Catholic Preaching

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Catholic Preaching episodes

  • Jesus’ Lenten Project to Help Us Become Like God the Father, Saturday of the First Week of Lent, 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”
    Saturday of the First Week of Lent
    February 24, 2024
    Dt 26:16-19, Ps 119, Mt 5:43-48

     

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

    https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.24.24_Homily_1.mp3

     

    The following text guided the homily: 

    • The whole point and purpose of Lenten season is to help us become who we’re supposed to be, to grow in the image and likeness of God in which we’ve been made. This holy season is a gift is for us to become fully Christian in identity and behavior — and that involves rediscovering or deepening our relationship with God in the Father through Christ in the Holy Spirit. On Ash Wednesday, we pondered how Jesus calls us to give alms, fast and pray differently from everyone else, doing each of these things in communion with our Father who sees in secret. We’re supposed to give alms recognizing that all that we are able to give to others we have first received from God the Father, and so our giving is an extension of his own loving Providence. We’re supposed to fast in order to hunger for what he hungers. We’re supposed to pray by meeting God the Father in our “inner room,” the locked “storeroom” in a Jewish house where all valuables were kept, indicating to us not only are we supposed to treasure God most but also his love in coming to meet us in the tiny “closet” of our interior life, whether we’re praying at home or in the middle of a multitude.
    • Lent is the time in which with God’s help we reorder our relationship with God through prayer, our relationship with others through almsgiving, our relationship with ourselves through fasting and self-denial. It’s a time to convert our hearts, our insides, our motivations, our aspirations, so that from the inside out, in all our actions, we might live as true Christians, in the love of God the Father. Lent is the time when we relive the Parable of the Prodigal Son, when we come to our senses as to how we’ve treated God as if he were not a loving Father, wandered from his house, squandered the inheritance he has given us and make the journey home. It’s a time when he runs out to meet us, to cleanse us, to restore us to our full dignity and to rejoice with us at our conversion. It’s the time when God the Father invites us to enter into his own merciful, loving heart and become his children. Lent is about becoming more and more Godlike.
    • That’s what today’s Gospel passage is about. Jesus puts an exclamation point on our Lenten and Christian summons. He tells us, “Therefore, be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Just a Jesus called us to a higher righteousness than the scribes and Pharisees, considered at the time the most religious Jews, so Jesus here reiterates his high standards for us, which is a sign of his confidence of what, with his grace, we are capable. Often when we hear Jesus’ words we’re thrown off by the word “perfect” and think that this is an unachievable standard, because after all, none of us is perfect, none of us will ever be perfect, and therefore if God is calling us never to make a mistake, then he’s calling us to something beyond human capacity. Therefore, we can feel somewhat justified in dismissing what Jesus says as if it’s clearly an unattainable goal. But lest we ignore what Jesus is calling us to, as if he couldn’t possibly have meant it, we should focus on a couple things:
    • First, the main emphasis of what Jesus is clearly saying is “Be like your heavenly Father.” After calling us to offer no resistance to evil doers, turn the other check, love our enemies and pray for our persecutors, he tells us why: so “that you may be childrenof your Father in heaven, who makes his sun rise on the bad and the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” He wants us to become true children of our heavenly Father and implies that we will not really become children of God until we start behaving like God, that he can be our Father — through creation, and especially through Baptism — without our being morally his children. The Father wants us to seek to act as his children, to behave like Jesus who shows us how to live as a Son of God. Just as God the Father loves everyone and does good to everyone, including those who curse him, who make themselves his enemy through sin and an evil life, who try to use him whenever they need him, Jesus calls us to a similar rule of life, to love our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us, to walk the second mile, to give our cloak as well as our tunic, to respond generously to all those who need to borrow. We’re called to be good — to let our sun shine and life-giving rain fall — not just on those who are good to us but even on those who are not good to us, just like God the Father does. This, he suggests, is the path to true holiness. This is the means by which we become, in action, sons and daughters of our heavenly Father, by behaving as God the Father behaves. On the other hand, we cannot be like God the Father or God the Son when we don’t love others enough to forgive them when they hurt us, to pray for them when they persecute us, to sacrifice for them when they’re in need, to avoid all vengeance against them when they strike us on our cheek or otherwise hurt or offend us.
    • Second, to understand what Jesus means when he calls us to be “perfect” like our Father in heaven, we must grasp the Greek word St. Matthew employs. That word is “teleios,” which is the adjective that comes from the noun “telos,” which means “end” or “goal.” Teleios refers to something fit to achieve its end or purpose. A hammer, for example, is teleiosfor pounding in a nail. A microphone is teleios for amplification. A student is teleios when he has mastered the material, lives it and can teach it to others. When Jesus calls us — in fact commands us —to be “teleios” as our heavenly Father is “teleios,” he’s not intending that we engage in a type of errorless and sinless perfectionism that may end up destroying our spiritual, psychological and physical equilibrium. Rather, he is summoning us to order our lives to the same purpose and same goal as God the Father, to mature to full stature, to achieve the end for which we were made, which is to be fully in the image and likeness of God, to be holy as God is holy, to love like God loves, to be merciful as he is merciful, to be divinized by him so that we may indeed have our action follow our being and behave truly as children of our celestial Father.
    • In order to achieve this Christian perfection, God doesn’t leave us on our own but gives us all the help we need. Just like every dad and mom wants to raise their children to fulfill all of their potential, God wants to raise us to fulfill all the potential with which he has created us. Everything in our Christian life is meant to help us to become
      • Prayer is meant to help us to become teleioslike God, by helping us to think as God thinks rather than the way everyone else thinks, to help us say and desire that God’s will be done rather than our own.
      • Our fasting and our almsgiving are meant to help us to become teleios, by helping us to hunger for what God hungers for and to become generous and providential toward others like God has been toward us.
      • Sacred Scripture is meant to help us to become teleioslike God, by imparting to us God’s wisdom and showing us the true path to love like he loves.
      • The sacraments are meant to help us come to become teleioslike God, by assisting us from within to become more and more like the one we encounter in the Sacraments, Jesus Christ, who frees us from sin and unites us to himself in baptism, who feeds us with himself in the Holy Eucharist, who forgives us our sins in Confession, who fills us with the Holy Spirit in Confirmation, who conforms men to himself in Holy Orders, who joins a man and woman in one flesh in marriage to become a true loving communion of persons resembling the Trinity, and who helps unite our sufferings and even our death to his in the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick.
      • Our daily life, including even and especially our difficulties, is meant to help us to become teleios like God. This means that when someone slaps us on the cheek, or begs from us, or hates or persecute us, all of it can be used by God to bring us to perfection. This was the path God the Father used to perfect Jesus according to his humanity. The Letter to the Hebrews says, “Although he was Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered and, being perfected (teleiotheis), became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him” (Heb 5:8-9). Jesus was perfected according to his human nature precisely through his suffering, through living what he calls us to live in today’s Gospel. Jesus was perfected when he didn’t retaliate against the brutal Roman soldiers who slapped him, mocked him and put a crown of thorns on his head. When they took his tunic in order to scourge and crucify him, he allowed them to take his undergarments as well. When they compelled him to walk a mile with the crushing burden of the Cross on his shoulders, he continued two miles, helped by Simon of Cyrene. When he was being crucified, he cried out with love for his enemies and prayer for his persecutors, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.” And by his horrendous but salvific death, Jesus made salvation and sanctification possible: he gained for us the graces to be able to love as he loves, to live and die as God’s image and likeness, all the way to the end of life and beyond.
      • There are some Christians who want to believe that there has to another way, who want to believe we can still fully please God, live a good Christian life, and get to heaven without taking Jesus’ challenging words seriously and literally. Some cling to the idol that as long as we do a few good deeds, attend Mass, pray a little, give something to the poor, that that’s all that God wants and demands and that we can otherwise live by the same standards by which everyone else lives. Rather than striving for sanctity, they want to believe that if someone takes an eye or a tooth from us, we’re justified in taking his eye or her tooth. They want to believe that we’re perfectly okay in slapping someone back who slaps us first, that we’re fine in being generous only to those whom we trust, loving only those who have not betrayed us, and vanquishing our enemy before the adversary gets a chance to attack or eliminate us. Today Jesus wants us to recognize that this is not his way. It’s not the way to human fulfillment. It’s not the way to happiness and heaven. Pope Francis reminded us all several years ago that “Jesus asks those who would follow him to love those who do not deserve it, without expecting anything in return, and in this way to fill the emptiness present in human hearts, relationships, families, communities and in the entire world. … Jesus did not come to teach us good manners, how to behave well at the table! To do that, he would not have had to come down from heaven and die on the Cross.  Christ came to save us, to show us the way, the only way out of the quicksand of sin, and this way is mercy.  To be a saint is not a luxury. It is necessary for the salvation of the world.” Spiritually we cannot be God’s children without the interior revolution the Lord is inviting us to here, to become his children.
      • In the first reading today, Moses said, “This day the Lord, your God, commands you to observe these statutes. Be careful then to observe them with all your heart and with all your soul. Today you are making a covenant with the Lord: he is to be your God and you are to walk in his ways and observe his statutes, commandments and decrees and to hearken to his voice.” And in the Psalm, we ponder how blessed are the people who don’t just know but follow the Law of the Lord, who walk in his law, who observe his decrees, who are firm by keeping his statutes, who seek him with all their heart. Today the Lord Jesus wants us to help us become blessed in that manner. He summons us to observe what he tells us in the Gospel with all our heart and soul, and to open ourselves to receive from Him the grace of the new and eternal Covenant in his blood, here given for us, so that we may actually live up to his standards and become teleios as he was teleios from the inside out. If we embrace this reality with all our heart and continue to embrace it in little things, then  we will experience the blessedness of all those who follow the law of the Lord!
      • As we enter more deeply into this parish retreat in which we ponder the practical reality of the gift of the Eucharistic Lord in our life, we finish by recalling that the greatest means by which Jesus helps us to become teleiosis through Holy Communion, when we poor and humble servants eat the Lord and enter into holy communion with Him. This is an indication of just how much God the Father desires us to become like him, that he would not only allow his Son to take our humanity and enter the world, that he would not just permit him to be tortured and crucified, but that he would go so far as to allow him to take on the miraculous appearances of bread and wine so that we could consume him and grow to be like him whom we eat. But God the Father has done all of this to divinize us so that we might live as his beloved sons and daughters. The Christian life may at times be supremely demanding as we seek to imitate Jesus in picking up our cross, in turning the other cheek, in going the second mile, in praying for persecutors and loving those who have made themselves our enemies, but God gives us himself so that we might live up to those high standards of ordinary Christian life! As we prepare to receive Jesus today and become, truly, a temple of God, we ask for the grace to cooperate with the Holy Spirit as he seeks to help us become teleios, to fulfill God’s will for us, which is our sanctification and, indeed, spiritual perfection.

        •  

        The readings for today’s Mass were: 

        Reading 1
        Dt 26:16-19
        Moses spoke to the people, saying:
        “This day the LORD, your God,
        commands you to observe these statutes and decrees.
        Be careful, then,
        to observe them with all your heart and with all your soul.
        Today you are making this agreement with the LORD:
        he is to be your God and you are to walk in his ways
        and observe his statutes, commandments and decrees,
        and to hearken to his voice.
        And today the LORD is making this agreement with you:
        you are to be a people peculiarly his own, as he promised you;
        and provided you keep all his commandments,
        he will then raise you high in praise and renown and glory
        above all other nations he has made,
        and you will be a people sacred to the LORD, your God,
        as he promised.”
        Responsorial Psalm
        Ps 119:1-2, 4-5, 7-8
        R. (1b)  Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord!
        Blessed are they whose way is blameless,
        who walk in the law of the LORD.
        Blessed are they who observe his decrees,
        who seek him with all their heart.
        R. Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord!
        You have commanded that your precepts
        be diligently kept.
        Oh, that I might be firm in the ways
        of keeping your statutes!
        R. Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord!
        I will give you thanks with an upright heart,
        when I have learned your just ordinances.
        I will keep your statutes;
        do not utterly forsake me.
        R. Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord!
        Verse Before the Gospel
        2 Cor 6:2b
        Behold, now is a very acceptable time;
        behold, now is the day of salvation.
        Gospel
        Mt 5:43-48
        Jesus said to his disciples:
        “You have heard that it was said,
        You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
        But I say to you, love your enemies,
        and pray for those who persecute you,
        that you may be children of your heavenly Father,
        for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,
        and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
        For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have?
        Do not the tax collectors do the same?
        And if you greet your brothers and sisters only,
        what is unusual about that?
        Do not the pagans do the same?
        So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

        The post Jesus’ Lenten Project to Help Us Become Like God the Father, Saturday of the First Week of Lent, February 24, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

        19 min
      • Second Sunday of Lent (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, February 24, 2024

        Fr. Roger J. Landry

        Conversations with Consequences Podcast
        Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent, B, Vigil
        February 24, 2024

         

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

        https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.24.24_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

         

        The following text guided the homily: 

        • This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to join you again and ponder with you the consequential conversation Jesus wants to have with us in the Gospel this Sunday, as we, with the apostles Peter, James and John, will behold Jesus transfigured among us. On the Second Sunday of Lent, the Church each year has us pray over the scene of the Lord’s transfiguration. Part of the reason is to give us, like God gave the three chosen apostles, a brief taste of the glory of Jesus, so that we may be strengthened for the journey of Lent just like Jesus intended to fortify these three friends before they would behold Jesus transfigured in blood on Mount Calvary. Knowing that the one who carried the Cross to Golgotha and the one who summons us in Lent to carry our Cross is in fact God provides the greatest possible confidence that the way of the Cross is in fact the divine way. And so it’s meant to inspire us to live Lent with great courage, focus and abandon. This year, as we continue to pray for all those in the Holy Land after the October 7 Hamas attacks and the ongoing war in Gaza, the remembrance of how the Lord became dazzlingly white is a powerful reminder that the bloodshed, hatred, and darkness do not have the last word, but that God himself entered not just the world but the Holy Land to lead us all on an exodus ultimately from death to life.
        • The scene of the Transfiguration has three concrete lessons that are meant to influence the way that every Catholic lives Lent and life.
        • The first lesson concerns the exertion, the effort, that a holy Lent entails. Jesus led Peter, James and John on what St. Mark calls 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, approximately five times the height of Mt. Tabor (1886 feet). That would have been a whole day’s work to ascend. They would have needed to leave civilization behind, to leave their comfort zones behind, and to climb with Jesus, sweating, probably gasping for air, in order to pray with Jesus. 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. It’s not even in a mountain climbing zig-zagging van. He’s asking us to climb, to sweat, to work, and to leave our own comfort zones behind. Each of us needs to ask: What is the Lord asking me to leave behind in order to advance with him on the journey of faith?
        • The second Lenten lesson is the help God gives us to make this exertion. In 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 became radiant. He was speaking with Moses and Elijah, the greatest figures in Jewish history, the personifications of the law and the prophets respectively, about the “exodus” he was to accomplish in Jerusalem. Like Moses led the Israelites from slavery through water and the desert to the promised land, Jesus was going to lead us to liberation, only this time the slavery is sin not Pharaoh, the water is baptismal not the Red Sea, 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 that it left Peter, James and John speechless, but they wanted to keep the experience going for as long as possible, with Peter offering to build three tents one each for Jesus, Moses and Elijah. Why did this scene of the Transfiguration happen? As I alluded to before, 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 Eucharistic Preface for 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 in Lent to come into greater union with the Lord. If anything is keeping us from the Lord, the vision of the Lord’s glory will help us to excise them, or to use Jesus’ biblical image, to cut off those hands or feet and pluck out the eyes. The sacrifice is worth it! Whatever we have to give up makes sense compared to the glory of Jesus we await, the glory he wants to share with us.
        • The final lesson is perhaps 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 here. But what he says is really quite strange when you think about it. After pronouncing Jesus once more as his Beloved Son — and answering the question Jesus asked in the previous scene when he surveyed who people and who the apostles were saying him to be — God the Father thundered, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him!” It’s a peculiar imperative from God the Father. After all, what had Peter, James and John been doing for the previous two years but listening to Jesus? They listened to him call them from their boats to be fishers of men. They heard him say all his parables of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Sower and the Seed, the Lost Coin, the Lost Sheep, and so many others. They listened to the Sermon on the Mount, the Sermon on the Plain and the great Eucharistic discourse in the Capernaum synagogue. They listened to him teach them how to pray. They listened to him instruct them as they walked along the dusty streets of Palestine. They listened to him lambaste the hypocritical Scribes and Pharisees and console 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 grasped. They had been selectively listening to Jesus and 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. They didn’t want to hear it. 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, most of them were not within earshot to hear Jesus’ seven last words. We see a glimpse of that at the end of this Sunday’s Gospel, when St. Mark tells us that Jesus charged Peter, James and John not to relate to anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead, and they questioned what rising from the dead meant, because they were in such denial as to the fact that Jesus would die and need to rise. 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 ignoring what Jesus was saying about his transfiguration in suffering and their metamorphosis by the Cross as well. And so that’s why he said, “Listen to him!” God the Father gives us the same imperative. On Ash Wednesday, for example, Jesus said, “Repent and Believe!” Have we? He likewise called us to prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Are we doing all three? Are we excelling in the self-denial, self-death through the Crosses God gives us and in following Jesus and heeding all of his words? God the Father who calls us to listen to his Son will listen to our prayers to have the trusting, obedient ears needed. That’s one of the most important parts of Lent.
        • On Sunday we will leave our homes to climb not the Mount of Transfiguration but the altar of God. It’s there at Mass that Lent and everything else in our faith finds its source and summit. The Lord wants us to make the exertion to leave our comfort zones and come, even to come each day during Lent if we can. It’s at Mass that we see Jesus transfigured not in glory but in humility. We build not a tent for him but a tabernacle and a Church so that we can come into his presence and allow him to transfigure us. And it’s at Mass that we listen to his word, the words of eternal life, and seek to become living commentaries of it. Each time we go to Mass God the Father give us as a reward for our exertions, as a foretaste of forever, what he holds dearest but was willing to sacrifice for our salvation. As we behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, God the Father says 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. Tabor, not Mt. Hermon, but the Celestial Jerusalem to my house where I’ve built a place not only for him, for Moses and for Elijah, but for you!”

          •  

          The Gospel passage on which the homily was based was: 

          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 Second Sunday of Lent (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, February 24, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

          11 min
        • Hungering for What Jesus Hungers: Fasting for the Feast of Faith, Parish Eucharistic Mission, St. Matthew’s, Windham, NH, February 23, 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 23, 2024

          https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.23.24_Hungering_for_What_God_Hungers_1.mp3

          The post Hungering for What Jesus Hungers: Fasting for the Feast of Faith, Parish Eucharistic Mission, St. Matthew’s, Windham, NH, February 23, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

          53 min
        • Persevering in the Way of Virtue and Mercy, Friday of the First Week of Lent, February 23, 2024

          Fr. Roger J. Landry

          Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
          Friday of the First Week of Lent
          Memorial of St. Polycarp, Martyr
          February 23, 2024
          Ez 18:21-18, Ps 130, Mt 5:20-26

           

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

          https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.23.24_Homily_1.mp3

           

          The following points were attempted in the homily: 

          • In today’s Gospel, Jesus says that our righteousness, our justice, must surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, in order to enter into eternal life, in order not to go to Hell. The “justice” of the Pharisees was quite rigorous in terms of prayer, weekly fasting, tithing. But there were two things it lacked. First, it was external, focusing on acts rather than the heart; second, it lacked mercy. The Pharisees were the “separated ones,” those who in order to cut themselves off from sin sought to cut themselves totally off from sinners, as if they weren’t sinners themselves. That’s why they complained when Jesus was eating with Matthew and the other tax collectors, because they had no communion at all with sinners, whom they thought would just be straw for the fires of hell. Likewise, to convert them, Jesus preached the three parables of the Lost Sheep, Lost Coin and Lost Son in Lk 15, because the scribes and Pharisees were like the older brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, preferring their brothers to remain dead in sin rather than rejoicing in their resurrection through reconciliation with God. Our righteousness must surpass theirs because theirs wasn’t truly “right” with God or with others: they served him with their lips and even externally with some of their deeds, but their hearts were far from him, because they didn’t realize their need for God’s mercy and God’s desire to transform them by that mercy to be merciful like he is merciful. The whole practice of Lent is meant to help us become like God: in fasting, we learn to hunger for what he hungers; in almsgiving, we share in his providential care, passing on to others who need it more than we do what God has first given to us; and in prayer, allowing his thoughts to become our thoughts and his ways our ways. Today in the readings we enter into these truths.
          • God responds to a complaint he knows has welled up in the hearts of the people of Israel in Ezekiel’s day and one that arises in every age. It certainly arose for the Scribes and Pharisees whose righteousness ours needs to surpass. “The Lord’s way is not fair!,” we can complain. Ezekiel had described clearly what the Lord’s way is. On the one hand, “If the wicked man turns away from all the sins he committed, if he keeps all my statutes and does what is right and just, he shall surely live, he shall not die. None of the crimes he committed shall be remembered against him; he shall live because of the virtue he has practiced.” On the other hand, “If the virtuous man turns from the path of virtue to do evil, the same kind of abominable things that the wicked man does, can he do this and still live? None of his virtuous deeds shall be remembered, because he has broken faith and committed sin; because of this, he shall die.”
          • The first way we and others complain that the Lord’s way is not just is that it is a way of mercy for sinners. Someone who has lived a sinful live for decades all of a sudden converts and God says he shall live. God won’t remember the crimes he has committed. True justice, we can object, is to hold people accountable forever. Like the older brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, we can get into the state that we don’t rejoice when our lost brother is found and our dead brother comes to life again. Our self-identity is caught up, somehow, in a sense of spiritual superiority, and when he’s restored to the relationship with the Father he should have had all along, we resent it rather than rejoice. But that shows how much we need to be converted! Jesus encountered it over and again in the resistance of the scribes and Pharisees to his work reconciling, embracing and eating with sinners. God tells us today through Ezekiel, “Do I indeed derive any pleasure for the death of the wicked? Do I not rather rejoice when he turns away from evil that he may live?” God’s way is a way of mercy. He doesn’t forget the needs of justice. In fact, he himself takes on our flesh to pay the price we deserved. But his mercy surpasses what our deeds deserve. And that should give us hope.
          • The second way the people of Ezekiel’s time and ours complain that God’s way is unfair is that it is a way of justice for those who refuse to convert, including those who had lived a very good life for a while but then turned away from God and persevered in that alienation. There’s a sense of added shock and scandal when a virtuous man diverts his heart from God to malevolence and maleficence. Most often these are not sins of the flesh but of calculation and corruption because through the virtuous life in most cases one knew better. We want to say that if God were fair, he would balance out the life: 70 years of virtue and only several months of vice. But it’s here that God holds us accountable and makes us responsible for our decisions made in freedom. For a person in this circumstance, as long as he still lives, it’s possible for him to turn back to the Lord and live, to leave his wicked deeds behind. His path, too, can be a way of mercy, but only if he recognizes what he’s done and repents. Previous good deeds don’t excuse or outweigh the turning of one’s heart from the Lord and the persevering in that sin at the end. It’s our way, God tells us, that is unjust if we don’t want to hold someone accountable for their choices, if we refuse to recognize that we are always in need of God’s mercy, that we’re always in the first category of those needing to convert.
          • Conversion, as I like to emphasize, involves three moments. The first is averting (turning away) from things that are not of God. The second is adverting (turning toward) God and the things of God. And the third is converting, turning with the Lord, which is a continual process. As life is dynamic, there’s always an opportunity for us to turn away from whatever keeps us from God, turn toward him in mercy, and turn with him in life. But there’s likewise a chance that we can turn away from him, turn toward sin, and begin to walk in the way of sinners. Jesus describes the journey we’re on in the Gospel as a walk to court to meet the judge. He calls us to be like him and to seek mercy rather than justice. “Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court. Otherwise your opponent will hand you over to the judge, and the judge will hand you over to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Amen, I say to you, you will not be released until you have paid the last penny.” If we seek justice from our adversary rather than reconciliation, we may very well end up receiving justice, being found guilty, and suffering the consequences. He says we anticipate that journey every time we come to pray and he calls us to live that reconciliation for us to pray well. “If you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift.” We can’t offer the gift of ourselves to God in a pleasing way if we seek to do so with unreconciled hearts and lives. It’s not enough that our external deeds are in conformity with God’s law, but he wants our hearts to be as well — not only not killing our brother but not being angry or insulting him or harboring any of the thoughts in which we treat our brother as dead within us. Jesus is calling us to convert from these thoughts rather than to persevere in them. If we convert, we will find mercy; if we persevere in them, we will find justice, and the words of the Psalm remind us that if the Lord is strictly just, we’re in trouble: “If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, who can stand?”
          • Today we celebrate a saint whose righteousness surpassed that of the scribe and Pharisees, and who persevered in the way of Christian love, virtue and heroism until death. St. Polycarp was the heroic bishop of Smyrna in southwestern Turkey who was martyred on this day in 166. He learned the Gospel as a young boy from St. John the Apostle himself. With Pope St. Clement and St. Ignatius of Antioch (a saint whom he knew, from whom he received a celebrated letter and whose chains he kissed as Ignatius was on the way to martyrdom in Rome), he is one of the three great Apostolic fathers, the great leaders of second generation of Christians. We know how the faith spread so much in the first generations: it was the witness of martyrdom — that sane people treated Jesus as someone worth living for and dying for — and the witness of Christian charity, that Christians would sell all they had, lay the proceeds at the feet of the apostles and bishops to care for everyone as family members where needed. Polycarp presided over that charity and mutual mercy. And at the end of life he also spread the faith, out of love for God and others, through his martyrdom. When the bloodthirsty mobs and soldiers came to arrest him, he said, doubtless based on the words Jesus taught in the Our Father and said in the Garden of Gethsemane, “The will of the Lord be done.” He asked for some time to pray as the guards were provided supper, and he prayed for two hours. He entrusted to God his own flock in Smyrna and the Church universal. As he was being brought to the place where he would be tried and killed, some of his captors tried to persuade him out of it by pronouncing Caesar Lord or by offering incense to the statues of the pagan gods, but he replied, “I am resolved not to do what you counsel me.” Later, in the stadium, he was given a chance to save his life simply by cursing Jesus Christ. He replied, “For 86 years I have served him and he has done me no wrong, why would I betray him now?” He had chosen Christ as the Way, the Truth and the Life and he was going to persevere in that choice until the end. He knew that if he as a virtuous man turned away from virtue to do evil, he would be treated justly as an evildoer. Out of love for God, however, he persevered faithfully and heroically. They sentenced him to be burned at the stake and as they were tying his feet to the stake and were about to nail his feet, but he said, “Leave me as I am. The one who gives me strength to endure the fire will also give me strength to stay quite still on the pyre, even without the precaution of your nails.” After he had prayed anew, with praise to God for having brought him to this hour, he asked for the grace to partake of the chalice of Christ as a pleasing sacrifice, and enter into eternal life in the immortality of the Holy Spirit, finishing his words with a doxology and amen. They lit the fire, and the Christian eyewitnesses noted in their account of his martyrdom that there was a Eucharistic culmination. They recalled, “When a great flame burst out, those of us privileged to see it witnessed a strange and wonderful thing. Indeed, we have been spared in order to tell the story to others. Like a ship’s sail swelling in the wind, the flame became as it were a dome encircling the martyr’s body. Surrounded by the fire, his body was like bread that is baked, or gold and silver white-hot in a furnace, not like flesh that has been burnt. So sweet a fragrance came to us that it was like that of burning incense or some other costly and sweet-smelling gum.” He entered into the sacrifice of Christ that he had the privilege of celebrating each morning. At the beginning of Mass, we prayed for the same gifts Polycarp displayed at the supreme hour as we opened today’s Mass, begging God to “grant, through [Polycarp’s] intercession, that, sharing with him in the chalice of Christ, we may rise through the Holy Spirit to eternal life.” This sharing in Christ’s passion, cooperating with the Holy Spirit, is the way that we will persevere until the end.
          • Today as we come forward to present ourselves to the altar, we ask the Lord’s grace through St. Polycarp’s intercession, so that we and our whole culture may turn from any ways that are evil, both in our actions and in our thoughts, and seek reconciliation with all those whom we have hurt and with all who have hurt us, so that together with them we may rejoice in the celebration in the House of Father, where the Father prepares for us not a fattened calf but a Lamb looking as if he has been slain. The Lord wants us to live, and we live by his mercy as we prepare to receive that holy offering that Jesus gave for the remission of sins, reconciling all of us to the Father.

            •  

            The readings for today’s Mass were: 

            Reading 1
            EZ 18:21-28
            Thus says the Lord GOD:
            If the wicked man turns away from all the sins he committed,
            if he keeps all my statutes and does what is right and just,
            he shall surely live, he shall not die.
            None of the crimes he committed shall be remembered against him;
            he shall live because of the virtue he has practiced.
            Do I indeed derive any pleasure from the death of the wicked?
            says the Lord God.
            Do I not rather rejoice when he turns from his evil way
            that he may live?
            And if the virtuous man turns from the path of virtue to do evil,
            the same kind of abominable things that the wicked man does,
            can he do this and still live?
            None of his virtuous deeds shall be remembered,
            because he has broken faith and committed sin;
            because of this, he shall die.
            You say, “The LORD’s way is not fair!”
            Hear now, house of Israel:
            Is it my way that is unfair, or rather, are not your ways unfair?
            When someone virtuous turns away from virtue to commit iniquity, and dies,
            it is because of the iniquity he committed that he must die.
            But if the wicked, turning from the wickedness he has committed,
            does what is right and just,
            he shall preserve his life;
            since he has turned away from all the sins that he committed,
            he shall surely live, he shall not die.
            Responsorial Psalm
            PS 130:1-2, 3-4, 5-7A, 7BC-8
            R. (3) If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, who can stand?
            Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD;
            LORD, hear my voice!
            Let your ears be attentive
            to my voice in supplication.
            R. If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, who can stand?
            If you, O LORD, mark iniquities,
            LORD, who can stand?
            But with you is forgiveness,
            that you may be revered.
            R. If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, who can stand?
            I trust in the LORD;
            my soul trusts in his word.
            My soul waits for the LORD
            more than sentinels wait for the dawn.
            Let Israel wait for the LORD.
            R. If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, who can stand?
            For with the LORD is kindness
            and with him is plenteous redemption;
            And he will redeem Israel
            from all their iniquities.
            R. If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, who can stand?
            Gospel
            MT 5:20-26
            Jesus said to his disciples:
            “I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that
            of the scribes and Pharisees,
            you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven.
            “You have heard that it was said to your ancestors,
            You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.
            But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother
            will be liable to judgment,
            and whoever says to his brother, Raqa,
            will be answerable to the Sanhedrin,
            and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna.
            Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar,
            and there recall that your brother
            has anything against you,
            leave your gift there at the altar,
            go first and be reconciled with your brother,
            and then come and offer your gift.
            Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court.
            Otherwise your opponent will hand you over to the judge,
            and the judge will hand you over to the guard,
            and you will be thrown into prison.
            Amen, I say to you,
            you will not be released until you have paid the last penny.”

            The post Persevering in the Way of Virtue and Mercy, Friday of the First Week of Lent, February 23, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

            19 min
          • Building Our Christian Life on the Rock of Peter’s and Christ’s Confessions, Chair of St. Peter, February 22, 2024

            Fr. Roger J. Landry

            Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
            Feast of the Chair of St. Peter
            February 22, 2024
            1 Pet 5:1-4, Ps 23, Mt 16:13-19

             

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

            https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.22.24_Homily_1.mp3

             

            The following points were attempted in the homily: 

            • In today’s Gospel, we have a double confession. Inspired by God the Father, doubtless through the work of the Holy Spirit in him, Simon confesses Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God. Jesus in return gives another, almost equally striking confession: He says in return to Simon, You are kepha (the Aramaic means both the name “Peter” and the thing “Rock”), you are Rock and on this Rock, on you, I will build my Church and the gates of Hell won’t prevail against it. Jesus built his Church with an architectural plan and the foundation of the Church would be Peter and his relationship to Christ. That means that if we’re going to be truly a follower of Jesus Christ, if we’re going to be fully Christian, we need to build our faith in Christ on Peter because Christ built his Church, his Mystical Body and Bride, on him. At the beginning of Mass today, we prayed to God the Father, “Grant that no tempests may disturb us for you have set us fast on the rock of the Apostle Peter’s confession of faith.” God has made our faith steadfast on the Rock’s profession of faith, and therefore our growth in faith, our deepening in the Christian life, is directly linked to Peter, to the petrine office, and to the responsibilities Christ gave him, which he passed on to his successors.
            • Today the Church celebrates the Feast of the “Chair” of St. Peter. Liturgically, it recalls the day St. Peter took up his episcopal ministry in Antioch, where he served before coming to Rome. He was “Pope” or the “father” or vicarious head of Christ’s Church from Jesus’ Ascension (May 19, 30 AD), but he didn’t immediately go to Rome. The early Christians not only celebrated Peter’s heroic martyrdom as a feast but also celebrated the day on which he started to guide the first Christians in the place Jesus’ believers were first called Christians.
            • To celebrate the feast of St. Peter’s Chair, however, is something more specific than fêting Peter’s ministry. The chair was the ancient symbol of teaching authority: teachers would sit and all their students would stand, the exact opposite of what happens today. It’s equivalent to a judge’s bench or gavel today in the legal field. The evangelists tell us on several occasions that Jesus “sat down and began to teach” the crowds. The chair became a symbol of teaching authority and in some ways that remains today, when we refer to the person who has the “chair of philosophy” or “chair of theology” or even the “chair” of a particular meeting. To celebrate the feast of the Chair of St. Peter is to rejoice in the teaching authority Christ has given him for the sake of his body the Church. Jesus gave Peter the “keys of the kingdom of heaven,” to bind and loose on earth, and that even greater authority over the sacraments points to the authority he has to teach authoritatively in Jesus’ name. We retain the expression of the Pope’s teaching ex cathedra (literally “from the chair”) to highlight his most solemn teachings to us, applying Christ’s words and wisdom to the present age.
            • I had the privilege to be ordained a deacon at the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican just over 25 years ago. In the sculpture that hovers above the altar, Bernini enshrined the chair that in the 1600s everyone believed was the one used by St. Peter to teach the faith to the people of Rome. They were mistaken by a measly 800 years — history then wasn’t what it is now and archaeology basically didn’t exist! — and the enclosed chair was actually given to the Pope around the year 800 by the emperor Otto II. The reality, however, to which the altar of the chair points is Peter’s authority, and Bernini illustrated the theology of that authority in this incredible sculpture. On top of the bronze-enshrined chair was the image of the Holy Spirit, showing that the Holy Spirit continues to guide Peter and through him the Church to “all the truth,” as Jesus promised during the Last Supper. Underneath the chair, pointing to and spiritually upholding the legs of the chair, are four great theologians, bishops and fathers of the Church, Saints Ambrose, Augustine, Chrysostom and Athanasius, two from the west and two from the east. Their presence shows how bishops and theologians are supposed to support the teaching authority of the Popes. On the front of the seat-back is a bas relief of Peter’s feeding Christ’s sheep and lambs, the commission Christ gave Peter at the end of St. John’s Gospel after asking him three times if he loved him. Peter’s love for Christ would be shown in his feeding Christ’s flock, and the first way he feeds the flock is through his authoritative teaching in Christ’s name. Just as the evangelists tell us that Jesus had pity on the crowds and began to teach them many things, so Peter, sharing in Christ’s compassion, teaches.
            • The teaching authority of the Pope has been so important throughout Church history. We see even in the Acts of the Apostles how there were disputes about whether Gentile converts needed to follow the whole Mosaic law and how Peter intervened in the Council of Jerusalem. Much later there were huge issues with whether Christ was fully God and fully man, whether he was two persons or one person and two natures, whether he had the full complement of a human body, soul and spirit, whether he had one will or two wills, whether the Holy Spirit was divine, what the sacraments were and whether they were necessary for salvation, which sacred writings were truly inspired and binding, and so many other concerns. It was the work of the Popes and the early ecumenical councils to guide the Church through this time of confusion and division. The Pope was the central reference point. We see that with Pope St. Clement, the fourth Pope, in the first century, as he resolved a dispute in Corinth. We see it famously in the fifth century, when Pope St. Leo the Great intervened with a “Tome” to guide the deliberations of the Council of Chalcedon in 451; after hearing it read, many said, in a phrase that has since become renowned, “Roma locuta est. Causa finita est.” “Rome [Peter] has spoken. The matter’s been put to rest.”
            • That teaching authority is just as important today. In the last sixty years, there have been various debates about the dignity of every human life, about the morality of marital sexuality, about whether Christ is the Savior of the human race, about the impossibility of the ordination of women to the priesthood, about the formula of baptism, about whether it’s possible to commit a mortal sin and how sins must be forgiven, and so many other themes. And the Church, through the successor of St. Peter, has sounded a clear trumpet. When we don’t have that trumpet, not only does the Church suffer division, but people’s salvation is at risk. While this teaching authority remains so important today, there is nevertheless some confusion with regard to the teaching authority of the Petrine Office. Some people think that rather than building his Church on a rock, Jesus built it on a weather-vane, in which successive popes can change the teachings of their predecessors on issues of faith and morals. In places like Germany, where there has recently taken place a so-called “Synodal Way,” some think they no longer even need the pope and can change teaching in a binding way for a national Church. There had to be a Vatican intervention within the last week to deal anew with some of its theological errors. The importance of the Petrine teaching office is seen in the chaos that ensues whenever a pope does not teach clearly and unambiguously on anything, like has happened recently, for example, on the conditions for worthy reception of holy communion, on whether it’s possible and prudent to bless couples in immoral relationships, on the unity of the sacrament of Holy Orders, and a few other issues. On this Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, as the whole Church gives God thanks for the gift of papal teaching office throughout the centuries, we likewise pray for the Pope and his successors to exercise that ever-needed charism guided by the Holy Spirit well, in an age of great confusion about what it means to be a human being, not to mention what it means to be a good Catholic, and how to live in accordance with our awesome origin and destiny.
            • I want to finish today by a reference to the second way Peter feeds Christ’s flock, which is by giving us Jesus’ body and blood. Peter is the one who gave the great confession of faith in Jesus’ Real Presence in the Eucharist. After Jesus told us that we needed to gnaw on his flesh and drink his blood to have life in us, after many of the disciples abandoned Jesus because they found that teaching too hard to endure, and after Jesus turned to the apostles and asked whether they, too, would abandon him, that’s when Peter stood up and said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Peter didn’t know better than the others how Jesus would give us his body and blood — he wouldn’t until exactly a year later when during the Last Supper he would totally change bread and wine into his body and blood and give himself to us to eat. Because he believed in Jesus, however, he believed in what he said. We hold fast to that confession of faith in Christ. At St. Peter’s Basilica this relationship between Peter and the Sacrament of the Eucharist is depicted artistically. The tabernacle in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel is a replica of a famous Church dedicated to St. Peter elsewhere in Rome, called San Pietro in Montorio. The Church at the time wanted to show the connection between Peter and the Eucharist and took a Church that symbolized Peter and placed Jesus within, to show that without holy orders, without the priesthood that finds its source of unity in Peter, there would be no Eucharist. So at the Mass, in which we have the double feast of the liturgy of the Word and the liturgy of the Eucharist, Peter’s authority is key for both. He nourishes us first with the Word of God and the applications of that Word to Christian life and then he nourishes us with the Word made Flesh. Peter was present at the first Mass and then celebrated the Eucharist for the early Christians with the table of the Word and the table of the Eucharist.
            • Today we thank the Lord for the gift of his work, his Church founded on Peter, his teaching through the Pope, his giving of the Sacraments, and we ask for the grace to hold fast to his continual confession. And we pray in a special way for the 266th Peter, Pope Francis, that his faith may never fail, that he may strengthen us his brothers and sisters with Jesus’ teaching, and help us all to confess Jesus in the world to be the Messiah and Son of God.

              •  

              The readings for today’s Mass were:

              Reading 1 1 PT 5:1-4

              Beloved:

              I exhort the presbyters among you,
              as a fellow presbyter and witness to the sufferings of Christ
              and one who has a share in the glory to be revealed.
              Tend the flock of God in your midst,
              overseeing not by constraint but willingly,
              as God would have it, not for shameful profit but eagerly.
              Do not lord it over those assigned to you,
              but be examples to the flock.
              And when the chief Shepherd is revealed,
              you will receive the unfading crown of glory.

              Responsorial Psalm PS 23:1-3A, 4, 5, 6

              R. (1) The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.

              The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
              In verdant pastures he gives me repose;
              Beside restful waters he leads me;
              he refreshes my soul.
              R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
              Even though I walk in the dark valley
              I fear no evil; for you are at my side
              With your rod and your staff
              that give me courage.
              R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
              You spread the table before me
              in the sight of my foes;
              You anoint my head with oil;
              my cup overflows.
              R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
              Only goodness and kindness follow me
              all the days of my life;
              And I shall dwell in the house of the LORD
              for years to come.
              R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.

              Alleluia MT 16:18

              R. Alleluia, alleluia.

              You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church;
              the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.
              R. Alleluia, alleluia.

              Gospel MT 16:13-19

              When Jesus went into the region of Caesarea Philippi

              he asked his disciples,
              “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”
              They replied, “Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah,
              still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
              He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”
              Simon Peter said in reply,
              “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
              Jesus said to him in reply, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah.
              For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.
              And so I say to you, you are Peter,
              and upon this rock I will build my Church,
              and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.
              I will give you the keys to the Kingdom of heaven.
              Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven;
              and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

              The post Building Our Christian Life on the Rock of Peter’s and Christ’s Confessions, Chair of St. Peter, February 22, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

              24 min
            • Lenten Conversion at the Sign Greater Than the Sign of Jonah, Wednesday of the First Week of Lent, February 21, 2024

              Fr. Roger J. Landry

              Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
              Wednesday of the First Week of Lent
              Memorial of St. Peter Damian, Doctor of the Church
              February 21, 2024
              Jonah 3:1-10, Ps 51, Lk 11:29-32

               

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

              https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.21.24_Homily_1.mp3

               

              The following points were attempted in the homily: 

              • We’re now one week into Lent and the Church today gives us a powerful reminder of the individual and communal conversion that Lent is supposed to bring about in us. Pope Benedict used to remind us that Lent is not about a minor course correction in our life but about a big change of heart and ways. Today is a good opportunity for us to see if we’re on the trajectory of tinkering a little with our life or profoundly altering it.
              • In the first reading, we encounter the Prophet Jonah, who was sent by God to the pagan city of Nineveh (modern day Mosul in northern Iraq and former capital of the neo-Assyrian empire) to preach massive conversion. “Forty more days and Nineveh will be destroyed!,” he exclaimed. The city was huge, taking three days to traverse in one direction, and yet Jonah didn’t have to announce “39 more days and Nineveh will be destroyed.” This pagan city heard the message immediately, believed God, spread it across the city, and converted, proclaiming a fast, vesting in sackcloth and sitting in ashes. The King himself divested of his royal garments and sat in sackcloth and ashes as well, proclaiming a total fast — “neither man nor beast, neither cattle nor sheep, shall taste anything; they shall not eat nor shall they drink water” — and commanding that both persons and animals shall be “covered with sackcloth and call loudly to God.” Most importantly, he decreed that “every man shall turn from his evil way and from the violence he has in hand.” All of this was in the hope that God may forgive them and that they may not perish. It was an unprecedented and total conversion — and God responded, because as we prayed in the Psalm, he never spurns a contrite and humbled heart.
              • If that’s what the pagan Ninevites did at the beginning of the 40-day proto-Lent that Jonah had announced, how much more seriously should we Christians take this 40-day season of penance and conversion? If they responded so thoroughly to the message of Jonah, how much more shall we respond to the “greater than Jonah,” Jesus, who announced that same basic message to us? One week ago, he put ashes on our forehead and told us to “Repent and believe in the Gospel.” He reminded us that we are dust and unto dust we shall return. He proclaimed a fast that he called us to do it differently than all the rest. He summoned us to prayer, to almsgiving, to remedying our evil actions and replacing them with good actions. Have we responded as seriously as the Ninevites to this summons? Or are we thinking that we still have 33 days left…
              • We may be tempted to respond to this summons by saying, “I’m not that bad!,” “I don’t have to repent from a life of crime or debauchery, or from harboring a cesspool of unchristian thoughts or desires.” But our individual conversion is only one part of Lent. There’s another aspect of it, which is communal reparation and conversion. Not everyone in Nineveh was as guilty as the others, but as a whole, Nineveh was a sinful city, and everyone, the good, the bad and the worse, even the innocent pets, repented. Likewise, not just for ourselves but for others we need to repent. Jesus said in the Gospel, “This generation is an evil generation,” and he can say that about every generation. There’s good in every generation, but there’s also evil in every generation. There are lots of great things in our culture, but much evil over which we need to repent. Two children every minute are legally executed in our country through abortion. We’ve allowed our hearts to harden toward immigrants. We’ve given into the pornification and vulgarization of our television and movie offerings. We’ve turned gossip into an art-form, which magazines and television programs totally dedicated to spreading gossip and rumor. We’ve legalized and are pushing pot, which is stinking up our city. We’re pretending as if various forms of extra-marital sex are sacraments rather that sins. We’re disfiguring the institution of marriage, which was part of God’s plans from the beginning, seeking to make marriage encompass a husband-less or a wife-less institution and rend asunder the union of one man and one woman God himself joined. And this is even before we comment on the sins associated with the daily rap sheet. We need to confront the fact that our generation is an evil generation, too, and we need to atone not only for our sins but for the sins of the world. Lent is a time not just of individual conversion but also of reparation for our sins and the sins of others, in which we turn to the Lord and beg for mercy.
              • But it doesn’t stop there. Part of our call as Jesus’ disciples is to become a sign of Jonah for others, a sign of conversion, someone whose own conversion makes other people scratch their heads and wonder why we, with a greater reputation for living our faith, are fasting so much, or getting up early to pray, or really sacrificing what we have for others at this time. It can call them to conversion. We need to proclaim, against the wiles of the devil, that we don’t have all the time in the world before we’re going to “be destroyed,” before we’ll breathe our last. When the Ninevites heard that they had only 40 days left, they didn’t waste time in converting. We and others may actually have fewer days left — for we know not the day or the hour — and the time to convert is now. The greatest way we preach conversion to others is not by wagging fingers but by showing the fruits of our own conversion and the joy to which it leads as we are now able to share more in Christ’s own risen life. But like Jonah, we can’t run away from this mission of praying for the conversion of others and seeking it. The first reading began today, “The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.” We know the first time he tried to escape the mission of calling others to conversion, because it was not a task to which he was looking forward. This morning it might be said that the Word of God is coming to us a 77th time or more.
              • Someone who lived as this sign and agent of conversion in the midst of his age was St. Peter Damian, the doctor of the Church we celebrate today. His life was a cruciform one that helped many people of his age come to conversion. He was neglected as a baby because his older brothers told his mother the family couldn’t have another mouth to feed, but another woman in the neighborhood suckled him. Orphaned, he was placed in the care of an older brother who neglected him badly, but eventually he was rescued by another brother who was a priest, who provided for his education and set him on the trajectory one day to be a doctor of the Church. His life was a crucible but at the same time he learned the power and wisdom of the Cross. When Pope Benedict gave a catechesis on him in 2009, he spoke about the Cross in his life, beginning with the Hermitage in which he worshipped God: “One detail should be immediately emphasized,” Pope Benedict said: “the Hermitage at Fonte Avellana was dedicated to the Holy Cross and the Cross was the Christian mystery that was to fascinate Peter Damian more than all the others. ‘Those who do not love the Cross of Christ do not love Christ,’ he said; and he described himself as ‘Petrus crucis Christi servorum famulus Peter, servant of the servants of the Cross of Christ’ (Ep, 9, 1). Peter Damian addressed the most beautiful prayers to the Cross in which he reveals a vision of this mystery which has cosmic dimensions for it embraces the entire history of salvation: ‘O Blessed Cross,’ he exclaimed, ‘You are venerated, preached and honoured by the faith of the Patriarchs, the predictions of the Prophets, the senate that judges the Apostles, the victorious army of Martyrs and the throngs of all the Saints’ (Sermo XLVII, 14, p. 304).” Pope Benedict drew a lesson for all of us: “Dear Brothers and Sisters, may the example of St Peter Damian spur us too always to look to the Cross as to the supreme act God’s love for humankind of God, who has given us salvation.” That Cross, too, becomes a way of life. It certainly did for St. Peter Damian. Early in life, he would offer hospitality to the poor as a way of serving Christ and voluntarily embraced poverty to be close to them. This was a way of life he brought to the monastery with him and in which he formed so many others. He used to call himself Petrus ultimus monachorum servus, “Peter, the least servant of the monks,” which points to how he became great by becoming the servant of all, just as he early called himself not servus servorum Dei like St. Gregory the Great, “servant of the servants of God” but “Petrus crucis Christi servorum famulus,” “Peter, servant of the servants of the Cross of Christ.” All servants of God are servants of the Cross and he sought to become the least of all and the servant of all. As a doctor of the Church, by his words and example, he is meant to teach us all. St. Peter also shows us how faith in the power of the Cross translates into a way of life. What is he most well-known for today is his work to root out corruption in the Church and in the life of faith, the “bitter jealousy and selfish ambition,” boasting, lying, “disorder and every foul practice” that “does not come down from above but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic.” Pope Benedict said in 2009, “He did not fear to denounce the state of corruption that existed in the monasteries and among the clergy, because, above all, of the practice of the conferral by the lay authorities of ecclesiastical offices; various Bishops and Abbots were behaving as the rulers of their subjects rather than as pastors of souls. Their moral life frequently left much to be desired. For this reason, in 1057 Peter Damian left his monastery with great reluctance and sorrow and accepted, if unwillingly, his appointment as Cardinal Bishop of Ostia. So it was that he entered fully into collaboration with the Popes in the difficult task of Church reform. He saw that to make his own contribution of helping in the work of the Church’s renewal contemplation did not suffice. He thus relinquished the beauty of the hermitage and courageously undertook numerous journeys and missions.” Beyond selfish ambition, one of the biggest corruptions he needed to root out was sexual license, especially homosexual activity, in monasteries and diocesan clergy, which is one of the reasons why so many today look to him as a patron to help root out all sins of unchastity in the Church. Having lived as a servant of the Cross of Christ, he became a sign of the greater than Jonah calling people to repent and believe in the Gospel.
              • The sign Jesus gives to every “evil age,” to each epoch in need of repentance including our own, is the sign of Jonah. That’s first but not just a sign of conversion. It’s also a sign given by his passion, death and resurrection. Just as Jonah was thrown from the boat to calm the storm, so Jesus was tossed overboard to quell the tempest of sin. Just as Jonah spent three days miraculously in the belly of the whale before being returned to shore saved, so Jesus spent three days in the belly of the earth before his resurrection. The sign of greatest conversion is the Cross. When we behold Jesus on the Cross like the serpent lifted up in the desert, we see what our sins did to Jesus and what they do to us: they kill us. That’s why in the Sistine Chapel there’s a huge image of Jonah right above Michelangelo’s Last Judgment and the Crucifix on the altar where the Pope celebrates Mass. But we also know that in the sign of Jonah whom Jesus is there is his resurrection, a clear sign that if we enter into this path of conversion, if we die to ourselves in him, if we toss ourselves into the infinite abyss of his merciful love, then we will experience salvation, so that from living in an evil generation we may pass to living forever with the saints. That’s why at the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, in the point-counterpoint series between Old Testament and New Testament scenes that fill up the nave, in counterpoint to Jonah’s being expunged from the whale on the third day we see the sculpture of Jesus’ resurrection. This points to the fact that the call to conversion is a call to life. The call to conversion is not principally about cutting out evil from our souls and helping all others in our culture to do the same; it’s principally about the life of joy that we will receive once we do.
              • Today as we prepare to receive within us that “greater than Jonah,” we ask Him to help us to convert so fully that we, as his mystical body, may continue to be that sign of conversion and salvation in the midst of our own Nineveh so that they, too, may experience not destruction but mercy and life.

                •  

                The readings for today’s Mass were: 

                Jon 3:1-10

                The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time:

                “Set out for the great city of Nineveh,
                and announce to it the message that I will tell you.”
                So Jonah made ready and went to Nineveh,
                according to the LORD’s bidding.
                Now Nineveh was an enormously large city;
                it took three days to go through it.
                Jonah began his journey through the city,
                and had gone but a single day’s walk announcing,
                “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed,”
                when the people of Nineveh believed God;
                they proclaimed a fast
                and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth.

                When the news reached the king of Nineveh,

                he rose from his throne, laid aside his robe,
                covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in the ashes.
                Then he had this proclaimed throughout Nineveh,
                by decree of the king and his nobles:
                “Neither man nor beast, neither cattle nor sheep,
                shall taste anything;
                they shall not eat, nor shall they drink water.
                Man and beast shall be covered with sackcloth and call loudly to God;
                every man shall turn from his evil way
                and from the violence he has in hand.
                Who knows, God may relent and forgive, and withhold his blazing wrath,
                so that we shall not perish.”
                When God saw by their actions how they turned from their evil way,
                he repented of the evil that he had threatened to do to them;
                he did not carry it out.

                Responsorial Psalm
                51:3-4, 12-13, 18-19

                R.    (19b) A heart contrite and humbled, O God, you will not spurn.

                Have mercy on me, O God, in your goodness;
                in the greatness of your compassion wipe out my offense.
                Thoroughly wash me from my guilt
                and of my sin cleanse me.
                R.    A heart contrite and humbled, O God, you will not spurn.
                A clean heart create for me, O God,
                and a steadfast spirit renew within me.
                Cast me not out from your presence,
                and your Holy Spirit take not from me.
                R.    A heart contrite and humbled, O God, you will not spurn.
                For you are not pleased with sacrifices;
                should I offer a burnt offering, you would not accept it.
                My sacrifice, O God, is a contrite spirit;
                a heart contrite and humbled, O God, you will not spurn.
                R.    A heart contrite and humbled, O God, you will not spurn.

                Verse before the Gospel
                Jl 2:12-13

                Even now, says the LORD,

                return to me with your whole heart
                for I am gracious and merciful.

                Gospel
                Lk 11:29-32

                While still more people gathered in the crowd, Jesus said to them,

                “This generation is an evil generation;
                it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it,
                except the sign of Jonah.
                Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites,
                so will the Son of Man be to this generation.
                At the judgment
                the queen of the south will rise with the men of this generation
                and she will condemn them,
                because she came from the ends of the earth
                to hear the wisdom of Solomon,
                and there is something greater than Solomon here.
                At the judgment the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation
                and condemn it,
                because at the preaching of Jonah they repented,
                and there is something greater than Jonah here.”

                The post Lenten Conversion at the Sign Greater Than the Sign of Jonah, Wednesday of the First Week of Lent, February 21, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                24 min
              • Jesus’ Most Important Lesson, First Tuesday of Lent, February 20, 2024

                Fr. Roger J. Landry

                Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
                Tuesday of the First Week of Lent
                February 20, 2024
                Is 55:10-11, Ps 34, Mt 6:7-15

                 

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

                https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.20.24_Homily_1.mp3

                 

                The following points were attempted in the homily: 

                • The whole purpose of Lent is for us to become fully Christian in identity and behavior and that involves rediscovering or deepening our relationship with God the Father through Christ in the Holy Spirit. On Ash Wednesday, we pondered how Jesus calls us to give alms, fast and pray differently from everyone else, doing each of these things in communion with our Father who sees in secret. We’re supposed to give alms recognizing that all that we are able to give to others we have first received from God the Father, and so our giving is an extension of his own loving Providence, as we saw yesterday. We’re supposed to fast in order to hunger for God and for what he hungers, as he made very clear in our readings on Friday and Saturday last week. And we’re supposed to pray by meeting God the Father in our “inner room,” the locked “store room” in a Jewish house where all valuables were kept, indicating to us not only that we are supposed to treasure God most but also that he loves us so much that he comes to meet us in the tiny “closet” of our interior life, whether we’re praying at home or in the middle of a multitude.
                • Today in the Gospel Jesus continues somewhat literally his Ash Wednesday instructions on prayer. Today’s passage is an excision of the Gospel passage from the Sermon on the Mount that the Church proclaims on Ash Wednesday. After Jesus said the words about the “inner room,” he elaborated about prayer in the words of today’s Gospel. He reiterates that as Christians we’re supposed to pray differently than everyone else, not looking for show like certain Pharisees, but also not “babbling on” like the pagans who think that their prayer will be heard because of the multiplication of words. Because of pagan polytheism, in which gods were warring against each other, pagan prayer would often involve trying to lobby your gods against the gods that others were supposedly lobbying, recognizing that for these gods, people were no more than pawns in their games. Prayers were thought to be heard by the greater accumulation of words and sound. Jesus said that not only should we not babble, but that we have to have a totally different conception and way of prayer altogether.
                • For us as Christians, prayer is to be an intimate conversation with a Father who loves us and already knows what we need. The first word Jesus teaches us is “Abba!” We’re to pray to a loving “daddy.” Then we’re supposed to seek what that loving Father who already knows what we need seeks. The first petition is that his name be hallowed rather than ours, and the way his name is hallowed is not just in our prayer but particularly through the Christian life of Christ-like love when others “seeing [our] good deeds glorify [our] Father in heaven” (Mt 5:16). We beg that his kingdom come and his will be done, rather than our own. We begin, in other words, by asking for everything related to God’s glory, kingdom and will.  A loving son or daughter wants what’s best for a parent — just like a parent wants what’s best for a child — and we begin praying not for ourselves and our needs but for God and his desires, knowing that God’s desires are for us to be holy by hallowing his name (the path to our own happiness!), for us to enter his kingdom fully as heirs, and for us to do his will on earth so that we may do it forever in heaven.
                • From there we turn to our own needs. The first thing we ask the Father is each day to give us our “supersubstantial” (epiousios) bread. This refers not just to the material sustenance we need for the day but also for what goes beyond our material substance, a reference that many of the early saints interpreted as a clear reference to Jesus in the Eucharist, the true Manna whom God the Father rains down each day to help us to hallow his name, enter and proclaim his kingdom and do his will. Next we ask the Father for mercy just as we have been merciful to others. Jesus glosses the entire prayer by reminding us that if we don’t forgive others, the Father won’t forgive us; this is not because he’ll punish us by refusing to forgive us but principally because unless we’ve got merciful hearts we can’t receive his mercy. God’s will is for us to become merciful like he is merciful and we ask God for the grace to do so. Finally we ask him not to let us fall when we’re tempted and to deliver us from the clutches of the evil one, a clear recognition not only that the devil exists and will be seeking to tempt us but that we need God’s help — not just human will power — to remain faithful to Him. This entire prayer is not just a prayer to the Father but a prayer to help us to become ever more united to and like the Father.
                • The whole mission of God the Son is precisely to reorder us properly to the Father. The Prophet Isaiah tells us today, “Just as from the heavens the rain and snow come down and do not return there till they have watered the earth, making it fertile and fruitful, … so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; It shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it.” This refers not just to God’s words, but most precisely to the Word, Jesus, who came forth from heaven precisely to water the soil of our hearts with his Living Water, to make us fertile and fruitful, and to nourish us in our divine filiation. He himself has already returned to the Father having achieved the end for which he was sent and he wants us to return through, with and in him, in his filial prayer, in his filial fasting, in his filial almsgiving, in his hallowing the Father’s name, announcing his kingdom, doing his will, becoming our supersubstantial bread, forgiving us, strengthening us in temptation and liberating us from the domination of evil. All Jesus has done is to help us to become spiritually fertile and fruitful so that we, too, might achieve the end for which we were made. That’s why Jesus’ teaching us how to pray, how to make of our life a fruitful existence made prayer, can be said to be his greatest lesson of all.
                • The mission of the Holy Spirit is likewise to help us to enter into this mystery of divine sonship. St. Paul told the Romans that we do not know how to pray as we ought but the Holy Spirit has been sent into our hearts — like that rain and snow coming from the heavens — so that we might cry out “Abba!” The Holy Spirit helps us to pray not by putting words on our lips but by changing who we are as we pray, so that we might pray as beloved children crying out “Daddy!” He convinces us that we’re children of God and, if children, heirs of the kingdom provided that we suffer with Christ so as to reign with him. That’s precisely what the Holy Spirit wants to do in us each Lent.
                • As we prepare now to receive the answer to our prayer to the Father to give us today our supersubstantial bread, we ask our Dad in heaven to strengthen us through this communion with his only begotten, beloved Son to pray differently than the rest, to pray as Christians, to pray united to him, as together as his family of beloved sons and daughters we enter into the greatest prayer ever made.

                  •  

                  The readings for today’s Mass were: 

                  Reading 1 Is 55:10-11
                  Thus says the LORD:
                  Just as from the heavens
                  the rain and snow come down
                  And do not return there
                  till they have watered the earth,
                  making it fertile and fruitful,
                  Giving seed to the one who sows
                  and bread to the one who eats,
                  So shall my word be
                  that goes forth from my mouth;
                  It shall not return to me void,
                  but shall do my will,
                  achieving the end for which I sent it.
                  Responsorial Psalm PS 34:4-5, 6-7, 16-17, 18-19
                  R. (18b) From all their distress God rescues the just.
                  Glorify the LORD with me,
                  let us together extol his name.
                  I sought the LORD, and he answered me
                  and delivered me from all my fears.
                  R. From all their distress God rescues the just.
                  Look to him that you may be radiant with joy,
                  and your faces may not blush with shame.
                  When the poor one called out, the LORD heard,
                  and from all his distress he saved him.
                  R. From all their distress God rescues the just.
                  The LORD has eyes for the just,
                  and ears for their cry.
                  The LORD confronts the evildoers,
                  to destroy remembrance of them from the earth.
                  R. From all their distress God rescues the just.
                  When the just cry out, the LORD hears them,
                  and from all their distress he rescues them.
                  The LORD is close to the brokenhearted;
                  and those who are crushed in spirit he saves.
                  R. From all their distress God rescues the just.

                  Verse Before the Gospel Mt 4:4b

                  One does not live on bread alone,

                  but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.

                  Gospel Mt 6:7-15
                  Jesus said to his disciples:
                  “In praying, do not babble like the pagans,
                  who think that they will be heard because of their many words.
                  Do not be like them.
                  Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
                  “This is how you are to pray:
                  Our Father who art in heaven,
                  hallowed be thy name,
                  thy Kingdom come,
                  thy will be done,
                  on earth as it is in heaven.
                  Give us this day our daily bread;
                  and forgive us our trespasses,
                  as we forgive those who trespass against us;
                  and lead us not into temptation,
                  but deliver us from evil.“If you forgive men their transgressions,
                  your heavenly Father will forgive you.
                  But if you do not forgive men,
                  neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.”

                  The post Jesus’ Most Important Lesson, First Tuesday of Lent, February 20, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                  17 min
                • The Lenten Summons to the Perfection of Charity, First Monday of Lent, February 19, 2024

                  Fr. Roger J. Landry

                  Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
                  Monday of the First Week of Lent
                  February 19, 2024
                  Lev 19:1-2.11-18, Ps 19, Mt 25:31-46

                   

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

                  https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.19.24_Homily_1.mp3

                   

                  The following text guided today’s homily: 

                  • The season of Lent in general, which takes us back to the fundamentals, is an opportunity for us to focus on some of life’s biggest questions, questions that in the hustle and bustle of each day we can punt. Why am I here? Where I am going in life? How am I to get from where I am to where I hope to be, to where God wants me to be? In the readings for today’s Mass, God, our supreme Teacher, gives us great clarity.
                  • He first tells us that the reason why we’re here, the reason why he created us, the reason why we’re born and in existence, is to become more and more his holy image and likeness. “Be holy,” he instructs us through Moses in the first reading, “for I, the Lord, your God, am holy.” The measure of our life will be determined by the measure with which we allow God’s holiness and life to enter into ours. Jesus himself would reiterate this point in the Gospel when he tells us “Be merciful as your heavenly Father is merciful,” and “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Holiness is to become like God who is holy, holy, holy. We can’t do that, obviously, by our own power. We know all too well our weaknesses. But nothing is impossible for God.
                  • Holiness is ultimately, as the Second Vatican Council described for us in Perfectae Caritatis, the perfection of love, when God who is love dwells within us so that we can love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength and love our neighbor with all our mind, heart, soul and strength. That’s why in today’s readings, God shows us the path to holiness precisely in the perfection of charity.
                  • In Leviticus, Moses gives us the Old Testament emphasis on “negative commandments,” or “thou shalt nots.” St. Paul called the Old Testament a “pedagogue,” a “disciplinarian” or “tutor,” something that God had given us precisely to be ready for the Master and his new and eternal Covenant. Just like a parent begins to instruct a child morally through describing what they shouldn’t do — “don’t stick the key into the electric outlet,” “don’t put your hand on the fire,” “don’t hit your little sister,” “don’t cross the road without looking both ways first” — because these are much clearer for children to understand than larger positive commands that require more thought, interpretation and application (like “love one another as I have loved you”), God does the same thing with training us toward holiness. He gives us first what we shouldn’t do. Through Moses, he tells us not to steal, not to lie or speak falsely, not to defraud or rob, not to withhold wages, not to curse the deaf, not to trip up the blind, not to make dishonest judgments, not to play favorites, not to spread slander, not to stand idly by when our neighbor’s life is threatened, not to bear hatred, not to take revenge and not to cherish grudges. All of this is summarized at the end in the positively phrased version of “Golden Rule,” “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” — which practically means “treat your neighbor as you would want your neighbor to treat you” — but in practice in Old Testament morality, this was understood as the “Silver Rule,” as “Do not do to your neighbor what you would not want him to do to you.” This was the way God was training them toward the perfection of holiness, by clearly indicating to them first the behaviors contrary to charity. But when we flip the negative commands around, we see what we are supposed to be doing positively: rather than stealing, robbing or defrauding from others he wants us to give generously, sacrificing for them; rather than lying, speaking falsely or spreading slander, he wants us to tell the truth, praise and build up; rather than withholding wages he wants us to give them promptly and perhaps even with a charitable bonus; rather than making fun or hurting the handicapped, he wants us to have special care for them; rather than judging dishonestly and playing favorites, he wants us to judge everyone with merciful love and treat everyone with justice; rather than standing idly by when our neighbors’ lives are threatened, he wants us to be willing to lay down of our lives for them; and rather than bearing hatred, taking revenge and cherishing grudges, he wants us to forgive and overcome evil with good. This is what it means to love our neighbor as we would want to be loved. This is the way we would reflect God’s holiness, his way of acting, and grow in it.
                  • Throughout the Gospels, Jesus would himself teach us and show us positively what the perfection of charity was in his own care for the poor, hungry, grieving, abandoned, and all others in need. He called us to love others as he has loved us first to the point of washing their feet, crossing the road to care for their wounds, forgiving them and praying for them even when they were making themselves our enemies. But not even that was enough for Jesus. In today’s Gospel he gives us in a sense the pinnacle of his teaching on charity by identifying so much with others that he says that he takes personally whatever we do or fail to do to them. St. John wrote in his first epistle that we cannot love the God we have not seen if we don’t love the brother or sister we do see (1 John 4:20). And Jesus wants to help us to grow in the capacity for love by making it “easier” for us, calling us to treat others the way we would treat him, since he presumes that if we knew we were caring for him directly, most of us would give it our best.
                  • And so the questions come for us:
                    • When we see someone who’s hungry or thirsty, do we try to help get him food or do we walk by or tell him to go get a job? And if we know that Jesus identifies with the hungry, is it enough for us to wait for someone who is hungry to approach us for food — a somewhat frequent occurrence for someone in big cities, especially outside of Churches — or do we go out in search of Jesus in the disguise of the man or woman or child with hunger pains? Jesus calls us not just not to treat the hungry and thirsty the way the Rich Man treated Lazarus (Lk 16), but positively to love them by feeding them.
                    • Do we welcome strangers or resent their presence? There is a terrible xenophobia (a fear of the stranger) present in some parts of our country, including among Catholics, with regard to immigrants. Many of us don’t see them as brothers and sisters and we certainly don’t see them as Jesus Christ. If we did, would we ever ask to see Jesus’ green card? Would we ever fight to have Jesus deported? Would we ever put the child Jesus in a cage and forcibly separate him from his parents? Yet this is what many Christians tolerate or even clamor for with regard to immigrants who entered or stayed in our country illegally. Jesus tells us that the way we treat them is the way we treat him. If we know Christ identifies with the stranger, do we go out in search of people to provide a welcome? Jesus calls us not only not to abuse strangers in our midst but to welcome them into our homes, into our lives, and allow them to inconvenience us, because that’s what loving them means.
                    • Do we clothe the naked or do we take advantage of their nudity? Today we’re living in an age of rampant pornography where so many are trained not to clothe the naked but strip them with their eyes and minds. So many fuel and fund the porn industry despite the fact that Jesus identifies with every woman, man, girl or boy violated and objectified in this way. Similarly when we see someone without proper clothing, do we seek to help or do we leave the person on his own? If we know Christ identifies with the naked, do we go out in search of people, for example, who do not have adequate winter clothing? Jesus here instructs us not only not to scourge them but to care for them, because that’s what’s consistent with loving them.
                    • Do we have a preferential care for those who are sick or do we ignore them lest we catch what they have? If we know Christ identifies with those who are ill, do we lovingly go out of our way to visit those who are in hospitals and nursing homes, rehab centers or homebound? Sickness is one of the most vulnerable times of life, a time not only of pain but also of occasional desperation when one has to suffer alone. Jesus had a special care for the sick and he wants all of us to do so remembering that when we see anyone ill, we should recognize that Jesus is saying to us, “I am ill and I need you to care for me.” Jesus here calls us not just not to neglect them or “put them out of their misery” but to love them by treating them with sacrifice and tenderness.
                    • Do we care for prisoners at all or just think of them as a bunch of thugs toward whom our only reaction should be fear? Not everyone is called to face-to-face prison ministry to strangers, but when we know someone in prison, do we seek to write that person and visit? Do we pray for those who are incarcerated? Do we seek to send Bibles or prayer books to help the time of imprisonment be a time of conversion rather than of hardening of hearts? When someone is released from prison and we meet him in Church, do we continue to treat him mainly as an ex-con or do we try to help him get back on his feet? Jesus calls us here not just not to call for the death penalty for prisoners, but actually to go out of our way to minister to them in one way or the other, because that’s what’s consistent with loving them.
                    • Jesus makes clear that while we are not saved by our works — we’ve saved by grace through faith — we will be judged by our works. We will be judged by our love, which is the perfection of holiness. It’s not those who cry out “Lord, Lord” who will be saved, Jesus tells us elsewhere, but the one who does the will of his Father in heaven. Jesus makes quite plain in the Gospel that those who don’t care for the poor and the needy, who don’t open their hearts to the stranger and to the prisoner, go to Hell. He notes that many, if they knew it were he in disguise, would readily care for him in their need, and he wants us to treat everyone the way we would treat him. The poor we will always have with us, he reminds us every Holy Week, so we will always have the opportunity and the duty to grow in love through caring for them.
                    • Jesus identified with the needy because he himself on the Cross experienced all of the attributes he describes in today’s Gospel. He was hungry on the Cross and cried out in his fifth word, “I thirst!” He was stripped totally naked (the loin cloth with which he’s vested on the Crucifix is merely for our sense of decorum). He was a stranger even in the world he created, kicked out of his own city of Jerusalem to die as a malefactor at the place of the skull. He was sick and wounded, having had his flesh ripped open by a brutal Roman scourging, having been beaten and crowned with thorns. He was imprisoned not only in the high priest’s dungeon but pinned to the cross by nails. He continues to live out his crucifixion when people don’t care for him, don’t love him, in others.
                    • We ask the Lord Jesus, whom we will soon recognize under the appearances of simple bread and wine here, to help us to recognize him in the disguise of the poor we’ll meet later t0day. As St. Teresa of Calcutta used to repeat, the same one who says, “This is my Body,” tell us, “I was hungry and you gave me food.” He reiterates to each of us today his call to be holy as he is holy, to love others as he has loved us and as we want to love him. As he prepares to feed us, we ask him to strengthen us to live up to this call!

                      •  

                      The readings for today’s Mass were:

                      Reading 1 LV 19:1-2, 11-18
                      The LORD said to Moses,
                      “Speak to the whole assembly of the children of Israel and tell them:
                      Be holy, for I, the LORD, your God, am holy.“You shall not steal.
                      You shall not lie or speak falsely to one another.
                      You shall not swear falsely by my name,
                      thus profaning the name of your God.
                      I am the LORD.“You shall not defraud or rob your neighbor.
                      You shall not withhold overnight the wages of your day laborer.
                      You shall not curse the deaf,
                      or put a stumbling block in front of the blind,
                      but you shall fear your God.
                      I am the LORD.
                      “You shall not act dishonestly in rendering judgment.
                      Show neither partiality to the weak nor deference to the mighty,
                      but judge your fellow men justly.
                      You shall not go about spreading slander among your kin;
                      nor shall you stand by idly when your neighbor’s life is at stake.
                      I am the LORD.
                      “You shall not bear hatred for your brother in your heart.
                      Though you may have to reprove him,
                      do not incur sin because of him.
                      Take no revenge and cherish no grudge against your fellow countrymen.
                      You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
                      I am the LORD.”
                      Responsorial Psalm PS 19:8, 9, 10, 15
                      R. (John 6:63b) Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life.
                      The law of the LORD is perfect,
                      refreshing the soul.
                      The decree of the LORD is trustworthy,
                      giving wisdom to the simple.
                      R. Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life.
                      The precepts of the LORD are right,
                      rejoicing the heart.
                      The command of the LORD is clear,
                      enlightening the eye.
                      R. Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life.
                      The fear of the LORD is pure,
                      enduring forever;
                      The ordinances of the LORD are true,
                      all of them just.
                      R. Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life.
                      Let the words of my mouth and the thought of my heart
                      find favor before you,
                      O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.
                      R. Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life.

                      Verse Before The Gospel 2 COR 6:2B

                      Behold, now is a very acceptable time;

                      behold, now is the day of salvation.

                      Gospel MT 25:31-46
                      Jesus said to his disciples:
                      “When the Son of Man comes in his glory,
                      and all the angels with him,
                      he will sit upon his glorious throne,
                      and all the nations will be assembled before him.
                      And he will separate them one from another,
                      as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.
                      He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
                      Then the king will say to those on his right,
                      ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father.
                      Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
                      For I was hungry and you gave me food,
                      I was thirsty and you gave me drink,
                      a stranger and you welcomed me,
                      naked and you clothed me,
                      ill and you cared for me,
                      in prison and you visited me.’
                      Then the righteous will answer him and say,
                      ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you,
                      or thirsty and give you drink?
                      When did we see you a stranger and welcome you,
                      or naked and clothe you?
                      When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’
                      And the king will say to them in reply,
                      ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did
                      for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’
                      Then he will say to those on his left,
                      ‘Depart from me, you accursed,
                      into the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his angels.
                      For I was hungry and you gave me no food,
                      I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
                      a stranger and you gave me no welcome,
                      naked and you gave me no clothing,
                      ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.’
                      Then they will answer and say,
                      ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty
                      or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison,
                      and not minister to your needs?’
                      He will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you,
                      what you did not do for one of these least ones,
                      you did not do for me.’
                      And these will go off to eternal punishment,
                      but the righteous to eternal life.”

                      The post The Lenten Summons to the Perfection of Charity, First Monday of Lent, February 19, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                      25 min
                    • A Special Forty Days in the Desert with Jesus, First Sunday of Lent (B), February 18, 2024

                      Fr. Roger J. Landry

                      Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, New York
                      First Sunday in Lent, Year B
                      February 18, 2024
                      Gen 9:8-15, Ps 25, 1 Pet 3:18-22, Mk 1:12-15

                       

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

                      https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.18.24_CCM_Homily_1.mp3

                       

                      The following text guided the homily: 

                      • Today St. Mark tells us in the Gospel, “The Spirit drove Jesus into the desert and he remained in the desert for forty days, tempted by Satan.” The First Sunday of Lent every year is a time when the same Holy Spirit who drove Jesus into the Judean desert wants to drive all of us, so that we can recapitulate Christ’s 40 days away from everything and, apart from every distraction, can focus on our relationship with God and others and on who we are — and, with Christ’s help, confront and overcome the way that the devil seeks to distort those relations and that image. As we likewise talk about on the Second Sunday of Advent each year when we meet John the Baptist in the desert at the Jordan River, most of us, even those who experience brutal winters, have no desire at all to go to the desert, certainly for no more than a brief visit. At a spiritual level, however, we should always have a great love for going to the desert with Jesus, because the desert is what helps us to understand the 40-day pilgrimage of Lent, in which we join and imitate Jesus in the desert and ponder the fruits of what he learned.
                      • To go into the desert is increasingly difficult for people today. Most people are so connected that if we lose our cell phone signal or battery juice we can easily feel totally disoriented. When I preach weekend retreats for lay people, and ask them voluntarily to surrender their phones so that they can give their full attention to Jesus, the expressions on some people’s faces makes it seem as if I’m asking for permission to saw off their arms or their legs. While the Lord is not calling us all physically to go to the Sahara, Gobi, Mojave or Judean deserts, he is calling us to the state of the desert, removing ourselves from distractions, from our screens and devices, newspapers and magazines, and the various things that may be fine in themselves but crowd our lives with noise so that we can’t hear God and with clutter so that we can’t see God. The first temptation we face in Lent is to refuse to go into the desert with Christ, to think that our Lent can be complete if, for example, all we do is give up sweets. We need silence. We need prayer. As Vatican Cardinal Robert Sarah from Guinea wrote in his recent book The Power of Silence, “God is silence, and the devil is noisy. … God’s first language is silence.… In order to understand this language, we must learn to be silent and to rest in God. [God] waits for our silence to reveal Himself. Regaining the sense of silence is therefore a priority, an urgent necessity. … The true revolution comes from silence; it leads us toward God and toward others.” The devil wants us to remain in noise where we can’t hear God’s gentle whispers, in the cacophony of modern life, of anxieties, worries, worldly pleasures and allurements. New York is a place in which life is noisier than most places on earth. And so it’s essential that we allow the Holy Spirit permission to drive us into the desert with Jesus. The first big hurdle for us in Lent is to hear Christ’s voice from the desert calling us to this silence and prayer with him, as he says, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while” (Mk 6:31). He wants us to take his yoke upon us and learn from him, to bind ourselves to him for this annual 40-day spiritual retreat. What is our response to him and this holy summons?
                      • There’s a clear purpose to this time with him in the desert. Jesus reveals this to us as soon as he departed from the desert. St. Mark tells us that Jesus emerged preaching, “Repent and believe in the Gospel.” These are the words he shared with us earlier this week, as we were marked with ashes on Wednesday. To repent — what metanoia means in Greek — is to revolutionize the way we look at things, the world, ourselves, and others, so that we might adopt Christ’s perspective. It means to turn our thoughts around, or better right side up. It’s as if we’ve been going in one direction and Jesus tells us, “Stop, turn around and go in this new direction, following the path I will show you.” Jesus is not calling us to a minor course correction in Lent; rather, for most of us, he’s summoning us to something far closer to a 180-degree turn. He wants us to examine all those parts of our life that are not in alignment with him and convert in such a way that we begin to turn with him full-time — which is what con-vertere means in Latin — and to follow him. That’s what he hopes to accomplish in us by our 40-days with him in prayer and silence. He’s offering us a new life and wants us to seize it.
                      • The desert experience with him is meant to help us to learn to repent and believe in the Gospel, to commit ourselves to living by faith in him and all he teaches. St. Mark tells us today, very concisely, that when Jesus went into the desert, “he was among wild beasts and the angels ministered to him.” In Lent and in life, we will experience with Jesus both “wild beasts” and angels. Let’s begin with the wild beasts. Pope Francis described them symbolically in his Angelus meditation this morning in St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican. He said that, in the spiritual life, we can think of the wild beasts “as the disordered passions that divide the heart, trying to take possession of it. They entice us, they seem seductive, and if we are not careful, we risk being torn apart by them. We can give a name to these ‘beasts’ of the soul: the various vices, the coveting of wealth, … the vanity of pleasure, … and the craving for fame. …  are like ‘wild’ beasts, and as such they must be tamed and fought; otherwise, they will devour our freedom. And Lent helps us to enter the inner wilderness to correct these things.”
                      • If we look at St. Matthew’s and St. Luke’s much longer accounts of Jesus’ 40 days in the desert, which Jesus himself must have conveyed to his first disciples since no one else was present, we see the types of ‘wild beasts” with which the devil sought to attack Jesus. They tell us that the devil subjected Jesus to “every temptation” (Lk 4:13), to every form of attack, in order to try to get him to disorder his relationship with God, with others and within himself. It’s important for us to come to know these wild beasts well, and how Jesus tamed and fought them, since they attack us not only in the desert but right here on the Columbia campus.
                      • The first class of beast Jesus fought was the temptation to disorder his relationship with God the Father, indicated by the devil’s seductive appeal for Jesus to throw himself off the parapet of the temple, presuming that God the Father would save him by sending his angels to prevent his even dashing his foot against a stone. The devil similarly seeks to tempt us to believe that God will prevent any harm to us or others whenever we do something risky and fatal. The devil wants to get us to think we can smoke several packs of cigarettes a day and not get cancer, speed drunk behind the wheel and never get into an accident, blow off study and not fail a test, sleep around and never get an STD or conceive a child. He wants us to jump off various cliffs and then blame God for not preventing our suffering. He tempts us step-by-step, and day-by-day, toward spiritual suicide. Jesus shows how to tame and fight this beast by committing ourselves never to put the Lord our God to the test, but, instead of tossing ourselves from dangerous precipices into sin, to throw ourselves lovingly into God’s arms and remain them.
                      • The second beast that St. Luke and St. Matthew describe is the temptation is to disorder our relationships with others. The devil promised Jesus that he would give him rule over all the cities, to be in control over everyone else, to have them serve him rather than he serve them, if only Jesus would take the bait to fall down before the devil in homage. Jesus resisted the temptation toward this type of diabolical control by quoting Scripture about worshipping and serving the Lord our God alone. The same devil tries to tempt us, too, to the same Faustian bargain, to distort our relationship with others, so that we may have over them dominion, control and power. The way to tame and resist this beast is to follow Jesus’ advice, and dedicate ourself to serving God and others made in God’s image and likeness, reverencing the Lord in them, striving to serve them with love rather than be served, and ultimately laying down our lives for them as Christ himself did.
                      • The third beast is the temptation is to disorder our relationship within ourselves, using what God has given us egocentrically for our own purposes rather than for God and others. This is shown in the temptation the devil gave to Jesus to change stones into bread after forty days of hunger. How strong this temptation must have been for someone so famished! The devil is always trying to get us to use the gifts and talents with which God has bestowed us selfishly, to make a name for ourselves, to make our kingdom come, and to do our will. Jesus shows us how to fight against and tame this beast, by replying and showing us we do not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from God’s mouth. He helps us to use our talents not self-centeredly but for God and others, and ultimately for our own true good, that the word of God may be done in us.
                      • Mark tells us that there are also angels sent to minister to Jesus in the desert and angels are likewise sent to help us. This first and foremost refers to real angels, who exist and seek to help us in the battle for love and against sin. But Pope Francis also interprets them symbolically as“the good thoughts and sentiments suggested by the Holy Spirit. While temptations tear us apart, the good divine inspirations unify us and let us enter into harmony: they quench the heart and infuse the taste of Christ.” What are these angels, these messengers, these means, good thought and feelings? Jesus indicated them to us as Lent began on Ash Wednesday. They’re the three traditional Lenten practices of prayer, almsgiving and fasting. Jesus told us in the Gospel four days ago, “When you pray, … when you give alms,… when you give fast.” These three “angelic practices” help us to become stronger, respectively, against the devil’s seductions to disorder our relationship with God, others and ourselves. They therefore constitute essential weapons in our fight against the wild beasts of disordered passions and against the work of the devil and the fallen angels. As “angels” these practices announce to us the path to do God’s will and enter into communion with him. Every Lent we go into the desert with Jesus, so that, through uniting ourselves to his prayer, fasting and self-giving, we may be strengthened by him against every way the devil seeks to attack.
                      • In terms of the “angel” of prayer, when we commit ourselves to pray in our inner room in intimacy with God the Father, we make God our priority. Perhaps the biggest sin most people are susceptible to is pushing God to the periphery of our lives. Many of us pray only when we need something, or only a few minutes a day, or only in a mechanical way when, for example, we come to Church. But this is simply not consistent with really believing in God and loving him above every other love. It’s also dangerous. The devil well knows that for many of us he would never be able to convince us never to pray and to cut ourselves off from conversation with God completely. So what he tries to do is to get us to think that we’re too busy to pray much, and that God doesn’t really care about our praying more than when we can. St. John Paul II talked about this in his great document Novo Millennio Ineunte at the beginning of this millennium. “It would be wrong,” he wrote, “to think that ordinary Christians can be content with a shallow prayer that is unable to fill their whole life. Especially in the face of the many trials to which today’s world subjects faith, they would be not only mediocre Christians but ‘Christians at risk.’ They would run the insidious risk of seeing their faith progressively undermined, and would perhaps end up succumbing to the allure of ‘substitutes,’ accepting alternative religious proposals and even indulging in far-fetched superstitions.” That’s the devil’s draw play: to get us to accept a shallow prayer life so that he can eventually draw us away from the Lord into superstitions and eventually into spiritual oblivion. The devil wants to lead us gradually into that truly risky situation. That’s why increasing the quantity and quality of our prayer time in the Lenten desert is what will have the most dramatic impact in changing us and turning around our minds and hearts. As St. Augustine reminds us, prayer doesn’t change God, it changes us. The more we seek God’s will in prayer, the more time we spend praising him, thanking him, begging for his forgiveness and confiding to him what we and others need, the more we will become like him and love what he loves. As the devil wants to tempt us toward minimizing prayer, the Spirit, as a divine angel, wants to drive us into the desert with Jesus so that our whole lives will be characterized by prayer.
                      • The second angel that announces God and seeks to bring us into communion with him is almsgiving. The devil regularly tempts us use others for our purposes and to ignore them if they don’t fit into our own ends. We often view life as a competitive survival of the fittest contest rather than one of loving cooperation and mutual help. In the devil can’t get us to become maleficent or to stop doing good deeds altogether, he wants to assuage our consciences by reminding us that a few times this week or this month or this year, we’ve done some acts of charity. For a follower of Jesus, however, charity must become a way of life, our true mission. That’s what real almsgiving does. Jesus gave everything for us and summoned us to love others as he has loved us. He became the Good Samaritan and rescued us and told us to go and do the same. Almgiving is not just about sacrificing things or time, but ultimately sacrificing ourselves. A Christian is supposed to be a person for God and others; that’s what the devil wants to distort and that’s what Jesus, especially in Lent, wants to fortify. So the angel of God therefore calls us to almsgiving.
                      • The third angel we have wants to help fix our distorted relationship with the material order. So often we can prioritize our material needs, living for the satisfaction of our bodily pleasure. We can become hedonists, those whose happiness is defined in terms of the meals we eat, the beverages we consume, the human experiences we can accumulate. God doesn’t call us to give up all the things of this world he created good, but he does call us to a deeper, more long-lasting and truer form of happiness, prioritizing our soul. That’s why fasting is so important. The only way we can learn to live by every word that comes from God’s mouth is by not living on bread and material things alone. Fasting helps us to cut the cords of our addictions and hyper-dependence, because either we control our appetites or they control us. When we eventually gain self-mastery, we can begin to hunger for what God hungers. Fasting opens us up in gratitude to God’s providence, his giving us each day our daily bread, so that we may better empathize and care for others who are in material need. That’s why fasting is the third angel — and the most countercultural — calling us to God, so that our bodies may align fully with our souls in praising God.
                      • The renewal God wants to give us in Lent, the goal toward which the angelic practices he announces are meant to lead, is the full living out of our baptismal identity as Christians. We see this in the other readings today. In the Book of Genesis, we encounter Noah and the new beginning, the second chance, God gave the human race after the flood. In order to be saved, people — and the other animals of creation — needed to be on Noah’s Ark. The Fathers of the Church eventually said that the Ark is a symbol of Peter’s boat the Church: to be saved, we need to be in that Barque. But we know that the Church is ultimately Jesus’ Mystical Body. To be saved we need to be a member of his Body, to enter into him, and that means entering into his prayer, his fasting, his almsgiving, his life, death and resurrection. Every Lent, we examine whether we’re fully in Him who is the Ark, we look at how much we are living the new and eternal Covenant in Christ’s blood, seeking God’s ways, walking his paths, and ultimately living out the promises of our baptism. St. Peter tells us in today’s second reading the connection between what God did with Noah and what he seeks to do with us. “God,” St. Peter says, “waited patiently in the days of Noah during the building of the ark in which a few persons, eight in all, were saved through water.” Then he applies that historical occurrence to our situation: “This prefigured baptism, which saves you now.” Notice the “now.” Baptism is not just supposed to be a thing of our “past,” for many of us in our first days of life, when we became Christians. It’s supposed to be something very much in the present. Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert after his baptism in the Jordan in order precisely to lead us on an exodus through the desert into the promised land of his kingdom. Lent is a type of exodus that seeks to bring about a new order, a new creation, a new kingdom, something that God brought about with Noah, the flood and the ark. Baptism, St. Peter says, is “an appeal to God for a clear conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,” and that appeal is meant to be made always in the “now.” Lent not only prepares catechumens and elect for the Sacrament of Baptism but is meant to lead every believer to a new beginning. After our “drowning” in the waters of baptism, we’re led into a similar post-baptismal desert each year by same Spirit who drove Jesus there, where we receive God’s help to renounce Satan, all his evil works and all his empty promises, and live by faith in God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Lent is a time to repent and believe, to renew our baptismal promises and live them as not just truths we consent to, but as the fundamental realities of our life, of who we are and what we do. Just as Noah built an ark far from water at God’s command, even though so many thought building such a ship there was ludicrous, so we enter the ark not in a seaport but with Jesus in the middle of the desert, seeking, like Noah, to live by faith with a clean conscience in our triune God.
                      • The Eucharist is the great means by which we are able every day to enter more deeply into the practices of the desert with Jesus. It’s where the angels of God lead us and where we’re strengthened in the fight against the wild beasts of everyday life. In preparation for the Eucharist, we heed the angel calling us to fast, at least an hour, so that we may hunger more and more for every word that comes from the Father’s mouth, and especially for the Word-made-flesh, Jesus, who comes from the Father’s bosom. In the Mass, we enter into the supreme form of prayer, Jesus’ own prayer from the Last Supper and Calvary. And we not only receive Jesus’ greatest alms — his body, blood, soul and divinity — but are helped by him from the inside, to “do this” in memory of him, living truly Eucharistic lives by giving our body and blood, sweat, tears and heart in loving service to others. At the time of Noah, God said that, after the flood, the rainbow would be the sign to “recall the covenant I have made between you and all living beings,” so now, as we’ll pray later in the Eucharistic Prayer, the Cross has “become the lasting sign of your Covenant” (Reconciliation I), and each Mass we receive Jesus’ Body and Blood given on Calvary as the “new and eternal Covenant,” as the efficacious sign that unites us to Christ, helps us to receive the fruit of his prayer, fasting and almsgiving, and equips us to pray, fast and give of ourselves together with him. As we prepare to receive Jesus today, we ask him for the graces to live this 40-day retreat by heeding his call boldly and eagerly to “come with him apart from the crowds to a deserted place,” so that we can receive his strength to heed the angels and fight and tame the beasts,  so that we can experience the joy that comes from repenting and believing, and so that we can become signs with him to the whole world that this is the time of fulfillment and the kingdom of God is at hand.

                        •  

                        The readings for tonight’s Mass were: 

                        Reading 1
                        Gn 9:8-15
                        God said to Noah and to his sons with him:
                        “See, I am now establishing my covenant with you
                        and your descendants after you
                        and with every living creature that was with you:
                        all the birds, and the various tame and wild animals
                        that were with you and came out of the ark.
                        I will establish my covenant with you,
                        that never again shall all bodily creatures be destroyed
                        by the waters of a flood;
                        there shall not be another flood to devastate the earth.”
                        God added:
                        “This is the sign that I am giving for all ages to come,
                        of the covenant between me and you
                        and every living creature with you:
                        I set my bow in the clouds to serve as a sign
                        of the covenant between me and the earth.
                        When I bring clouds over the earth,
                        and the bow appears in the clouds,
                        I will recall the covenant I have made
                        between me and you and all living beings,
                        so that the waters shall never again become a flood
                        to destroy all mortal beings.”
                        Responsorial Psalm
                        Ps 25:4-5, 6-7, 8-9.
                        R. (cf. 10) Your ways, O Lord, are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.
                        Your ways, O LORD, make known to me;
                        teach me your paths,
                        Guide me in your truth and teach me,
                        for you are God my savior.
                        R. Your ways, O Lord, are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.
                        Remember that your compassion, O LORD,
                        and your love are from of old.
                        In your kindness remember me,
                        because of your goodness, O LORD.
                        R. Your ways, O Lord, are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.
                        Good and upright is the LORD,
                        thus he shows sinners the way.
                        He guides the humble to justice,
                        and he teaches the humble his way.
                        R. Your ways, O Lord, are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.
                        Reading 2
                        1 Pt 3:18-22
                        Beloved:
                        Christ suffered for sins once,
                        the righteous for the sake of the unrighteous,
                        that he might lead you to God.
                        Put to death in the flesh,
                        he was brought to life in the Spirit.
                        In it he also went to preach to the spirits in prison,
                        who had once been disobedient
                        while God patiently waited in the days of Noah
                        during the building of the ark,
                        in which a few persons, eight in all,
                        were saved through water.
                        This prefigured baptism, which saves you now.
                        It is not a removal of dirt from the body
                        but an appeal to God for a clear conscience,
                        through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
                        who has gone into heaven
                        and is at the right hand of God,
                        with angels, authorities, and powers subject to him.
                        Verse Before the Gospel
                        Mt 4:4b
                        One does not live on bread alone,
                        but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.
                        Gospel
                        Mk 1:12-15
                        The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert,
                        and he remained in the desert for forty days,
                        tempted by Satan.
                        He was among wild beasts,
                        and the angels ministered to him.

                        After John had been arrested,

                        Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God:
                        “This is the time of fulfillment.
                        The kingdom of God is at hand.
                        Repent, and believe in the gospel.”

                        The post A Special Forty Days in the Desert with Jesus, First Sunday of Lent (B), February 18, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                        31 min
                      • Driven with Christ into the Lenten Desert, First Sunday of Lent (B), February 18, 2024

                        Fr. Roger J. Landry

                        Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
                        First Sunday in Lent, Year B
                        February 18, 2024
                        Gen 9:8-15, Ps 25, 1 Pet 3:18-22, Mk 1:12-15

                         

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

                        https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.18.24_MCs_Homily_1.mp3

                         

                        The following text guided the homily: 

                        • Most people, even those who experience brutal winters, have no desire at all to go to the desert, certainly for no more than a brief visit. At a spiritual level, however, we should always have a great love for the desert, because the desert is what helps us to understand the 40-day pilgrimage of Lent, in which we join and imitate Jesus in the desert and ponder the fruits of what he learned and experienced there upon his return. Every Lent, the same Holy Spirit whom we read in today’s Gospel drove Jesus into the desert wants to drive us into the desert with him. Lent is meant to help us recapitulate Christ’s 40 days away from everything so that we, apart from every distraction, can focus on our relationship with God and others and on who we are — and, with Christ’s help, confront and overcome the way that the devil seeks to distort those relations and that image.
                        • To go into the desert is increasingly difficult for people today. Most people are so connected that if we lose our cell phone signal or battery juice we can easily feel totally disoriented. While the Lord is not calling us all physically to go to the Sahara, Gobi, Mojave or Judean deserts, he is calling us to the state of the desert, removing ourselves from distractions, from our screens and devices, newspapers and magazines, and the various things that may be fine in themselves but crowd our lives with noise so that we can’t hear God and with clutter so that we can’t see God. The first temptation we face in Lent is to refuse to go into the desert with Christ, to think that our Lent can be complete if, for example, all we do is give up sweets. We need silence. We need prayer. As Vatican Cardinal Robert Sarah from Guinea wrote in his recent book The Power of Silence, “God is silence, and the devil is noisy. … God’s first language is silence.… In order to understand this language, we must learn to be silent and to rest in God. [God] waits for our silence to reveal Himself. Regaining the sense of silence is therefore a priority, an urgent necessity. … The true revolution comes from silence; it leads us toward God and toward others.” The first big hurdle is for us to hear Christ’s voice from the desert calling us to this silence and prayer, saying, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while” (Mk 6:31).
                        • The next lesson we need to grasp is what is supposed to be the fruit of that time in the desert. What does the Holy Spirit who drives us to this Lenten desert experience want to help us to achieve? Jesus shares this lesson with us as soon as he finished that first 40-day retreat. He returned saying, “Repent and believe in the good news.” These are the words he shared with us earlier this week, as we were marked with ashes on Wednesday. To repent — what metanoiameans in Greek — is to revolutionize the way we look at things, the world, ourselves, and others, so that we might put on the way Christ looks at things. It means to turn one’s thoughts around, or better right side up. It’s as if we’ve been going in one direction and Jesus tells us, “Stop, turn around and go in this new direction,” following the path I will show you. Jesus is not calling us to a minor course correction, but for many of us, to something far closer to a 180-degree turn. He wants us to examine all those parts of our life that are not in alignment with him and convert in such a way that we begin to turn with him full-time (which is what con-verteremeans) and follow him. That’s what he hopes to accomplish in us by our 40-days with him in prayer and silence.
                        • When we look at the way the devil tried to tempt Jesus in the desert, we see the three fundamental ways we can get out of spiritual alignment. We can also learn from Christ how in Lent he wants to help us press the reset button in our spiritual life to come back into alignment. As St. Matthew and St. Luke indicate to us in their larger descriptions of Jesus’ time in the Judean wildernes, the devil subjected Jesus to “every temptation” (Lk 4:13), and those can be summarized as temptations to disorder his relationship with God, with others and within himself. Since no one else was there, the only way we would know about what Jesus endured was if he had told his first disciples, and the reason he would have told them is so that, through the way he responded to these temptations, we might learn how to resist them, too.
                        • The first class of temptation Jesus suffered was to disorder his relationship with God the Father, indicated by the devil’s seductive appeal for Jesus to throw himself off the parapet of the temple, presuming that God the Father would save him by sending his angels to prevent his even dashing his foot against a stone. The devil similarly seeks to tempt us to believe that God will prevent any harm to us or others whenever we do something risky and fatal. The devil wants to get us to get us to jump off various cliffs and then blame God for letting us suffer. He tempts us ultimately toward spiritual suicide. Jesus shows that the proper response is never to put the Lord our God to the test, but in fact to love him and throw ourselves into his arms rather than from dangerous precipices into sin.
                        • The second class of temptation is to disorder our relationships with others. The devil promised Jesus that he would give him rule over all the cities, to be in control over everyone else, to have them serve him rather than he serve them, if only Jesus would take the bargain of falling down before the devil in homage. Jesus resisted the temptation toward this type of diabolical control by quoting Scripture about worshipping and serving the Lord our God alone. The devil tries to tempt us, too, to distort our relationship with others, so that we will seek to exercise over them dominion, control and power. The antidote is to follow Jesus’ advice, to serve God and others made in God’s image and likeness, reverencing the Lord in them, striving to serve them with love rather than be served, and laying down our lives for them as Christ himself did.
                        • The third class of temptation is to disorder our relationship within ourselves, using what God has given us egocentrically for our own purposes rather than for God and others. This is shown in the temptation the devil gave to Jesus to change stones into bread after forty days of hunger. How strong this temptation must have been for someone so famished! But Jesus replied that we live not on bread alone but on every word that comes from God’s mouth. We’re supposed to use our talents not selfishly but for God and others, and ultimately for our own true good, that the word of God may be done in us.
                        • In response to these three fundamental types of temptations, Jesus not only shows us how to resist with the power of the Word of God but also as Divine Physician prescribes for us on Ash Wednesday the medicine we need. He does so through the three traditional Lenten practices of prayer, almsgiving and fasting, when he instructs us, “When you pray, when you give alms,… when you give fast.” These help us to become stronger against the devil’s seductions to disorder our relationship with God, others and ourselves respectively. They constitute a crucial part of our Lenten penitence. They are part of living with Jesus in the desert and, through uniting ourselves with his prayer, fasting and self-giving, entering into his resistance to the principal forms of temptation by the evil one.
                        • In terms of prayer, when we pray in our inner room in intimacy with God the Father, we make him our priority. Perhaps the biggest sin most people are susceptible to is pushing God to the periphery of our lives. We pray only when we need something, or only a few minutes a day, or only when we’re supposed to in an increasingly routine way. But this is simply not consistent with really believing in God and loving him above every other love. It’s also dangerous. The devil well knows that for many of us he would never be able to convince us never to pray. So what he tries to do is to get us to think that we’re too busy to pray much and that God doesn’t really care about our praying more than when we can. St. John Paul II talked about this in his great document Novo Millennio Ineunte at the beginning of this millennium. “It would be wrong,” he wrote, “to think that ordinary Christians can be content with a shallow prayer that is unable to fill their whole life. Especially in the face of the many trials to which today’s world subjects faith, they would be not only mediocre Christians but ‘Christians at risk.’ They would run the insidious risk of seeing their faith progressively undermined, and would perhaps end up succumbing to the allure of ‘substitutes,’ accepting alternative religious proposals and even indulging in far-fetched superstitions.” That’s the devil’s draw play: to get us to accept a shallow prayer life so that he can eventually draw us away from the Lord into superstitions and eventually into spiritual oblivion. He wants to lead us step-by-step, day-by-day, into that truly risky situation. That’s why increasing the quantity and quality of our prayer time in the Lenten desert is what will have the most dramatic impact in changing us and turning around our minds and hearts. Prayer doesn’t change God; it changes us. The more we seek God’s will in prayer, the more time we spend praising him, thanking him, begging for his forgiveness and confiding to him what we and others need, the more we will become like him and love what he loves. As the devil wants to tempt us toward minimizing prayer, the Spirit wants to drive us into the desert with Jesus so that our whole lives will be characterized by prayer.
                        • In terms of the medicine for the distortion of our relationship with others, Jesus prescribes almsgiving. The truth is, succumbing to the devil’s subtle or plain temptations, we often begin to use others for our purposes and to ignore them if they don’t fit into our own ends. We often see ourselves in a competitive survival of the fittest contest with them rather than in loving cooperation. We may assuage our consciences, reminding ourselves that a few times this week or this month or this year we’ve done some acts of charity, but for a follower of Jesus, charity must become a way of life, our true mission. That’s what real almsgiving does. Jesus gave everything for us and told us to love others as he has loved us. He became the Good Samaritan and rescued us and told us to go and do the same. Almgiving is not just about sacrificing things or time, but ultimately sacrificing ourselves. A Christian is supposed to be a person for God and others; that’s what the devil wants to distort and that’s what Jesus, especially in Lent, wants to fortify.
                        • The third distortion that the Divine Physician wants to cure is of our relationship with the material order. So often we can prioritize our material needs, living for the satisfaction of our bodily pleasure. We can become hedonists, those whose happiness is defined in terms of the meals we eat, the beverages we consume, the human experiences we can accumulate. God doesn’t call us to give up all the things of this world he created good, but he does call us to a deeper form of happiness, prioritizing our soul. That’s why fasting is so important. The only way we can learn to live by every word that comes from God’s mouth is by not living on bread and material things alone. Fasting helps us to cut the cords of our addictions and hyper-dependence, because either we control our appetites or they control us. When we eventually gain self-mastery, we begin to hunger for what God hungers. Fasting opens us up in gratitude to God’s providence, his giving us each day our daily bread, so that we may better empathize and care for others who are in material need.
                        • So a crucial part of our repentance and faith in the Gospel, of our Lenten desert experience, is entering into Jesus’ prayer, almsgiving and fasting, which means entering into his total self-giving to the Father and to us. In the first reading, we encounter Noah and the new beginning, the second chance, God gave the human race after the flood. In order to be saved, people — and the other animals of creation — needed to be on the ark. The Fathers of the Church eventually said that the Ark is a symbol of Peter’s boat the Church: to be saved, you needed to be in that Barque. But we know that the Church is ultimately Jesus’ Mystical Body. To be saved we need to be a member of his Body, to enter into him, and that means entering into his prayer, his fasting, his almsgiving, his life, death and resurrection. Every Lent, we examine whether we’re fully in Him who is the Ark, we look at how much we are living the new and eternal Covenant in Christ’s blood, seeking God’s ways, walking his paths, and ultimately living out the promises of our baptism. St. Peter tells us in today’s second reading the connection between what God did with Noah and what he seeks to do with us. “God,” St. Peter says, “waited patiently in the days of Noah during the building of the ark in which a few persons, eight in all, were saved through water.” Then he applies that historical occurrence to our situation: “This prefigured baptism, which saves you now.” Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert after his baptism in the Jordan in order precisely to lead us on an exodus through the desert into the promised land of his kingdom. Lent is a type of exodus that seeks to bring about a new order, a new creation, a new kingdom, something that God brought about with Noah, the flood and the ark. Baptism, St. Peter says, is “an appeal to God for a clear conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” It’s a new beginning. After our “drowning” in the waters of baptism, we’re led into a similar post-baptismal desert by same Spirit who drove Jesus there. In baptism and the life of Christ to which it leads, we receive God’s help to renounce Satan, all his evil works and all his empty promises. Then we profess our faith in God Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and in the Holy Catholic Church God founded. Lent is a time to repent and believe, to renew those promises and live them as not just truths we consent to, but as the fundamental realities of our life, of who we are and what we do. Just as Noah built an ark far from water at God’s command, even though so many thought building such a ship there was crazy, so we enter the ark not in a seaport but with Jesus in the middle of the desert, seeking, like Noah, to live by faith with a clean conscience in our triune God.
                        • The four vows you profess as Missionaries of Charity help to live out those baptismal promises and to fight against the devil’s temptations. Spiritual poverty refuses the diabolical fruit of materialism; chastity, the diabolical fruit of lust and hedonism, using others for our pleasure; obedience the diabolical fruit of false freedom, disobeying God and trying to control rather than serve others; and wholehearted service of the poorest of the poor focuses you on how to apply your true wealth, true love and true freedom to loving and serving God in the poor and quenching his infinite thirst. The more you respond to God’s graces to live these vows, the more you will experience with Jesus the freedom from the dominion of the evil one in your life and the joy of happiness.
                        • The Eucharist is the great means by which we are able every day to enter more deeply into the practices of the desert. In preparation for the Eucharist, we always fast, at least an hour, so that we may hunger more and more for every word that comes from the Father’s mouth, and especially for the Word-made-flesh, Jesus, who comes from the Father’s bosom. In the Mass, we enter into the supreme form of prayer, Jesus’ own prayer from the Last Supper and Calvary. And we not only receive Jesus’ greatest alms — his body, blood, soul and divinity — but are helped by him from the inside, to “do this” in memory of him, living truly Eucharistic lives by giving our body and blood, sweat, tears and heart in loving service to others. At the time of Noah, God said that, after the flood, the rainbow would sign to “recall the covenant I have made between you and all living beings,” so now, as we’ll pray later in the Eucharistic Prayer, the Cross has “become the lasting sign of your Covenant” (Reconciliation I), and each Mass we receive Jesus’ Body and Blood given on Calvary as the “new and eternal Covenant,” as the efficacious sign that unites us to Christ, helps us to receive the fruit of his prayer, fasting and almsgiving, and equips us to pray, fast and give of ourselves together with him. As we prepare to receive Jesus today, we ask him for the graces to live this 40 day calling us boldly and eagerly to “come with him apart from the crowds to a deserted place,” so that we can experience the joy that comes from repenting and believing, and become signs with him to the whole world that this is the time of fulfillment and the kingdom of God is at hand.

                          •  

                          The readings for today’s Mass were: 

                          Reading 1
                          Gn 9:8-15
                          God said to Noah and to his sons with him:
                          “See, I am now establishing my covenant with you
                          and your descendants after you
                          and with every living creature that was with you:
                          all the birds, and the various tame and wild animals
                          that were with you and came out of the ark.
                          I will establish my covenant with you,
                          that never again shall all bodily creatures be destroyed
                          by the waters of a flood;
                          there shall not be another flood to devastate the earth.”
                          God added:
                          “This is the sign that I am giving for all ages to come,
                          of the covenant between me and you
                          and every living creature with you:
                          I set my bow in the clouds to serve as a sign
                          of the covenant between me and the earth.
                          When I bring clouds over the earth,
                          and the bow appears in the clouds,
                          I will recall the covenant I have made
                          between me and you and all living beings,
                          so that the waters shall never again become a flood
                          to destroy all mortal beings.”
                          Responsorial Psalm
                          Ps 25:4-5, 6-7, 8-9.
                          R. (cf. 10) Your ways, O Lord, are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.
                          Your ways, O LORD, make known to me;
                          teach me your paths,
                          Guide me in your truth and teach me,
                          for you are God my savior.
                          R. Your ways, O Lord, are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.
                          Remember that your compassion, O LORD,
                          and your love are from of old.
                          In your kindness remember me,
                          because of your goodness, O LORD.
                          R. Your ways, O Lord, are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.
                          Good and upright is the LORD,
                          thus he shows sinners the way.
                          He guides the humble to justice,
                          and he teaches the humble his way.
                          R. Your ways, O Lord, are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.
                          Reading 2
                          1 Pt 3:18-22
                          Beloved:
                          Christ suffered for sins once,
                          the righteous for the sake of the unrighteous,
                          that he might lead you to God.
                          Put to death in the flesh,
                          he was brought to life in the Spirit.
                          In it he also went to preach to the spirits in prison,
                          who had once been disobedient
                          while God patiently waited in the days of Noah
                          during the building of the ark,
                          in which a few persons, eight in all,
                          were saved through water.
                          This prefigured baptism, which saves you now.
                          It is not a removal of dirt from the body
                          but an appeal to God for a clear conscience,
                          through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
                          who has gone into heaven
                          and is at the right hand of God,
                          with angels, authorities, and powers subject to him.
                          Verse Before the Gospel
                          Mt 4:4b
                          One does not live on bread alone,
                          but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.
                          Gospel
                          Mk 1:12-15
                          The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert,
                          and he remained in the desert for forty days,
                          tempted by Satan.
                          He was among wild beasts,
                          and the angels ministered to him.

                          After John had been arrested,

                          Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God:
                          “This is the time of fulfillment.
                          The kingdom of God is at hand.
                          Repent, and believe in the gospel.”

                           

                          The post Driven with Christ into the Lenten Desert, First Sunday of Lent (B), February 18, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                          21 min

                        About Catholic Preaching

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

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