todos aquellos que encontrarán a Jesús con nosotros en el camino, para que, al ver nuestra fe, puedan ser tocados por Jesús, recibir sanidad, ser restaurados a la vida plena de fe y venir a unirse a nosotros en la peregrinación de vida terrenal con Jesús Eucarístico, mientras él busca llevarnos al abrazo eterno de Dios Padre en el cielo.
Jesús ha venido a esta Misa para tocarnos aún más poderosamente de lo que tocó a la niña y a la mujer en el Evangelio. Abrámonos ahora al pleno poder de este milagro eucarístico de amor, para que podamos aprender desde dentro cómo caminar tal como Jesús caminó, como caminamos con él hoy en Columbus.]
In the ongoing Eucharistic Revival of the Catholic Church in the United States, the most important outcome is for us not just to recognize that the Eucharist is Jesus Christ — the same Jesus who was in Mary’s womb for nine months, whom St. Joseph held in his strong arms, who died on Calvary for us, rose from the dead on the third day and ascended to heaven 40 days later — but to treat Jesus the way Mary and Joseph treated him, the way the disciples and apostles treated him, the way the saints throughout the centuries have treated him. We Catholics firmly believe and forthrightly profess that the Eucharist is not a thing, the Eucharist is not bread and wine, but is in fact the eternal Son of God, the Savior of the World, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He just looks different than he did in ancient Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem, humbly present for us under double miracle of the transubstantiation of bread and wine into his Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity and the retention of the appearances of bread and wine so that we won’t be repulsed when we consume him. The question is how do we in fact treat Jesus? Do we approach him with faith and awe? Do we draw close to him with love, hope and gratitude?
In the second reading, St. Paul tells us that that Jesus, even though he was rich, made himself poor, so that by his poverty we might become rich. This truth obviously applies to the way that the Son of God took on our humanity so that we might share in his divinity. It applies to the way he was stripped of everything and killed on Calvary so that we might participate in his triumph over sin and death in his resurrection. To anticipate the Gospel he came to hemorrhage his blood on Calvary, to enter into our pain, our shame, our embarrassment even as we see in the healing of Jairus’s daughter into our death and resurrection. He, God, came to share radically in our death so that he might do for all of us something even greater than he did for her, not just resuscitating us to die again later, but raising us to eternal life. This incredible solidarity applies most of all to the way Jesus is with us in the Eucharist. As St. Thomas Aquinas told us in his beautiful Eucharistic hymn, Adoro Te Devote, on the Cross his divinity was hidden, but in the Eucharist even his humanity is hidden; Jesus impoverished himself in this way so that he might unite us to his risen life even now, so that he might fill us with his joy, so that he might enrich us as we receive him as the world’s greatest treasure.
Today’s dramatic Gospel scene helps us to see the faith with which two different people in need approached Jesus 2000 years ago, which can place a mirror before us about how we, too, draw close to Jesus today. The healing of the woman with the hemorrhage in today’s Gospel is one of the literally most touching of all Jesus’ miracles. Jesus was on his way with Jairus, the synagogue leader, to care for his daughter who at the time was on the point of death. St. Mark tells us that a large crowd was following Jesus and pressing in on him. As happens in almost any big crowd, people were no doubt bumping into Jesus left and right. Yet in the midst of all of that commotion on the move, Jesus is touched in a different way by this anonymous woman — and Jesus immediately knew he was touched differently. The woman believed that if she could just touch the tassel of Jesus’ garments, she would be cured. And she was not to be disappointed.
Jesus, upon feeling his healing power go out in response to her faith, stopped and asked, somewhat remarkably, “Who touched my clothes?” It would be as if an ambulance driver speeding to attend to a 911 call all of a sudden heard a faint, friendly tap of the horn and slammed on the brakes trying to find out who was trying to say hello. Jesus stopped, and doubtless to the confusion and concern of Jairus, began to ask who had come into contact with the hem of his tunic. It shows how big the crowd must have been, banging into him, that he didn’t even see the woman approach him to touch the edge of his garments. “Who touched my clothes?,” he kept asking. Jesus was never interested in merely working miracles of bodily healing. Those were always a prelude to the greater miracle of healing souls, and that healing happened and happens through a personal relationship with him. That’s why he never worked “mass miracles of healing,” but always cured people one-by-one, because he wanted to have that personal bond. So Jesus wanted to meet and enter into a relationship with the person he had just physically cured.
After Jesus’ question, the woman approached with fear and trembling, fell down before him and told him everything, including how she had sought to pick-pocket a healing miracle from him without his knowledge. She was afraid not just because the stop she had caused Jesus to make was going to prove fatal for the daughter of the understandably impatient, powerful synagogue leader, but because by her touching Jesus with her effusion of blood, she was making him ritually impure according to the Jewish law and incapable without ablutions of entering the synagogue or the temple. That ritual impurity meant that she had been suffering not only physically for twelve years, but also socially and religiously: because of her bleeding, she couldn’t touch anyone and was basically cut off from human contact; she was even, in a sense, cut off from God by not being able to enter the synagogue. She probably thought that Jesus and everyone else with whom she would have come into contact trying to get to Jesus would have been furious with her. But Jesus would address all those problems. He spoke to her tenderly, called her “Daughter,” and said, “Your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease.” He made the miracle public so that she could be restored totally to the community, to the worship of God, and to a relationship with God-in-the-flesh.
The miracle of the healing of Jairus’ daughter likewise happened with a touch. Jairus, the leader of the Capernaum synagogue where Jesus was already becoming controversial, didn’t care if the rabbis and the members of the community would criticize him for reaching out to someone who was already highly suspect in their eyes and was no longer even welcome in their synagogue. He loved his daughter too much to care about his career. With fatherly abandon, he ran up to Jesus, threw himself humbly and plaintively at his feet, and, as St. Mark says, begged Jesus repeatedly to come to lay his hands on his daughter that she might get well and live. Jairus knew that there was a power to Jesus’ hands, to his healing touch, and he wanted his daughter to feel it. And at the end of the scene, after she had died and everyone was mourning her death the way anyone would weep uncontrollably at the death of a child, Jairus would see that Jesus’ healing touch was even more powerful than he had imagined, even more miraculous than he had just witnessed with the hemorrhaging woman. “Do not fear,” Jesus told Jairus, “only believe,” and Jairus did both. When Jesus arrived at the house after the little girl had died, he took her by the hand, touched her, and said, “Little girl, arise!” In Greek, the verb for arise comes from the same word used to describe Jesus’ resurrection. Like in Michelangelo’s famous scene of the creation of Adam on the vault of the Sistine Chapel when God stretches out his hand and instills life into Adam, so Jesus’ touch brings life back into this little girl. “I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus said elsewhere, and his touch contains within it that resurrection, that life, that total restorative power. The miracle of raising this little girl from death to life was meant to show what Jesus wants to do for all of us, in this world and forever. As the Book of Wisdom tells us in the first reading, “God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living. … For God formed man to be imperishable; the image of his own nature he made him. But by the envy of the devil, death entered the world, and they who belong to [the devil’s] company experience it.” Jesus came to give us a triumph over the devil. As we prayed in the Psalm, he came to rescue us so that our infernal enemies wouldn’t rejoice over us and so that he could change our mourning into dancing. As we pondered in the epistle, even though he was rich, he became poor, spending himself for us totally down to the last drop of his own effusion of blood, so that by his poverty we might become rich. Jesus came to bring to fulfillment in your life and mine what the miracles in the Gospel point to.
The question for you and me is whether in our lives we humbly reach out to touch Jesus in the Eucharist with the faith of Jairus and the woman with the 12 year hemorrhage — or do we just “bump into him,” like all those following in the crowd, who, even though they were coming into physical contact with him, were receiving none of his healing and transformative power. Today many in our society, including many Catholics, have lost touch with Jesus and his healing power in the sacraments and prayer. Some Catholics live and come to Church almost as non-Catholics, without conviction in Jesus’ Real Presence. When we come to Mass and approach to receive Jesus in Holy Communion, do we do so with faith, knowing that we’re touching far more than the hem of his garment, but receiving his whole Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity within? That he can work miracles for us just like the two he worked in the Gospel? On Friday the Eucharistic pilgrimage stopped at Mother Angeline McCrory Manor for a processing with the nursing home and then a holy hour. As part of the Holy Hour, during which we focused on how in the presentation in the Temple Saints Simeon and Anna had touched the baby Jesus, I had the privilege to bring Jesus individually to all those present. They touched the monstrance, many kissed it, and they were touched by Jesus. Many were weeping uncontrollably. It was very moving. The same Jesus who walked through Capernaum, who walked through Mother Angeline Manor, comes here to St. Joseph Cathedral today for you, to touch you and me, and not just on the outside. He comes to touch us on the inside. But are we going to touch him with true faith, knowing he can cure us of our inner wounds, knowing he can raise from the dead whatever in us is lifeless? Will we receive him with awe and reverence? Will we draw close, knowing the depth at which he wants to reach out and touch us? Just like he did with Jairus’ little girl, so he wants to lay his hands on us, as he did on the day we were baptized, as he does in silence in the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick, as he does through the raised hands of the priest giving God’s forgiveness in the Sacrament of Penance, and as he does within, as we become for a time like a tabernacle in which the King of Kings makes his abode. Will we allow him to transform us in such a way by our contact with him in prayerful adoration so that we can in turn become the hands of his mystical body, burning with his desire to reach out and heal a wounded world in which so many are bleeding, in which so many, including little girls like Jairus’ daughter, are dying physically and spiritually because they’re not in a life-changing relationship of faith with Him who is the Resurrection, the Way, the Truth and the Life?
Every Mass is meant to be a sacred encounter with God in which he touches us at the greatest depth of our body and soul and seeks to bring us into greater communion with him. But for this dramatic transformation to occur, we need to believe in him, in his teaching, in his love, in his power. He tells us, as he told Jairus, “Do not fear, just believe.” We prepare to do so as we proclaim with fervor our Profession of Faith, as we get ready to fall on our knees before him as he enters not Jairus’ house, but comes under the roof of each of us and makes us a true temple. Today we beg him for the grace to “arise!,” to be raised up to the fullness of life with him, and with us the whole Church, so that filled with a contagious amazement like all those in Jairus’ house after the miracle, others, in seeing our awe, might hunger to follow us here to where the Eucharistic Jesus wants to touch and change them, too.

The readings for the Mass were:
Reading 1
Wis 1:13-15; 2:23-24
God did not make death,
nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.
For he fashioned all things that they might have being;
and the creatures of the world are wholesome,
and there is not a destructive drug among them
nor any domain of the netherworld on earth,
for justice is undying.
For God formed man to be imperishable;
the image of his own nature he made him.
But by the envy of the devil, death entered the world,
and they who belong to his company experience it.
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 30:2, 4, 5-6, 11, 12, 13
R. (2a) I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me.
I will extol you, O LORD, for you drew me clear
and did not let my enemies rejoice over me.
O LORD, you brought me up from the netherworld;
you preserved me from among those going down into the pit.
R. I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me.
Sing praise to the LORD, you his faithful ones,
and give thanks to his holy name.
For his anger lasts but a moment;
a lifetime, his good will.
At nightfall, weeping enters in,
but with the dawn, rejoicing.
R. I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me.
Hear, O LORD, and have pity on me;
O LORD, be my helper.
You changed my mourning into dancing;
O LORD, my God, forever will I give you thanks.
R. I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me.
Reading 2
2 Cor 8:7, 9, 13-15
Brothers and sisters:
As you excel in every respect, in faith, discourse,
knowledge, all earnestness, and in the love we have for you,
may you excel in this gracious act also.
For you know the gracious act of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that though he was rich, for your sake he became poor,
so that by his poverty you might become rich.
Not that others should have relief while you are burdened,
but that as a matter of equality
your abundance at the present time should supply their needs,
so that their abundance may also supply your needs,
that there may be equality.
As it is written:
Whoever had much did not have more,
and whoever had little did not have less.
Alleluia
Cf. 2 Tm 1:10
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Our Savior Jesus Christ destroyed death
and brought life to light through the Gospel.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Mk 5:21-43 or 5:21-24, 35b-43
When Jesus had crossed again in the boat
to the other side,
a large crowd gathered around him, and he stayed close to the sea.
One of the synagogue officials, named Jairus, came forward.
Seeing him he fell at his feet and pleaded earnestly with him, saying,
“My daughter is at the point of death.
Please, come lay your hands on her
that she may get well and live.”
He went off with him,
and a large crowd followed him and pressed upon him.
There was a woman afflicted with hemorrhages for twelve years.
She had suffered greatly at the hands of many doctors
and had spent all that she had.
Yet she was not helped but only grew worse.
She had heard about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd
and touched his cloak.
She said, “If I but touch his clothes, I shall be cured.”
Immediately her flow of blood dried up.
She felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction.
Jesus, aware at once that power had gone out from him,
turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who has touched my clothes?”
But his disciples said to Jesus,
“You see how the crowd is pressing upon you,
and yet you ask, ‘Who touched me?'”
And he looked around to see who had done it.
The woman, realizing what had happened to her,
approached in fear and trembling.
She fell down before Jesus and told him the whole truth.
He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has saved you.
Go in peace and be cured of your affliction.”
While he was still speaking,
people from the synagogue official’s house arrived and said,
“Your daughter has died; why trouble the teacher any longer?”
Disregarding the message that was reported,
Jesus said to the synagogue official,
“Do not be afraid; just have faith.”
He did not allow anyone to accompany him inside
except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James.
When they arrived at the house of the synagogue official,
he caught sight of a commotion,
people weeping and wailing loudly.
So he went in and said to them,
“Why this commotion and weeping?
The child is not dead but asleep.”
And they ridiculed him.
Then he put them all out.
He took along the child’s father and mother
and those who were with him
and entered the room where the child was.
He took the child by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum,”
which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise!”
The girl, a child of twelve, arose immediately and walked around.
At that they were utterly astounded.
He gave strict orders that no one should know this
and said that she should be given something to eat.

The post Touching Jesus in the Eucharist With Faith, Thirteenth Sunday (B), June 30, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
28 min
June 29, 2024 Longing For, Seeing and Receiving Our Salvation, Eucharistic Reflection at Mother Angeline McCrory Manor, June 28, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Mother Angeline McCrory Manor
Columbus, Ohio
June 28, 2024
To listen to the reflection, based on the scene of the Presentation, please click below:
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24 min
June 29, 2024 Becoming Fully Alive and Glorifying God through a Eucharistic Life, St. Charles Preparatory School, June 28, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Charles Preparatory School, Bexley, Ohio
Eucharistic Reflection
June 28, 2024

To listen to the reflection, please click below:
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The post Becoming Fully Alive and Glorifying God through a Eucharistic Life, St. Charles Preparatory School, June 28, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
22 min
June 29, 2024Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, June 29, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, B, Vigil
June 29, 2024

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.29.24_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 as we encounter him work two dramatic miracles.
Both were the result of a journey, when a Jairus a synagogue official comes to Jesus and drops down before and a woman with a hemorrhage makes a trip along the ground to touch Jesus’ clothes. As the Church in the United States continues to make its four-part Eucharistic Pilgrimage to Indianapolis where the National Eucharistic Congress will take place starting July 17, it’s important for us to ponder the pilgrimage each of us is called to make to come to Jesus.
The healing of the woman with the hemorrhage is one of the literally most touching of all Jesus’ cures. Jesus was on his way with Jairus, the synagogue leader, to care for his daughter who at the time was on the point of death. St. Mark tells us that a large crowd was following Jesus and pressing in on him. As happens in almost any big crowd, people were bumping into him left and right. Yet in the midst of all of that commotion on the move, Jesus is touched in a different way by this anonymous woman — and Jesus immediately knew he was touched differently. The suffering woman believed that if she could just touch the tassel of Jesus’ garments, she would be cured. And she was not to be disappointed.
Jesus, upon feeling his healing power go out in response to her faith, stopped and asked, somewhat remarkably, “Who touched my clothes?” It would be like if an ambulance driver speeding to attend to a 911 call all of a sudden heard a faint, friendly tap of the horn and then slammed on the brakes trying to find out who was trying to say hello. Jesus stopped, and doubtless to the confusion and concern of Jairus, began to ask who had come into contact with the hem of his tunic. It shows how big the crowd must have been banging into him that he didn’t even see the woman approach him to touch the edge of his garments. “Who touched my clothes?,” he asked again. Jesus was never interested in merely working miracles of bodily healing. Those were always a prelude to the greater miracle of healing souls, and that healing happened and happens through a personal relationship with him. That’s why he never worked “mass miracles of healing,” but always cured people one-by-one, because he wanted to have that personal bond. So Jesus wanted to meet and enter into a relationship with the person he had just physically cured.
After Jesus’ question, the woman approached with fear and trembling, fell down before him and told him everything, including how she had sought to pick-pocket a healing miracle from him without his knowledge. She was afraid not just because the stop she had caused Jesus to make was going to prove fatal for the daughter of the understandably impatient, powerful synagogue leader, but because by her touching Jesus with her effusion of blood, she was making him ritually impure according to the Jewish ceremonial law and incapable without ablutions of entering the synagogue. That ritual impurity meant that she had been suffering not only physically for twelve years, but also socially and religiously: because of her bleeding, she couldn’t touch anyone and was basically cut off from human contact; she was even, in a sense, cut off from God by not being able to enter the synagogue. She probably thought that Jesus and everyone else with whom she would have come into contact trying to get to Jesus would have been furious with her. But Jesus would address all those problems. He spoke to her tenderly, called her “Daughter,” and said, “Your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease.” He made the miracle public so that she could be restored totally to the community, to the worship of God, and to a relationship with God-in-the-flesh.
The miracle of the healing of Jairus’ daughter likewise began with a touch. Jairus, the leader of the Capernaum synagogue where Jesus was already becoming controversial, didn’t care if the rabbis and the members of the community would criticize him for reaching out to Jesus, who was already highly suspect in their eyes and was no longer welcome in their synagogue. Jairus loved his daughter too much to care about his career. With fatherly abandon, he ran up to Jesus, threw himself at his feet, doubtless grabbed onto them, and, as St. Mark says, begged Jesus repeatedly to come to lay his hands on his daughter that she might get well and live. Jairus knew that there was a power to Jesus’ hands, to his healing touch, and he wanted his daughter to feel it. And at the end of the scene, after she had died and everyone was mourning her death the way anyone would weep uncontrollably at the death of a child, Jairus would see that Jesus’ healing touch was even more powerful than he had imagined, even more miraculous than he had just witnessed with the hemorrhaging woman. “Do not fear,” Jesus told Jairus, “only believe,” and Jairus did both. When Jesus arrived at the house after the little girl had died, he took her by the hand, touched her, and said, “Little girl, arise!” In Greek, the verb is the same word used to describe Jesus’ resurrection. Like in Michelangelo’s famous scene of the creation of Adam on the vault of the Sistine Chapel when God stretches out his hand to instill life into Adam, so Jesus’ touch brings life back into this little girl. “I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus said elsewhere, and his touch contains within it that resurrection, that life, that total restorative power. The miracle of raising this little girl from death to life was meant to show what Jesus wants to do for all of us, in this world and forever.
The question for you and me is whether in our life we humbly reach out to touch Jesus with the faith of Jairus and the woman with the 12-year hemorrhage — or do we just “bump into him,” like all those following in the crowd, who, even though they were coming into physical contact with him, were receiving none of his healing and transformative power. During this National Eucharistic Revival, it’s important for us to ask: we come to Mass and approach to receive Jesus in Holy Communion, do we do so with faith, knowing that we’re touching far more than the hem of his garment, but receiving his whole body, blood, soul and divinity within? Do we recognize we’re receiving the same Jesus whose feet Jairus grasped? Or do we receive him routinely, without awe, without reverence, with hands or souls in need of cleansing? Do we make the effort to come to receive him, even each day, and to pray to him in the dialogue that constitutes Eucharistic adoration? Do we approach Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament knowing he likewise wants to reach out and touch us, that just like he did with Jairus’ little girl, he wants to lay his hands on us, as he does on the day we’re baptized, as he does in silence in the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick, as he does through the raised hands of the priest giving God’s forgiveness in the Sacrament of Penance, whereby he who is the resurrection and the life wants us to share in his triumph over sin and death. Do we allow him to transform us in such a way by our contact with him in prayer, in the Sacraments and especially in the Holy Eucharist, that we can in turn become the hands of his mystical body, burning with his desire to reach out and heal a wounded world in which so many are bleeding, in which so many, including kids, are dying physically and spiritually because they’re not in a life-changing relationship of faith with Him who is the Resurrection, the Way, the Truth and the Life?
As we prepare on Sunday to act on his words, “Do not fear, just believe,” and proclaim with fervor our Profession of Faith; as we get ready to fall on our knees before him as he enters not Jairus’ house, and not only the house of God, but enters under the roof of each of us and makes us a true temple, let us ask him for the grace to “arise!,” to be raised up to the fullness of life with him, both individually and as a family of faith, that filled with a contagious amazement like all those in Jairus’ house after the miracle, others, in seeing our awe, might hunger to follow us on pilgrimage to where the Eucharistic Jesus wants to touch and change them, too. Jesus has indeed rescued us and will rescue us again. He loves us too much to leave us in the pit, hemorrhaging and dead. He’s reaches out to us each day in the Holy Eucharist. Let us reach back, make the journey necessary, and receive his grace never to leave his restorative embrace!

The Gospel passage on which the homily was based was:
Gospel
Mt 7:21-29
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’
will enter the Kingdom of heaven,
but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.
Many will say to me on that day,
‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name?
Did we not drive out demons in your name?
Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’
Then I will declare to them solemnly,
‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.’
“Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them
will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.
The rain fell, the floods came,
and the winds blew and buffeted the house.
But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock.
And everyone who listens to these words of mine
but does not act on them
will be like a fool who built his house on sand.
The rain fell, the floods came,
and the winds blew and buffeted the house.
And it collapsed and was completely ruined.”
When Jesus finished these words,
the crowds were astonished at his teaching,
for he taught them as one having authority,
and not as their scribes.
The post Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, June 29, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
9 min
June 26, 2024 One Priest’s Eucharistic Pilgrimage, Mass for the 25th Anniversary Of My Priestly Ordination, Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish, N. Pickerington, Ohio, June 26, 2024
Fr. Roger Landry
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church, North Pickerington, Ohio
Mass for the Priest Himself on the Anniversary of His Ordination
Readings for the Votive Mass of the Holy Eucharist
June 26, 2024
1 Kings 19:4-8, Ps 116, 1 Cor 11:23-26, Mk 14:12-16.22-26

To listen to an audio recording of the homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.26.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
We proclaim in the heart of every Mass, after we have lifted up our hearts to the Lord, that it is “truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give [God] thanks.”
Today is a day of special thanksgiving as the Seton Route of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage has come here to this beautiful parish dedicated to God though her intercession.
As part of the Eucharistic Revival, it’s a day of special thanksgiving to God for the awesome gift of Jesus Christ, who remains with us until the end of time, and even within us, in the Sacrament of the Altar.
And it’s a day to thank God for the gift of the priesthood, through which Christ gives us himself in the Eucharist, forgives us our sins in the Sacrament of Penance, and seeks to give us his life to overflowing.
Today I give thanks to God for the 25th anniversary of my priestly ordination, which took place at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Fall River by then Bishop, now Cardinal, Sean O’Malley, OFM Cap., who has remained a friend, spiritual father and priestly model for me.
I give thanks to God for the gift of the Church in heaven and on earth for having nourished my vocation as a Christian and a priest and for all the saints, priests, religious, consecrated, spiritual directors and directees, parishioners and faithful who have encouraged me, formed me and let me serve them in God’s name.
I thank God for the gift of the domestic Church in which I was raised, for my mom and dad who are present here today who first taught me to pray and to love God with all my heart and strength, for my twin brother Scot, my brother Greg, my sister Colleen, my in-laws, nieces and nephews, all of whom have formed the most important seminary and Christian formation house I ever attended, namely, home.
I thank the Lord for so many friends, priests, religious and lay, who have nourished my life and priesthood and opened up their homes and lives to me, many of whom have made the sacrifice to travel to be here today and many more who are watching on the parish’s superb livestream.
Among those friends, I’d like to mention my many fellow pilgrims with whom I have been blessed to journey over the past quarter century. My priesthood has been filled with pilgrimages to the Holy Land, to Rome and various parts of Italy, to the great shrines of Christian Europe, to World Youth Days and so much more. Many of those fellow spiritual travelers have continued our mutual journey here.
I would like to single out and express my gratitude to God that I can celebrate this silver jubilee with my fellow pilgrims on the Seton Route of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage: Natalie, Zoe, Amarayni, Marina, Christoph, Dominic, Father Justin, Brother Lazarus and the other CFRs who have joined us each week, Mother Mary Maximilian, Sisters Mary Fatima, Theresa Marie, and Miriam Christi, Beth Neer and Jan Pearson. It’s been a real honor to travel with them over the last 40 days of this life-changing adventure with the Lord and I hope to have the privilege to continue to accompany them not just over the next 25 days but I hope 25 years into eternity.
I’d like to say a special word of thanks to Bishop Earl Fernandes, Liz Christy and the Diocese of Columbus, to Father Leo Connolly and the parishioners of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish, for their overwhelming Christian hospitality and generosity in welcoming the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage and for pulling out all the stops for my twenty-fifth anniversary, treating me as if I were a native son of the Diocese and the parish. What a great grace it is that in divine providence I am able to celebrate this Mass of Thanksgiving as a Seton Route pilgrim here in this beautiful Church built for the Eucharist and placed under the prayers of this great Eucharistic convert, saint and intercessor, whose first-class relic my fellow pilgrims and I have been privileged to take turns wearing over the course of our journey.
In short, thank you to everyone who has come tonight to adore and thank the Lord together with me for the gift of 25 years of the priestly life.
Please permit me to single out one more person, Father Tad Pacholczyk, my classmate from the North American College, who was ordained a priest with me 25 years ago today in Fall River, who forsook a celebration of his own generously to come here to celebrate with all of us. In addition to being a faithful priest, Father Tad is also one of the universal Church’s top specialists in bioethics, whose work has guided countless people trying to understand and live according to Church teachings. Congratulations, Father Tad! Ad multos gloriososque annos!
Throughout this National Eucharistic pilgrimage, I’ve had the privilege to pray about and preach upon the dynamic nature of the Christian life. The Church, Christ’s Mystical Body and Bride, is, as Eucharistic Prayer III proclaims, a “pilgrim Church on earth.” The Christian summons, as St. John wrote, is to “walk as [Jesus] walked” (1 Jn 2:6), to hear him say to us, as he once said to a paralyzed man, “Rise and walk” (Lk 9:5), to respond to his summons, “Come to me,” to “Follow Me” and to “go” sent out by him to the lost sheep everywhere, proclaiming the Gospel, teaching others to do what Christ has taught us, and to remember and remind others that he is with us always until the end of time.
This pilgrimage of Christian life is in fact a Eucharistic procession, because Christ himself accompanies us each day — on both sunny and rainy ones — in the Holy Eucharist, as he strives as our Good Shepherd to lead us to the verdant pastures where he has prepared an eternal banquet for us and wants to make our cup overflow. In the first reading, we see how God sought to strengthen the Prophet Elijah for his 40-day journey through the desert with some hearth cakes and water brought by an angel. The Lord gives us so much more — his own Body and Blood — to strengthen us as our weekly, even daily, viaticum for the pilgrimage of life. The National Eucharist Pilgrimage, the boldest and longest Eucharistic Procession in the 2,000-year history of the Church, is meant to be a reminder of the pilgrim nature of the Church and of Christian existence and help all U.S. Catholics revive the dynamism of growth in Eucharistic faith, amazement, gratitude, love and life.
As I’ve looked back with gratitude on my 25 years as a priest and my 54 years as a Christian, I can see how the Eucharistic Lord Jesus has been there at every pivotal moment of my life, calling me to deeper and deeper communion with him in the most Blessed Sacrament. Please permit me to trace some of the major steps on the Eucharistic pilgrimage of my life, which I offer in grateful witness to God’s goodness and in the hope that it might help provoke others to thank the Lord for similar Eucharistic interventions in theirs.
The first major station on my Eucharistic journey happened 50 years ago this year. I come from a home with a mom who has always sought to align her life to that of Our Lady through her work in the Legion of Mary and a dad who was as strong, manly, hard-working and loving like St. Joseph. I’m convinced that I was able to give a wholehearted yes to my vocation as a priest because I come from a family in which loving God and giving him your best and your all was cultivated. My earliest memory is of praying the Rosary as a family, as we did every night. My mom, who has always been a daily Mass goer, one morning when I was four, brought Scot and me to daily Mass at St. Michael’s in Lowell, Massachusetts. We were seated in the first pew because we were short and to avoid distractions. My parents had taught us that the Eucharist wasn’t bread but Jesus. That morning Mass, as our pastor, an elderly Father Jon Cantwell, pronounced the words of consecration, I thought if I were big enough to climb up on the altar and peer into the chalice, I’d see what looked like human blood. Then I beheld with amazement Father Cantwell carefully weeble-wobble down the marble steps of the sanctuary to give the Lord Jesus to those, like my mom, who were old enough and lucky enough to receive him. Afterward Fr. Cantwell came over to the side altar where the tabernacle was, in front of our pew, to put the ciborium containing the hosts in the tabernacle, genuflect with great difficulty and shut the door, as he returned to the altar for the purification of the sacred vessels. I just kept staring at the tabernacle door knowing that Jesus was behind it. I remember saying to him within, “Jesus, the priest must be the luckiest person in the whole world, capable of holding you in his hands and giving you to others!” It’s then that I asked Jesus to make me a priest. That was 50 years ago. From that point forward, amazement at the priesthood and what the priest is able to do on behalf of God for others never waned. Over the course of time, of course I was also attracted to lots of other things, to being a doctor, lawyer, catcher for the Red Sox, professional tennis player, husband and dad, pro-life difference maker and more, but the desire to be a priest, and my wonder at the gift and mystery of the priesthood, never left me. It led me to be an altar boy for a decade, to work at a Catholic rectory assisting priests throughout junior high and high school and to try to live in a way morally consistent with Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. By the time I was ordained 25 years later, I already had a quarter century’s experience of looking at the world through the eyes of a priestly vocation, which I think God has been able to put to some use.
The second major Eucharistic station on the pilgrimage of my life happened a few weeks into my freshman year in college. On my own for the first time, responsible for my decisions, I pondered who I really wanted to be and what I should prioritize. I asked myself a fateful question: “Roger, is there anything more important you could do on a Monday than receive God inside? A Tuesday? Wednesday through Saturday?” By God’s grace, I recognized that, no, there’s nothing more important that anyone could do than to live out the mystery of the Annunciation each day and receive the same Jesus Christ within us as she received at Nazareth. I made a commitment to going to daily Mass. And obviously assisted by the mercy of God in the Sacrament of Confession, I’ve kept that commitment over the course of the last 13,059 days. It’s been a way in which I have been able to live what Jesus told us in tonight’s Gospel: “Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.” And I give thanks that day by day, communion by communion, I have been drawing my life from the Eucharistic Lord as the source, summit, root and center of my existence, as the Lord Jesus has been trying to do his work within me, to help me experience that life, to conform me more and more to his Eucharistic image, and to help me become a means by which to help many others come to live Eucharistic lives, too.
The third stage also happened in college when a priest, who became my first spiritual director, helped me to see that a desire for the priesthood didn’t necessarily mean I was being called to priesthood. That led to be intense two-and-a-half-year period of prayer in which I sought to hear what God was asking of me in life and to beg for the grace to do whatever he desired. I would pray a couple of hours a day in front of the Blessed Sacrament at St. Paul’s Church in Cambridge, at the Opus Dei chapel close to campus, and at various shrines in Boston. I helped to start Eucharistic adoration on first Fridays at the Catholic Student Center at Harvard. It was there that I had asked God, on April 3, 1992, to tell me what he wanted of me, making a novena in preparation. Fifteen minutes before I was supposed to adore, I got a call from my sister Colleen, who was in Harvard Square waiting for my brother who was supposed to help her with her taxes. Scot had forgotten and so I had to go get my 18 year-old sister and miss the holy hour. Later that night, however, after receiving spiritual direction and praying before the Lord at Elmbrook University Center, the Lord gratefully confirmed for me that he actually was calling me to be a priest, filling me with a conviction and a peace that have never wavered, despite the sometimes common, sometimes unique contradictions that God permits to happen when one follows his path. I give thanks to God for giving me a great love for Eucharistic adoration and prayer before him in the Blessed Sacrament and for having given me the chance to build or have chapels in the rectories of all the parishes I was assigned in the Diocese of Fall River to make this prayer easier as the Lord seeks to confirm me in the vocation he in Eucharistic prayer revealed.
There have been multiple other moments of greater Eucharistic awareness.
As a transitional deacon in the Vatican, I’ll never forget holding the ciborium full of hosts to distribute as St. John Paul II said the words of consecration over them.
I’ll never forget my first Mass. I’m seldom nervous but I was overwhelmed that day as I heard the words of consecration being said in my voice. I think I was at the point of spacing out if it weren’t for the help of so many brother priests behind me, which brought me to my senses and helped me to finish with awe the echo of the most important words ever enunciated. I’ve never lost the amazement of Jesus’ hijacking my unique New England phonetics to bring himself from heaven to the altar.
Today I have the chance to say those words for the 11,984th time, as I try to pray them like I did at my first Mass, as I hope to do in every Mass as if it were my only or my last. St. Paul wrote with conviction and affection to the first Christians in Corinth, as we heard in tonight’s epistle, “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.’” I, too, seek to pass on to you as of the greatest importance what I, too, and the whole Church has received, not just so that we can remember Jesus in our minds, but so that Jesus himself can be actualized in our midst as he gives us himself.
I’d like to share one more memory, one more important station in my Eucharistic pilgrimage. It’s of my only deliberate liturgical abuse, for which I hope the Lord Jesus will be merciful to me!
It took place 80 days after I was ordained a priest. With two priest classmates from the North American College, we made a thanksgiving pilgrimage to the Holy Land. We went to the Franciscan booking office that reserves Masses at the great shrines in Jerusalem and beyond to ask whether it might be possible for us, as newly ordained priests, to celebrate Mass in the tomb of Jesus.
That was our main and sole objective, conscious that such reservations were normally made months in advance and basically begging for a miracle.
The 80-something year-old friar asked in Italian, “Siete tutti sacerdotini?,” “You’re all baby priests?” I said we were. Then he said, “No, non è possible celebrare una messa nel sepolcro di Cristo.” “No, it’s not possible to celebrate a Mass in Christ’s tomb.” But he had curiously stressed the word “una” or one. Then he startled giggling with his bold body. And with incredible generosity he said, “You must each celebrate a Mass in the tomb!” Then he booked us three straight days very early in the morning. Then he asked if we would like to celebrate Mass at the Church of the Last Supper on Thursday, on Calvary on Friday, in Nazareth where the Annunciation took place on Saturday, at the Mount of Transfiguration on Sunday, and in Bethlehem the following Tuesday. It was an extraordinary gift.
Because he told me I was the leader, he booked me to celebrate the first Mass inside the tomb of Jesus. The Mass was at 4:30 am. It was just the three of us. After we prayed the words, “Take this, all of you and eat of it, for this is my body, which will be given up for you,” we genuflected. Then I turned to Father Sam Martin and Father Blaise Berg, both of whom are celebrating their silver jubilees today in the Dioceses of LaCrosse, Wisconsin, and Sacramento, and said, “Do you realize we have just put the risen body of the Lord Jesus back into the empty tomb?” Rather than being startled by my liturgical innovation, they both smiled as we just adored the Lord there for a while before proceeding to the consecration of the Precious Blood, after which we again stopped for a lengthy time to adore.
I’ve had the privilege on my 14 pilgrimages to the Holy Land to celebrate Mass in the tomb more than 25 times. The experience of being the instrument by which the Risen Jesus returns to the place from which he rose triumphant from the grave always fills me with wonder and has influenced the way I celebrate every Mass, in various languages, in shrines, sanctuaries, cathedrals, basilicas, outdoor chapels, my home in Massachusetts, hotel rooms, and even twice quietly and discreetly during lengthy flights on airplanes as everyone else was asleep.
At every Mass, I am able to receive the same Lord Jesus within me whom I have brought to the empty tomb. At every Mass, I have had the joy to place him within others — now so many hundreds of thousands of people over the last 25 years — as they’ve come for Holy Communion. At tonight’s Mass, I am so happy to be able to give him to you, as the greatest possible gift any person could ever give.
Every time I give the Risen Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of the Savior of the World to people I know and love and to people he knows and loves, I grow in the conviction he gave me as a four year-old, that the priest really is the luckiest man in the world.
These last 40 days as I’ve journeyed on this Eucharistic pilgrimage, with some days holding Jesus for hours two inches from my nose, at other times adoring him in beautiful churches with hundreds of others like we’ve done at St. Joseph’s in Somerset, at St. Francis de Sales in Newark and here earlier today, and even for lengthy trips in the specially outfit Tabor or stand in the Eucharistic Pilgrimage Van, I’ve been able to grow in my gratitude for the Eucharistic dimension of priestly life.
The Eucharist is the very heart and purpose of the priesthood.
It’s to give Jesus to others that a priest freely lays down his freedom in a promise of obedience to his bishop and the bishops’ successors, whoever they may be.
It’s to give others the Eucharist that a priest promises to live a simple life, forsaking sometimes lucrative careers to give you the Pearl of Great Price worth far more than all earthly treasures combined.
It’s to give others the Eucharist that a priest forsakes the great blessings of the Sacrament of Marriage and a family of his own, as in the early Church, based on precedents in Judaism, priests who were married before ordination needed to go without conjugal relations for three days before Mass. Over the course of time, the desire for daily Mass led to perpetual continence of married priests and then to the law of priestly celibate chastity. Every celibate priest today proclaims by the fact of his ordination that he prioritizes your being able to receive Jesus every day in Holy Communion more than he does the beauty of human marital and familial love. Priests are flawed human beings and obviously make many mistakes, but every priest has made this choice to prioritize your having access to the Eucharistic Lord. As St. Teresa of Calcutta never ceased saying, “No priest, no Eucharist.” That’s why we need to be grateful for everyone of the 404,000 priests who offer Christ to us. That’s why we need to pray with persevering ardor to the Harvest Master for young men to hear the call to be hardworking priestly laborers in the Lord’s vineyard.
But even though the priest gives up a lot, he of course gains so much more. Through obedience, he learns true freedom; through simplicity of life, how to value the treasure buried in the field. Through chaste celibacy for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, how to enter into Christ’s spousal love for the Church and to experience over time the joys, and sometimes the anguish, of a true spiritual fatherhood.
The great 20th century Dominican Preacher Father Henri Lacordaire once summarized the priesthood in the following eloquent words:
“To live in the midst of the world without wishing its pleasures; to be a member of each family, yet belonging to none;to share all suffering; to penetrate all secrets; to heal all wounds; to go from men to God and offer Him their prayers; to return from God to men to bring pardon and hope; to have a heart of fire for charity, and a heart of bronze for chastity; to teach and to pardon, console and bless always. My God, what a life, and it is yours, O priest of Jesus Christ!”
That has indeed been my life for the last 25 years.
I am so grateful to God for having given me a priestly vocation.
I am so grateful to have been able to share it with you, for at least a day, and for some of you, for every one of the 9,133 days since Bishop O’Malley imposed hands on me.
As I prepare once again, with my brother priests, to go up to the altar of God, to make a pilgrimage to the Lord who perpetually rejuvenates his priests and faithful each day at the Mass, I make my own anew the words of tonight’s Psalm, “How can I repay the Lord for all the good done for me? I will raise the cup of salvation and call on the Lord’s name!”
What an incredible gift it is to raise that chalice!
What an awesome privilege it is to call upon that name!
What a mind-blowing reality it is for us as creatures to receive the Savior himself in holy communion!
What an astonishing honor it is for a creature to hold his Creator, a sinner his Savior, a sheep his Shepherd, and to give him to others!
But this is the gift God makes possible for us in the Holy Eucharist and in the priesthood.
Let us, therefore, with holy awe approach the Lord tonight anew as he seeks to strengthen us for the Eucharistic Pilgrimage of earthly life, as we commit to journey with him and with each other to the heavenly banquet where this Eucharistic banquet will find its fulfillment and where our thanksgiving and joy will know no end.
To watch a video of the Mass, please click below. The homily begins at 47:30.

The post One Priest’s Eucharistic Pilgrimage, Mass for the 25th Anniversary Of My Priestly Ordination, Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish, N. Pickerington, Ohio, June 26, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
31 min
June 26, 2024 The Divine Counsels for a Eucharistic Life, 12th Tuesday (II), June 25, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Francis de Sales Church, Newark, Ohio
Tuesday of the 12th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Votive Mass of the Holy Eucharist
June 25, 2024
2 Kings 19:9-11.14-21.31-36, Ps 48, Mt 7:6.12-14

To listen to an audio recording of the homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.25.24_Homily_1.mp3

The readings for the Mass were:
Reading 1
2 KGS 19:9B-11, 14-21, 31-35A, 36
Sennacherib, king of Assyria, sent envoys to Hezekiah
with this message:
“Thus shall you say to Hezekiah, king of Judah:
‘Do not let your God on whom you rely deceive you
by saying that Jerusalem will not be handed over
to the king of Assyria.
You have heard what the kings of Assyria have done
to all other countries: they doomed them!
Will you, then, be saved?’”
Hezekiah took the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it;
then he went up to the temple of the LORD,
and spreading it out before him,
he prayed in the LORD’s presence:
“O LORD, God of Israel, enthroned upon the cherubim!
You alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth.
You have made the heavens and the earth.
Incline your ear, O LORD, and listen!
Open your eyes, O LORD, and see!
Hear the words of Sennacherib which he sent to taunt the living God.
Truly, O LORD, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations
and their lands, and cast their gods into the fire;
they destroyed them because they were not gods,
but the work of human hands, wood and stone.
Therefore, O LORD, our God, save us from the power of this man,
that all the kingdoms of the earth may know
that you alone, O LORD, are God.”
Then Isaiah, son of Amoz, sent this message to Hezekiah:
“Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel,
in answer to your prayer for help against Sennacherib, king of Assyria:
I have listened!
This is the word the LORD has spoken concerning him:
“‘She despises you, laughs you to scorn,
the virgin daughter Zion!
Behind you she wags her head,
daughter Jerusalem.
“‘For out of Jerusalem shall come a remnant,
and from Mount Zion, survivors.
The zeal of the LORD of hosts shall do this.’
“Therefore, thus says the LORD concerning the king of Assyria:
‘He shall not reach this city, nor shoot an arrow at it,
nor come before it with a shield,
nor cast up siege-works against it.
He shall return by the same way he came,
without entering the city, says the LORD.
I will shield and save this city for my own sake,
and for the sake of my servant David.’”
That night the angel of the LORD went forth and struck down
one hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp.
So Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, broke camp,
and went back home to Nineveh.
Responsorial Psalm
PS 48:2-3AB, 3CD-4, 10-11
R. (see 9d) God upholds his city for ever.
Great is the LORD and wholly to be praised
in the city of our God.
His holy mountain, fairest of heights,
is the joy of all the earth.
R. God upholds his city for ever.
Mount Zion, “the recesses of the North,”
is the city of the great King.
God is with her castles;
renowned is he as a stronghold.
R. God upholds his city for ever.
O God, we ponder your mercy
within your temple.
As your name, O God, so also your praise
reaches to the ends of the earth.
Of justice your right hand is full.
R. God upholds his city for ever.
Alleluia
JN 8:12
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
I am the light of the world, says the Lord;
whoever follows me will have the light of life.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
MT 7:6, 12-14
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Do not give what is holy to dogs, or throw your pearls before swine,
lest they trample them underfoot, and turn and tear you to pieces.
“Do to others whatever you would have them do to you.
This is the Law and the Prophets.“Enter through the narrow gate;
for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction,
and those who enter through it are many.
How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life.
And those who find it are few.”
The post The Divine Counsels for a Eucharistic Life, 12th Tuesday (II), June 25, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
35 min
June 25, 2024 Beholding the Eucharistic Lamb of God Indicated by John the Baptist, Nativity of St. John the Baptist, June 24, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Co-Cathedral of St. Joseph, Wheeling, West Virginia
Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist
June 24, 2024
Is 49:1-6, Ps 139, Acts 13:22-26, Lk 1:57-66.80

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These were the readings for the Mass:
Reading I
Is 49:1-6
Hear me, O coastlands,
listen, O distant peoples.
The LORD called me from birth,
from my mother’s womb he gave me my name.
He made of me a sharp-edged sword
and concealed me in the shadow of his arm.
He made me a polished arrow,
in his quiver he hid me.
You are my servant, he said to me,
Israel, through whom I show my glory.
Though I thought I had toiled in vain,
and for nothing, uselessly, spent my strength,
yet my reward is with the LORD,
my recompense is with my God.
For now the LORD has spoken
who formed me as his servant from the womb,
that Jacob may be brought back to him
and Israel gathered to him;
and I am made glorious in the sight of the LORD,
and my God is now my strength!
It is too little, he says, for you to be my servant,
to raise up the tribes of Jacob,
and restore the survivors of Israel;
I will make you a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.
Responsorial Psalm
139:1b-3, 13-14ab, 14c-15
R.        (14) I praise you, for I am wonderfully made.
O LORD, you have probed me, 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.        I praise you for I am wonderfully made.
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.        I praise you, for I am wonderfully made.
My soul also you knew full well;
nor was my frame unknown to you
When I was made in secret,
when I was fashioned in the depths of the earth.
R.        I praise you, for I am wonderfully made.
Reading II
Acts 13:22-26
In those days, Paul said:
“God raised up David as king;
of him God testified,
I have found David, son of Jesse, a man after my own heart;
he will carry out my every wish.
From this man’s descendants God, according to his promise,
has brought to Israel a savior, Jesus.
John heralded his coming by proclaiming a baptism of repentance
to all the people of Israel;
and as John was completing his course, he would say,
‘What do you suppose that I am? I am not he.
Behold, one is coming after me;
I am not worthy to unfasten the sandals of his feet.’
“My brothers, sons of the family of Abraham,
and those others among you who are God-fearing,
to us this word of salvation has been sent.”
Alleluia
See Lk 1:76
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
You, child, will be called prophet of the Most High,
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Lk 1:57-66, 80
When the time arrived for Elizabeth to have her child
she gave birth to a son.
Her neighbors and relatives heard
that the Lord had shown his great mercy toward her,
and they rejoiced with her.
When they came on the eighth day to circumcise the child,
they were going to call him Zechariah after his father,
but his mother said in reply,
“No. He will be called John.”
But they answered her,
“There is no one among your relatives who has this name.”
So they made signs, asking his father what he wished him to be called.
He asked for a tablet and wrote, “John is his name,”
and all were amazed.
Immediately his mouth was opened, his tongue freed,
and he spoke blessing God.
Then fear came upon all their neighbors,
and all these matters were discussed
throughout the hill country of Judea.
All who heard these things took them to heart, saying,
“What, then, will this child be?”
For surely the hand of the Lord was with him.
The child grew and became strong in spirit,
and he was in the desert until the day
of his manifestation to Israel.
The post Beholding the Eucharistic Lamb of God Indicated by John the Baptist, Nativity of St. John the Baptist, June 24, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
20 min
June 24, 2024 Laboring for the Food That Endures That the Son of Man Gives, St. John the Evangelist Church, Bellaire, OH, June 23, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. John the Evangelist Church, Bellaire, Ohio
Eucharistic Holy Hour
June 23, 2024

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31 min
June 23, 2024 Following Jesus The Light of the World, Steubenville Youth Conference, Franciscan University, June 22, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Eucharistic Meditation
Steubenville Youth Conference, entitled “Illumination”
Franciscan University of Steubenville
Steubenville, Ohio
June 22, 2024

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9 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.