Catholic Preaching

Catholic Preaching

By Father Roger LandryReligion & Spirituality Christianity

Download on the App Store

Download on the App Store

Get it on Google Play

Catholic Preaching episodes

March 01, 2024Building Our Life On The Rejected Cornerstone, Friday of the Second Week of Lent, March 1, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
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 this homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.1.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
Today in the readings we focus on one of the most difficult experiences of human life: rejection. We ponder the rejection of the young patriarch Joseph by his family members and of Jesus by his creatures. It’s an occasion for us to ponder the times in our lives that we, too, have been rejected, especially those occasions that sting the most. But in response to the terrible rejections of Joseph and Jesus, the Responsorial Psalm has us proclaim today, repeatedly, “Remember the marvels the Lord has done!” 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 experience of the rejection we see through examining sin, the envy that causes it, and how God not only seeks — marvelously! — to take away our sins and forgive them but to make them part of our salvation.
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. To use his own words, quoting the Psalms, “The stone rejected by the builders has become the cornerstone.” That is indeed a marvel in our eyes!
These two points should lead to three sets of resolutions on our part.
The first is about the terrible evil of envy and the destruction to which it leads. Envy is sadness and anger about someone else’s being blessed, a coveting of what others have that knows no limit. We need to see it for the capital sin that it is. And the greatest way to oppose envy is to be grateful for all we have rather than upset at what we don’t have and to thank God for the way he’s blessed others, especially our family members and friends.
The second resolution is about how to endure difficulty, hardship and betrayal we will suffer because of the evil and envy of others. God always seeks to bring good out of evil and we need to have confidence that our hardships endured can lead to our salvation and the salvation of others. “All things work out for the good,” St. Paul writes to the Romans. Especially when we’re in a situation like Joseph or like Jesus, we need to remember that it’s not the whole story, that God can always use that evil for good.
The third resolution is to build our lives on Christ the Cornerstone, something that the experience of rejection helps us to do more easily because rejection shatters our false foundations, when we perhaps haven’t built our life on him and his mercy but even in some ways rejected it. That’s what we have the chance to do each day in the Holy Eucharist, when we receive within that very rejected Cornerstone. To live a Eucharistic life is precisely to enter into the mystery of how God brings the greatest good from the greatest evil, how he turns the sin of envy into the greatest means of sanctity.
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 beg him to draw good out of all the evil we’ve suffered out account of the envy of others. And we beseech him to help us never to succumb to that capital sin but rather to rejoice in all that he’s given us and given others. Rather than saying, “Come, let us kill him!,” and rejecting Jesus, instead we say, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!,” and embrace him with eternal love.

The readings for today’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.
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 Rejected Cornerstone, Friday of the Second Week of Lent, March 1, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
18 min
February 29, 2024Trusting in, and Listening to, the One Who Has Returned from the Dead, Thursday of the Second Week of Lent, February 29, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Thursday of the Second Week of Lent
February 29, 2024
Jer 17:5-10, Ps 1, Lk 16:19-31

To listen to today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.29.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
We’ve been talking since the beginning of Lent about how this holy season is supposed to make us more like God: that prayer is meant to help us begin to think as God thinks and to treasure and become more like him whom we adore; that fasting is meant to help us to hunger for what God hungers; that almsgiving is supposed to help us participate in God’s providential care for others. The mercy we show for others is really the fruit of all three practices: the fruit of prayer is charity; what God hungers for is, as we heard on in Isaiah on the third day of Lent, for us to share our bread with the hungry, to shelter the oppressed and the homeless, to clothe the naked when we see them, not to turn our back on our own family members and kin in need, to release those bound unjustly and break the yoke that keeps people oppressed; and almsgiving doesn’t concern simply good deeds done for the poor and needy, but the tree that produces that fruit: The word almsgiving comes from the old English aelmesse, which is derived from the Greek eleemosyna, which is the word for mercy, as in Kyrie eleison, “Lord, have mercy.” The Latin is misericors, literally a “heart for the poor.” Almsgiving flows from a merciful heart, a heart like God’s.
It’s not enough for us as Christians simply not to do evil to others. We also are called positively to do good, to sacrifice ourselves for others, to go out in search for those in need, to give not only things but ourselves to those in greater need. Jesus wants us — and wants to help us — to love one another as he has loved us first, to become Good Samaritans to others just like he crossed the road all the way from heaven to care for us, not just not harming us but positively helping us. Yesterday he told us that the way to become great, the ambition he wants us to have, is to aspire to become the servant of the rest and to give our life to save others’ lives. Lent is a time for us to examine whether we are in fact bearing fruit from a heart full of compassion. It’s the time for us to beg God for what we asked at the beginning of today’s Mass, to “direct the hearts of your servants to yourself, that, caught up in the fire of your Spirit, we may be found steadfast in faith and effective in works.”
In the Gospel today, Jesus gives us one of his most powerful parables in which he illustrates to us that it’s not enough just not to harm our neighbor. He wants us to love our neighbor, to give of ourselves for our neighbors in need. The Rich Man in the Parable goes to hell not because he did any evil to the poor man, Lazarus, wounded and starving to death at his gate. He didn’t insult him. He didn’t beat him. He didn’t send dogs to attack him. The Rich Man was sent to hell because when he saw Lazarus at his gate he simply did nothing. He continued to eat his three sumptuous meals a day while Lazarus was dying of starvation and lack of care. Even the pets recognized his suffering such that the dogs were licking his wounds to try to heal them, but the Rich Man had no such compassion.
The parable illustrates very clearly the Rich Man’s sins of omission and it gets us to ask courageously and sincerely whether we’re committing similar sins. Jesus says that at the end of time, those who with great pain and regret he will wave to his eternal left, will be those who did nothing when they saw people hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, ill or in prison (Mt 25:31-46). They’ll all be shocked, similar to the way the Rich Man was shocked in the parable today, and will ask, “When did we see you, Lord, hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, ill or in prison and not minister to your needs?” And Jesus says he’ll respond, “As often as you failed to do it to one of the least of my brothers and sisters, you failed to do it to me.” The Rich Man’s problem is not just that he failed to lift a finger to help poor Lazarus at his gate; his deeper problem was that he failed to care for Jesus starving and wounded at his gate. He failed to recognize that the poor man at his gate was actually not a nuisance but a gift meant to lead him to love, to conversion and change.
That brings us to the second lesson of today’s Lenten readings, which is perhaps even more powerful than the first. Why didn’t the rich man care? Why didn’t he act when he so easily could have helped? The reason is because his heart was stony, rather than compassionate. The Rich Man was stuffing himself with so much food and pleasure that he could no longer empathize. His riches, his vanity, his pride, had made him blind. He was basing his existence on his own desires, on his material securities, rather than on God, on his commandments, on love of God and others. In his plaintive appeals to Abraham to have Lazarus at least go to his brothers to warn them of the consequences of their own sinful omissions because of a similarly hedonistic heart-hardening life, it was clear that he knew that they were ignoring the “Moses and the prophets,” they were failing to heed God and his word, just as much as he himself had been doing so before.
The first reading and the Psalm highlight for us the choice that we have to make, the choice that Lazarus got right and the choice that the Rich Man got wrong. It’s between basing our lives on God or on mammon. About the choice God wants us to make, about the fundamental orientation of our life, God tells us through the Prophet Jeremiah in the first reading, “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose hope is the Lord. He is like a tree planted beside the waters that stretches out its roots to the stream: it fears not the heat when it comes, its leaves stay green. In the year of drought it shows no distress, but still bears fruit.” This is the fruitful lifestyle of one who, the Psalm adds, “delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on God’s law day and night.” That is the one who prospers eternally in whatever he does, because the chief fruit of his life is interior, in his relationship with God. Because Lazarus always trusted in the Lord, even while his body was decaying, the leaves of his spiritual tree were unfaded; even while he was physically infamished, spiritually he was bearing fruit even during the drought. The Rich Man on the other hand was one who, to quote Jeremiah, was “cursed” because he “trusts in human beings, who seeks his strength in flesh, whose heart turns away from the Lord.” He’s described as a barren bush in the desert,” a “lava waste,” a “salt and empty earth.” To use the image of the Psalm, he’s like the “chaff,” the insubstantial remains of something that once was alive but now has had all the life burned out of it, “that the wind drives away.” At death, it was revealed that all his property, his banquets, his wealth were like chaff, whereas Lazarus’ deep roots in the living water of God were revealed as the real strength of his existence and the source of fruit that lasted into eternity.
All of this brings us to the choice that faces each of us this Lent: Whether we’re going to seek after what the Rich Man sought and place our attention fundamentally on meeting our own needs and wants, or whether we’re going to base our life on God, whether we’re going to meditate on his law day and night, whether we’re going to seek ambitiously to use all the blessings and gifts he’s given us to build up his kingdom by loving his sons and daughters in need all around us, or whether we’re going to use them selfishly to build up our kingdom. It’s not enough for us to wish to do good. God wants us actually to choose to do good and to spend our lives loving others. We will never run out of Lazaruses at our gates, especially here in New York City. There will never be a shortage of Lazaruses on Amsterdam and Broadway. We will never exhaust the opportunity to care for Jesus in disguise, including even here on campus. Lent is meant to help Christians to give alms, pray and fast not just for 40 days but for a lifetime. It’s supposed to bring us back to the basics, and a heart that trusts in God and cares for others is as basic as it gets for Christians.
At the very end of the Gospel today, the Rich Man begs that Lazarus return to his brothers to warn them of the impending doom unless they change and begin to care for those in need, saying that if someone from the dead were to return to them they would repent. But Abraham replies that if they don’t believe in Moses and the Prophets, neither would they believe should someone back from the dead bring them this message. Well, we’ve been given the privilege that the brothers of the Rich Man never received. Jesus has in fact come back from the dead to give us this message himself. Here at Mass we encounter him risen, not in the disguise of a poor man but under the even humbler appearances of bread and wine. Today he gives us his Body and Blood and tells us, “Do this in memory of me.” This means not just that we celebrate the Mass in his memory but that we, receiving the message he gives us in his own body language, go and do the same, giving our body, our blood, our sweat, our tears, our food, our material resources to others. That is path of life, the path of watered roots and fruitfulness in season and out, the path of love that will bring us to experience eternal joy with him, with Lazarus, and with all the saints. As we prepare to receive him today, let us ask him for the grace to remain in a holy communion always with his self-giving charity so that we, recognizing him here, may recognize him always in the disguise of the poor and love and care for him there as much as we do here!

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
JER 17:5-10
Thus says the LORD:
Cursed is the man who trusts in human beings,
who seeks his strength in flesh,
whose heart turns away from the LORD.
He is like a barren bush in the desert
that enjoys no change of season,
But stands in a lava waste,
a salt and empty earth.
Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
whose hope is the LORD.
He is like a tree planted beside the waters
that stretches out its roots to the stream:
It fears not the heat when it comes,
its leaves stay green;
In the year of drought it shows no distress,
but still bears fruit.
More tortuous than all else is the human heart,
beyond remedy; who can understand it?
I, the LORD, alone probe the mind
and test the heart,
To reward everyone according to his ways,
according to the merit of his deeds.
Responsorial Psalm
PS 1:1-2, 3, 4 AND 6
R. (40:5a) Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
Blessed the man who follows not
the counsel of the wicked
Nor walks in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the company of the insolent,
But delights in the law of the LORD
and meditates on his law day and night.
R. Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
He is like a tree
planted near running water,
That yields its fruit in due season,
and whose leaves never fade.
Whatever he does, prospers.
R. Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
Not so, the wicked, not so;
they are like chaff which the wind drives away.
For the LORD watches over the way of the just,
but the way of the wicked vanishes.
R. Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
Gospel
LK 16:19-31
Jesus said to the Pharisees:
“There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linen
and dined sumptuously each day.
And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores,
who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps
that fell from the rich man’s table.
Dogs even used to come and lick his sores.
When the poor man died,
he was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham.
The rich man also died and was buried,
and from the netherworld, where he was in torment,
he raised his eyes and saw Abraham far off
and Lazarus at his side.
And he cried out, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me.
Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue,
for I am suffering torment in these flames.’
Abraham replied, ‘My child,
remember that you received what was good during your lifetime
while Lazarus likewise received what was bad;
but now he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented.
Moreover, between us and you a great chasm is established
to prevent anyone from crossing
who might wish to go from our side to yours
or from your side to ours.’
He said, ‘Then I beg you, father, send him
to my father’s house,
for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them,
lest they too come to this place of torment.’
But Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets.
Let them listen to them.’
He said, ‘Oh no, father Abraham,
but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’
Then Abraham said,
‘If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets,
neither will they be persuaded
if someone should rise from the dead.’”
The post Trusting in, and Listening to, the One Who Has Returned from the Dead, Thursday of the Second Week of Lent, February 29, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
17 min
February 29, 2024 Ambition for a Eucharistic Life, Eucharistic Holy Hour, Holy Family Parish, Flushing, NY, February 28, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Holy Family Parish, Fresh Meadows (Flushing), New York
Diocese of Brooklyn Station Church Holy Hour
February 28, 2024
Matthew 20:17-28
To listen to an audio recording of tonight’s talk, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.28.24_Ambition_for_a_Eucharistic_Life_1.mp3

The post Ambition for a Eucharistic Life, Eucharistic Holy Hour, Holy Family Parish, Flushing, NY, February 28, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
37 min
February 28, 2024The Lenten Conversion of Our Earthly Ambitions, Wednesday of the Second Week of Lent, February 28, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Wednesday of the Second Week of Lent
February 28, 2024
Jer 18:18-20, Ps 31, Mt 20:17-28

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.28.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in today’s homily:
The entire season of Lent is a commentary on what Jesus announced to us on Ash Wednesday. It’s an occasion to turn away from sin and turn to Him who is the Gospel in such a way that we seek and begin to turn with him constantly, which is what it means to “con-vert.” That conversion to which we’re summoned does not stop at external behaviors, rending our garments, but at our desires, what the Prophet Joel calls rending our hearts. In today’s readings we see how our deepest desires, our most profound ambitions, are meant to be transformed. In the Gospel yesterday, Jesus told us, “The greatest among you must be your servant,” and Jesus today reiterates that point saying, “Whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave,” and says that this is at its deepest level a reiteration of his common command, “Follow me,” because “the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Lent is the period for the transformation of our ambitions, so that we will turn more and more with Jesus’ ambition. The three Lenten practices are all meant to help us: prayer helps us to look at things from God’s perspective, fasting to help us hunger for God and for what he hungers, almsgiving to help us to put others’ needs ahead of our own personal desires. Jesus wants to help us transform our ambitions by uniting us to his own prayer, fasting and almsgiving. It’s important for us to note that he doesn’t seek to eliminate all ambition. For him, ambition, desire, hunger themselves are not sins. But he wants us to be desirous of the right things, to revolutionize what great things we seek. There’s a pacific ocean between ambition for self-aggrandizement, which is the typical ambition in the world, and ambition for souls; between seeking to glorify one’s name and establish one’s kingdom versus trying to hallow God’s Name and enter and establish his Kingdom. Today in the Gospel Jesus seeks to make holy the ambition not just of James and John and their mother, not just of the apostles, but all of us. And in the process, he teaches us an important lesson about the way he purifies us of false ambition so that we may be more like him.
We see just how much the apostles’ and their family members’ ambitions need to be transformed in St. Matthew’s account. As soon as Jesus gives the third prediction of his upcoming betrayal, condemnation, mockery, scourging and crucifixion, rather than consoling him, the apostles and John’s and James’ mom show their spiritually worldly ambitions. In fact, every time Jesus predicted his passion it seemed to bring out the worst, rather than the best, in his followers. We remember the first time he announced it, Peter, thinking not as God does but as human beings do and playing the part of Satan, “rebuked” him, saying “no such thing should ever happen to you.” The second time Jesus gave announced what would happen everyone just remained silent, thinking about their own situation, and then speaking along the way about the one who would be the greatest. But it gets worse today. As soon as he says the words about his crucifixion, the mother of James and John approached Jesus with her sons — because they were too afraid to ask on their own, it seems — and petitioned that they sit on his right and his left as his two chief advisors when he entered into what they believed would be his earthly kingdom. Little did she know that those thrones would be occupied by two thieves on Calvary! When the other ten apostles heard about this, St. Matthew, one of them, recalls, “they became indignant at the two brothers,” not of course because they found such behavior contrary to genuine love of Jesus but because they likewise coveted those two spots.
Jesus took advantage of the ugliness of the raw earthly ambition to instruct them about the holy ambition he wants them and us to have. He asked, “Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink?” That chalice was the cup Jesus would pray that the Father take away from him in the Garden, the cup of suffering announced by the psalms and the Prophet Isaiah. He was asking whether they could share in his suffering and the zeal that led him to suffer for others’ salvation. He was inviting them to share his own desires and enter truly into his kingdom. To illustrate how Jesus wants us to share in his ambition, he asks James and John whether they can drink the chalice he was about to drink. This is a question as to whether they could share his suffering for others’ redemption and the love that inspired it, as to whether they were willing to serve others according to the standards of the kingdom rather than of the world. John and James willingly replied, “We can!,” a sign of the promptness of their conversion, and Jesus confirmed that they would. But then Jesus made a larger point about the ambition he wanted them and us to have, contrasting his ambition with those of worldly kings and sycophantic courtiers: “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and the great ones make their authority over them felt. But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave. Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Ambition for greatness in Jesus’ kingdom will be shown not by positions of authority but by practices of service and ultimately by giving our whole life to rescue others from slavery to sin and death. Today, Jesus asks all of us whether we’re willing to drink that chalice. In an age in which many in the Church and society speak of empowerment as if all of life depended on taking and exercising power and in which the sin of clericalism has been exposed in all its destructive ugliness, Jesus’ words about transformed ambition are ever relevant… and challenging.
Drinking Jesus’ chalice of holy ambition, we have to admit, goes against any hopes and plans we might have had for a comfy life. God, after all, didn’t create us with a desire to suffer. After the Fall, however, our love for others would be shown by our capacity to suffer and die for them, since, as Jesus would say during the Last Supper, no one has greater love than to die for others. This transformation was a struggle for the Prophet Jeremiah. After recounting to the Lord how others were contriving plots against him to destroy him, he turned to God and complained, “Must good be repaid with evil that they should dig a pit to take my life? Remember that I stood before you to speak in their behalf, to turn away your wrath from them.” He had done good and was suffering as a result — and that fundamental unfairness scandalized him. He did not realize at that point because of his youth that the suffering he would eventually willingly endure, his loving service toward those who were plotting to kill him, his humility and identification with God’s saving will under duress, would lead to his eternal exaltation. He was able to drink the chalice of suffering in anticipation of Jesus’ drinking it to the dregs, but at first he shied away. The Lord allowed him that suffering for his own purification. The Lord often treats us in a similar way. When we serve others, we may not be thanked or appreciated. Others may in fact pay attention to our words not because they’re God’s words but to catch us in our speech. They may allow us to serve them just to catch us in a mistake. Regardless, God permits this because out of it he wants to help us transform our life into a ransom for others, in imitation of, and together with, Jesus’ self-giving. This is a hard teaching, but it is part of the good news: When we unite our occasionally unrequited love, our unappreciated service, to Jesus and his, he is in fact able to make it a ransom to save many.
Jesus wants us all to be great in his kingdom and today he teaches us how. As we prepare to become one with him in Holy Communion, as we prepare to drink from the chalice of his Precious Blood, let us remember that at the Last Supper, right after Jesus had consecrated the Precious Blood and mentioned that one of the Twelve would betray him, they all began to argue once again who among them was the greatest (Lk 22:19-23). Today let’s convert that same egocentric impulse by striving to be the greatest, not according to earthly categories, but divine. Let us ask Jesus for the grace to conform ourselves to his merciful ambitions for us so that we may imitate him in becoming the servant of the rest and in giving our lives, with His, as a ransom for as many as we can. He asks us today, “Can you drink this chalice?” And through the intercession of SS. James and John as well as of John of God, may we reply, and mean, “Yes we can!”

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 Jer 18:18-20
The people of Judah and the citizens of Jerusalem said,
“Come, let us contrive a plot against Jeremiah.
It will not mean the loss of instruction from the priests,
nor of counsel from the wise, nor of messages from the prophets.
And so, let us destroy him by his own tongue;
let us carefully note his every word.”
Heed me, O LORD,
and listen to what my adversaries say.
Must good be repaid with evil
that they should dig a pit to take my life?
Remember that I stood before you
to speak in their behalf,
to turn away your wrath from them.
Responsorial Psalm PS 31:5-6, 14, 15-16
R. (17b) Save me, O Lord, in your kindness.
You will free me from the snare they set for me,
for you are my refuge.
Into your hands I commend my spirit;
you will redeem me, O LORD, O faithful God.
R. Save me, O Lord, in your kindness.
I hear the whispers of the crowd, that frighten me from every side,
as they consult together against me, plotting to take my life.
R. Save me, O Lord, in your kindness.
But my trust is in you, O LORD;
I say, “You are my God.”
In your hands is my destiny; rescue me
from the clutches of my enemies and my persecutors.
R. Save me, O Lord, in your kindness.
Verse Before the Gospel Jn 8:12
I am the light of the world, says the Lord;
whoever follows me will have the light of life.
Gospel Mt 20:17-28
As Jesus was going up to Jerusalem,
he took the Twelve disciples aside by themselves,
and said to them on the way,
“Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem,
and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests
and the scribes,
and they will condemn him to death,
and hand him over to the Gentiles
to be mocked and scourged and crucified,
and he will be raised on the third day.”
Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee approached Jesus with her sons
and did him homage, wishing to ask him for something.
He said to her, “What do you wish?”
She answered him,
“Command that these two sons of mine sit,
one at your right and the other at your left, in your kingdom.”
Jesus said in reply,
“You do not know what you are asking.
Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink?”
They said to him, “We can.”
He replied,
“My chalice you will indeed drink,
but to sit at my right and at my left,
this is not mine to give
but is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.”
When the ten heard this,
they became indignant at the two brothers.
But Jesus summoned them and said,
“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them,
and the great ones make their authority over them felt.
But it shall not be so among you.
Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant;
whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave.
Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve
and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
The post The Lenten Conversion of Our Earthly Ambitions, Wednesday of the Second Week of Lent, February 28, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
19 min
February 27, 2024The Humble Path to Setting Things Right and Being Exalted With Christ, Tuesday of the Second Week of Lent, February 27, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Campus Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Tuesday of the Second Week of Lent
February 27, 2024
Is 1:10.16-20, Ps 50, Mt 23:1-12

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.27.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
On Ash Wednesday each year, Jesus gives us the program for Lent and life when he announces “Repent and Believe.” There are two moments that he describes: the first stage of conversion is averting from everything unfit from God — from a bad life, from sin, from evil. The second stage is adverting, turning toward God, and then converting, turning with God, through putting our faith into practice. In today’s opening prayer we asked for this, as we begged the Lord in his “unceasing mercy” and “constant help” to keep us “from all harm”— and no harm is greater than separating ourselves from God’s love and fraternal love through sin — and be “directed to all that brings salvation,” which is what real practical faith in the Gospel brings us. In today’s readings we also see both moments portrayed very clearly.
At the beginning of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, God through his emissary calls the Jews “Sodom” and “Gomorrah” to highlight the severity of their sins, invoking the most notoriously iniquitous cities of all time. Throughout Isaiah we see what those sins were. God speaks of their “misdeeds,” their “doing evil,” their “scarlet” and “crimson red” sins. “Wash yourselves clean!,” Isaiah cries out. In the Responsorial Psalm, God points out the hypocrisy of his people, saying, “Why do you recite my statutes and profess my covenant with your mouth” as “you hate discipline and cast my words behind you?” In the Gospel, Jesus begins a searing 35-verse call to repentance not only for the Scribes and Pharisees but for all of us who, like them — and in contrast to the sinners of Sodom and Gomorrah who previously gloried in their debaucheries — can be tempted to appear white on the outside while our souls remain scarlet on the inside. That hypocrisy, that acting, was the principal vice of the Scribes and the Pharisees and often can remain the downfall for those who behave in a religious way but whose hearts are far from the Lord. Jesus says of them that they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy religious burdens on others without lifting a finger to help them, whereas the truth, although often challenging, is meant always to set us free. The reason why they didn’t lift a finger in charity and seek to help people who were struggling to align their lives to God’s will was because they were doing everything not for God or others but to be seen: they widened the phylacteries that would contain verses of sacred scripture in their locks of hair, lengthened the tassels that were to remind them of revelation, and preferred to be acknowledged by everyone for their religious devotion in banquets, synagogues and marketplaces. They were the types who, Jesus told us on Ash Wednesday, pray, fast and give alms not out of love for God and others but to be rewarded by others’ praise and esteem, the exact opposite of the type of motivation God wants: their motivation was not true love of God but rather self-love under the mask of devotion. They sat on Moses’ seat but didn’t share Moses’ own humility before God (Ex 4:10,13). Their knowledge of the law, rather than moving them to conform their lives ever more to God’s revelation, became in essence an obstacle, because it made them proud not humble; they manipulated their knowledge of the law to seek to grow in others’ eyes. They sought the titles of “rabbi” — which literally means “great one,” but is normally translated “teacher” — and “father” and “master,” but in seeking these titles they were striving to take the place not only of Moses but of God: God is our Father; Jesus is our one Master; the Holy Spirit is our teacher and guide. Jesus once said about Capernaum, Bethsaida and Chorazin that if those of sinful Sidon and licentious Tyre had heard and seen what these three cities had heard Jesus say and watch do, that Sidon and Tyre would long ago have converted. And our call to conversion — 2,000 years after Jesus backed up all of his preaching with the resurrection — needs to be greater still.
That leads us to the second stage of conversion. It’s not merely fighting against and eliminating sin. It’s positively and passionately doing good. It’s loving God and loving others as God loves others, with all we have and are. Isaiah says we should be ambitious to “make justice your aim” and “learn to do good.” He gives us hope that even if our sins be crimson and scarlet they can become white as snow; in other words they can be transformed from evil into good, by giving us the added motivation to make up for lost time, to recognize what a great and merciful God we have and imitate his loving mercy and generosity to those who need our help as much as we need God’s mercy. He wants to change us from the inside out. “Come now,” God tells us through Isaiah, “let us set things right.” He invites us “now” — because “now” is the day of salvation, as we heard from St. Paul on Ash Wednesday — and doesn’t put the burden on us, but takes the responsibility for fulfilling that call with us. He wants to help us to convert. The whole purpose of the Incarnation is so that Jesus could help us set things aright. In the Gospel, Jesus summarizes our cooperation with this holy desire of God by saying, “The greatest among you must be your servant.” Jesus, the greatest ever, humbled himself to take on our nature, became our slave, washed our feet and our hands, head and souls, and called us to follow him along this path of humility and service. For him, and for those who truly follow him, to reign is to serve, not to be served. He wants us to share his ambition that we be truly great not in the eyes of others but in the eyes of his Father and in the Father’s kingdom. He teaches us by his words and by his own life that the way up in greatness is the way down in humility. That’s the second stage of conversion.
And there’s a particular focus of the language we can’t miss. Jesus wants us to have the holy ambition to become great among each other by our serving each other. The “greatest among you,” he says, which means we become great among each other, by washing each other’s feet, by ministering to each other. There’s a perennial temptation to think that the call to become the servant of the rest means to think about people on the outside, about neighbors who are strangers we meet waylaid on roadsides, but it always begins with greatness in the home and family, greatness among roommates, greatness among fellow students or co-workers or literal neighbors. Jesus has given us each other to help make us great if we respond by really loving and serving each other.
To help us follow in their footsteps, Christ now gives us himself, showing us the saving power of God. He humbles himself fully to exalt us in humility, so that together with the great one, the Son of the Father and Master on the inside, we might learn to do good, aim at justice, hear the plea of the orphan, defend the widow and serve all with fidelity and perseverance as Christ did — until, God willing, we are able to experience the exaltation that comes from those who live by faith.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 IS 1:10, 16-20
Hear the word of the LORD,
princes of Sodom!
Listen to the instruction of our God,
people of Gomorrah!
Wash yourselves clean!
Put away your misdeeds from before my eyes;
cease doing evil; learn to do good.
Make justice your aim: redress the wronged,
hear the orphan’s plea, defend the widow.
Come now, let us set things right,
says the Lord:
Though your sins be like scarlet,
they may become white as snow;
Though they be crimson red,
they may become white as wool.
If you are willing, and obey,
you shall eat the good things of the land;
But if you refuse and resist,
the sword shall consume you:
for the mouth of the LORD has spoken!
Responsorial Psalm PS 50:8-9, 16BC-17, 21 AND 23
R. (23b) To the upright I will show the saving power of God.
“Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you,
for your burnt offerings are before me always.
I take from your house no bullock,
no goats out of your fold.”
R. To the upright I will show the saving power of God.
“Why do you recite my statutes,
and profess my covenant with your mouth,
Though you hate discipline
and cast my words behind you?”
R. To the upright I will show the saving power of God.
“When you do these things, shall I be deaf to it?
Or do you think that I am like yourself?
I will correct you by drawing them up before your eyes.
He that offers praise as a sacrifice glorifies me;
and to him that goes the right way I will show the salvation of God.”
R. To the upright I will show the saving power of God.
Verse Before The Gospel EZ 18:31
Cast away from you all the crimes you have committed, says the LORD,
and make for yourselves a new heart and a new spirit.
Gospel MT 23:1-12
Jesus spoke to the crowds and to his disciples, saying,
“The scribes and the Pharisees
have taken their seat on the chair of Moses.
Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you,
but do not follow their example.
For they preach but they do not practice.
They tie up heavy burdens hard to carry
and lay them on people’s shoulders,
but they will not lift a finger to move them.
All their works are performed to be seen.
They widen their phylacteries and lengthen their tassels.
They love places of honor at banquets, seats of honor in synagogues,
greetings in marketplaces, and the salutation ‘Rabbi.’
As for you, do not be called ‘Rabbi.’
You have but one teacher, and you are all brothers.
Call no one on earth your father;
you have but one Father in heaven.
Do not be called ‘Master’;
you have but one master, the Christ.
The greatest among you must be your servant.
Whoever exalts himself will be humbled;
but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”
The post The Humble Path to Setting Things Right and Being Exalted With Christ, Tuesday of the Second Week of Lent, February 27, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
15 min
February 26, 2024Becoming Merciful Like Our Great and Awesome God, Monday of the Second Week of Lent, February 26, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Monday of the Second Week of Lent
February 26, 2024
Dan 9:4-10, Ps 79, Lk 6:36-38

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.26.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
As we’ve been pondering for the last 12 days, the whole purpose of Lent is to become like God the Father. Today Jesus begins the Gospel by encouraging and commanding us to be merciful as God the Father is merciful. God is merciful love (hesed) and he who is rich in mercy wants to help us to become not only rich through our receiving that mercy but richer still in our sharing it. But the path God chooses to help us to become rich in mercy is at first glance surprising and paradoxical. Right after Jesus tells us to be merciful like his Father, he says, “Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven,” before proceeding to summarize everything by saying, “For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.” If we’re merciful, most people interpret the text to say, we won’t judge other people. Mercy and judging seem to be polar opposites. But they’re not. The key is to understand whom we should be judging, because it is precisely through judging that we open ourselves up to God’s mercy and the transformation that always accompanies that gift.
Pope Francis took up this theme several years ago in his daily homily at the St. Martha Domus in the Vatican. He said that we can only progress on our Christian journey in life if we are capable of judging ourselves first. “We are all sinners,” he said, “not in theory but in reality,” and we need the ability to judge ourselves to be sinners in need of God’s mercy. We have to say, “I accuse myself!” We have to pray, as we do at the beginning of each Mass, “I have greatly sinned … by my own … most grievous fault.” Pope Francis says that many of us spend time judging others rather than accusing ourselves. “We are all masters, professors of self-justification: ‘No it wasn’t me, it’s not my fault.’ … We all have an alibi to explain away our shortcomings, our sins, and we often put on a face that says, ‘I do not know,’ a face that says ‘I didn’t do it, maybe someone else did,’ an innocent face. This is no way to lead a Christian life.” The Pope said, “If we do not learn this first step in life, we will never, never be able to take other steps on the road of our Christian life, of our spiritual life. The first step is to judge ourselves. Without saying anything out loud. Between you and your conscience. … This is what judging yourself means, not hiding from the roots of sin that are in all of us, the many things we are capable of doing, even if we cannot see them.” Once we begin to judge ourselves as the sinners we are, we can open ourselves to God’s mercy because we’ll recognize how much and why we need it. C.S. Lewis once said that the two essential truths of Christianity are that we’re sinners and that Jesus has come to save us from our sins. We can’t appreciate God’s mercy unless we recognize how desperate we are for it. And once we recognize how much we need it, then we can be compassionate toward others who need it, too. The way we stop judging and condemning others is when we recognize that but for God’s grace we would be under the very same judgment and condemnation: we, too, are sinners responsible for Christ’s crucifixion through our sins just as much as others have.
While judging ourselves instead of others is the first step, however, it’s not the last. The second step is a capacity to do reparation for our sins and the sins of others. One of the greatest aspects of the Divine Mercy devotion requested by Jesus through St. Faustina is that we beg God the Father for mercy “in expiation for our sins and those of the whole world.” We see through judging ourselves that we’re all in a similar boat and hence we pray for our sins and those of others. That’s what we witness the Prophet Daniel and the Psalmist doing today. Daniel was a prophet in Babylon and was certainly not guilty of all of the sins that brought the people into exile. Yet he prayed in their name to the Lord in the first person plural. He was praying for his sins and everyone’s, because those sins were all contributing factors leading to the exile. He implored, “We have sinned, been wicked and done evil; we have rebelled and departed from your commandments and your laws. We have not obeyed your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes, our fathers, and all the people of the land. Justice, O Lord, is on your side — [in other words, we have no excuses!] — we are shamefaced even to this day: we, the men of Judah, the residents of Jerusalem, and all Israel, near and far, in all the countries to which you have scattered them because of their treachery toward you. O Lord, we are shamefaced, like our kings, our princes, and our fathers, for having sinned against you. … We rebelled against you and paid no heed to your command, O Lord, our God, to live by the law you gave us through your servants the prophets.” That was a forceful, collective self-accusation. He wasn’t apologizing for the sins of “others” in the third person, but, including himself among the sinners, for all the sins committed. He didn’t lose hope, however, because of those sins. That’s why he prayed, “But yours, O Lord, our God, are compassion and forgiveness!” God’s nature is to be merciful. And it was the same sentiment that led us to cry out with the Psalmist, “Lord, do not deal with us according to our sins.” We prayed, “Remember not against us the iniquities of the past; may your compassion quickly come to us, for we are brought very low. Help us, O God our savior, because of the glory of your name; deliver us and pardon our sins for your name’s sake.” Notice that there’s no sense of entitlement in this prayer. We are asking God to forgive us because of his merciful and glorious name, he who is kind and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in love. We don’t deserve forgiveness, but God extends it nevertheless because that’s who he is.
This judging of ourselves and praying in collective reparation are two great lessons for us to learn in Lent. We’re called sincerely to beat our breasts and come to confession, accusing ourselves, not excusing ourselves, of the ways by thought, word, deed and omission we have not lived in communion with God. And we’re called to do reparation for our and others’ sins, because there’s much to repair in our families, chaplaincy, communities, nation and world. There is so much for which we need to say, “Sorry, Lord!” and “Do not treat us as our sins deserve”: the sins of abortion, the deconstruction of the family, hardness of heart toward Christ in the disguise of immigrants and the poor, taking the Lord for granted even on the Lord’s day, the murder of so many people for various reasons, and so many other grievous sins. We begin him to bring his compassion quickly to us because we have been brought very low.
But there’s a third step. It’s the capacity to bring that mercy to others, so that we might genuinely be merciful like God is merciful to us, so that the measure with which we measure may be greater so as to receive in turn greater mercy because of our enlarged receptivity. We expand our capacity to receive God’s mercy by sharing that mercy with others. God gives us plenty of opportunities to practice that every day. One of the greatest forms of almsgiving is to give others a second, third, or seventy-times-seventh chance.
Today at Mass God enfleshes his Mercy in the person of his Son, whom we’re about to receive. God the Father doesn’t treat us as our sins deserve, but treats us with the love he has for his Son, who gave his life in justice and mercy to save our own. Today as we receive him, we big him to have his mercy packed down and poured into our lap to overflowing so that we may measure that mercy out in prayer and charity and eternally have that mercy fully measured back to us.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 DN 9:4B-10
“Lord, great and awesome God,
you who keep your merciful covenant toward those who love you
and observe your commandments!
We have sinned, been wicked and done evil;
we have rebelled and departed from your commandments and your laws.
We have not obeyed your servants the prophets,
who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes,
our fathers, and all the people of the land.
Justice, O Lord, is on your side;
we are shamefaced even to this day:
we, the men of Judah, the residents of Jerusalem,
and all Israel, near and far,
in all the countries to which you have scattered them
because of their treachery toward you.
O Lord, we are shamefaced, like our kings, our princes, and our fathers,
for having sinned against you.
But yours, O Lord, our God, are compassion and forgiveness!
Yet we rebelled against you
and paid no heed to your command, O Lord, our God,
to live by the law you gave us through your servants the prophets.”
Responsorial Psalm PS 79:8, 9, 11 AND 13
R. (see 103:10a) Lord, do not deal with us according to our sins.
Remember not against us the iniquities of the past;
may your compassion quickly come to us,
for we are brought very low.
R. Lord, do not deal with us according to our sins.
Help us, O God our savior,
because of the glory of your name;
Deliver us and pardon our sins
for your name’s sake.
R. Lord, do not deal with us according to our sins.
Let the prisoners’ sighing come before you;
with your great power free those doomed to death.
Then we, your people and the sheep of your pasture,
will give thanks to you forever;
through all generations we will declare your praise.
R. Lord, do not deal with us according to our sins.
Verse Before The Gospel SEE JN 6:63C, 68C
Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life;
you have the words of everlasting life.
Gospel LK 6:36-38
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
Stop judging and you will not be judged.
Stop condemning and you will not be condemned.
Forgive and you will be forgiven.
Give and gifts will be given to you;
a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing,
will be poured into your lap.
For the measure with which you measure
will in return be measured out to you.”
The post Becoming Merciful Like Our Great and Awesome God, Monday of the Second Week of Lent, February 26, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
13 min
February 25, 2024The Two Dramas of the Second Sunday of Lent, Second Sunday of Lent (B), February 25, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Second Sunday of Lent, Year B
February 25, 2024
Gen 22:1-2.9-13.15-18, Ps 116, Rom 8:31-34, Mk 9:2-10

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.25.24_CCM_Homily_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
There’s a rhythm at the beginning of every Lent. On the First Sunday, we always ponder Jesus’ forty days in the desert and how he resisted the temptations of the devil, so that we can learn from his triumph how to reject the devil’s machinations during our annual 40 days with Jesus in the desert and beyond. On the Second Sunday, our thoughts are always framed by two dramas, that of Abraham in the first reading and of the Transfiguration in the Gospel, because Abraham and the Transfiguration teach us various indispensable elements that are meant to influence the way we live each Lent. Today I’d like to cull from these dramas five different essential elements that will help us to live Lent and Life.
The first is the faithful exertion, the trusting effort, that a holy Lent entails. In today’s Gospel, Jesus leads Peter, James and John on a hike up a “high mountain apart by themselves.” Christian tradition normally associates the mountain where Jesus was Transfigured as Mount Tabor, which towers over Galilee and the Plains of Megiddo, and takes over ten minutes to climb in vans up narrow zig-zagging paths. It would take vigorous climbers at least a few hours to ascend on foot. But Scriptural scholars believe the more likely place where this glorification happened was Mount Hermon, now in southern Syria and close to Caesarea Philippi where the preceding scene in St. Matthew’s Gospel took place. Mount Hermon is 9,232 feet tall, nearly five times the height of Mt. Tabor (1,886 feet). That would have taken a whole day’s work to ascend. Jesus and the three apostles needed to leave civilization behind, to leave their comfort zones behind, and climb with Jesus, sweating, probably gasping for air, to pray with Jesus and see him revealed. We see an even greater exertion involved in what God asked Abraham. Abram was 75 years old — well past retirement age for people today — when the Lord called to him while he was in Ur of the Chaldeans (modern-day Iraq) and told him to leave the land of his kinfolk and go, not to a known, posh retirement community, but to an unknown land God would show him. God was asking him to pack up his bags completely and leave everything behind. Abram could have easily replied, “I’m an old dog, Lord, and I’m too tired to learn new tricks,” but he didn’t. He did, rather, what the Lord commanded. Little did he know that the land of Canaan to which the Lord was leading him would not have a welcome mat, but that he would have to fight for the land. But Abram and his entire family and flocks left and made the journey, not knowing how long the journey would last or where it would end up. The lesson for us this Lent is that the Lord is likewise asking of us to make a journey of faith, a holy exertion. Lent is fundamentally dynamic. We’re called to be on the move. Jesus never says to us, “Stay where you are,” but always “Come!,” and “Go!” and “Follow me!” And the pilgrimage he seeks to have us make with him isn’t in a comfy car. He’s asking us to climb, to sweat, to work, and to leave our comfort zones behind. It’s as if God were asking us to go to live in an igloo in Antarctica: Would you do it? While he’s not drawing us to the south pole, he is asking us, in Lent, first to go out into the desert with him, then to climb a high mountain, then to leave our safe spaces and follow him along the way of the Cross. And so it’s important for us to ask: What’s my Ur of the Chaldeans? What is the Lord asking me to leave behind in order to be able to make with him a real pilgrimage of faith?
The second lesson we learn is about what real faith is. We see this in Abraham’s trust in God when God promised him something that would have seemed impossible under the biological know-how of 3,800 years ago and still today. Abram was 75 and his wife, Sarai, was 65. She had tried in vain to conceive children. But God told Abram that he would finally become not just a father through Sarai, but the father of many nations. He took Abram outside and asked him to look into the sky and count the stars if he could. “So shall your descendants be,” God said. But what careful students of the text grasp is that a few verses later it said, “When the sun was about to set” (Gen 15:12). In other words, God had Abram look into the sky when the sky was blue, not dark. Abram couldn’t see the stars but he knew that they were there, and he believed that God would give him just as many children, even though he couldn’t yet see them, or hold them, or love them. And God had Abram wait 25 years for the fulfillment of this promise, when he was 100 and Sarai 90, changing their names to indicate that they were to be parents of many. The Church gives us the figure of Abraham at the beginning of every Lent precisely to help us to focus on our own faith, our faith in God’s promises. Do we really stake our life on the Lord’s word? For example, when Jesus tells us over and again not to be afraid, that even though people can harm the body, they can’t harm the soul, do we hold onto our insecurities and preoccupations or do we find our courage in God? In this time of the National Eucharistic Revival, when he tells us “This is my Body,” “This is the chalice of my blood,” and “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you,” do we act on these truths and recognize that in Mass we meet God? We finish most of our prayers with the word “Amen!” Many catechists say this expression means “Yes!” with a hundred exclamation points, or that it means “So be it!” But in Hebrew the word “amen” means to “support” or “uphold.” When we say “amen!,” we’re declaring that we’re staking our whole life on what we’ve just said “Amen!” to. That’s what Abraham did when he believed God more than he believed common sense and biological observation. That’s the type of faith that God wants to help grow in us every Lent.
The third lesson is about sacrifice. In Lent, we’re called to make sacrifices of our time in prayer, of our nourishment and pleasures in fasting, and of our things and ourselves in almsgiving. But often our sacrifices can be relatively small and unthreatening. The Church gives us the scene of Abraham’s sacrificing Isaac in today’s first reading to help us to see that God sometimes tests us in faith, like he put Abraham to the test, by asking us to sacrifice what we humanly love most in order to help us learn to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. It wasn’t enough that God had asked Abram to leave Ur and have to fight for part of Canaan. It wasn’t enough for him to believe that, even at advanced ages, he and Sarai could conceive. It wasn’t enough for him to have to wait 25 years for the fulfillment of that startling promise. It was to sacrifice that long awaited son. How shocking God’s words must have been to Abraham when God told him, “Take your son, Isaac, your only one, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There you shall offer him up as a holocaust.” This went against every paternal instinct in Abraham’s aged body. Any father worthy of the name would die to save the life of a son or daughter, not become the child’s executioner. It was a three-day journey. Abraham loaded the wood of the sacrifice on Isaac’s shoulders. We don’t know exactly how old Isaac was, but he was old enough to be able to carry the wood for three days. Biblical scholars say he was anywhere between a teenager and a young adult and therefore easily able to overpower a man 100 years his senior. When Isaac asked, “Where is the lamb for the Holocaust?,” Abraham prophetically replied, “God himself will provide the lamb.” Abraham built the altar, tied down the humble, willing Isaac and took out his knife to slaughter — to slaughter! — his son. It’s at that moment, the angel of the Lord stopped him, saying, “Abraham! Abraham! … Do not lay your hand on the boy. Do not do the least thing to him. I know now how devoted you are to God, since you did not withhold from me your own beloved son.” Why would God have designed such a test? Most rabbinical scholars say it was to put a definitive end to child sacrifice in the land of Canaan, to show Abraham’s descendants that unlike their neighbors, God did not want sons and daughters made in his image and likeness to be slain. Christians have always had a different answer, based on the Letter to the Hebrews. The sacred author tells us, “By faith Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was ready to offer his only son, of whom it was said, ‘Through Isaac descendants shall bear your name.’ He reasoned that God was able to raise even from the dead, and he received Isaac back as a symbol” (Heb 11:17-19). Abraham knew that Isaac was the son of the promise and, because he believed in God, he knew that even should Isaac die, God, who is faithful to his promises, would raise him from the dead. That would take extraordinary faith even today, 2,000 years after Jesus’ resurrection, but Abraham had that faith in God’s fidelity to his promise, in God’s love, 1,800 years before Christ’s resurrection! That’s the type of faith that God wants to see in us, that God wants to grant us if we accept that grace. Abraham received Isaac back as a symbol, the Letter to the Hebrews tells us. A symbol of what? A symbol of Christ’s own resurrection! God provided far more than a ram caught in a thicket. He provided his own Son, the Lamb of God, who like Isaac willingly carried the wood for the sacrifice and allowed himself to be bound. Unlike what happened on Mount Moriah, however, at the sacrifice of Calvary, no angel cried out, “Stop!” and “Don’t lay a hand or a nail on him!” The sacrifice was completed. Mary, our mother in faith, was there, knowing that even should Jesus die, God the Father would raise him from the dead. This faith we see in Abraham and in Mary is the type of faith we’re supposed to have in general, but especially with regard to our own death. God permits us to suffer and die because he intends to raise us from the dead as well. In today’s second reading, St. Paul tells us, “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him?” The apostle goes on to say, “What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? As it is written: ‘For your sake we are being slain all the day; we are looked upon as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” That’s the faith that God wants to see grow in us this Lent, that even if we undergo persecution, peril and the sword, even if we are like sleep to be slaughtered, even if we should die, we cannot be separated from Christ’s love and that love, which is more powerful than death, will raise us up. In order to experience that growth in faith, however, we need first to be put to the test. We have to be asked to sacrifice our “Isaac,” the person or thing that we love, in order to make God the pearl of great price worth selling everything else in our life. I remember my first year in seminary when I realized just how attached I was to my computer — it was one of the original generations of Macs — and what it stored. Everything I had done since from ages 14 to 23 was on it. After reading this story, I asked myself if God were to ask me to give up my computer, would I do it? Would I toss it out the fourth floor window if God were asking? Would I chuck all my past, all the work, all of it, if God demanded it? Ultimately, after three long days of prayer, God helped me to have the courage to say yes should God have demanded it. Thankfully he didn’t. But this is the type of faith Jesus demands of his disciples. This is the type of faith he wants to help us to obtain through the various tests and trials of Lent, as we give up our time to pray, our food to fast, and our possessions to others. Would we give up our cell phone or laptop? Would we sacrifice our social media accounts? Would we give up Columbia? Would we sacrifice our desire to control our future? God wants to help each of us this Lent to identify our Isaacs and make sure our Isaacs are able to be offered to God rather than become our gods. And he wants us to grasp that if we make such a sacrifice, he will be able to raise what we seem to lose from the dead, to give us, as he promised elsewhere, 100-fold in this life and eternal life.
The fourth Lenten lesson we encounter on this Second Sunday of Lent is the divine assistance God gives us to make the sacrifice of what we hold dearest, including our own life. We see this in the scene of the Transfiguration. Saints Peter, James and John saw something extraordinary at the end of their spiritual and physical climb: Jesus was transfigured. He and his clothes were radiant. He was speaking with Moses and Elijah, the greatest figures in Jewish history, about what St. Luke calls the “exodus” he was to accomplish in Jerusalem: like Moses led the Israelites from slavery to Pharaoh through the water of the Red Sea and the desert to the promised land flowing with milk and honey, Jesus would leads us from slavery to sin through the waters of baptism and the desert of Lent to the promised land irrigated by the Living Water welling up to eternal life. The experience of the various theophanies at the top of the mountain was so powerful the three apostles didn’t know what to say, but they wanted to keep the experience going for as long as possible, building tents for Jesus, Moses and Elijah. Why did Jesus want Peter, James and John to have this window into what likely occurred regularly in Jesus’ prayer, this glimpse of his divine glory? The reason was ultimately to strengthen them to remain strong in faith even when they would descend the Mount of Transfiguration to ascend Mount Calvary. In the Preface of today’s Mass, every priest in the world prays: “For after [Jesus] had told the disciples of his coming Death, on the holy mountain he manifested to them his glory, to show, even by the testimony of the law and the prophets, that the Passion leads to the glory of the Resurrection.” It was to sustain their faith in trial when they would see Jesus transfigured in blood. We know that it didn’t fully work. All three apostles fell asleep in the Garden. All three fled Gethsemane. Only one of the three — John — was present at the foot of the Cross. But while for the most part the lesson of the Transfiguration failed them, it’s meant to sustain us. This vision of Jesus’ glory is what has sustained the faith of the martyrs in making the sacrifice of themselves for God, because they knew that once they breathed their last, they would see Jesus transfigured. This vision of Jesus’ glory, and how he wants us to share in it, is meant to give us the hope to persevere in faith no matter what trials come our way. It’s also what’s meant to help us live Lent boldly and make the sacrifices necessary to come into greater union with the Lord. If anything is keeping us from the Lord, the vision of the Lord’s glory is meant to help, to use Jesus’ images from the Sermon on the Mount, to cut off whatever hands or feet and pluck out whatever eyes keep us from him. Whatever we may have to sacrifice is small compared to the glory of Jesus we await, the glory he wants to share with us.
The fifth and final lesson is the most important. After all of the other aspects of Jesus’ transfiguration, God the Father finally speaks. He speaks only three times in the entire New Testament: at Jesus’ baptism, when he pronounces Jesus his beloved Son in whom he is well pleased; at the Last Supper when, in response to Jesus’ prayer to glorify his name replies that he has glorified it and will glorify it again; and during Jesus’ transfiguration. But what he says is really quite strange. After pronouncing Jesus once more as his Beloved Son — and answering the question Jesus had asked in Caesarea Philippi, when he surveyed the apostles about who the people and they said he was — God the Father thundered, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him!” It’s a peculiar imperative since Peter, James and John had been listening to Jesus almost non-stop for the previous two years. They listened to him call them from their boats to be fishers of men. They heard him preach the parables of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Sower and the Seed, the Lost Coin, the Lost Sheep, and so many others. They were raptly attuned to the Sermon on the Mount, the Sermon on the Plain and the great Eucharistic discourse in the Capernaum synagogue. They hearkened to him when he taught them how to pray. They hung on his words as he instructed them walking along the dusty streets of Palestine. They gave him both ears as he lambasted the hypocritical Scribes and Pharisees and consoled widows, sinners, and so many others. They had spent the previous two years constantly listening to Jesus. But God the Father noticed something that they themselves hadn’t yet grasped: they had only been selectively listening to Jesus. They had been particularly tone-deaf to what Jesus had been saying about how he was going to be betrayed, suffer greatly in Jerusalem, be tortured, crucified, killed and on the third day be raised. Jesus told them that three times in the Gospels and who knows how many other times, but they didn’t want to hear the message, and when Good Friday came, only one of them was within earshot to hear Jesus’ seven last words. Even when Mary Magdalene, or the disciples in Emmaus, or the other apostles to doubting Thomas were testifying that Jesus had been raised just as he promised, the others still didn’t want to listen and believe. They were still obviously “questioning what rising from the dead meant,” as St. Mark tells us at the end of today’s scene. What they were even less willing to hear was what Jesus said after the prediction of his own crucifixion, death and resurrection, namely, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” To be Jesus’ disciple, to be able to follow him, they needed to say no to their earthly ambitions and be crucified with him, but they didn’t want to hear or heed that message at all. God the Father, who could see their hearts, knew that they were seeking to ignore what Jesus was saying about his and their transfiguration in suffering. So that’s why he said, “Listen to him!” God the Father says the same thing to us today. On Ash Wednesday Jesus said to each of us, “Repent and Believe!” Have we acted on those words? He called us to prayer, fasting and almsgiving: Are we doing all three with firm commitment? In response to his summons, have we denied ourselves, assumed our crosses and begun to follow Jesus up close along the way of the Cross to Calvary? God the Father who calls us to listen to his Son will listen to our prayers for all of the help we need to have trusting, obedient ears; after all, since he didn’t spare his own Son, he will give us everything else besides. But learning how to listen to what Jesus says to us, and becoming true doers of his word, is the most important parts of Lent.
Today we’ve left our dorm rooms, apartments and rectories, our Urs of the Chaldeans, not to travel to the ancient Holy Land, not to go to a place that the Lord will show us later, but to come to Notre Dame Church. We’ve climbed not the Mount of Transfiguration but Morningside heights. It’s here at Mass that Lent and everything else in our faith is meant to find its source and summit. The Lord wants us to make the journey of faith, the holy exertion, to leave our comfort zones behind each day and come here each day during Lent if we can. It’s here that we listen to his word, the words of eternal life, and seek to become living commentaries of it. It’s here at Mass that we present ourselves and what we have to the Lord, praying that these sacrifices, united to Christ’s, may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father. It’s here at Mass that we see Jesus transfigured not in glory but in humility. It’s here that the Lord wants us to increase our faith in his promises, especially that if we worthily eat his flesh and drink his blood, we’ll have his life in us and live forever. It’s here where, after building a tabernacle and a Church for him, he wants to build a booth within us from where he wants to transfigure our whole life. If God didn’t even spare his own Son but gives him to us here each day, we have full confidence that he really will give us everything else besides. Today as a reward for our exertions, as a foretaste of forever, God the Father gives us what he holds dearest and was willing to sacrifice for our salvation. Today as we get ready hear St. John the Baptist’s words, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!,” the Lamb God himself provided, let us also hear the Father saying to us, “This is my beloved Son. Do whatever he tells you! Take seriously his words throughout Lent, ‘Repent and Believe!’ and follow him, accompany him, on the pilgrimage on which I sent him to lead you, up not Mt. Moriah, or Mt. Tabor, or Mt. Hermon, but the Celestial Jerusalem to my house where I’ve built a place not only for him, Moses and Elijah, but for you! Don’t be afraid of this journey of faith, but like Abraham, like Mary, follow my beloved Son this Lent and through life, listen to him, sacrifice with him, as he leads you on an exodus not to an unknown place but straight to my eternal embrace.”

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
Gn 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18
God put Abraham to the test.
He called to him, “Abraham!”
“Here I am!” he replied.
Then God said:
“Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love,
and go to the land of Moriah.
There you shall offer him up as a holocaust
on a height that I will point out to you.”
When they came to the place of which God had told him,
Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it.
Then he reached out and took the knife to slaughter his son.
But the LORD’s messenger called to him from heaven,
“Abraham, Abraham!”
“Here I am!” he answered.
“Do not lay your hand on the boy,” said the messenger.
“Do not do the least thing to him.
I know now how devoted you are to God,
since you did not withhold from me your own beloved son.”
As Abraham looked about,
he spied a ram caught by its horns in the thicket.
So he went and took the ram
and offered it up as a holocaust in place of his son.
Again the LORD’s messenger called to Abraham from heaven and said:
“I swear by myself, declares the LORD,
that because you acted as you did
in not withholding from me your beloved son,
I will bless you abundantly
and make your descendants as countless
as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore;
your descendants shall take possession
of the gates of their enemies,
and in your descendants all the nations of the earth
shall find blessing—
all this because you obeyed my command.”
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 116:10, 15, 16-17, 18-19
R. (116:9) I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.
I believed, even when I said,
“I am greatly afflicted.”
Precious in the eyes of the LORD
is the death of his faithful ones.
R. I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.
O LORD, I am your servant;
I am your servant, the son of your handmaid;
you have loosed my bonds.
To you will I offer sacrifice of thanksgiving,
and I will call upon the name of the LORD.
R. I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.
My vows to the LORD I will pay
in the presence of all his people,
In the courts of the house of the LORD,
in your midst, O Jerusalem.
R. I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.
Reading 2
Rom 8:31b-34
Brothers and sisters:
If God is for us, who can be against us?
He who did not spare his own Son
but handed him over for us all,
how will he not also give us everything else along with him?
Who will bring a charge against God’s chosen ones?
It is God who acquits us, who will condemn?
Christ Jesus it is who died—or, rather, was raised—
who also is at the right hand of God,
who indeed intercedes for us.
Verse Before the Gospel
Cf. Mt 17:5
From the shining cloud the Father’s voice is heard:
This is my beloved Son, listen to him.
Gospel
Mk 9:2-10
Jesus took Peter, James, and John
and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves.
And he was transfigured before them,
and his clothes became dazzling white,
such as no fuller on earth could bleach them.
Then Elijah appeared to them along with Moses,
and they were conversing with Jesus.
Then Peter said to Jesus in reply,
“Rabbi, it is good that we are here!
Let us make three tents:
one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
He hardly knew what to say, they were so terrified.
Then a cloud came, casting a shadow over them;
from the cloud came a voice,
“This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”
Suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone
but Jesus alone with them.
As they were coming down from the mountain,
he charged them not to relate what they had seen to anyone,
except when the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
So they kept the matter to themselves,
questioning what rising from the dead meant.
The post The Two Dramas of the Second Sunday of Lent, Second Sunday of Lent (B), February 25, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
33 min
February 25, 2024Our Lenten Journey of Faith, Second Sunday of Lent (B), February 25, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
Second Sunday of Lent, Year B
February 25, 2024
Gen 22:1-2.9-13.15-18, Ps 116, Rom 8:31-34, Mk 9:2-10

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click here:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.25.24_MCs_Homily_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
There’s a rhythm at the beginning of every Lent. On the First Sunday, we always ponder Jesus’ forty days in the desert and how he resisted the temptations of the devil, so that we can learn from his triumph how to reject the devil’s machinations during our 40 days with Jesus in the desert and beyond. On the Second Sunday, our thoughts are always framed by two dramas, that of Abraham and of the Transfiguration, because Abraham and the Transfiguration teach us various indispensable elements that are meant to influence the way we live each Lent. Today I’d like to cull from these dramas five different essential elements that will help us to live Lent and Life.
The first is the exertion, the effort, that a holy Lent entails. In today’s Gospel, Jesus leads Peter, James and John on a hike up an “exceedingly high mountain.” Christian tradition normally associates the mountain where Jesus was Transfigured as Mount Tabor, which towers over Galilee and the Plains of Megiddo, and takes over ten minutes to climb in vans up narrow zig-zagging paths. It would take vigorous climbers at least a couple of hours to ascend on foot. But Scriptural scholars believe the more likely place where this glorification happened was Mount Hermon, now in southern Syria and close to Caesarea Philippi where the preceding scene in St. Matthew’s Gospel took place. Mount Hermon is 9,232 feet tall, approximately five times the height of Mt. Tabor (1886 feet). That would have been a whole day’s work to ascend. They needed to leave civilization behind, they needed to leave their comfort zones behind, and climb with Jesus, sweating, probably gasping for air, to pray with Jesus and see him revealed. We see an even greater exertion involved in what God asked Abraham. Abram was 75 years old — well past retirement age for people today — when the Lord called to him while he was in Ur of the Chaldeans (modern-day Iraq) and told him to leave the land of his kinfolk and go not to a known, posh retirement community, but to an unknown land God would show him. God was asking him to pack up his bags completely and leave behind his language, his land, everything. Abram could have easily replied, “I’m an old dog, Lord, and I’m too tired to learn new tricks,” but he didn’t. He did what the Lord commanded. Little did he know that the land of Canaan to which the Lord was leading him would not have a welcome mat, but that he would have to fight for the land. But Abram and his entire family and flocks left and made the journey, not knowing how long the journey would last or where it would end up. The lesson for us this Lent is that the Lord is likewise asking of us to make an exertion. Lent is fundamentally dynamic. We’re called to be on the move. Jesus never says to us, “Stay where you are,” but always “Come!,” and “Go!” and “Follow me!” And the pilgrimage he seeks to have us make with him isn’t in a comfy golf cart. He’s asking us to climb, to sweat, to work, and to leave our comfort zones behind. If God were asking you, for example, to go to live in Antarctica would you do it? What’s your Ur of the Chaldeans? What is the Lord asking you to leave behind in order to enter onto a journey of real faith?
The second lesson we learn is about what real faith is. We see this in Abraham’s trust in God when God promised him something that would have seemed impossible under the biological know-how of 3800 years ago and still today. Abraham was 75 and his wife was 65. She had tried in vain to conceive children. But God told Abram that he would finally become not just a father through Sarah, but the father of many nations. He took Abram outside and asked him to look into the sky and count the stars if he could. “So shall your descendants be,” God said. But what careful students of the text grasp is that a few verses later it said, “When the sun was about to set” (Gen 15:12). In other words, God had Abram look into the sky when the sky was blue, not dark. Abram couldn’t see the stars but he knew that they were there, and he believed that God would give him just as many children, even though he couldn’t yet see them, or hold them, or love them. And God had Abraham wait 25 years for the fulfillment of this promise, when he was 100 and Sarah 90. The Church gives us the figure of Abraham at the beginning of every Lent precisely to help us to focus on our own faith, our faith in God’s promises. Do we really stake our life on the Lord’s word? For example, when he promises that if we leave everything to follow him, we will have 100-fold in this life and eternal life, do we believe in him? When Jesus tells us over and again not to be afraid, that even though people can harm the body, they can’t harm the soul, do we hold onto our insecurities and preoccupations or do we find our courage in God? In this time of the Eucharistic Revival, when he tells us “This is my Body,” “This is the chalice of my blood,” and “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you,” do we act on these truths and recognize that in Mass we meet God? We finish most of our prayers with the word “Amen!” Many catechists say this expression means “Yes!” with a hundred exclamation points or that it means “So be it!” But in Hebrew the word “amen” means to “support” or “uphold.” When we say “amen!,” we’re declaring that we’re staking our whole life on what we’ve just said “Amen!” to. That’s what Abraham did when he believed God more than he believed common sense and biological observation. That’s the type of faith that God wants to help grow in us every Lent.
The third lesson is about sacrifice. In Lent, we’re called to make sacrifices of our time in prayer, of our nourishment and pleasures in fasting, and of our things and ourselves in almsgiving. But often our sacrifices can be relatively small and unthreatening. The Church gives us the scene of Abraham’s sacrificing Isaac in today’s first reading to help us to see that God sometimes tests us in faith, like he put Abraham to the test, by asking us to sacrifice what we humanly love most in order to help us learn to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. How shocking God’s words must have been to Abraham when he said, “Take your son, Isaac, your only one, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There you shall offer him up as a holocaust.” This went against every paternal instinct in Abraham’s 113-year-old body. Any father worthy of the name would die to save the life of a son or daughter, not become the child’s executioner. It was a three-day journey. Abraham loaded the wood of the sacrifice on Isaac’s shoulders and when Isaac asked, “Where is the lamb for the Holocaust?,” Abraham prophetically replied, “God himself will provide the lamb.” Abraham built the altar, tied down Isaac and took out his knife to slaughter — to slaughter! — his son. It’s at that moment, the angel of the Lord stopped him, saying, “Abraham! Abraham! … Do not lay your hand on the boy. Do not do the least thing to him. I know now how devoted you are to God, since you did not withhold from me your own beloved son.” Why would God have designed such a test? Why would Abraham have carried it out? The Letter to the Hebrews gives us the answer. “By faith Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was ready to offer his only son, of whom it was said, ‘Through Isaac descendants shall bear your name.’ He reasoned that God was able to raise even from the dead, and he received Isaac back as a symbol” (Heb 11:17-19). Abraham knew that Isaac was the son of the promise and, because he believed in God, he knew that even should Isaac die, God, who is faithful to his promises, would raise him from the dead. That would be extraordinary faith even today, 2,000 years after Jesus’ resurrection, but Abraham had that faith in God’s fidelity to his promise, in God’s love, 1,800 years before Christ’s resurrection. That’s the type of faith we’re called to have in God. Abraham received Isaac back as a symbol, the Letter to the Hebrews tells us. A symbol of what? A symbol of Christ’s own resurrection. God did provide the Lamb for the sacrifice: his own Son, the Lamb of God, who like Isaac needed to carry the wood for the sacrifice. But unlike the sacrifice on Mount Moriah, at the sacrifice of Calvary no angel cried out, “Stop!” and “Don’t lay a hand or a nail on him!” The sacrifice was completed. But Mary, our mother in faith, was there, knowing that even should Jesus die, God the Father would raise him from the dead. And that’s the type of faith we’re supposed to have with regard to our own death, that God seeks to raise us from the dead as well. In today’s second reading, St. Paul tells us, “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him?” St. Paul goes on to say, “What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? As it is written: ‘For your sake we are being slain all the day; we are looked upon as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” That’s the faith that God wants to see grow in us this Lent. In order to experience that growth in faith, however, we need first to be put to the test, to examine what is our “Isaac,” who is the person or what is the thing that we love most that God might be asking us to sacrifice, to give up, in order to make God the pearl of great price worth selling everything else in our life. I remember my first year in seminary when I realized just how attached I was to my computer and what it stored. Everything I had done since the age of 14 was on it. After reading this story, I asked myself if God were to ask me to give up my computer, would I do it? Would I toss it out the window if God were asking? Would I toss out all my past, all the work, all of it, if God demanded it? Ultimately, God helped me after three days to have the courage to say yes to that should God have demanded it. That’s the type of faith Jesus demands of every disciple. That’s the type of faith he wants to help us through the various tests and trials of Lent to obtain. But it comes from identifying our Isaacs and making sure our Isaacs are able to be offered to God rather than become our gods.
The fourth Lenten lesson we encounter on this Second Sunday of Lent is the help God gives us to make sacrifices of what we hold dearest, including our own life. We see that in the scene of the Transfiguration. Saints Peter, James and John saw something extraordinary at the end of their spiritual and physical climb. Jesus was transfigured. He and his clothes were radiant. He was speaking with Moses and Elijah, the greatest figures in Jewish history, about the “exodus” he was to accomplish in Jerusalem, when he would lead us to liberation, like Moses led the Israelites from slavery through water and the desert to the promised land, only this time the slavery is to sin not to Pharaoh, the water is not the Red Sea but baptism, the desert is not in the Middle East but in Lent, and the Promised Land is not flowing with milk and honey but the Living Water that wells up to eternal life. The experience of the various theophanies at the top of the mountain was so powerful the three apostles didn’t know what to say, but they wanted to keep the experience going for as long as possible, building booths for Jesus, Moses and Elijah. Why did this scene of the Transfiguration happen? The reason was ultimately to strengthen them to remain strong in faith even when they would descend the Mount of Transfiguration to ascend Mount Calvary. When they would see Jesus transfigured in blood, they would be able to remember Jesus in glory. The Church helps us to capture the reason for Jesus’ transfiguration in the Preface of today’s Mass, in which the priest prays, “For after [Jesus] had told the disciples of his coming Death, on the holy mountain he manifested to them his glory, to show, even by the testimony of the law and the prophets, that the Passion leads to the glory of the Resurrection.” It was to sustain their faith in trial. We know that it didn’t fully work. They fell asleep in the Garden. They fled in Gethsemane. Only John was present at the foot of the Cross. But while it for the most part failed them, it’s meant to sustain us. This vision of Jesus’ glory is what has sustained the faith of the martyrs in making the sacrifice of themselves for God, because they knew that once they breathed their last, they would see Jesus transfigured. This vision of Jesus’ glory, and how he wants us to share in it, is meant to give us the hope to persevere in faith no matter what trials come our way. It’s also what’s meant to help us live Lent boldly and make the sacrifices necessary to come into greater union with the Lord. If anything is keeping us from the Lord, the vision of the Lord’s glory is meant to help us cut off those hands or feet and pluck out those eyes. Whatever we may have to give up makes sense compared to the glory of Jesus we await, the glory he wants to share with us.
The fifth and final lesson is perhaps the most important one of all. After all of the other aspects of Jesus’ transfiguration, God the Father finally speaks. He speaks only three times in the entire New Testament: at Jesus’ baptism, when he pronounces Jesus his beloved Son in whom he is well pleased; at the Last Supper when, in response to Jesus’ prayer to glorify his name replies that he has glorified it and will glorify it again; and here. But what he says is really quite strange. After pronouncing Jesus once more as his Beloved Son — and answering the question Jesus asked in the previous scene in Caesarea Philippi, when he surveyed the apostles about who people and who they were saying he was — God the Father thundered, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him!” It’s a peculiar imperative considering that Peter, James and John been basically been listening to Jesus non-stop for the previous two years. They listened to him call them from their boats to be fishers of men. They heard him preach the parables of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Sower and the Seed, the Lost Coin, the Lost Sheep, and so many others. They were raptly attuned to the Sermon on the Mount, the Sermon on the Plain and the great Eucharistic discourse in the Capernaum synagogue. They hearkened to him teach them how to pray. They hung on his words as he instructed them as they walked along the dusty streets of Palestine. They gave him both ears as he lambasted the hypocritical Scribes and Pharisees and consoled widows, sinners, and so many others. They had spent the last two years constantly listening to Jesus. But God the Father noticed something that they themselves hadn’t yet grasped: they had been selectively listening to Jesus. They had been particularly tone deaf to what Jesus had been saying in the scene immediately preceding this one, when Jesus said that he was going to be betrayed, suffer greatly in Jerusalem, be tortured, crucified, killed and on the third day be raised. They didn’t want to hear it. St. Peter, right after his name had been changed to rock, changed it again as Jesus called him “Satan,” and told him to get behind him in order to follow him rather than try to lead him, because he and the others were thinking not as God does but as human beings do. Jesus ended up telling them what would occur three separate times, but they didn’t want to hear the message, and when Good Friday came, only one of them was within earshot to hear Jesus’ seven last words. What they were even less willing to hear was what Jesus said after that, namely, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” To be Jesus’ disciple, to be able to follow him, they needed to say no to their earthly ambitions and be crucified with him. God the Father, who could see their hearts, knew that they were seeking to ignore what Jesus was saying about his transfiguration in suffering and theirs as well. And so that’s why he said, “Listen to him!” The same Father says the same thing to us today. On Ash Wednesday Jesus said, “Repent and Believe!” Have we acted on those words? Jesus called us to prayer, fasting and almsgiving? Are we doing all three with firm commitment? Have we denied ourselves, assumed our crosses and following Jesus along the Via Sacra to Calvary? God the Father who calls us to listen to his Son will listen to our prayers for all of the help we need to have the trusting, obedient ears needed. After all, since he didn’t spare his own Son, he will give us everything else besides. But learning how to listen to what Jesus says to us, and becoming doers of his word, are one of the most important parts of Lent.
Today we’ve left our rooms and rectories, our Urs, not to travel to ancient Palestine but to come to this chapel. We’ve climbed not the Mount of Transfiguration but a staircase to ascend this sanctuary. It’s here at Mass that Lent and everything else in our faith finds its source and summit. The Lord wants us to make the exertion to come here leaving our comfort zones each day during Lent if we can. It’s here that the Lord wants us to increase our faith in his promises, especially that if we worthily eat his flesh and drink his blood we’ll have his life in us and live forever. It’s here that we present our sacrifices to the Lord praying that these sacrifices, united to Christ’s, may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father. It’s here that we see Jesus transfigured not in glory but in humility and build not a booth for him but he seeks to build one within us where he seeks to transfigure our whole life. And it’s here that we listen to his word, the words of eternal life, and seek to become living commentaries of it. If God didn’t even spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, he really will give us everything else besides. Today as a reward for our exertions, as a foretaste of forever, he gives us what he holds dearest but was willing to sacrifice for our salvation. Today as we hear the echo of St. John the Baptist’s words later in Mass, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!,” that Lamb God himself provided, let us also hear the Father saying to us, “This is my beloved Son. Do whatever he tells you! Take seriously his words throughout Lent, ‘Repent and Believe!’ and follow him, accompany him, on the pilgrimage on which he wants to lead you, up not Mt. Moriah, not Mt. Tabor, not Mt. Hermon, but the Celestial Jerusalem to my house where I’ve built a booth not only for him, not just for Moses and for Elijah, but for you!”

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 Gn 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18
God put Abraham to the test.
He called to him, “Abraham!”
“Here I am!” he replied.
Then God said:
“Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love,
and go to the land of Moriah.
There you shall offer him up as a holocaust
on a height that I will point out to you.”
When they came to the place of which God had told him,
Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it.
Then he reached out and took the knife to slaughter his son.
But the LORD’s messenger called to him from heaven,
“Abraham, Abraham!”
“Here I am!” he answered.
“Do not lay your hand on the boy,” said the messenger.
“Do not do the least thing to him.
I know now how devoted you are to God,
since you did not withhold from me your own beloved son.”
As Abraham looked about,
he spied a ram caught by its horns in the thicket.
So he went and took the ram
and offered it up as a holocaust in place of his son.
Again the LORD’s messenger called to Abraham from heaven and said:
“I swear by myself, declares the LORD,
that because you acted as you did
in not withholding from me your beloved son,
I will bless you abundantly
and make your descendants as countless
as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore;
your descendants shall take possession
of the gates of their enemies,
and in your descendants all the nations of the earth
shall find blessing—
all this because you obeyed my command.”
Responsorial Psalm Ps 116:10, 15, 16-17, 18-19
R. (116:9) I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.
I believed, even when I said,
“I am greatly afflicted.”
Precious in the eyes of the LORD
is the death of his faithful ones.
R. I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.
O LORD, I am your servant;
I am your servant, the son of your handmaid;
you have loosed my bonds.
To you will I offer sacrifice of thanksgiving,
and I will call upon the name of the LORD.
R. I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.
My vows to the LORD I will pay
in the presence of all his people,
In the courts of the house of the LORD,
in your midst, O Jerusalem.
R. I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.
reading 2 Rom 8:31b-34
Brothers and sisters:
If God is for us, who can be against us?
He who did not spare his own Son
but handed him over for us all,
how will he not also give us everything else along with him?Who will bring a charge against God’s chosen ones?
It is God who acquits us, who will condemn?
Christ Jesus it is who died—or, rather, was raised—
who also is at the right hand of God,
who indeed intercedes for us.
Verse Before the Gospel cf. Mt 17:5
From the shining cloud the Father’s voice is heard:
This is my beloved Son, listen to him.
Gospel Mk 9:2-10
Jesus took Peter, James, and John
and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves.
And he was transfigured before them,
and his clothes became dazzling white,
such as no fuller on earth could bleach them.
Then Elijah appeared to them along with Moses,
and they were conversing with Jesus.
Then Peter said to Jesus in reply,
“Rabbi, it is good that we are here!
Let us make three tents:
one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
He hardly knew what to say, they were so terrified.
Then a cloud came, casting a shadow over them;
from the cloud came a voice,
“This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”
Suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone
but Jesus alone with them.
As they were coming down from the mountain,
he charged them not to relate what they had seen to anyone,
except when the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
So they kept the matter to themselves,
questioning what rising from the dead meant.
The post Our Lenten Journey of Faith, Second Sunday of Lent (B), February 25, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
26 min
February 24, 2024 Eucharistic Almsgiving: Making Our Charity a Commentary on the Words of Consecration, Parish Eucharistic Mission, St. Matthew’s, Windham, NH, February 24, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Matthew Parish, Windham, NH
Parish Day of Recollection: “Eucharistic Help for a Holy Lent:
The Eucharistic Revival and Jesus’ Call to Pray, Fast and Give Alms”
February 24, 2024
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.24.24_Eucharistic_Driven_Almsgiving_1.mp3
The post Eucharistic Almsgiving: Making Our Charity a Commentary on the Words of Consecration, Parish Eucharistic Mission, St. Matthew’s, Windham, NH, February 24, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
49 min
February 24, 2024 Going with Jesus into the Desert: Adoring God Alone, Parish Eucharistic Mission, St. Matthew’s, Windham, NH, February 24, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Matthew Parish, Windham, NH
Parish Day of Recollection: “Eucharistic Help for a Holy Lent:
The Eucharistic Revival and Jesus’ Call to Pray, Fast and Give Alms”
February 24, 2024
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.24.24_Going_into_the_Desert_Adoring_God_Alone_1.mp3

The post Going with Jesus into the Desert: Adoring God Alone, Parish Eucharistic Mission, St. Matthew’s, Windham, NH, February 24, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
53 min

About Catholic Preaching

From the publisher's feed

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.

More shows like Catholic Preaching

Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies by Bishop Robert Barron

Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons - Catholic Preaching and Homilies

4,972 Listeners

Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz by Ascension

Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz

6,229 Listeners

The Word on Fire Show - Catholic Faith and Culture by Bishop Robert Barron

The Word on Fire Show - Catholic Faith and Culture

5,717 Listeners

The Thomistic Institute by The Thomistic Institute

The Thomistic Institute

809 Listeners

St. Josemaria Institute Podcast by St. Josemaria Institute

St. Josemaria Institute Podcast

597 Listeners

First Things Podcast by First Things

First Things Podcast

717 Listeners

Pints With Aquinas by Matt Fradd

Pints With Aquinas

6,749 Listeners

All Things Catholic with Dr. Edward Sri by Ascension

All Things Catholic with Dr. Edward Sri

1,354 Listeners

The Counsel of Trent by Catholic Answers

The Counsel of Trent

2,615 Listeners

Catholic Daily Reflections by My Catholic Life!

Catholic Daily Reflections

555 Listeners

Every Knee Shall Bow (Your Catholic Evangelization Podcast) by Ascension

Every Knee Shall Bow (Your Catholic Evangelization Podcast)

839 Listeners

Godsplaining by Dominican Friars Province of St. Joseph

Godsplaining

1,276 Listeners

Catholic Saints by Augustine Institute

Catholic Saints

1,214 Listeners

Catholic Bible Study by Augustine Institute

Catholic Bible Study

779 Listeners

Chris Stefanick Catholic Show by Chris Stefanick | Real Life Catholic

Chris Stefanick Catholic Show

443 Listeners