Catholic Preaching

Catholic Preaching

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  • Trusting in and Thirsting for Christ the Living Water, Monday of the Third Week of Lent, March 4, 2024

    Fr. Roger J. Landry

    Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
    Monday of the Third Week of Lent
    March 4, 2024
    2 Kings 5:1-15, Ps 42, Lk 4:24-30

     

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

    https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.4.24_Homily_1.mp3

     

    The following points were attempted in the homily: 

    • The third week of Lent begins a new phase in our Lenten pilgrimage. The first two-and-a-half weeks of Lent, from Ash Wednesday through Saturday of the Second Week, are all about Jesus’ call to conversion, to repent, to respond to God’s gift of mercy, and through prayer, fasting and almsgiving, to become with God’s help holy as he is holy, teleios (fit for purpose, “perfect”) as he is teleios, merciful as he is merciful. Beginning on the Third Sunday, we begin a specifically baptismal itinerary, helping the Elect preparing for baptism to crave ever more the Living Water, Jesus. It’s also a chance for those of us who have already entered the saving waters to ponder anew the crucial continuing relevance of our own baptism not as an event from many years ago but as the defining reality of our life, leading us to want to keep our temple clean and to bear fruit from having been attached to the vine. During these upcoming two weeks, through the end of the Fourth Week at daily Mass (and Fifth Sunday in Cycle A), God wants to help the Elect and us to say, with the words of today’s Psalm, “Athirst is my soul for the living God!,” and with the Samaritan Woman, “Give us that water always!,” the Living Water, Jesus, who begins to well up within us to eternal life on the day of our baptism. Today’s readings and feast help us to examine whether we have a faith that thirsts for God.
    • Jesus returned to his hometown synagogue on the Sabbath, opened up the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah, read the section from Isaiah 61 that focuses on what the Messiah will do when at last he comes and then said, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” At first the people were amazed. But then they began to murmur, “Isn’t this the carpenter?” They began to take offense at him because he was one of them and how could one of them actually be the long awaited one? Their hearts began to harden. They weren’t responding with faith. That’s why Jesus today said to them, “No prophet is accepted in his native place.” Their admiration eventually turned to resentment and hatred. Their hardened hearts soon became homicidal as they tried to murder him by throwing him head first off a cliff. He came to his own, St. John would say, but his own didn’t accept him. They already had confined him to an unthreatening box and they weren’t going to let him escape.
    • Jesus gave two examples in the Gospel of the type of open, faithful, thirsting hearts that God expects. The first is the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17:7-16). During a famine, God sent the Prophet Elijah to her home. Elijah asked her to prepare for him some water and some bread, but the woman replied that all she had was a little flour and a little olive oil left and that she was preparing to make her last meal for her and her son before they would starve to death in the famine. Elijah told her not to be afraid because God would take care of all three of them, that the jar of flour would not be used up or the jug of oil run dry until the Lord sends rain. With trust, the woman did as Elijah said and the three of them survived for three and a half years. Jesus implies in his example that God wouldn’t have found such total trust in Israel and so Elijah had to go to a foreigner, someone who would believe in God enough not to presume he or she knew God’s designs but rather to do what the Prophet commanded. Do we have the trust in God to do what he commands us through his prophets?
    • The second example Jesus employs is even stronger, and it’s based on what we read in today’s first reading. Jesus says that there were many lepers in Israel at the time of Elisha, but the only one who was cured was Naaman the Syrian, presumably because he was the only one who would come with sufficient faith to be cured by God. That faith wasn’t easy to come by, as we see in account from the Second Book of Kings. Naaman was a very successful general of the King of Aram’s army and came down with an unbelievable amount of wealth — ten silver talents (each about $16,500 in today’s money), six thousand gold pieces and ten very precious festal garments — seeking a cure for his leprosy at the instigation of one of the Jewish servants of the Naaman’s wife. He was hoping initially to buy a miracle or to get one done by the very impressive external status of the petitioner. Elisha the Prophet, however, knew that what he needed was the humble faith necessary to allow God to work. So Elisha didn’t even come to the door to greet him — even though it would have been only a few feet — but simply sent a note to bathe seven times in the Jordan River. At first Naaman was outraged, thinking he had wasted his time and so much hope coming down, only to be asked to do something so simple as bathe in a river when there were better rivers back in Syria. (The waters of the Jordan are full of sediment and looks more like liquid sand than an ordinary river). But the people in his retinue reasoned with him that if he would have done something hard or spectacular, he should have the faith to do something simple and straightforward. And he had the faith and humility to change and to bathe — and on the seventh washing his leprous flesh became baby skin, totally restored.
    • That whole miracle points to the type of faith we need to have with regard to the great gift of baptism and to the type of merciful healing Christ wants to give us in Lent. To human logic, the claims of baptism seem preposterous. Just like Naaman initially scoffed at what washing seven times in the Jordan river could do, so we can say with regard to the far greater claims of baptism, “How can a few drops of water on someone’s head and a short prayer [‘I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’] really totally cleanse someone’s soul, make someone a temple of God’s presence, incorporate someone into Christ’s Mystical Body, and implant within the person a stream of Living Water flowing up to eternal life?” But that’s exactly what it does. We’re called constantly to grow in our faith-filled recognition of what happened on the day of our baptism and how it’s supposed to impact our life today. Without a doubt, Naaman would never have forgotten the day he was cured through obeying Elisha and bathing seven times. We should never forget the even greater miracle that happened to us. And we should welcome Jesus within us in baptism, not like the Nazarenes who rejected him, but like the one Nazarene girl did when Jesus took on her own flesh. Jesus the Merciful Messiah incorporates us to him in baptism.
    • But it’s not only with regard to baptism that we should have faith but to so many other interactions when God has us do something that on the surface that seems different from the way we would expect but that may have unbelievable consequences if we do so with faith. We might think that praying, fasting and giving alms are all really small, somewhat inconsequential practices, but when we do them with faith they can conform us to Jesus in his praying, fasting and self-giving.  We might think that for our post-baptismal sins to be forgiven we should have to walk barefoot all the way to California, but Jesus calls us to receive his mercy by confessing our sins to his priests to whom he has given the Holy Spirit for the remission of sins. We might think that for our spiritual nourishment, the most important thing would be to read an entire library of spiritual books, but Jesus says it is to make him in the Holy Eucharist the source and the summit of our life. We might think that in order to get to heaven, we need to do a whole series of absolutely heroic deeds, but Jesus says that we need to love and care for him in the hungry, thirsty, naked, stranger, ill or imprisoned.
    • One of the most important parts of the Lenten conversion God is asking of us is that we learn how to trust in him and in what he says and does rather than try, like the Nazarenes, to conform him to our own limited categories. We need to approach him with faith rather than hardened hearts. To accept Jesus with honor means to recognize who he is, to thirst for him, to welcome him and what he teaches, and to obey him with faith, like the widow of Zarephath, Naaman and the converted St. John of God. As we prepare to receive him now within ourselves, the place he has deigned to make a tabernacle of his holy presence, we ask him to increase our faith and gratitude in what he has already done for us and in us and to increase our trust and longing for what he still very much desires to do. We ask him to help us thirst for him and, just as water extinguishes a fire, to have the living water of the ocean of his mercy wipe away our sins and fill us to overflowing with divine love.

      •  

      The readings for today’s Mass were: 

      Reading 1
      2 KGS 5:1-15AB
      Naaman, the army commander of the king of Aram,
      was highly esteemed and respected by his master,
      for through him the LORD had brought victory to Aram.
      But valiant as he was, the man was a leper.
      Now the Arameans had captured in a raid on the land of Israel
      a little girl, who became the servant of Naaman’s wife.
      “If only my master would present himself to the prophet in Samaria,”
      she said to her mistress, “he would cure him of his leprosy.”
      Naaman went and told his lord
      just what the slave girl from the land of Israel had said.
      “Go,” said the king of Aram.
      “I will send along a letter to the king of Israel.”
      So Naaman set out, taking along ten silver talents,
      six thousand gold pieces, and ten festal garments.
      To the king of Israel he brought the letter, which read:
      “With this letter I am sending my servant Naaman to you,
      that you may cure him of his leprosy.”
      When he read the letter,
      the king of Israel tore his garments and exclaimed:
      “Am I a god with power over life and death,
      that this man should send someone to me to be cured of leprosy?
      Take note! You can see he is only looking for a quarrel with me!”
      When Elisha, the man of God,
      heard that the king of Israel had torn his garments,
      he sent word to the king:
      “Why have you torn your garments?
      Let him come to me and find out
      that there is a prophet in Israel.”
      Naaman came with his horses and chariots
      and stopped at the door of Elisha’s house.
      The prophet sent him the message:
      “Go and wash seven times in the Jordan,
      and your flesh will heal, and you will be clean.”
      But Naaman went away angry, saying,
      “I thought that he would surely come out and stand there
      to invoke the LORD his God,
      and would move his hand over the spot,
      and thus cure the leprosy.
      Are not the rivers of Damascus, the Abana and the Pharpar,
      better than all the waters of Israel?
      Could I not wash in them and be cleansed?”
      With this, he turned about in anger and left.
      But his servants came up and reasoned with him.
      “My father,” they said,
      “if the prophet had told you to do something extraordinary,
      would you not have done it?
      All the more now, since he said to you,
      ‘Wash and be clean,’ should you do as he said.”
      So Naaman went down and plunged into the Jordan seven times
      at the word of the man of God.
      His flesh became again like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.
      He returned with his whole retinue to the man of God.
      On his arrival he stood before him and said,
      “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth,
      except in Israel.”
      Responsorial Psalm
      PS 42:2, 3; 43:3, 4
      R. (see 42:3) Athirst is my soul for the living God.
      When shall I go and behold the face of God?
      As the hind longs for the running waters,
      so my soul longs for you, O God.
      R. Athirst is my soul for the living God.
      When shall I go and behold the face of God?
      Athirst is my soul for God, the living God.
      When shall I go and behold the face of God?
      R. Athirst is my soul for the living God.
      When shall I go and behold the face of God?
      Send forth your light and your fidelity;
      they shall lead me on
      And bring me to your holy mountain,
      to your dwelling-place.
      R. Athirst is my soul for the living God.
      When shall I go and behold the face of God?
      Then will I go in to the altar of God,
      the God of my gladness and joy;
      Then will I give you thanks upon the harp,
      O God, my God!
      R. Athirst is my soul for the living God.
      When shall I go and behold the face of God?
      Gospel
      LK 4:24-30
      Jesus said to the people in the synagogue at Nazareth:
      “Amen, I say to you,
      no prophet is accepted in his own native place.
      Indeed, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel
      in the days of Elijah
      when the sky was closed for three and a half years
      and a severe famine spread over the entire land.
      It was to none of these that Elijah was sent,
      but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon.
      Again, there were many lepers in Israel
      during the time of Elisha the prophet;
      yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”
      When the people in the synagogue heard this,
      they were all filled with fury.
      They rose up, drove him out of the town,
      and led him to the brow of the hill
      on which their town had been built,
      to hurl him down headlong.
      But he passed through the midst of them and went away.

      The post Trusting in and Thirsting for Christ the Living Water, Monday of the Third Week of Lent, March 4, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

      16 min
    • Our Lenten House Cleaning, Third Sunday of Lent (B), March 3, 2024

      Fr. Roger J. Landry

      Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
      Third Sunday of Lent, Year B
      March 3, 2024
      Ex 20:1-17, Ps 19, 1 Cor 1:22-25, Jn 2:13-25

       

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

      https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.3.24_CCM_Mass_1.mp3

       

      The following text guided the homily: 

      • In today’s Gospel, we encounter a Jesus with whom many of us, especially today, are unfamiliar. The same Jesus whom Isaiah prophesied would “not break a bruised reed nor quench a smoldering wick” (Is 42:3), the same Jesus whom the psalms would call “kind and merciful” (Ps 145:8), the same Jesus who referred to himself as “meek and humble of heart” (Mt 11:29), started to overturn tables, toss money on the floor, and make a whip of cords to drive sheep and the cattle out of the temple precincts. There is no contradiction between the image of Jesus as the kind, merciful friend of sinners and Jesus as consumed with zeal for his Father’s house, because it is precisely out of love for his Father and for sinner that he really the hated sin that can kill sinners. The same Jesus who, in order to take away our sins, would later become like a sheep led to the slaughter silent before his shearers (Is 53:7), who would meekly allow his creatures to betray, slap, mock, spit upon, crown with thorns, and crucify him, in today’s Gospel, in order to purify the Temple and those in it, would, as Good Shepherd, drive out thieves and marauders (Jn 10:8). It’s crucial for those of us who are Jesus’ disciples, who love him, who want to follow him, to know this side of Jesus, too, because it will help us to appreciate ever more what his earthly mission was, so that we can allow him to accomplish his saving work in us and form us to continue his saving work in others.
      • What he was doing and its application to us can more easily be seen if we know two Greek expressions used by St. John in today’s Gospel. The first is the word for “temple” or “temple area.” It’s to hieron, which is a neuter form of the word that means “consecrated.” The temple was called “the consecrated place,” the locus literally “separated” from the world where people would come to be with God and filled with him so as to be able to return changed by God and capable of changing the world with him. The second word is ekballein, which is the word used to describe how Jesus “drove out” the animals. It’s the same verb employed when Jesus did drove out demons in exorcisms. Understanding these two words, we can now grasp more precisely what Jesus wants to do in us: he wants to exorcise whatever in the temple — and whatever in us — is not fit for consecration to God. That’s what he wants to do each Lent.
      • He needed to do such an exorcism because the Temple in Jerusalem, built to be the dwelling place of God on earth, constructed and consecrated to be the place to encounter God in prayer and worship, had become something very different. It wasn’t so much the fact that animals were being sold and money exchanged in the temple precincts — the outer, so-called “courtyard of the Gentiles” — that bothered Jesus. It was two things associated with this selling of animals and exchanging money.
      • The first was that the moneychangers and animal sellers were notoriously overcharging the people. The temple had become, as Jesus named it today, a “marketplace” or, what he called in Matthew, Mark and Luke, a “den of thieves” (Mt 21:13; Mk 11:17; Lk 19:46). When people came to the temple, they needed to sacrifice an animal to God, the size and value of the animal being determined by their personal means and the type of sacrifice being made. Rather than carry or accompany an animal like an ox or a sheep or even a cage with pigeons with them for the many miles’ uphill walk to the temple — which was a considerable inconvenience and burden — most would buy one at the temple. But because there was such a demand, especially at the time of the Passover, the merchants had the market drastically to overcharge the people who needed the animals. Others who would try to save money by bringing an animal of their own often had to get the animals inspected by Temple officials who needed to verify that the animals they had brought were unblemished, as the Mosaic law stipulated. These inspectors often were on the take of the animal sellers to find blemishes that weren’t there and disqualify the affected animals. The poor who had saved their money over the course of the whole year for the trip to the temple, therefore, one way or the other, had to pay these enormous prices. While they were there, they also had to pay a temple tax, which needed to be given in one of two types of acceptable Temple currencies. That meant that most everyone had to exchange money and the moneychangers could take an exorbitant commission, which again penalized the poor most of all. Jesus was outraged that people were coming into the temple to rip off the poor. That was the first thing that incensed him.
      • The second was worse. Even though God in the Old Covenant had commanded animal sacrifices both as a way of helping his people learn how to love him with all their mind, heart, soul, strength and resources by sacrificing something precious according to their means, as well as a means of expressing gratitude to God for his blessings, the Jewish mentality had become so distorted over the centuries that many began to look at their relationship with God as something contractual or even magical. “As long as I sacrifice this animal to God,” some began to think to themselves, “everything will be all right. God will be happy.” Too many people had started to look at the temple as a “marketplace” where they would go to “buy God off” with animal sacrifices, and to view God almost as someone who needed to be placated by bloody gifts. God had said many times through the prophets, “It is a contrite heart I seek, not animal sacrifices,” it was repentance and conversion he sought, but they hadn’t gotten the picture. So Jesus gave them all a lesson they would never forget — and we would never forget. Jesus wanted to return first the temple and then his people to the true worship of God. He wanted the temple to be not a marketplace but his Father’s house, a place of prayer, not a den of thieves. And so Jesus through his prophetic act and righteous indignation sought to help his beloved people recover a real notion of what their relationship with the Father should be based on.
      • The Prophet Malachi had described centuries before the purification Jesus would accomplish when he entered the Temple. We hear the passage often in Advent and Handel featured it prominently in The Messiah, but it is particularly appropriate to the Lenten cleansing Christ wants to give the Church and each of us. Malachi writes: “And suddenly there will come to the temple the Lord whom you seek, and the messenger of the covenant whom you desire. … But who will endure the day of his coming? And who can stand when he appears? For he is like the refiner’s fire, or like the fuller’s lye. He will sit refining and purifying, and he will purify the sons of Levi, refining them like gold or like silver that they may offer due sacrifice to the Lord. Then the sacrifice of Judah and Jerusalem will please the Lord, as in days of old, as in years gone by.” Jesus came with fire to refine his holy place and his holy people, to bleach both, to make both new so that we could offer fitting sacrifice to the Lord: not the sacrifice of animals, but the oblation of ourselves in union with Christ.
      • When asked why he was doing what he was doing and what sign he could show of his authority, Jesus pointed to another temple, the temple of his Body, which he said would be destroyed but rebuilt in three days. Neither his critics nor his disciples understood then what he was saying, but the disciples would understand later after that temple to which Jesus referred would be destroyed on Good Friday and raised from the dead on the third day. Jesus was indicating that his sacred humanity is the true temple, the sanctuary where humanity and divinity meet, the locus of authentic worship and the supreme consecrated place. But Jesus’ plan for that rebuilt temple was not just coextensive with his flesh but with his Mystical Body. His plan was to incorporate us into that Temple! When we’re baptized, when we’re consecrated in the womb of the Church and die and rise in the saving waters, we enter and become part of that Temple. We become members of Jesus’ Body, and ourselves become dwelling places of God where Father, Son and Holy come to abide. This is what led St. Paul to say in his First Letter to the Corinthians, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body” (1 Cor 6:19-20). Through Baptism, our body and soul become a temple of the Holy Spirit, a holy dwelling place of God, where God is welcomed, where he speaks, where he is loved, praised and served. This is the temple that Jesus wants to make sure is clean, a real house of the Father, a real place of prayer, where God dwells.
      • The Church gives us this reading on the Third Sunday of Lent because each Lent Jesus wants to give this far more important temple than the one built by Herod a thorough cleaning. It’s important for us to reflect on this point. Our body and soul is so much more valuable to Jesus than the Temple of Jerusalem, which was considered one of the wonders of the ancient world. That’s how precious we are to God. Zeal for us consumes him. He wants to drive out of our bodies and souls anything unfit for God. He wants to drive out our sins. With the refiner’s fire of the Holy Spirit and the fuller’s lye of the Sacraments of Baptism and Reconciliation, he wants to purify us of all impurities. He does this out of love for God and love for us — and out of holy hatred and righteous anger toward the sin that kills us and separates us from God. Our temples may not have money changers, but our hearts may value money and material things more than we value God, as we put work above prayer or even above Mass, as we place our security in the things of this world than we do in God’s providence. Our temples may not have sheep, cows, doves and lambs, but we may live like animals, following our instincts and lower appetites rather than living as conscious, mature, loving, self-disciplined sons and daughters of God. This Lent, Jesus wants to cleanse us of everything that doesn’t belong in the temple we are. He wants to drive out our materialism and unite us to his spiritual poverty so that we may treasure his kingdom. He wants to drive out our hedonism and unite us to his consecrated chastity so that we may indeed love God and others as he loves his Father and us. He wants to expel our radical individualism and idolatry of autonomy and bind us to his holy obedience so that we may together with him consecrate ourselves to the Father’s saving will in all things until death. But he doesn’t want to have to do this work in us by violence like he cleansed the Temple of Jerusalem. He wants us to cooperate in that holy house cleaning.
      • For some in our community who have been preparing for the Sacrament of Baptism, that purification will take place at the Easter Vigil as Christ will power wash their interior in an indelible way and make them his Temple. For the rest of us who have already been baptized, that cooperation must take the form of the Sacrament of Confession, when Jesus through his priests raises his hand not to snap a whip but to impart an absolution that thoroughly cleanses our soul and returns it to his baptismal splendor. So if you have not yet made a good, indeed great, confession this Lent, or, if since your last confession, your temple has again been sullied by thoughts, words, deeds and a neglect to love, today’s Gospel is the invitation Christ and the Church extend. Please respond to this invitation and come. I hear confessions every day of the week except Saturdays.
      • The first reading today was explicitly chosen to help us prepare for that sacramental cleansing and to teach us how to keep our Temple pure and pristine. The Decalogue was the means God gave the Israelites in the desert to live out their consecration to him and to remain faithful to their end of the Covenant with him. Consecration is a separation from the worldly, from the mundane, and the Ten Commandments help us to live together in holiness with God and others. Jesus would say in the Gospel that “all the law and the prophets” — and the Ten Commandments are at the heart of the law — “hang on” the two commandments of loving God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength, and loving our neighbor as ourselves. The Ten Commandments are a commentary on love and consecration. The first commandment shows us how to cut ourselves off from idols to be God’s. The second how to sanctify our speech and images. The third how to consecrate the Lord’s day and indeed our whole week and life. The fourth how to honor God through honoring the parents through whom he gave us life. The fifth how to separate ourselves from the hatred that can lead to murder. The sixth and ninth how to cut ourselves off from the lust that leads us to consume others for our gratification. The seventh and tenth how to rejoice in what others have rather than covet or steal it, like the money changers would seek to take the money of the poor in the temple. And the eighth to cut ourselves off from the diabolical temptation to enter under the standard of the “father of lies” by uniting ourselves with Christ who is the Truth incarnate. The Christian moral life, which has the Decalogue as its foundation, is a means of union with God, of living out and strengthening our consecration. Today is an opportunity for us to rededicate ourselves to this pathway of love. It’s also an occasion to take note of the ways that we have not lived up to the Covenant of Love with God, the way that our moral life and soul have been stained, and to come to God for the cleansing he came into the world to give.
      • The other means that God gives us today to help us to live our consecration as well as to examine our conscience is the epistle, taken from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. It’s the way of the Cross, living a truly cruciform life. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus tells us very clearly that unless we deny ourselves, pick up our Cross daily and follow him along the path of self-sacrificial love, we cannot be his disciple. His prayer to the Father during the Last Supper, in which he consecrated himself so that we may be consecrated in the truth, was a way of saying, “I sacrifice myself so that they may be sacrificed in the truth.” To enter into Jesus’ consecration, we must join him on the Cross. St. Paul is one who did so. He would write in his letter to the Christians in Galatia, “I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives within me, because the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me” (Gal 2:19-20). The Cross is what allows us to become truly consecrated, separated from worldliness, in the world but not of it (Jn 17:14-15). But that type of consecrated existence with Jesus is wildly countercultural and contradictory to modern expectations. St. Paul points to that in today’s second reading, where he declares, “Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Christ crucified was a scandal to the Jews because the Messiah, the son of David the King, was popularly expected to kick out foreign powers, not be executed by them on Calvary. He was a folly to Greeks because the Greeks believed the greatest wisdom was the knowledge how to stay alive, and Jesus was ignominiously assassinated in the most gruesome way possible. Neither couldn’t understand how the crucifixion was anything other than a colossal failure and foolishness; worse would be anyone who wants to unite himself to that seemingly idiotic immolation. But St. Paul says to those who are called, Christ crucified is the power and wisdom of God. Long after the bodies of those who crucified him were rotting in tombs, Christ’s body had risen and he was alive — and by his crucifixion had saved from eternal death those who entered into his death. Long after the clever Greeks who were Jesus’ contemporaries were forgotten, Jesus’ teachings not only remained but were forever validated, because they showed the power of God’s own love and how God can and does draw good even out of the worst of evil. As St. Paul says, “The foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.”
      • It’s key for us, first, to grasp that for us to enter into Jesus’ consecration we need to yoke ourselves to him on the Cross. We need to transcend human respect and worldly wisdom to see in this sign of torture the means by which we can, like Jesus, learn to love so much as to bear even torture. We need to look at it as the gift God gives to make it possible for us to begin to love like God loves and to flip human logic right side up, by seeing love, not self-preservation, as the most important thing we could know. The second thing St. Paul helps us to examine today are those times when we have lived as enemies, rather than friends, of the Cross of Christ (Phil 3:18), so that we might bring that worldliness to be cleansed by Jesus, too. The Lenten penances of prayer, fasting and almsgiving help us learn to live by the Cross of Christ. In prayer, we sacrifice our time for God and begin to live, as Jesus calls us to, as a house of prayer. In fasting, we crucify our appetites so they might be fully aligned to God rather than slaves to pleasures of the world. In almsgiving, we sacrifice of selfishness and materialism and make of ourselves, and what we have, a gift of love for others. There are many who in Lent fail to live it in a cruciform way, sacrificing very little, and therefore changing very little. Today St. Paul and the Church help us to grasp how to find in the Cross and in going all out in terms of our prayer, fasting and almsgiving, we can be strengthened by the power and wisdom of Christ crucified and, through them, enhance our consecration.
      • Tonight the same Jesus whose hands gripped the cord to drive out the money changers and who wrists were later nailed to a Cross to free us from our sins now extends those hands and gloriously scarred wrists to us, inviting us to trust in him, to take his hands, to yoke ourselves to him, and to become with him a hieron, a consecrated abode of God, a holy Temple, a place where his words of eternal life resonate and are put into practice. Jesus is the power and wisdom of God and wants us to live by that power and wisdom full-time and full-throttle. He wants to restore us fully to who we are. We thank him for loving us so much as to hate whatever in us can separate us from him and for making it possible for us to have him wash our souls just like he washed the feet of the apostles during the first Eucharist. As we prepare to receive him and enter into communion with him, we ask him to share with us his holy zeal for his Father’s House and make us, as we celebrate this Mass and beyond, a true and consecrated house of prayer.

        •  

        The readings for today’s Mass were: 

        Reading I
        Ex 20:1-17

        In those days, God delivered all these commandments:

        “I, the LORD, am your God,
        who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.
        You shall not have other gods besides me.
        You shall not carve idols for yourselves
        in the shape of anything in the sky above
        or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth;
        you shall not bow down before them or worship them.
        For I, the LORD, your God, am a jealous God,
        inflicting punishment for their fathers’ wickedness
        on the children of those who hate me,
        down to the third and fourth generation;
        but bestowing mercy down to the thousandth generation
        on the children of those who love me and keep my commandments.

        “You shall not take the name of the LORD, your God, in vain.

        For the LORD will not leave unpunished
        the one who takes his name in vain.

        “Remember to keep holy the sabbath day.

        Six days you may labor and do all your work,
        but the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD, your God.
        No work may be done then either by you, or your son or daughter,
        or your male or female slave, or your beast,
        or by the alien who lives with you.
        In six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth,
        the sea and all that is in them;
        but on the seventh day he rested.
        That is why the LORD has blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.

        “Honor your father and your mother,

        that you may have a long life in the land
        which the LORD, your God, is giving you.
        You shall not kill.
        You shall not commit adultery.
        You shall not steal.
        You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
        You shall not covet your neighbor’s house.
        You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife,
        nor his male or female slave, nor his ox or ass,
        nor anything else that belongs to him.”

        Responsorial Psalm
        19:8, 9, 10, 11

        R. (John 6:68c)  Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.

        The law of the LORD is perfect,
        refreshing the soul;
        The decree of the LORD is trustworthy,
        giving wisdom to the simple.
        R. Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.
        The precepts of the LORD are right,
        rejoicing the heart;
        the command of the LORD is clear,
        enlightening the eye.
        R. Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.
        The fear of the LORD is pure,
        enduring forever;
        the ordinances of the LORD are true,
        all of them just.
        R. Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.
        They are more precious than gold,
        than a heap of purest gold;
        sweeter also than syrup
        or honey from the comb.
        R. Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.

        Reading II
        1 Cor 1:22-25

        Brothers and sisters:

        Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom,
        but we proclaim Christ crucified,
        a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,
        but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike,
        Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
        For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom,
        and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

        Verse Before the Gospel
        Jn 3:16

        God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,

        so that everyone who believes in him might have eternal life.

        Gospel
        Jn 2:13-25

        Since the Passover of the Jews was near,

        Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
        He found in the temple area those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves,
        as well as the money changers seated there.
        He made a whip out of cords
        and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen,
        and spilled the coins of the money changers
        and overturned their tables,
        and to those who sold doves he said,
        “Take these out of here,
        and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.”
        His disciples recalled the words of Scripture,
        Zeal for your house will consume me.
        At this the Jews answered and said to him,
        “What sign can you show us for doing this?”
        Jesus answered and said to them,
        “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”
        The Jews said,
        “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years,
        and you will raise it up in three days?”
        But he was speaking about the temple of his body.
        Therefore, when he was raised from the dead,
        his disciples remembered that he had said this,
        and they came to believe the Scripture
        and the word Jesus had spoken.

        While he was in Jerusalem for the feast of Passover,

        many began to believe in his name
        when they saw the signs he was doing.
        But Jesus would not trust himself to them because he knew them all,
        and did not need anyone to testify about human nature.
        He himself understood it well.

        The post Our Lenten House Cleaning, Third Sunday of Lent (B), March 3, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

        30 min
      • Our Lenten Reconsecration, Third Sunday of Lent (B), March 3, 2024

        Fr. Roger J. Landry

        Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
        Third Sunday of Lent, Year B
        March 3, 2024
        Ex 20:1-17, Ps 19, 1 Cor 1:22-25, Jn 2:13-25

         

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

        https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.3.24_MCs_Homily_1.mp3

         

        The following points were attempted in the homily: 

        • For seven years I had the joy of being pastor of what I’ve always believed — even before I was assigned there — was the most beautiful Catholic Church in all of New England, St. Anthony of Padua Parish in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Those sisters who were assigned to the Convent on County Street in New Bedford would be familiar with it. The architecture of the Church was designed by Joseph Venne, who built St. Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal. The original interior decorator was the Italian genius Giovanni Castognoli. The painter of the vault and the designer and executor of the stained glass windows was another Italian master, Guido Nincheri. The combination between painting, stained glass, sculpture and architecture is something that the first time I entered the Church as a seminarian overwhelmed me to such a degree that I couldn’t help immediately falling to my knees. After having served as a guide to so many of the basilicas in Rome, I was overjoyed to have the privilege to lead many tours of the Church where I was pastor.
        • One of the central artistic elements inside St. Anthony’s was a series of rondi, or round paintings, found all over the Church. Over the pews in the nave, there were various rondi from the life of St. Anthony. Once we entered the sanctuary, the theme of the rondi was Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, as Guido Nincheri placed various prophetic and illustrative images of the source and summit of Christian life: grain and grapes, the pelican, the ark of the covenant, the Old Testament sacrifices, Melchizedek’s offering bread and wine, and Jesus’ holding the Eucharistic elements during the Last Supper. Over the exits in the transept there were two other images with which I would always finish the hour-long tour. One was of a monstrance filled with the Eucharist, a clear sign that as Catholics were leaving Mass, they were being invited to recall that, having received Holy Communion, they were now supposed to be living monstrances taking Christ within them on a Corpus Christi procession across the streets of New Bedford on their way home. The other rondo was a menorah burning before the Ark of the Covenant and the showbread in the desert. When I would ask people why they thought there would be a menorah over the exit in counterpoint to the monstrance, no one would get the right answer. Some would say that it was a sign that Jesus was Jewish. Others would say, strangely, that it was an image of Christmas, because Hanukkah, for which they thought the Menorah is the central symbol, often overlaps with the Advent or Christmas season. (Actually, there is a difference between the Menorah, which has seven candles and used to burn, both in the tent in the desert and in the temple before the Ark of the Covenant and the showbread, and the Hanukkiah, which has nine candlesticks, one for each of the days of Hannukah — celebrating when Judas Maccabeus and his companions in the middle of the second century before Christ took to clean and rededicate the Temple of Jerusalem after Antioches IV and his Greek pagans had desecrated it — and a ninth candle to light the other eight). The Menorah was there to remind them that as they left Church they were like the Ark of the Covenant, holding within the New and Eternal Covenant, Jesus himself. But it was also, I think, a reminder to those who didn’t know the difference between a Menorah and a Hannukiah that every time they were leaving Mass they were supposed to have been rededicated to God, reconsecrated to his love and service, recommitted to the Covenant he had formed with them on the day of their baptism, as they carried within God’s presence.
        • Those rondi, I think, are an appropriate reminder to us of what we’re supposed to recall as an impact of Mass, but what Jesus hopes to accomplish within us each Lent, as he seeks to cleanse us, to reconsecrate us, to help us to repent, to believe and to live the Gospel. That’s what today’s readings help us to ponder as they show us not only that Jesus wants to make us the temple of his presence, but how he wishes to keep that temple fit for purpose. During the Last Supper, Jesus would be the Father to consecrate us in his word, knowing, as we sang in the Responsorial Psalm, that he has the words of everlasting life. Let’s therefore enter together into that life-saving and life-giving word.
        • In today’s Gospel, we encounter a Jesus with whom many of us, especially today, are unfamiliar. The same Jesus whom Isaiah prophesied would “not break a bruised reed nor quench a smoldering wick” (Is 42:3), the same Jesus whom the psalms would call “kind and merciful” (Ps 145:8), the same Jesus who called himself “meek and humble of heart” (Mt 11:29), started to overturn tables, tossing money on the floor, and making a whip of cords to drive the sheep and the cattle out of the temple. There is no contradiction between the image of Jesus as the kind, merciful friend of sinners and Jesus as consumed with zeal for his Father’s house, because out of love for sinners and his Father, he both really loved sinners and really the hated sin that can kill sinners.
        • What he was doing and its application to us can more easily be seen if we know two Greek words. The first is the word for “temple” or “temple area.” It’s to hieron, which is a neuter form of the word that means “consecrated.” The temple was called “the consecrated place,” the locus totally separated to allow people to come to be with God and filled with him so as to be able to return from there changed by God and capable of changing the world with God. The second word is ekballein, which is the word used to describe how Jesus “drove out” the animals. It’s the same verb used when Jesus did exorcisms. When we see these two words, we can grasp better what Jesus wants to do in us: he wants to exorcise whatever in us is not fit for consecration to God. That’s what he wants to do each Lent. That’s how he gets us ready to be reconsecrated as we leave each Mass.
        • Let’s return to the scene. The Temple in Jerusalem, built in order to be the dwelling place of God on earth, constructed to be a place of encountering God in prayer, had become something very different. It wasn’t so much the fact that animals were being sold and money exchanged in the temple precincts that bothered Jesus. It was two things associated with this selling of animals and exchanging money:
        • The first was that the moneychangers and animal sellers were tremendously overcharging the people. The temple had become a “den of thieves.” When people came to the temple, they needed to sacrifice an animal to God, the size and value of the animal being determined by their personal means and the type of sacrifice being made. Rather than carry an animal with them for the many miles’ uphill walk to the temple — which was too much of a burden — most would buy one at the temple. But because there was such a demand, especially at the time of the Passover, the merchants had the market drastically to overcharge the people who needed the animals. Others who would try to save money by bringing an animal of their own often had to get the animals inspected by Temple officials who needed to verify that the animals they had brought were unblemished, as the Mosaic law stipulated. These inspectors were often on the take of the animal sellers to find blemishes that weren’t there and disqualify the affected animals. The poor who had saved their money over the course of the whole year for the trip to the temple, therefore, one way or the other, had to pay these enormous prices. While they were there, they also had to pay a temple tax, which could only be given in one of two types of acceptable Temple currencies. That meant that most everyone had to exchange money, and the moneychangers could take an exorbitant commission, which again penalized the poor most of all. Jesus was outraged that people were coming into the temple to rip off the poor. That was the first thing that incensed him.
        • The second was worse. The Jewish mentality had become so distorted over the centuries that many had began to look at their relationship with God as something contractual or even magical. “As long as I sacrifice this animal to God,” they began to think to themselves, “everything will be all right. God will be happy.” Too many people had started to look at the temple as the place to go “bribe” God with their animal sacrifices. They had started to look at God as someone who needed to be “bought” by these gifts in lieu of changing their conduct. God had said many times through the prophets, “It is a contrite heart I seek, not animal sacrifices,” but they hadn’t gotten the picture. So Jesus gave them all a lesson they would never forget — and we would never forget. Jesus wanted to return first the temple and then the people to the true worship of God. He wanted the temple to be a place of prayer, to be His Father’s House once again, and he wanted to help the people recover a true notion of what their relationship with the Father should be based on — a contrite, merciful and loving heart.
        • The Prophet Malachi had described centuries before the purification Jesus would accomplish when he entered the Temple. We hear the passage often in Advent and Handel featured it prominently in his Messiah, but it is particularly appropriate to the Lenten cleansing Christ wants to give us: “And suddenly,” Malachi writes, “there will come to the temple the Lord whom you seek, and the messenger of the covenant whom you desire. … But who will endure the day of his coming? And who can stand when he appears? For he is like the refiner’s fire, or like the fuller’s lye. He will sit refining and purifying, and he will purify the sons of Levi, refining them like gold or like silver that they may offer due sacrifice to the Lord. Then the sacrifice of Judah and Jerusalem will please the Lord, as in days of old, as in years gone by.” Jesus came with fire to refine us, to bleach us, to make us new so that we can offer fitting sacrifice to the Lord: not the sacrifice of animals, but the oblation of ourselves in union with Christ.
        • When asked why he was doing what he was doing, Jesus pointed to another temple, the temple of his body, which he said would be destroyed but rebuilt in three days. This is the true temple, the authentic locus of worship, the rightful hieron, the genuine house of the Father, the place where humanity and divinity meet. But Jesus’ plan for that rebuilt temple wasn’t coextensive with his flesh, but with his Mystical Body. His plan was to incorporate us into that Temple. When we’re baptized, when we’re consecrated in the womb of the Church and the saving waters, we enter and become part of that temple. We become members of Jesus’ body, and ourselves become dwelling places of God where Father, Son and Holy truly abide. This is what led St. Paul to say in his letter to the Corinthians, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body.” Our body and soul are a temple of the Holy Spirit, meant to be a holy dwelling place of God, where God speaks, is praised and glorified. This is the temple that Jesus wants to make sure is clean, a real house of prayer, a real place where God is adored.
        • The Church gives us this reading on the Third Sunday of Lent because Jesus wants to give this far more important temple than the one built by Herod — think about that for a moment, because it’s true! — a thorough cleaning. Zeal for us consumes him. He wants to drive out of our bodies and souls anything unfit for God. He wants to eliminate our sins. He wants to extirpate the seven capital vices, to purify us of all impurities. He does this out of love for God and love for us — and out of hatred and anger toward the sin that kills us and separates us from God. Our temples may not have money changers, but our hearts may value money and material things more than we value God, as we put work above prayer or even above Mass, as we place our security in the things of this world than we do in God’s providence. Our temples may not have sheep, cows and lambs, but we may live like animals, following our instincts and lower appetites rather than living as conscious, mature, loving, self-disciplined sons and daughters of God. Jesus wants to clean us this Lent of everything that doesn’t belong in the temple we are or are supposed to be. He wants to drive out our materialism and unite us to his spiritual poverty so that we may treasure his kingdom. He wants to drive out our hedonism and unite us to his consecrated chastity so that we may indeed love God and others as he loves his Father and us. He wants to expel our radical individualism and idolatry of autonomy and bind us to his holy obedience so that we may together with him consecrated ourselves to the Father’s saving will in all things until death. But we need to allow him to do that work of purification with the refiner’s fire and fuller’s lye. That’s the beginning stage in the renewal of our consecration, being thoroughly cleansed. But the reconsecration is not just a liberation from things unfit for God but also a positive, loving gift of ourselves to God and to his plans for our salvation and the salvation of the world. We see three ways that Jesus wants to strengthen us to live out our consecration in the readings today.
        • The first is by prayer. Instead of our temple being a den of thieves or any sins unworthy of the Lord, Jesus tells us in the Synoptic Gospels that he wants his Father’s house rather to be a “house of prayer.” Prayer is the consecration of our time, our hearts and our desires to God. We have been created in order to pray, to live in communion with God. That’s why the first act of Lent is to go out into the desert with Jesus to pray, and to do so not for show, as he warns us on Ash Wednesday, but to enter into a deeper loving bond with God our Father who sees in secret and rewards us with himself.
        • The second means to live out and strengthen our reconsecration is in the moral life, in which we consecrate to God our life and all our choices. In the first reading, we encounter the Decalogue, which was the means that God gave to the Israelites in the desert to live out their consecration to God in keeping their end of the Covenant. Consecration is a separation from the worldly, from the purely mundane, to be with God and then together with God to carry out his will, and the Ten Commandments help us to do it. Jesus would say in the Gospel that “all the law and the prophets” — and the Ten Commandments is clearly the central part of the law — “hang on” the two commandments of loving God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength, and loving our neighbor as ourselves. The Ten Commandments are a commentary on love and on consecration. The first commandment shows us how to cut ourselves off from idols to be God’s. The second how to sanctify our speech and images. The third how to consecrate the Lord’s day. The fourth how to honor God through honoring the parents through whom he gave us life. The fifth how to separate ourselves from the hatred that can lead to murder. The sixth and ninth how to cut ourselves off from the lust that leads us to consume others for our gratification. The seventh and tenth how to rejoice in what others have rather than covet or steal it, like the money changers would seek to take the money of the poor in the temple. And the eighth to cut ourselves off from the diabolical temptation to enter under the standard of the “father of lies” by uniting ourselves with Christ who is the Truth incarnate. The Christian moral life, which has the Decalogue as its foundation, is a means of union with God, of living out and strengthening our consecration. Today is an opportunity for us to rededicate ourselves to this pathway of love.
        • The third and final means is the most challenging. It’s the way of the Cross. Jesus tells us very clearly that unless we deny ourselves, pick up our Cross daily and follow him along the path of self-death through self-sacrificial love, we cannot be his disciple. His prayer to the Father during the Last Supper, in which he consecrated himself so that we may be consecrated in the truth, was a way of saying, “I sacrifice myself so that they may be sacrificed in the truth.” To enter into his consecration, we must join him on the Cross. St. Paul is one who did so. He would say in his letter to the Christians in Galatia, “I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, because the life I live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me” (Gal 2:19-20). That’s what it means to live a consecrated life. But that type of consecrated existence with Jesus is countercultural and contradictory to modern expectations. St. Paul points to that in today’s second reading, where he says, “Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Christ crucified was a scandal to the Jews because the Messiah, the son of David the King, was supposed to kick out foreign powers, not be executed by them on Calvary; he was a folly to Greeks because the Greeks believed the greatest wisdom was the knowledge how to stay alive, and Jesus was ignominiously assassinated in the most gruesome way possible. Neither couldn’t understand at all how the crucifixion was anything other than a colossal failure and foolishness; worse would be anyone who wants to unite himself to that seemingly imbecilic immolation. But St. Paul says to those who are called, Christ crucified is the power and wisdom of God. Long after the bodies of those who crucified him were rotting in tombs, Christ’s body had risen and he was alive — and by his crucifixion had saved those who entered into his death from eternal death. Long after the wise Greeks who were Jesus’ contemporaries were forgotten, Jesus’ teachings not only remained but remained forever validated, because they showed the power of God’s own love and how God can and does draw good out of evil. As St. Paul says, “The foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.” It’s key for us to grasp that for us to enter into Jesus’ consecration we need to yoke ourselves to him on the Cross. Jesus said in St. Matthew’s Gospel, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for your selves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” Jesus’ plan is to unite ourselves to him totally on the yoke of the Cross so that we can learn from him the sacrifice, the consecration, we need to come to be fully like him.
        • The same Jesus whose hands gripped the cord to drive out the money changers and were later nailed to a Cross to free us from our sins now extends those gloriously scarred risen hands to us and invites us to trust in him, to take his hands, to yoke ourselves to him, and to become with him a hieron, a consecrated abode of God, a holy Temple, a house of prayer, a place where his words of eternal life resonate and are put into action. Jesus is the power and wisdom of God and wants us to live by that power and wisdom. He’s given us a taste of that today. As we prepare now for the Liturgy of the Eucharist, let’s remember that as we finish today we are supposed to leave as monstrances, as arks of the Covenant, as Menorahs pointing to the presence of God, and as rededicated temples of his glory!

          •  

          The readings for today’s Mass were: 

          Reading I
          Ex 20:1-17

          In those days, God delivered all these commandments:

          “I, the LORD, am your God,
          who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.
          You shall not have other gods besides me.
          You shall not carve idols for yourselves
          in the shape of anything in the sky above
          or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth;
          you shall not bow down before them or worship them.
          For I, the LORD, your God, am a jealous God,
          inflicting punishment for their fathers’ wickedness
          on the children of those who hate me,
          down to the third and fourth generation;
          but bestowing mercy down to the thousandth generation
          on the children of those who love me and keep my commandments.

          “You shall not take the name of the LORD, your God, in vain.

          For the LORD will not leave unpunished
          the one who takes his name in vain.

          “Remember to keep holy the sabbath day.

          Six days you may labor and do all your work,
          but the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD, your God.
          No work may be done then either by you, or your son or daughter,
          or your male or female slave, or your beast,
          or by the alien who lives with you.
          In six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth,
          the sea and all that is in them;
          but on the seventh day he rested.
          That is why the LORD has blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.

          “Honor your father and your mother,

          that you may have a long life in the land
          which the LORD, your God, is giving you.
          You shall not kill.
          You shall not commit adultery.
          You shall not steal.
          You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
          You shall not covet your neighbor’s house.
          You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife,
          nor his male or female slave, nor his ox or ass,
          nor anything else that belongs to him.”

          Responsorial Psalm
          19:8, 9, 10, 11

          R. (John 6:68c)  Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.

          The law of the LORD is perfect,
          refreshing the soul;
          The decree of the LORD is trustworthy,
          giving wisdom to the simple.
          R. Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.
          The precepts of the LORD are right,
          rejoicing the heart;
          the command of the LORD is clear,
          enlightening the eye.
          R. Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.
          The fear of the LORD is pure,
          enduring forever;
          the ordinances of the LORD are true,
          all of them just.
          R. Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.
          They are more precious than gold,
          than a heap of purest gold;
          sweeter also than syrup
          or honey from the comb.
          R. Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.

          Reading II
          1 Cor 1:22-25

          Brothers and sisters:

          Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom,
          but we proclaim Christ crucified,
          a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,
          but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike,
          Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
          For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom,
          and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

          Verse Before the Gospel
          Jn 3:16

          God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,

          so that everyone who believes in him might have eternal life.

          Gospel
          Jn 2:13-25

          Since the Passover of the Jews was near,

          Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
          He found in the temple area those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves,
          as well as the money changers seated there.
          He made a whip out of cords
          and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen,
          and spilled the coins of the money changers
          and overturned their tables,
          and to those who sold doves he said,
          “Take these out of here,
          and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.”
          His disciples recalled the words of Scripture,
          Zeal for your house will consume me.
          At this the Jews answered and said to him,
          “What sign can you show us for doing this?”
          Jesus answered and said to them,
          “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”
          The Jews said,
          “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years,
          and you will raise it up in three days?”
          But he was speaking about the temple of his body.
          Therefore, when he was raised from the dead,
          his disciples remembered that he had said this,
          and they came to believe the Scripture
          and the word Jesus had spoken.

          While he was in Jerusalem for the feast of Passover,

          many began to believe in his name
          when they saw the signs he was doing.
          But Jesus would not trust himself to them because he knew them all,
          and did not need anyone to testify about human nature.
          He himself understood it well.

          The post Our Lenten Reconsecration, Third Sunday of Lent (B), March 3, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

          26 min
        • Worshipping Bathed In The Mercy of the Lord, Saturday of the Second Week of Lent, March 2, 2024

          Fr. Roger J. Landry

          Ste. Marie’s Parish, Manchester, New Hampshire
          Parish Day of Recollection: “Eucharistic Lenten Mission”
          Saturday of the Second Week of Lent
          March 2, 2024
          Mic 7:14-15.18-20, Ps 103, Lk 15:1-3.11-32

           

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

          https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.2.24_Homily_1.mp3

           

          The following text guided the homily: 

          • Today, as we enter more deeply into the Eucharistic dimension of Lent during this Parish Lenten Retreat, the readings help us focus on the right worship of God and, in particular, the need for God’s mercy in being able to worship God aright. Pope Benedict once commented on the fact that at the beginning of the Last Supper Christ washed the feet of his apostles. In his dialogue with St. Peter, when St. Peter first objected to having Christ do the work of a slave and wash his feet, Jesus told him that unless Peter allowed him to wash his feet, he would have no part in him. Then Peter asked to have not just his feet washed but his hands and head as well, but Jesus said that one who has been bathed has no need to but to have his feet washed. Pope Benedict said that the bathing to which Jesus referred was baptism and the washing of the feet, that part of us that is in contact with the world, refers to the Sacrament of Confession. It is a prelude to how, in order to celebrate Mass well, to worship God well, we must come washed in God’s mercy. We must arrive ready to respond to Jesus’ summons at the beginning of his public ministry that the Church reiterates as we’re marked with ashes on Ash Wednesday, to “repent and believe in the Gospel.” We must be striving to pray, fast and give alms in such a way that we begin to think with the mind of God, hunger for what he hungers, and gratefully participate in his providential care of our brothers and sisters. Lent is a time to become holy like God is holy, perfect as God is perfect, merciful like the Father is merciful. It is a time to focus on how his mercy endures forever and therefore on our recognizing our need for it, our coming to receive it, our rejoicing in it and our seeking to pass it on to others like we’ve first received it, are all meant to grow.
          • In today’s readings we focus on that mercy, which is the driver of the whole season of Lent, especially this first phase of Lent focused on conversion that finishes today. The Prophet Micah exclaims with wonder and gratitude about God’s hesed, his merciful faithfulness to us despite our sins: “Who is there like you, the God who removes guilt and pardons sin for the remnant of his inheritance; Who does not persist in anger forever, but delights rather in clemency, and will again have compassion on us, treading underfoot our guilt? You will cast into the depths of the sea all our sins; You will show faithfulness to Jacob, and grace to Abraham, as you have sworn to our fathers from days of old.” In the Responsorial Psalm we ponder how “kind and merciful” he is who “pardons all your iniquities, … heals all your ills, … redeems your life from destruction, … crowns you with kindness and compassion, … will not always chide, … does not keep his wrath forever, … who does not deal with us according to our sins, nor requite us according to our crimes,” who has “put our transgressions” further from us as the east is from the west and the heavens are high above the earth.” And then in the Gospel, Jesus illustrates for us the love of God who delights in clemency, who shows his faithfulness to his wayward children, who does not deal with us according to our sins but who treats his with paternal kindness and compassion. It’s perhaps the most famous short-story of all time. It’s called the Parable of the Prodigal Son after the youngest of two boys, but it could easily have been called the Parable of the Merciful Father or the Parable of the Merciless Brother. We conclude this phase of Lent pondering what Jesus wants to teach us about mercy through all three characters in today’s Gospel.
          • We begin with the younger son. His essential sin was not all that he did to blow his inheritance on a dissolute life. It was to treat his Father as if he were dead. To ask for the inheritance while the Father was still living was tantamount to saying, “You’re dead to me, Old Man. I don’t want to wait until you croak. Give me now, as if it’s a right I have rather than an unmerited grace, what you’re planning to give me when finally you breathe your last.” And the Father, doubtless more concerned over the direction of his son’s life than nursing his own wounds at the son’s ingratitude and presumption, gave him the inheritance, probably figuring out it would be the only chance that the son might have of learning the lesson he had long missed. The son, as we know, went and squandered everything in an immoral life. Eventually when a famine hit the land where he was, he needed to do work that no Jew would ever have signed up for, to care for pigs (whom the Jews considered unclean animals). He was eventually so hungry that he longed for what the pigs were eating, something that indicated basically that he had become almost subhuman. But that’s when the grace of conversion first hit him. “Coming to his senses,” St. Luke writes, he realized that his Father’s hired hands were always well-fed and he decided to return to his Father’s house, to apologize for his sins, and asked to be treated like a hired hand. He recognized that at least his Father was a good man who cared for those who worked for him. When we hear the word today, “hired hand,” most of us, I think, imagine he was being asked to be treated as an “employee,” but it was nothing really of the sort. He was asking to be treated as “less than a slave.” The slaves were considered members of the household to some degree and they were taken care of and fed. The “hired hands” were not members of the family. They were responsible for their own upkeep, if they could get a job day-by-day. But the younger son recognized that the Father was kind and gave “more than enough food to eat” even to those who had no right to food. The son was beginning to reawaken to the Father’s goodness. But he still didn’t understand the Father. He rehearsed his speech as he was returning home, that he had sinned against God and against his father — both of whom he had treated as if they were dead to him — and didn’t deserve to be treated as a son, thinking that the relationship of filiation would now have been “dead” since he had basically already pronounced his father’s obituary. But the Father, seeing him far off, was filled with merciful love and ran to his son. I’ve always imagined a 60-year-old man in sandals looking foolish running to embrace his long-lost son, running the way a child scampers across the airport to greet his or her father returning from military service overseas. The son began with his well-practiced confession, but the Father interrupted him. He called for the finest garment to be put around him to cover up all of the swine excrement with which doubtless he had been covered. He put a signet ring on his finger, to show that he still had “power of attorney” over the Father’s goods. He had sandals placed on his feet to symbolize that he was free to go about as he pleased — slaves never had sandals. Whereas he was prepared to ask to be treated like a hired hand lower than slaves, the Father restored him to his full dignity!
          • This is obviously an allusion to what God seeks to do to all of us through the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation. When we come to our senses, when we realize the Father not only is not dead but is good and cares for us and we begin to make the journey home, he runs out to meet us to restore us to who we really are. In the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin elsewhere in the same chapter of Luke 15, Jesus tells us that heaven rejoices most of all for the return of one sinner, because every forgiven sinner is a restored beloved son or daughter of the Father. The Father initiates a massive celebration, having the special fattened calf slaughtered for the son’s return, because, as he says, “My son was dead and has come back to life again. He was lost and has been found.” That’s what happens every good Confession. Every reconciliation is a resurrection, when we’re raised from the dead by the Father’s mercy (which is why, I believe, Jesus founded it on Easter Sunday evening). The Sacraments is God’s great lost-and-found department for his beloved children. The whole point of this first phase of Lent was to bring us back fully into the house of the Father so that he could restore us to who we really are. Lent is a time for us to recognize that we’re the prodigal son and make the journey to the Father’s restorative embrace. We need to recognize those areas in our life where we have treated him as if he were dead, through our self-sufficiency; the ways in which we have squandered his gifts by using them on ourselves; the times in which we have wallowed in the pigsties of grudges or self-pity; the ways in which we have lived like or below animals through obeying our appetites more than what he’s whispered though our conscience; and make our way back home to his embrace. As Pope Francis said at the beginning of his papacy, “God never tires of forgiving us, but it’s we who tire of asking for forgiveness.” The Father is always ready to embrace us with his merciful love, but we must be sensible enough to recognize who he is, come back to say sorry, and be grateful for the way that he does far more than feed and employ us.
          • During this Lenten season we have to do more than respond to God’s grace to restore our relationship with God the Father, however. We also have to seek to restore our relationship with our brothers and sisters. And that’s where the second, older brother comes into the scene. In some ways, Jesus told the whole parable in order to focus on his reaction to the loving mercy of the Father toward his younger brother. The setting for the parable was in response to the Pharisees and Scribes’ complaints that Jesus “welcomes sinners and eats with them.” They would rather have had the sinners never convert than for Jesus to have shown mercy to them. They were a society of older brothers in the parable. And we can see in the older brother’s behavior that he, too, never really grasped the Father’s goodness or love. When he got angry and refused to enter the party the Father was throwing for the younger son’s return, he passive-aggressively waited outside until the Father came for him. He couldn’t join in the celebration because, in his heart, his brother was still dead. When the Father pleaded with him to enter the party, he replied with anger that betrayed that he had never related to his Father out of love but only out of duty. He was essentially a slave who, even though he never left the Father’s house, really didn’t want to be there either and resented his Father out of the type of envy we heard about yesterday in the betrayal of Joseph by his brothers and the prophesied betrayal of Jesus by his own people. “Look, all these years I served you and not once did I ever disobey your orders.” That’s the language of a slave, not a son! You can almost hear him calling his Father “Master” or “Boss-man” rather than “Dad.” And it gets worse. “Yet when this son of yours returns…” He can’t even refer to his own flesh-and-blood as his brother. The younger brother had wasted his inheritance “with prostitutes,” he said, a detail that isn’t in evidence, a sign that that’s likely what he would have done had he been bold enough to do what the younger brother had done and gotten his own half of the inheritance. He was filled with envy and hatred against his brother as well as against the Father. He had never even been allowed to kill a young goat for a party with his friends and yet the other brother got a fatted calf. By this point of the story, we can clearly see that while the younger brother was restored to health the older brother was still sick. The younger brother now at least understood the love of the Father and was rejoicing in it, whereas the older brother was still in a judgmental, bitter pigsty of his own. Jesus concludes the parable by telling us that the Father basically thought he had no choice but to celebrate because of his younger son’s being brought back morally from the dead, for his being restored fully into the inheritance, which was not a thing fundamentally of money but of fatherly love. We don’t know whether the older brother entered the party with him or not. The reason is because that was still an open question for the scribes and the Pharisees who were listening to the parable of Jesus, whether they would share his joy and come to welcome and eat with the same sinners, the same prodigal sons and daughters with whom Jesus was dining, or whether they would continue to remain defiantly and enviously outside. There’s an obvious application for all of us, too, of this second part of the parable. Do we rejoice when other sinners return to the faith or do we resent that after they “had their fun” they are now restored to the same status as we have?  When we’re tempted toward this type of hardness of heart of the Scribes and the Pharisees, the most common reason is because we look at the practice of the faith in general as a series of duties, of God as a powerful task master, rather than as a drama of love with God as the most loving Father ever. It’s also because we look at others not with the love of brothers and sisters but rather begrudgingly as fallen away sons and daughters of God but with whom we don’t want really to associate. The beginning of the Lenten season is meant to help us not only to make the journey of the Prodigal Son but also the journey to which Jesus was summoning the Scribes and the Pharisees. The Father comes out and wants us to join in the party. God’s greatest joy is forgiving, as Pope Francis likes to say, and he wants us to enter into that joy. In fact, he wants us to join him in going out to others to invite them to return to the Father’s house so that the joy of heaven will be even greater.
          • Today we’ve all come as repentant prodigals to the Father’s house, where he seeks to renew us in our baptismal garments, to restore us to our full inheritance and help us to walk with true freedom. We’ve come here so that we can join ourselves worshipping him with the whole Church from the rising of the Sun to its setting. We recognize that in Mass, we join ourselves to Jesus, who called himself to St. Faustina, “Mercy Incarnate,” and offer to the Eternal and Merciful Father, “the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of his dearly beloved Son, in atonement for our sins and for those of the whole world.” And in God’s kindness and mercy, he hasn’t prepared a fattened calf but something far greater — a Lamb looking as if he has been slain, whose blood was offered “for the remission of sins” — so that through communion with His own beloved Son on the inside, Mercy incarnate, we may indeed live always in the love of the Father and have his mercy become fully alive in our life. This is the path by which our Lent will be translated into an Easter joy that will know no end.

            •  

            The readings for today’s Mass were: 

            Reading 1
            Mi 7:14-15, 18-20
            Shepherd your people with your staff,
            the flock of your inheritance,
            That dwells apart in a woodland,
            in the midst of Carmel.
            Let them feed in Bashan and Gilead,
            as in the days of old;
            As in the days when you came from the land of Egypt,
            show us wonderful signs.Who is there like you, the God who removes guilt
            and pardons sin for the remnant of his inheritance;
            Who does not persist in anger forever,
            but delights rather in clemency,
            And will again have compassion on us,
            treading underfoot our guilt?
            You will cast into the depths of the sea all our sins;
            You will show faithfulness to Jacob,
            and grace to Abraham,
            As you have sworn to our fathers
            from days of old.

            Responsorial Psalm
            Ps 103:1-2, 3-4, 9-10, 11-12
            R. (8a) The Lord is kind and merciful.
            Bless the LORD, O my soul;
            and all my being, bless his holy name.
            Bless the LORD, O my soul,
            and forget not all his benefits.
            R. The Lord is kind and merciful.
            He pardons all your iniquities,
            he heals all your ills.
            He redeems your life from destruction,
            he crowns you with kindness and compassion.
            R. The Lord is kind and merciful.
            He will not always chide,
            nor does he keep his wrath forever.
            Not according to our sins does he deal with us,
            nor does he requite us according to our crimes.
            R. The Lord is kind and merciful.
            For as the heavens are high above the earth,
            so surpassing is his kindness toward those who fear him.
            As far as the east is from the west,
            so far has he put our transgressions from us.
            R. The Lord is kind and merciful.
            Verse Before the Gospel
            Lk 15:18
            I will get up and go to my father and shall say to him,
            Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.
            Gospel
            Lk 15:1-3, 11-32
            Tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to Jesus,
            but the Pharisees and scribes began to complain, saying,
            “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
            So to them Jesus addressed this parable.
            “A man had two sons, and the younger son said to his father,
            ‘Father, give me the share of your estate that should come to me.’
            So the father divided the property between them.
            After a few days, the younger son collected all his belongings
            and set off to a distant country
            where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation.
            When he had freely spent everything,
            a severe famine struck that country,
            and he found himself in dire need.
            So he hired himself out to one of the local citizens
            who sent him to his farm to tend the swine.
            And he longed to eat his fill of the pods on which the swine fed,
            but nobody gave him any.
            Coming to his senses he thought,
            ‘How many of my father’s hired workers
            have more than enough food to eat,
            but here am I, dying from hunger.
            I shall get up and go to my father and I shall say to him,
            “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.
            I no longer deserve to be called your son;
            treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers.”‘
            So he got up and went back to his father.
            While he was still a long way off,
            his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion.
            He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him.
            His son said to him,
            ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you;
            I no longer deserve to be called your son.’
            But his father ordered his servants,
            ‘Quickly, bring the finest robe and put it on him;
            put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.
            Take the fattened calf and slaughter it.
            Then let us celebrate with a feast,
            because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again;
            he was lost, and has been found.’
            Then the celebration began.
            Now the older son had been out in the field
            and, on his way back, as he neared the house,
            he heard the sound of music and dancing.
            He called one of the servants and asked what this might mean.
            The servant said to him,
            ‘Your brother has returned
            and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf
            because he has him back safe and sound.’
            He became angry,
            and when he refused to enter the house,
            his father came out and pleaded with him.
            He said to his father in reply,
            ‘Look, all these years I served you
            and not once did I disobey your orders;
            yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends.
            But when your son returns
            who swallowed up your property with prostitutes,
            for him you slaughter the fattened calf.’
            He said to him,
            ‘My son, you are here with me always;
            everything I have is yours.
            But now we must celebrate and rejoice,
            because your brother was dead and has come to life again;
            he was lost and has been found.'”

            The post Worshipping Bathed In The Mercy of the Lord, Saturday of the Second Week of Lent, March 2, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

            24 min
          • Third Sunday of Lent (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, March 2, 2024

            Fr. Roger J. Landry

            Conversations with Consequences Podcast
            Homily for the Third Sunday of Lent, B, Vigil
            March 2, 2024

             

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

            https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.2.24_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

             

            The text that guided the homily was: 

            • This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege to join you again and ponder with you the consequential conversation Jesus wants to have with us in the Gospel this Sunday, when we will encounter a Jesus with whom many of us, especially today, are unfamiliar, a Jesus who speaks to us through a powerful, prophetic gesture. The same Jesus whom Isaiah prophesied would “not break a bruised reed nor quench a smoldering wick” (Is 42:3), the same Jesus whom the psalms would call “kind and merciful” (Ps 145:8), the same Jesus who referred to himself as “meek and humble of heart” (Mt 11:29), started to overturn tables, tossed money on the floor, and made a whip of cords to drive the sheep and the cattle out of the temple. There is no contradiction between the image of Jesus as the kind, merciful friend of sinners and Jesus as consumed with zeal for his Father’s house, because out of love for sinners and his Father, he really the hated the sins that can kill sinners.
            • The word St. John uses to describe how Jesus drove out the animals is the same verb used when Jesus did exorcisms and drove out demons. Jesus was doing an exorcism of the temple in Jerusalem. The Temple had been built in order to be the dwelling place of God on earth, a place to encounter God in prayer, but it had become something very different. It wasn’t so much the fact that animals were being sold and money exchanged in the temple precincts that bothered Jesus. It was two things associated with this selling of animals and exchanging money.
            • The first was that the moneychangers and animal sellers were ripping off the people. The temple had become a “den of thieves.” When people came to the temple, they needed to sacrifice an animal to God, the size and value of the animal being determined by their personal means and the type of sacrifice being made. Rather than carry or accompany an animal like an ox or a sheep or even a cage with pigeons with them for the many miles’ uphill walk to the temple — which was a considerable inconvenience and burden — most would buy one at the temple. But because there was such a demand, especially at the time of the Passover, the merchants had the market drastically to overcharge the people who needed the animals. Others who would try to save money by bringing an animal of their own often had to get the animals inspected by Temple officials who needed to verify that the animals they had brought were unblemished, as the Mosaic law stipulated. These inspectors often were on the take of the animal sellers to find blemishes that weren’t there and disqualify the affected animals. The poor who had saved their money over the course of the whole year for the trip to the temple, therefore, one way or the other, had to pay these enormous prices. While they were there, they also had to pay a temple tax, which needed to be given in one of two types of acceptable Temple currencies. That meant that most everyone had to exchange money and the moneychangers could take a large commission, which again penalized the poor most of all. Jesus was outraged that people were coming into the temple to rip off the poor. That was the first thing that incensed the Lord.
            • The second was worse. Even though God had commanded the animal sacrifices as a way of helping them learn how to love him with all their mind, heart, soul and strength by sacrificing something precious according to their means, as well as a means of expressing gratitude to God for his blessings, the Jewish mentality had become so distorted over the centuries that they began to look at their relationship with God as something contractual or even magical. “As long as I sacrifice this animal to God,” some began to think to themselves, “everything will be all right. God will be happy.” Too many people had started to look at the temple as the place to go to “bribe” God with their animal sacrifices. They had started to look at God as someone who needed to be “bought” by these bloody gifts. God had said many times through the prophets, “It is a contrite heart I seek, not animal sacrifices,” but they hadn’t gotten the picture. So Jesus gave them all a lesson they would never forget — and we would never forget. Jesus wanted to return first the temple and then his people to the true worship of God. He wanted the temple to be a place of prayer, to be His Father’s House once again, and he wanted to help his people recover a real notion of what their relationship with the Father should be based on — a contrite, merciful and loving heart.
            • When asked why he was doing what he was doing, Jesus pointed to another temple, the temple of his body, which he said would be destroyed but rebuilt in three days. Jesus himself became through the incarnation the true temple, the true locus of divine worship, the genuine place where God dwells on earth. But Jesus’ plan for that rebuilt temple wasn’t coextensive with his flesh, but with his Mystical Body. His plan was to incorporate us into that Temple. When we’re baptized, we enter and become part of that temple. We become members of Jesus’ Mystical Body, and ourselves become dwelling places of God, where Father, Son and Holy Spirit truly abide. This is what led St. Paul to say in his First Letter to the Corinthians, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?” After Baptism, our body and soul become a temple of the Holy Spirit, meant to be a holy dwelling place of God, where God speaks, is praised and glorified. This is the temple that Jesus wants to make sure is clean, a real house of prayer, a real place where God is worshipped.
            • The Church has us ponder this reading on the Third Sunday of Lent so that each of us can grasp that Jesus wants to give this far more important temple than the one built by Herod, the temple of our body and soul, a thorough cleaning. Zeal for us consumes him. He wants to drive out of our bodies and souls anything not fit for God. He wants to cleanse of our sins. He wants to extirpate any of the seven capital vices, to purify us of all impurities. He does this out of love for God and love for us — and out of hatred and anger toward the sin that kills us and separates us from God. Our temples may not have money changers, but our hearts may value money more than we value God, as we put work above prayer or even above Mass on the Lord’s day, as we place our security in the material things of this world than we do in God’s providence. Our temples may not have sheep, oxen and lambs, but we may live like animals, living according to our instincts and lower appetites, rather than living as mature, loving, self-disciplined sons and daughters of God. Jesus wants to clean us this Lent of everything that doesn’t belong in his dwelling place. Through almsgiving, he wants to drive out our materialism and unite us to his spiritual poverty so that we may treasure his kingdom. Through fasting, he wants to drive out our hedonism and unite us to his consecrated chastity so that we may indeed love God and others as he loves his Father and us. Through prayer, he wants to expel our radical individualism and idolatry of autonomy and bind us to his holy obedience so that we may together with him consecrate ourselves to the Father’s saving will in all things until death.
            • Every Lent, Jesus seeks to reconsecrate the temple he has created us to be by incorporating us anew in the destruction and rebuilding of his own body, the true temple, raised on the third day. As catechumens and elect prepare for Baptism and as the rest of us prepare to renew our baptismal promises at Easter, Jesus wants to help us make our interior a place of true prayer. He wants to fill us with his own zeal out of love for the Father and others. He wants to stoke in us righteous anger toward the sins that desecrate the temple of his presence and to allow him, through a good confession, to cleanse and restore our temple back to its baptismal splendor. Those are the results of the consequential conversation he wants to have with us this weekend.

              •  

              The Gospel reading on which the homily was based was: 

              Gospel
              Jn 2:13-25

              Since the Passover of the Jews was near,

              Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
              He found in the temple area those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves,
              as well as the money changers seated there.
              He made a whip out of cords
              and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen,
              and spilled the coins of the money changers
              and overturned their tables,
              and to those who sold doves he said,
              “Take these out of here,
              and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.”
              His disciples recalled the words of Scripture,
              Zeal for your house will consume me.
              At this the Jews answered and said to him,
              “What sign can you show us for doing this?”
              Jesus answered and said to them,
              “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”
              The Jews said,
              “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years,
              and you will raise it up in three days?”
              But he was speaking about the temple of his body.
              Therefore, when he was raised from the dead,
              his disciples remembered that he had said this,
              and they came to believe the Scripture
              and the word Jesus had spoken.

              While he was in Jerusalem for the feast of Passover,

              many began to believe in his name
              when they saw the signs he was doing.
              But Jesus would not trust himself to them because he knew them all,
              and did not need anyone to testify about human nature.
              He himself understood it well.

               

              The post Third Sunday of Lent (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, March 2, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

              9 min
            • Building Our Life on the Eucharistic Cornerstone, Friday of the Second Week of Lent, March 1, 2024

              Fr. Roger J. Landry

              Ste. Marie’s Parish, Manchester, New Hampshire
              Parish Day of Recollection: “Eucharistic Lenten Mission”
              Friday of the Second Week of Lent
              March 1, 2024
              Gen 37:3-4.12-13.17-18, Ps 105, Mt 21:33-43.45-46

               

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

              https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.1.24_St._Maries_Homily_1.mp3

               

              The following text guided the homily: 

              • Today at the beginning of this Parish Lenten Mission dedicated to the Holy Eucharist and how in the Eucharist, the source and summit of our faith, Jesus teaches us how better to pray, fast and give alms. In today’s readings, we have a chance to focus a little bit on why the U.S. Bishops have begun a three-year-plus Eucharistic Revival. It’s the theme of human rejection of God and how God responds to that rejection. We remember how when Jesus, in the Synagogue of Capernaum, announced he would give us his body and blood in Holy Communion, most of his disciples said, “This teaching is hard; who can endure it?,” and walked away. The Revival has been called because, sadly, so many Catholics have walked away from Jesus himself in the Eucharist; only one of six Catholics comes to Mass each Sunday. Many haven’t made a conscious choice to reject Jesus. Many have just drifted away. The Revival is an opportunity to try to pray them back, invite the back, and help them stay when they return. It’s a time to turn rejection into a building project on Jesus the Cornerstone. Jesus in today’s Gospel says that he is the stone rejected by the builders who has become the Cornerstone. Even if others have rejected him, even if we in the past have rejected him, even if we in the present routinely marginalize him, this Lent, this Revival, is a chance for us to do something different: to build on him anew. That’s the grace that’s before us.
              • Let’s enter into the readings to see how God wants to bring something great from something evil. In the first reading from the Book of Genesis, we witness how Joseph’s brothers were envious of him because he was their father Jacob’s favorite. The fact that Jacob loved Joseph the most didn’t mean he didn’t love the other brothers, but their envy led them not only to close themselves to the love their father had for them but also to the love they should have had for their father and their brother. Their envy led them, as Genesis tells us, to “hate [Joseph] so much that they would not even greet him,” and that interior poison led them to do something much worse. When Joseph went out to help his brothers tend the flocks in Dothan, the brothers conspired to plan to murder him, toss his dead body into a cistern and then lie about it to their father by saying a wild beast had devoured him. They wanted to replicate Cain’s invidious murder of his brother Abel. To save Joseph’s life, one of the brothers, Reuben, persuaded the other siblings just to abandon Joseph into an empty cistern so that he might be able to rescue him later. And so they agreed and threw him down into an inescapable situation, with most of the brothers likely thinking that, while they themselves didn’t shed his blood, it would just be a longer dying process. But then they saw a group of Ishmaelites — basically their second cousins through their grandfather Isaac’s half-brother Ishmael — and sold him into slavery for 20 pieces of silver, not as an act of mercy but of simple profiteering from what they anticipated would be a situation tantamount to his death in Egypt. At every stage, their envy at Joseph’s good fortune led to evil. Their brotherly betrayal was a prophetic type of what would eventually happen to Jesus when he would be sold by one of his spiritual brothers, one of his closest friends, for silver, too.
              • Jesus describes that betrayal, and the envy that led to it, in today’s Gospel. Jesus spoke to the chief priests and the scribes in a parable about the way they had treated all the messengers God had sent them and how they were going to treat him. In the prophets Israel had often been referred to as a vineyard planted by God (Hos 10:1). God had made the Israelites stewards of that vineyard but expected a harvest when vintage time grew near. The prophets were the ones sent to remind them of that yield of good deeds, but, as Jesus said, “one they beat, another they killed and a third they stoned.” Other prophets were sent and maltreated the same way. Finally, God sent his Son but, in prophetic tones that would be fulfilled in the cry of “Crucify Him!” in Pontius Pilate’s praetorium, they shouted out, “This is the heir. Come let us kill him and acquire his inheritance.” They wanted to be owners, not stewards, of what they had received and were prepared to commit murder in order to maintain their privileges. They wanted to be the ones in charge of the inheritance of faith, not God himself. The chief motivation behind the persecution of the prophets and the crucifixion of Jesus, Jesus implies in the image, was envy, envy that led to a hatred so severe that it resulted in homicide.
              • But we know that that’s not the end of either story. God’s mercy intervenes. God always seeks to bring good out of evil and in both cases God’s goodness triumphed over the worst of human wickedness. Joseph’s being sold for 20 pieces of silver, becoming a slave in Egypt and his ability to interpret dreams eventually brought him to the attention of Pharaoh and to the second position in the Kingdom, an office he was able to use not only to save millions of Egyptians lives during a time of famine but also his family. Likewise, Jesus’ being sold for 30 pieces of silver, taking on the appearance of a slave in order to serve us all and enduring the worst of nightmares, led him to save not only millions of Egyptian lives and so many fellow Israelites but the entire human race, including those who had conspired to have him crucified. That’s why the Responsorial Psalm has us proclaim today, repeatedly, “Remember the marvels the Lord has done!” That’s why in the Gospel, Jesus, citing Psalm 118, says, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. By the Lord has this been done; it is wonderful in our eyes!” (Ps 118:22-23). The verse right after that is the essential verse of Easter, “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice in it and be glad.” To prepare ourselves in Lent for Easter, we must enter more deeply into the paschal mystery of Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection, we must enter into his experience of rejection and how God brings something marvelous out of it. It wasn’t enough for him just to suffer and die for us. It wasn’t enough for him to take on our nature and enter the world. He wanted to become our food, so that we could build on him each day.
              • As we prepare now to receive that “Stone rejected by the builders” in Holy Communion — the greatest marvel of all in our eyes and God’s — we ask him for the grace to build our entire life on Him, our most secure foundation. We ask him to bless this Parish retreat and indeed the whole Eucharistic Revival. Rather than saying, “Come, let us kill him!,” and rejecting Jesus, instead we shout out tonight, remember the marvels the Lord has done, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!,” and “Blessed are those called to the Supper of the Lamb!”

                •  

                The readings for tonight’s Mass were: 

                Reading 1
                Gn 37:3-4, 12-13a, 17b-28a
                Israel loved Joseph best of all his sons,
                for he was the child of his old age;
                and he had made him a long tunic.
                When his brothers saw that their father loved him best of all his sons,
                they hated him so much that they would not even greet him.One day, when his brothers had gone
                to pasture their father’s flocks at Shechem,
                Israel said to Joseph,
                “Your brothers, you know, are tending our flocks at Shechem.
                Get ready; I will send you to them.”

                So Joseph went after his brothers and caught up with them in Dothan.

                They noticed him from a distance,
                and before he came up to them, they plotted to kill him.
                They said to one another: “Here comes that master dreamer!
                Come on, let us kill him and throw him into one of the cisterns here;
                we could say that a wild beast devoured him.
                We shall then see what comes of his dreams.”

                When Reuben heard this,

                he tried to save him from their hands, saying,
                “We must not take his life.
                Instead of shedding blood,” he continued,
                “just throw him into that cistern there in the desert;
                but do not kill him outright.”
                His purpose was to rescue him from their hands
                and return him to his father.
                So when Joseph came up to them,
                they stripped him of the long tunic he had on;
                then they took him and threw him into the cistern,
                which was empty and dry.

                They then sat down to their meal.

                Looking up, they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead,
                their camels laden with gum, balm and resin
                to be taken down to Egypt.
                Judah said to his brothers:
                “What is to be gained by killing our brother and concealing his blood?
                Rather, let us sell him to these Ishmaelites,
                instead of doing away with him ourselves.
                After all, he is our brother, our own flesh.”
                His brothers agreed.
                They sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver.

                Responsorial Psalm
                Ps 105:16-17, 18-19, 20-21
                R. (5a) Remember the marvels the Lord has done.
                When the LORD called down a famine on the land
                and ruined the crop that sustained them,
                He sent a man before them,
                Joseph, sold as a slave.
                R. Remember the marvels the Lord has done.
                They had weighed him down with fetters,
                and he was bound with chains,
                Till his prediction came to pass
                and the word of the LORD proved him true.
                R. Remember the marvels the Lord has done.
                The king sent and released him,
                the ruler of the peoples set him free.
                He made him lord of his house
                and ruler of all his possessions.
                R. Remember the marvels the Lord has done.
                Verse Before the Gospel
                Jn 3:16
                God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son;
                so that everyone who believes in him might have eternal life.
                Gospel
                Mt 21:33-43, 45-46
                Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people:
                “Hear another parable.
                There was a landowner who planted a vineyard,
                put a hedge around it,
                dug a wine press in it, and built a tower.
                Then he leased it to tenants and went on a journey.
                When vintage time drew near,
                he sent his servants to the tenants to obtain his produce.
                But the tenants seized the servants and one they beat,
                another they killed, and a third they stoned.
                Again he sent other servants, more numerous than the first ones,
                but they treated them in the same way.
                Finally, he sent his son to them,
                thinking, ‘They will respect my son.’
                But when the tenants saw the son, they said to one another,
                ‘This is the heir.
                Come, let us kill him and acquire his inheritance.’
                They seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.
                What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants when he comes?”
                They answered him,
                “He will put those wretched men to a wretched death
                and lease his vineyard to other tenants
                who will give him the produce at the proper times.”
                Jesus said to them, “Did you never read in the Scriptures:The stone that the builders rejected
                has become the cornerstone;
                by the Lord has this been done,
                and it is wonderful in our eyes?

                Therefore, I say to you,

                the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you
                and given to a people that will produce its fruit.”
                When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables,
                they knew that he was speaking about them.
                And although they were attempting to arrest him,
                they feared the crowds, for they regarded him as a prophet.

                The post Building Our Life on the Eucharistic Cornerstone, Friday of the Second Week of Lent, March 1, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                19 min

              About Catholic Preaching

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

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