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Catholic Preaching

By Father Roger LandryReligion & Spirituality Christianity

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December 19, 2023The Advent of Desire from Sterility to Fruitfulness, December 19, 2023
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Mass for December 19
December 19, 2023
Jdg 13:2-7.24-25, Ps 71, Lk 1:5-25

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.19.23_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
Two of the major themes of Advent are desire and the passage from sterility to fruitfulness. Advent is about God’s hunger for us and our hunger for him, which leads us to run out to meet him who is coming, and being transformed by him, to continue with gratitude growing in communion with him. There’s something missing in our life that he comes to fulfill. On Tuesday of the first week of Advent, something we just heard again on Sunday, evoked yet again in the O Antiphon that is our Gospel verse, Isaiah prophesies that “a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom.” From a stump — which seems sterile, cut down, as good as dead — we don’t expect much growth, but we see that the Shoot, Jesus himself, would eventually reach across the globe and into eternity and bear far more than 30, 60 or 100-fold fruit.
Today’s readings — both of which feature sterile women — help us to enter more deeply into this mystery of desire and this exodus from barrenness into fruitfulness. In something as wondrous as a shoot sprouting from a stump that didn’t seem capable of generating a whole forest that would never be cut down, we see two women whose wombs were barren, who after much prayer and longing finally conceived a son.
In the first reading, we have the wife of Manoah (who unfortunately is never named!), who hadn’t been able to conceive. The angel appears to her doubtless as a response to her prayer and says, “Though you are barren and have had no children, yet you will conceive and bear a son … who will begin the deliverance of Israel from the power of the Philistines … [and who] shall be consecrated to God from the womb until the day of his death.” Her long wait, her many prayers, eventually led to her conceiving the great judge Samson.
In the Gospel we see an even greater miracle. Elizabeth and Zechariah were sterile and were both late in years. Elizabeth was almost certainly post-menopausal. Zechariah was a priest of the priestly division of Abijah whose turn it was to serve in the temple. The way the cultic priesthood worked at the temple of Jerusalem was that there were about 20,000 male descendants of Aaron, all of whom were automatically priests. They were divided into 24 divisions and they would rotate ministry at the temple, serving twice a year for a week. In every division, there were between 800-900 priests assigned. The day’s duties — offering the morning and evening sacrifices of a one year-old unblemished male lamb together with flower, oil and wine, as well as offering the incense at the altar while those two sacrifices were taking place — were assigned each day by lottery. One could go an entire lifetime of service without one’s name every being drawn (there were 28 chosen each week, 56 per year, out of 800-900 priests; if everyone got a turn and were chosen not by lot but equally, that would be every 14-16 years). When one’s name was selected, however, it was one of the happiest days in the priest’s life. Doubtless as Zechariah was chosen to offer the incense for one of the two sacrifices, he approached the altar with a prayer that he had been carrying within him his entire married life. We wouldn’t be surprised if Elizabeth, before he would begin each week’s service, would have reminded him, “If you’re chosen, don’t forget God to hear our prayers and give us a child to remove the shame of my sterility.” So during the time he was offering the incense filled with this prayer, the angel of the Lord appeared to him and told him, “Your request has been heard and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son and you must call him John. … Many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb, and he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. He will go before him … to prepare a people fit for the Lord.” Just as God had made a stump sprout, just as he would make rocks give streams of water, turn deserts into oases of life and even raise the Dead Sea to life (Ez 47), so he would turn sterility into fertility. Pope Francis spoke about this miraculous transformation from barrenness to bounty during his homily for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe in 2017. “Together with Elizabeth, the sterile woman” the Holy Father said, “we contemplate Elizabeth the woman of hidden fecundity. It’s she who is the first to recognize and bless Mary. It’s she who in her old age experienced in her life, in her flesh, the fulfillment of the promised made by God. She who couldn’t have children bore in her womb the precursor of salvation. In her we understand that the dream of God isn’t sterility or stigmatization or shame, but to make rise up in them and from them a hymn of blessing.”
The Lord wants to work a similar miracle in us and every Advent we prepare for it. He wants to raise to life whatever it in us is barren so that it gives forth life with him. Many times we’re spiritually sterile, we bear no fruit. We labor for months, years and even more to grow in prayer and it seems like we have nothing to show for it. We try to pass on the faith on to others and we end up feeling like barren fig trees. Today Jesus wants to give us hope. The reason why he often waits to grant something intrinsically good for which we desire so ardently is to increase that desire and to make us always conscious of the gift God gives that most of us would take for granted if we received things too easily. The long advent for the fulfillment of those promises are meant to increase, like the candles on an advent wreath increase each week during Advent, our prayer, our hope and — after the prayer is granted — our gratitude.
But how does this transformation take place? How do we cooperate with what God’s trying to do? I think that’s shown in the other important lesson we learn from today’s readings. In order for the miracle to occur we not only need to ask for it in faith but receive it with faith. That’s what Zechariah didn’t do. He asked the angel, “How shall I know this? For I am an old man and my wife is advanced in years.” Even though he and his wife had been praying for decades, even though an angel had appeared to him to announce the answer to his longings, he wanted verification. He really didn’t want to accept it without another sign. His question is totally different from the question of Mary that we see in the Annunciation. After the same Archangel Gabriel appeared to her, she asked, “How will this be, for I will not know man.” That wasn’t at all a question of doubt, but of modality. It clearly implies she had made a vow of consecrated virginity to the Lord — otherwise, why would she be asking how she would conceive a child, since she would well have known how children are conceived! — and therefore essentially was asking, “How will I become a mother? Does the Lord intend for me to break my vow of virginity in order to conceive?” That’s when the Angel talked about how the Holy Spirit would overshadow her so that she would become the only virginal mother in the history of the world. Zechariah’s question was different. He knew how Elizabeth would conceive a child if she were to become a mom. He just didn’t really want to believe and accept that she would become a mom through him now that she was a senior citizen. For us to bear fruit, we need to trust in the Lord’s promises.
But what if we struggle with doubt? How can we overcome our temptations not to believe that all that God has promised will take place? That’s the third lesson from today’s readings. It’s found in the medicinal penance the Archangel gave Zechariah. At first it might seem very strange as a response to Zechariah’s doubt. We could imagine that Gabriel would have instead negated or delayed the promise. Instead he said, “But now you will be speechless and unable to talk until the day these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled at their proper time.” Why would his being struck mute be a proper punishment? The answer is because it would force him to pray, force him to become good soil of faith for the Lord to respond to the Lord’s gifts. Like the kings are forced to silence before the root of Jesse, each of us must approach these great mysteries of God and the fulfillment of his promises with a faith nourished in silence. St. Augustine says that Zechariah was struck mute for the whole of the time when his son, John the Baptist, would be silent in the womb of Elizabeth. As soon as he was born and could start to cry out, Zechariah’s tongue would be loosened so that he, too, could cry out about the marvel the Lord had done for him when he would name is son John, which means God-is-gracious. I’ve always thought that the reason is to help him develop a contemplative heart like Mary, who treasured within her heart what the Angel had said. She believed because she was one who regularly received the Lord’s gifts in the silent dialogue of prayer. Zechariah needed to become more like Mary. That’s a very important lesson for us every Advent. The way for us to go from sterility to fertility is by faithfully receiving all God’s word on good soil, which will enable us to bear not just a son or a little fruit, but 30, 60 and 100 fold. We’re supposed to be tremendously fertile! But to become fruitful soil, we have to make time for silence, to ponder within our hearts and treasure all that God is saying and doing in our lives, in others’ lives, in the world. If we’re too busy, we’ll often be prone to doubt like Zechariah. If we’re running around “hustle, bustle, push and muscle, rushing to and fro” (A Christmas Carol), we’ll never be able to respond with faith and bear the type of fruit that God wants to give us.
Today we come up to the Lord’s temple. We don’t have this privilege just, maybe, once in a lifetime if we’re lucky to enter into God’s presence, but we have the opportunity every day. We don’t have make this grotto chapel smoke with incense rising up to God because we come with hearts lifted up the Lord with the sweet-smelling fragrance of faith. It’s here that the Lord wants to do a greater miracle in us than in the wife of Manoah and in Elizabeth’s womb. He wants us to bear someone far greater than Samson and John the Baptist within, but the same Jesus whom Mary conceived, so that we will become pregnant with the presence of God-with-us within us, and bear him, his love, his life, his joy to the world.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
JGS 13:2-7, 24-25A
There was a certain man from Zorah, of the clan of the Danites,
whose name was Manoah.
His wife was barren and had borne no children.
An angel of the LORD appeared to the woman and said to her,
“Though you are barren and have had no children,
yet you will conceive and bear a son.
Now, then, be careful to take no wine or strong drink
and to eat nothing unclean.
As for the son you will conceive and bear,
no razor shall touch his head,
for this boy is to be consecrated to God from the womb.
It is he who will begin the deliverance of Israel
from the power of the Philistines.”
The woman went and told her husband,
“A man of God came to me;
he had the appearance of an angel of God, terrible indeed.
I did not ask him where he came from, nor did he tell me his name.
But he said to me,
‘You will be with child and will bear a son.
So take neither wine nor strong drink, and eat nothing unclean.
For the boy shall be consecrated to God from the womb,
until the day of his death.’”
The woman bore a son and named him Samson.
The boy grew up and the LORD blessed him;
the Spirit of the LORD stirred him.
Responsorial Psalm
PS 71:3-4A, 5-6AB, 16-17
R. (see 8) My mouth shall be filled with your praise, and I will sing your glory!
Be my rock of refuge,
a stronghold to give me safety,
for you are my rock and my fortress.
O my God, rescue me from the hand of the wicked.
R. My mouth shall be filled with your praise, and I will sing your glory!
For you are my hope, O LORD;
my trust, O God, from my youth.
On you I depend from birth;
from my mother’s womb you are my strength.
R. My mouth shall be filled with your praise, and I will sing your glory!
I will treat of the mighty works of the LORD;
O God, I will tell of your singular justice.
O God, you have taught me from my youth,
and till the present I proclaim your wondrous deeds.
R. My mouth shall be filled with your praise, and I will sing your glory!
Gospel
LK 1:5-25
In the days of Herod, King of Judea,
there was a priest named Zechariah
of the priestly division of Abijah;
his wife was from the daughters of Aaron,
and her name was Elizabeth.
Both were righteous in the eyes of God,
observing all the commandments
and ordinances of the Lord blamelessly.
But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren
and both were advanced in years.
Once when he was serving as priest
in his division’s turn before God,
according to the practice of the priestly service,
he was chosen by lot
to enter the sanctuary of the Lord to burn incense.
Then, when the whole assembly of the people was praying outside
at the hour of the incense offering,
the angel of the Lord appeared to him,
standing at the right of the altar of incense.
Zechariah was troubled by what he saw, and fear came upon him.
But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah,
because your prayer has been heard.
Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son,
and you shall name him John.
And you will have joy and gladness,
and many will rejoice at his birth,
for he will be great in the sight of the Lord.
He will drink neither wine nor strong drink.
He will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb,
and he will turn many of the children of Israel
to the Lord their God.
He will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah
to turn the hearts of fathers toward children
and the disobedient to the understanding of the righteous,
to prepare a people fit for the Lord.”
Then Zechariah said to the angel,
“How shall I know this?
For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.”
And the angel said to him in reply,
“I am Gabriel, who stand before God.
I was sent to speak to you and to announce to you this good news.
But now you will be speechless and unable to talk
until the day these things take place,
because you did not believe my words,
which will be fulfilled at their proper time.”
Meanwhile the people were waiting for Zechariah
and were amazed that he stayed so long in the sanctuary.
But when he came out, he was unable to speak to them,
and they realized that he had seen a vision in the sanctuary.
He was gesturing to them but remained mute.
Then, when his days of ministry were completed, he went home.
After this time his wife Elizabeth conceived,
and she went into seclusion for five months, saying,
“So has the Lord done for me at a time when he has seen fit
to take away my disgrace before others.”
The post The Advent of Desire from Sterility to Fruitfulness, December 19, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
18 min
December 18, 2023The Righteous Shoot, December 18, 2023
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
December 18 Mass
December 18, 2023
Jer 23:5-8, Ps 72, Mt 1:18-25

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.18.23_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
“This is the name they give him,” the Prophet Jeremiah says today. A name is essential for us to enter into interpersonal dialogue. Today we encounter three different names, names God gives to himself, names we use to refer to God. Each of them helps us to relate to God more deeply as the names complement and deepen our understanding of God, how he wishes us to interact with him and how he wishes to have us grow in his image and likeness.
In the Gospel, we get both “Emmanuel” and “Jesus.” Emmanuel means “God-with-us” and Jesus means, “Yahweh saves.” God comes to be with us in the incarnation precisely in order to save us. We see this salvation depicted in the first reading. The prophet Jeremiah describes how, in the days of the “righteous shoot” to David, “Judah will be saved.” Just as God redeemed Israel from slavery in Egypt, so he would redeem Israel again from the “lands of the north,” which refers not only to Assyria and Babylon to which many of the Jews were forcibly brought after conquering Israel, but much more broadly to those in other lands, since with the exception of Egypt, most of the other known inhabitants were located north of the Holy Land. The Lord would save them from them all. In the Gospel, when the Angel reveals what St. Joseph is to call Mary’s son, he says that the child will be called “Jesus,” “God saves,” precisely because “he will save his people from their sins.” Jesus was coming to rescue us. This point about salvation is really important. To relate to Jesus means to relate to him as Savior, savior from our sins and what they lead to, death. Whenever we call upon his name, we’re remembering our need for salvation.
The third title, the one that is given after Jeremiah says, “This is the name they give him,” is “Justice.” The Jews will say, “The Lord our Justice.” The Messiah would be the “righteous shoot” from the stump of Jesse and he would come to make us right with God, to help us ad-just to him and his holy will. The Lord our Righteousness will bring justice and peace, as we pray in the Responsorial Psalm, but that is dependent upon our relating to God in justice and holiness. In the Gospel today, we see how to do this with the other “righteous shoot” from the stump of Jesse, who is St. Joseph. St. Matthew, inspired by the Holy Spirit, calls him in the Gospel, “just.” We know that as soon as Mary had received the appearance of the Archangel Gabriel saying that she would become the mother of the Son of God, she “went with haste” to visit her cousin Elizabeth and care for her at least for three months through the end of her pregnancy and likely for a few months afterward. Despite much Christian art to the contrary, it’s highly unlikely that St. Joseph accompanied her, because that would mean he would give up his carpentry work at the very time he was supposed to be working to provide a home for both of them so that they could begin to live together. (In Jewish matrimonial customs, a couple was first engaged, then they expressed consent before a rabbi or priest and were married, but they wouldn’t live together for at least another year or so until the husband had earned enough money for their cohabitation and for their eight-day wedding reception. The Angel Gabriel appeared to Mary during this time between the marriage, betrothal in the ancient sense, and their “living together.”) So Mary almost certainly didn’t travel with Joseph, but likely traveled with others from her village who were making the 60 mile trek to Jerusalem, since Ein Karim, where Zechariah and Elizabeth lived was only a few miles beyond that down hill. When she returned three to six months later, Joseph would have been shocked to see that Mary was very pregnant with child. We can only imagine the sense of confusion and perhaps even betrayal he would have initially felt as he would have thought she must have become pregnant while she was away. Doubtless they talked about it. Joseph naturally would have been as slow to believe the story that his wife was actually still a virgin — that she was not impregnated by a man at all, but that God had sent an angel to announce that the Holy Spirit would impregnate her — as you would be if a young person you know told you the same reason for why she was now pregnant. St. Matthew tells us that St. Joseph was a “righteous man,” he was a man who lived by the law, but he was at the same time unwilling to expose her to shame or the penalty for adultery, which would be death by stoning. He was listening to the Lord in the law but he was also listening in conscience. So he decided to divorce her quietly, which was a response of justice and mercy. That’s when an angel appeared to him in a dream and confirmed for him that what Mary had told him was true.
We can ask the important question: why did God wait to reveal his plans to Joseph? Why didn’t the angel appear to Mary when Joseph was with her, or why didn’t the angel simply come to him after he had gone to Mary’s house to clue him in on the plans? Why didn’t he appear to him at least right before Mary’s return? Why did the Lord allow him to experience the depth of the agony of what appeared to be Mary’s betrayal of her covenant with God and with him? It’s precisely so that we can learn from Joseph’s response. We see his justice even and especially in agony. We also see his obedience to the Lord in a dream, something that even before Freud could have easily been deconstructed and disobeyed, yet he did obey. He wasn’t mellowing in self-pity, but always still open to God, such that when the angel appeared in a dream, he acted as soon as he awoke. We learn a great deal from this. When the long awaited God-with-us, God-saves, the Just One, came into our world to save us, he didn’t make everything tranquil. He disturbed. He made things terribly inconvenient for Mary and for Joseph. What he asked of them made them suffer. Salvation wasn’t easy. It was going to involve their sacrifices, their misunderstandings and being misunderstood, their leaving their homes, their escaping to Egypt, their having their own hearts pierced with spiritual swords and so much more. And that’s a truth that all of us have to grasp. When Mary’s Son eventually grew up and began preaching — even though he was the Prince of Peace, even though the angels at his birth had proclaimed “peace on earth to people on whom his favor rests” — he said that he had come not to bring peace but the sword and from now on houses and families would be divided, three against two and two against three (Lk 12:52). He was going to bring difficulty. Salvation is messy and the Savior was going to involve us, like he involved Mary and Joseph, in his messy messianic work. So as we get ready to celebrate Christmas, and more generally focus on the Christian life, we shouldn’t anticipate that we’re in for an easy ride. But is with us in the midst of it all, saving us, and through it making us righteous.
In a few minutes, as soon God-with-us-to-save-us-from-our-sins appears on this altar, we will proclaim the mystery of faith. We will turn to him and say, “Save us, Savior of the world!” The redemption we long for and pray for is actually fulfilled here at every Mass. Today as we proclaim that great mystery, let us recommit ourselves to our prayer, to our living the covenant by keeping his commandments of love, reaching out to receive his redemption and seeking to become instruments to help others to come to Jesus as well!

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
JER 23:5-8
Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD,
when I will raise up a righteous shoot to David;
As king he shall reign and govern wisely,
he shall do what is just and right in the land.
In his days Judah shall be saved,
Israel shall dwell in security.
This is the name they give him:
“The LORD our justice.”
Therefore, the days will come, says the LORD,
when they shall no longer say, “As the LORD lives,
who brought the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt”;
but rather, “As the LORD lives,
who brought the descendants of the house of Israel
up from the land of the north”–
and from all the lands to which I banished them;
they shall again live on their own land.
Responsorial Psalm
PS 72:1-2, 12-13, 18-19
R. (see 7) Justice shall flourish in his time, and fullness of peace for ever.
O God, with your judgment endow the king,
and with your justice, the king’s son;
He shall govern your people with justice
and your afflicted ones with judgment.
R. Justice shall flourish in his time, and fullness of peace for ever.
For he shall rescue the poor when he cries out,
and the afflicted when he has no one to help him.
He shall have pity for the lowly and the poor;
the lives of the poor he shall save.
R. Justice shall flourish in his time, and fullness of peace for ever.
Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel,
who alone does wondrous deeds.
And blessed forever be his glorious name;
may the whole earth be filled with his glory.
R. Justice shall flourish in his time, and fullness of peace for ever.
Gospel
MT 1:18-25
This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about.
When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph,
but before they lived together,
she was found with child through the Holy Spirit.
Joseph her husband, since he was a righteous man,
yet unwilling to expose her to shame,
decided to divorce her quietly.
Such was his intention when, behold,
the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said,
“Joseph, son of David,
do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home.
For it is through the Holy Spirit
that this child has been conceived in her.
She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus,
because he will save his people from their sins.”
All this took place to fulfill
what the Lord had said through the prophet:
Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel,
which means “God is with us.”
When Joseph awoke,
he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him
and took his wife into his home.
He had no relations with her until she bore a son,
and he named him Jesus.
The post The Righteous Shoot, December 18, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
23 min
December 17, 2023Witnessing to Light and Joy, Third Sunday of Advent (B), December 17, 2023
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, New York
Third Sunday in Advent, Year B
December 17, 2023
Is 61:1-2.10-11, Lk 1:46-50.53-54, 1 Thess 5:16-24, Jn 1:6-8.19-28

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.17.23_CCM_Homily_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
“Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!” These familiar words from the refrain of the most famous Advent Hymn of all time frame the Church’s prayer today. We call the Third Sunday of Advent Gaudete Sunday from St. Paul’s words to the Philippians that we sang in the entrance antiphon at the beginning of today’s Mass: Gaudete semper in Domino. Iterum dico: Gaudete! “Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I say, rejoice. Indeed, the Lord is near” (Phil 4:4-5). Because the Lord is near, because the Lord is coming, because the Lord never ceases to come, we are called to rejoice always. The priest wears rose vestments and we light a rose rather than a purple candle on the Advent wreath to symbolize this joy: rose is a mix between red and white, between passion and purity, and therefore is a fitting hue to symbolize the joy that is the fruit of mutual, holy, love, commitment and devotion. All of the readings of today’s Mass have us ponder the type of joy we’re supposed to have at the advent of the Lord in history, mystery and majesty, so that when Christmas comes, we may be able to receive the “good news of great joy” announced by the angels, so that when the Lord approaches in the sacraments and when he arrives at the end of time, we may be ready not just to sing but absolutely to burst with our Christian “joy to the world.”
In the first reading, Isaiah exclaims, “I rejoice heartily in the Lord, in my God is the joy of my soul; for he has clothed me with a robe of salvation and wrapped me in a mantle of justice, like a bridegroom adorned with a diadem, like a bride bedecked with her jewels.” God has spoiled us with himself, enveloping us in his salvation and justice and adorning us with things far greater than diamonds. In the Blessed Virgin Mary’s famous Magnificat, which the liturgy has us sing as a canticle in place of the Psalm today, our spiritual mother sings of the joy that comes from God’s enveloping us in his salvation from the inside. She exults, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,” and then gives a long list of reasons of jubilation: “for he has looked upon his lowly servant, … [he] has done great things for me, … he has mercy on those who fear him in every generation, he has filled the hungry with good things, … he has come to the help of his servant, … he has remembered his promise of mercy.” In the second reading, St. Paul describes that our reaction to these blessings of the Lord should be to “rejoice always, pray without ceasing and in all circumstances give thanks.” Finally in the Gospel we see that John the Baptist was preparing everyone through a baptism of repentance to rejoice when at last the Lamb of God would become manifest to take away our sins. John announced, “I baptize with water; but there is one among you whom you do not recognize, the one who is coming after me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie.” Eventually when that “one among you” finally revealed himself and began to baptize, John’s disciples went to John and said, “Rabbi, the one who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you testified, here he is baptizing and everyone is coming to him.” John answered and said, “You yourselves can testify that I said [that] I am not the Messiah, but that I was sent before him. The one who has the bride is the bridegroom; the best man, who stands and listens to him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. So this joy of mine has been made complete.” The whole purpose of Advent, and in particular the goal of Gaudete Sunday, is to prepare for our joy to be brought to completion at the coming of Jesus the Bridegroom, at the sound of his voice.
Today the Church marks the 87th birthday of our Holy Father, Pope Francis, and as we pray for him, it is a good occasion for us to ponder the biggest priority of his papacy. He announced it in his programmatic inaugural apostolic exhortation, which he entitled, Evangelii Gaudium, or “The Joy of the Gospel.” In the first three short sentences of the exhortation, he tells us three important aspects of joy. “The joy of the Gospel,” he declares, “fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus. Those who accept his offer of salvation are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness and loneliness. With Christ, joy is constantly born anew.” Joy is born, he says, first, from the encounter with Jesus. There are many people who “bump into” Jesus but who don’t really encounter him because, to some degree, they’re afraid of what he might ask. Rather than fill them with life, they fear that he might take their life away. We need not to be afraid to encounter Jesus, but to let him meet us at the depth at which he desires. In a special way, in the context of the ongoing Eucharistic Revival, it’s essential that we take full advantage of the unbelievable gift of the encounter we have with Jesus in Holy Communion and in Eucharistic adoration. The second thing Pope Francis says that causes our Christian joy is that Jesus offers us the gift of salvation, which will set us free from sin, sorrow, emptiness and loneliness, if only we accept that offer. To receive that gift, however, means coming to encounter Jesus first in the Sacrament of Baptism and then, for sins committed after baptism, in the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation. That’s where God’s greatest joy, as Pope Francis calls it, is poured into our hearts, since heaven rejoices more for one repentant sinner than 99 who never needed to repent. The third thing of which Pope Francis reminds us is that with Christ joy is constantly born anew. It’s something ever fresh. It’s never stale, or old, or “yesterday,” because the encounter with Jesus is always meant to be in the here-and-now. Jesus is with us today, accompanying us each day of our life, but God-with-us wants us to be with him, so that he can share with us each day the joy of the Gospel. A Christian who encounters Jesus meets him who has risen from the dead, who is tremendously vivacious, whose joy overflows. A Christian who really encounters Jesus and seeks to follow him will be someone who lives joyfully. He or she will live with special fervor not only Gaudete Sunday, but Gaudete Monday, Gaudete Tuesday, and Gaudete semper. He or she will live be able to say about each day, “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it!” (Ps 118:24).
But in order for us to have this joy from our encounter with Jesus, we have to meet a joyful Jesus. Pope Francis fittingly wrote the Joy of the Gospel, “There are Christians whose lives seem like Lent without Easter,” who live as if they always have “just come back from a funeral,” whose lives seem devoid of the joy Jesus came into this world to give us as a permanent reality. Sometimes when people meet us or attend Masses in particular parishes, rather than finding bursting with the joy flowing from Jesus’ brimming heart, meet the “frozen chosen,” or, worse, the depressing disciples, the apathetic apostles, or the fulminating faithful. Rather than giving testimony to the light, as John the Baptist said was his mission in today’s Gospel, such Christians give witness to darkness. Rather than sharing the good news, they risk making the good news seem like a fairy tale or a lie. That’s why it’s so crucial for us to have a proper image of a joyful Jesus. The reason why many of us do not live the faith overflowing with joy is because we’re not accustomed to looking at Jesus full of joy. We picture him as uber-serious, as perpetually upset with the state of the world, or even with angry eyes looking condemn us rather than save us. We don’t picture him smiling and contagiously lovingly us and others. We don’t see him with an infectious happiness that could get Peter, Andrew, James and John to leave their boats immediately, to entice Matthew from his tax tables without hesitation, to have vast crowds come to hang on his words for hours. When I was seven years old, Franco Zeffirelli’s epic six-hour television series, Jesus of Nazareth, was released. My parents let me stay up to watch it, which was a big deal for a first grader. It had many hall-of-fame actors and some great cinematography. Half of all American homes tuned in. But Robert Powell’s depiction of Jesus deeply confused me. He literally never blinked his eyes and seemed aloof and withdrawn. He lacked vivacity and happiness. He seemed far from the one who had said that entered the world so that we might life and have it to the full. I rejoiced that later we got much better depictions of Jesus, like Bruce Marchiano, who placed Jesus in the 1993 Visual Bible Film Series adaptation of the Gospel of Matthew, or Jim Caviezel in The Passion of the Christ, or more recently, Jonathan Roumie in the new multi-season television drama The Chosen. Marchiano, Caviezel and Roumie all show Jesus as full of joy, even though Jesus has to face much opposition, even though he will be betrayed by his friends, even though he will be unjustly railroaded, tortured and crucified.
In an incredible 1975 apostolic exhortation, Gaudete in Domino, taking its name from the same phrase of St. Paul from which Gaudete Sunday comes, Pope St. Paul VI focused on Jesus’ joys. This exhortation has always moved me because in it, Paul VI gives a glimpse of how full of joy Jesus was. He wrote, Jesus “experienced our joys. He knew, appreciated, and celebrated a whole range of human joys, simple daily joys within the reach of everyone. … He admires the birds of heaven, the lilies of the field. He immediately grasps God’s attitude towards creation at the dawn of history. He willingly extols the joy of the sower and the harvester, the joy of the man who finds a hidden treasure, the joy of the shepherd who recovers his sheep or of the woman who finds her lost coin, the joy of those invited to the feast, the joy of a marriage celebration, the joy of the father who embraces his son returning from a prodigal life, and the joy of the woman who has just brought her child into the world. For Jesus, these joys are real because for Him they are the signs of the spiritual joys of the kingdom of God: the joy of people who enter this kingdom, return there or work there, the joy of the Father who welcomes them. … His happiness is above all to see the Word accepted, the possessed delivered, a sinful woman or a publican like Zacchaeus converted, a widow taking from her poverty and giving. He even exults with joy when He states that the little ones have the revelation of the kingdom that remains hidden from the wise and clever. Yes, because Christ was ‘a man like us in all things but sin,’ He accepted and experienced affective and spiritual joys, as a gift of God. And He did not rest until ‘to the poor he proclaimed the good news of salvation…and to those in sorrow, joy,’” as we pray in the fourth Eucharistic prayer. But St. Paul VI noted that the “secret of the unfathomable joy that dwells in Jesus and that is special to Him” was the “inexpressible love by which He knows that He is loved by His Father.” Jesus’ joy came from his abiding in the love of the Father and Jesus came into the world so that we might have the same joy by experiencing that same divine love.
This Gospel of Joy, about rejoicing always, about encountering Jesus and being transformed by his joy not just once-in-a-while but full-time, is important and challenging for every Catholic, but it’s particularly crucial for young Catholics. The time of college can be an emotional rollercoaster, going from highs to lows often within the same hour. Most young people are moody because their state, even their identity, can be tied to things that are fleeting and regularly changing, like the grades they get on exams, papers or courses, like others’ approval, or how many “likes” they get on a social media post, or whether a particular person reciprocates their interest, or even what the weather is. Rather than anchoring themselves to rock, they are victims of the waves, tides, and storms. That’s why it’s super important, first, for students to come to Jesus who wants to fill them with joy, a joy the world can’t give or rob, and for them to become true apostles of joy, guiding others to the same joyful Source, especially when sometimes others feel joy is so unattainable that they give into the temptation even to take their own life.
But how can we find that joy, not just for a fleeting moment but more and more stably? How can we become profused by it in such a way that, without even trying, we share it with others? Cardinal Timothy Dolan, when he was my rector at the North American College in Rome during the late 1990s, gave us a tremendous rector’s conference on joy that I still remember almost three decades later. Most people readily recognize in him, both from a distance and up close, how joyful he is in living the faith. He shared with us the Christian’s open secret. To maintain and grow our joy, he said, we have to recognize and go to the fonts of joy and then be aware of the ways by which our joy is dissipated. He said we need to do four things and avoid four things. Let’s examine what this joyful disciple, now our Archbishop of New York, teaches us.
The first source of joy, he says, is God himself. Joy is a gift from God, a fruit of the Holy Spirit, dwelling within us in sanctifying grace. God gives us his joy when he gives us himself. Second, joy comes from the conviction that God loves us, that he gave his Son to save us, that he walks at our side always interceding for us. That’s the joy that St. Paul VI said Jesus always had and wants to impart to us. Third, Cardinal Dolan stated, joy comes from a trust and hope in divine providence, that everything works out for the good for those who love God. This is what we see in the first disciples after the resurrection, when they were threatened by the same people who had crucified Jesus: Jesus’ resurrection gave them courage and joy even in the midst of persecution. If we have the same trust in God’s providence, then we will persevere in it even in the midst of our own sufferings and setbacks, not to mention the harassment and mockery we can sometimes experience as disciples. And fourth, the future Cardinal said, joy comes from prayer, that we can approach God with anything we need, that he listens to us as a loving Father and always gives himself in response. Among the causes of our joy is that we can ask God in prayer to increase our joy and make it complete. So four things, four habits, we need to grow in joy: remaining in the state of grace, pondering often how much God loves us, trusting that God cares for us and will provide in every circumstance, and the privilege and power of prayer.
Cardinal Dolan also focused on the things that can banish joy from our hearts. While no one else can take our joy from us, these are the ways we can voluntarily squander it. The first thing is self-pity, when we begin to feel bad for ourselves, normally because something far less important than God didn’t go the way we hoped. The second is worrying, when we allow ourselves to be eaten alive by preoccupations, as if God isn’t greater or in charge. Jesus told us in the Sermon on the Mount not to worry even about what we are to eat, drink, wear or sleep, and if he’s saying not to worry about our most basic needs, he’s saying not to worry either about all of the other things we don’t need but simply desire. Third, we lose our joy when we place our happiness in anything or anyone else other than God, like acclaim, advancement, promotion, recognition, fame, prestige, power, the friendship or love of another creature or any other worldly things. Even when we attain what we’re seeking and experience pleasure as a result, that pleasure won’t last and sustain. Because pleasure and joy are different, as are contentment and happiness. As C.S. Lewis once astutely said in his classic Surprised By Joy, “I doubt whether anyone who has tasted [joy] would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world.” And lastly, we squander our joy through complaining. Rather than focusing on the treasure we have in God, we focus on all the other things that we don’t have. We begin to complain about everything, like the Israelites did in the desert, even after God’s miraculous liberation, his separating the Red Sea in two, his miraculous feeding with manna from heaven each morning, quails each night, water from a rock, his giving a column of fire to illumine the night and so much more. Rather than counting our blessings, we forget them and just enumerate and covet what others have as if it’s more important than what we do. In short, to maintain our joy, as we focus on God’s indwelling, his personal love for us, his fatherly care, and his attentive listening to our prayers, we also need to battle against the self-pity, worrying, complaining and setting our hearts on earthly treasures that can never produce the joy for which our hearts have been made. Cardinal Dolan’s advice is essential for us to find in this world and forever the joy our hearts seek and to become true witnesses of joy to our roommates, fellow students, professors, family members and others we encounter, even and especially in the midst of exams and papers and final grades.
The greatest means of all to be filled with joy here on earth is the encounter we have with Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. We call what we’re doing the “celebration” of the Mass because it’s supposed to be a truly joy-filled feast. It’s here that God comes to speak with us. It’s here that God comes to be with us. It’s here that he comes to hear our prayers. It’s here that he comes to feed us and sanctify us from the inside out. We pray at every Mass, “Blessed are those called to the Supper of the Lamb,” because we are the most blessed people on the planet, receiving today the greatest Gift one could ever receive. In Holy Communion, we are receiving Joy-to-the-world-incarnate, the one who came so that his joy might be in us and our joy may be brought to perfection. Today as we prepare to receive within us the same Jesus whom Mary carried within her womb for nine months, we are urged to make our own her words, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my savior,” for he is about to fill the spiritually hungry with the greatest nourishment of all! We repeat with Isaiah, “I rejoice heartily in the Lord, in my God is the joy of my soul,” as he is about to do far more than clothe us with the “robe of salvation,” and bedeck us like a bride with jewels, because he is about to clothe us with himself and give himself to us as the pearl of great price. God’s desire to enter into a Holy Communion with us is the most profound reason of all to act on St. Paul’s words in today’s second reading, to “rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and in all circumstances give thanks!” Indeed! Gaudete semper!

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
Is 61:1-2A, 10-11
The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
because the LORD has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor,
to heal the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives
and release to the prisoners,
to announce a year of favor from the LORD
and a day of vindication by our God.
I rejoice heartily in the LORD,
in my God is the joy of my soul;
for he has clothed me with a robe of salvation
and wrapped me in a mantle of justice,
like a bridegroom adorned with a diadem,
like a bride bedecked with her jewels.
As the earth brings forth its plants,
and a garden makes its growth spring up,
so will the Lord GOD make justice and praise
spring up before all the nations.
Responsorial Psalm
Lk 1:46-48, 49-50, 53-54
R. (Is 61:10b) My soul rejoices in my God.
My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord;
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked upon his lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed:
R. My soul rejoices in my God.
the Almighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his Name.
He has mercy on those who fear him
in every generation.
R. My soul rejoices in my God.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has come to the help of his servant Israel
for he has remembered his promise of mercy,
R. My soul rejoices in my God.
Reading 2
1 Thes 5:16-24
Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing.
In all circumstances give thanks,
for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.
Do not quench the Spirit.
Do not despise prophetic utterances.
Test everything; retain what is good.
Refrain from every kind of evil.
May the God of peace make you perfectly holy
and may you entirely, spirit, soul, and body,
be preserved blameless for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The one who calls you is faithful,
and he will also accomplish it.
Alleluia
Is 61:1 (cited in Lk 4:18)
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring glad tidings to the poor.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Jn 1:6-8, 19-28
A man named John was sent from God.
He came for testimony, to testify to the light,
so that all might believe through him.
He was not the light,
but came to testify to the light.
And this is the testimony of John.
When the Jews from Jerusalem sent priests
and Levites to him
to ask him, “Who are you?”
He admitted and did not deny it,
but admitted, “I am not the Christ.”
So they asked him,
“What are you then? Are you Elijah?”
And he said, “I am not.”
“Are you the Prophet?”
He answered, “No.”
So they said to him,
“Who are you, so we can give an answer to those who sent us?
What do you have to say for yourself?”
He said:
“I am the voice of one crying out in the desert,
‘make straight the way of the Lord,’”
as Isaiah the prophet said.”
Some Pharisees were also sent.
They asked him,
“Why then do you baptize
if you are not the Christ or Elijah or the Prophet?”
John answered them,
“I baptize with water;
but there is one among you whom you do not recognize,
the one who is coming after me,
whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie.”
This happened in Bethany across the Jordan,
where John was baptizing.
The post Witnessing to Light and Joy, Third Sunday of Advent (B), December 17, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
31 min
December 17, 2023Making Straight the Path to Joy, Third Sunday of Advent (B), December 17, 2023
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
Third Sunday in Advent, Year B
December 17, 2023
Is 61:1-2.10-11, Lk 1:46-50.53-54, 1 Thess 5:16-24, Jn 1:6-8.19-28

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click here:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.17.23_MCs_Homily_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
“Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!” These familiar words from the refrain of the most famous Advent Hymn of all frame our prayer today. We call the Third Sunday of Advent Gaudete Sunday from St. Paul’s words to the Philippians that are the entrance antiphon for today’s Mass: Gaudete semper in Domino. Iterum dico: Gaudete! “Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I say, rejoice. Indeed, the Lord is near” (Phil 4:4-5). Because the Lord is near, because the Lord is coming, because the Lord never ceases to come, we are called to rejoice always. The priest wears rose vestments and we light a rose rather than a purple candle on the Advent wreath to symbolize this joy: rose is a mix between the passion of red and the purity of white and symbolizes the joy that is the fruit of true love, commitment and devotion. And all of the readings of the Mass have us ponder the type of joy we’re supposed to have at the advent of the Lord in history, mystery and majesty, so that when Christmas comes, when the Lord approaches in the sacraments, and when he arrives at the end of time, we may be ready not just to sing but absolutely to burst with our Christian “joy to the world.”
In the first reading, Isaiah exclaims, “I rejoice heartily in the Lord, in my God is the joy of my soul; for he has clothed me with a robe of salvation and wrapped me in a mantle of justice, like a bridegroom adorned with a diadem, like a bride bedecked with her jewels.” God has spoiled us with himself, enveloping us in his salvation and justice and adorning us with things far greater than diamonds. In the Blessed Virgin Mary’s famous Magnificat, which the liturgy has us sing as a canticle in place of the Psalm today, our spiritual mother sings of the joy that comes from God’s enveloping us in his salvation from the inside, exulting, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my savior, for he has looked upon his lowly servant, … [he] has done great things for me, … he has mercy on those who fear him in every generation, he has filled the hungry with good things, … he has come to the help of his servant, … for he has remembered his promise of mercy.” In the second reading, St. Paul describes that our reaction to these blessings of the Lord should be to “rejoice always, pray without ceasing and in all circumstances give thanks.” Finally in the Gospel we see what John the Baptist was doing to prepare people through a baptism of repentance to rejoice when at last the Lamb of God would come to take away our sins. John announced, “I baptize with water; but there is one among you whom you do not recognize, the one who is coming after me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie.” Eventually when that “one among you” finally revealed himself and himself began to baptize, John’s disciples went to him and said, “Rabbi, the one who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you testified, here he is baptizing and everyone is coming to him.” John answered and said, “You yourselves can testify that I said [that] I am not the Messiah, but that I was sent before him. The one who has the bride is the bridegroom; the best man, who stands and listens to him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. So this joy of mine has been made complete.” Preparing for our joy to be brought to completion at the coming of Jesus the Bridegroom, at the sound of his voice, is the purpose of Advent and in a particular way the goal of Gaudete Sunday.
Today the Church marks the 87th birthday of the Holy Father, Pope Francis, and as we pray for him, it is a good occasion for us to ponder his thoughts on joy. Since the beginning of his papacy, he has been trying to help the whole Church to rejoice in the gift of our faith and share it with others. He began his programmatic apostolic exhortation “The Joy of the Gospel” with three powerful sentences: “The joy of the Gospel,” he wrote, “fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus. Those who accept his offer of salvation are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness and loneliness. With Christ, joy is constantly born anew.” Joy is born, he said, from the encounter with Jesus. There are many people who “bump into” Jesus but who don’t really encounter him because, to some degree, they’re afraid of what he might ask. Rather than fill them with life, they fear that he might take their life away. We need not to be afraid to encounter Jesus, but to let him meet us at the depth at which he desires. In a special way, as we prepare in ten days for the 350th anniversary of Jesus’ revelations to St. Margaret Mary of the desire he has for us in the Blessed Sacrament, and in the context of the ongoing Eucharistic Revival, it’s essential that we take advantage of the “res mirabilis,” the mind-blowing reality of the encounter we have with him in Holy Communion and in Eucharistic adoration. The second thing Pope Francis says that causes our Christian joy is that Jesus offers us salvation, to set us free from sin, sorrow, emptiness and loneliness, if only we accept that offer. Receiving that gift means coming to encounter Jesus in his mercy in the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation. That’s where God’s greatest joy, as Pope Francis calls it, is poured into our hearts, since heaven rejoices more for one repentant sinner than 99 who never needed to repent. The third thing of which Pope Francis reminds us is that with Christ joy is constantly born anew. It’s something ever fresh. It’s never stale, or old, or “yesterday,” because the encounter with Jesus is always meant to be in the present. We’re not called to live off past encounters but recognize he’s with us today, accompanying us through life, because he wants to share with us each day the joy of the Gospel. A Christian who encounters Jesus meets him who has risen from the dead, who is very much alive, who is tremendously vivacious, whose joy overflows. A Christian who really encounters Jesus will be someone who lives joyfully. Pope Francis has particularly called religious to help the whole Church “wake up the world” with joy. “Where there are consecrated persons, there is joy,” he said during the Year of Consecrated Life. He calls religious “to know and show that God is able to fill our hearts to the brim with happiness; that we need not seek our happiness elsewhere; that the authentic fraternity found in our communities increases our joy; and that our total self-giving in service to the Church, to families and young people, to the elderly and the poor, brings us life-long personal fulfillment.” How beautiful it is that joy is built into the spirit of the Missionaries of Charity as the fruit of loving trust and total surrender and the discipline of cheerfulness. MCs are supposed to live with special fervor not only Gaudete Sunday, but Gaudete Monday, Gaudete Tuesday, and Gaudete semper.
One of the most helpful sources I’ve ever found to help us grow in living the Christian faith with joy is a beautiful apostolic exhortation from Saint Paul VI written in 1975 entitled Gaudete in Domino, “Rejoice in the Lord,” taken from the same phrase of St. Paul from which Gaudete Sunday gets its name. St. Paul VI asked, “Is it not normal that joy should dwell in us, when our hearts contemplate or rediscover, in faith, the fundamental and simple reasons for joy?” And what are those fundamental and simple reasons? Paul VI gives them: “God has so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son; through His Spirit, God’s presence does not cease to enfold us with His tenderness and to fill us with His life; and we are journeying towards the blessed transfiguration of our life in the path of the resurrection of Jesus. Yes, it would be very strange if this Good News, which evokes the alleluia of the Church, did not give us the look of those who are saved. The joy of being Christian, of being united with the Church, of being ‘in Christ,’ and in the state of grace with God, is truly able to fill the human heart.” This is the joy of John the Baptist, who could serenely say that he was not the Messiah, Elijah or the Prophet foretold by Moses, but that he was the voice of another whose straight path he was preparing, whose sandal strap he was unworthy to untie, who would baptize with the Holy Spirit whom Isaiah in today’s first reading said would be upon and anoint him to bring glad tidings, to bring joy, to the poor.
But in order to appreciate those spiritual joys, we must first be able to appreciate the natural joys that God gives us. Paul VI wrote, “There is a need for a patient effort to teach people, or teach them once more, how to savor in a simple way the many human joys that the Creator places in our path: the elating joy of existence and of life; the joy of chaste and sanctified love; the peaceful joy of nature and silence; the sometimes austere joy of work well done; the joy and satisfaction of duty performed; the transparent joy of purity, service and sharing; the demanding joy of sacrifice. … Christian joy presupposes a person capable of natural joy. These natural joys were often used by Christ as a starting point when He proclaimed the kingdom of God.”
Jesus was able to use those joys, Paul VI said, because he had shared them. In Jesus’ humanity, Paul VI wrote, Jesus “experienced our joys. He has manifestly known, appreciated, and celebrated a whole range of human joys, those simple daily joys within the reach of everyone. … He admires the birds of heaven, the lilies of the field. He immediately grasps God’s attitude towards creation at the dawn of history. He willingly extols the joy of the sower and the harvester, the joy of the man who finds a hidden treasure, the joy of the shepherd who recovers his sheep or of the woman who finds her lost coin, the joy of those invited to the feast, the joy of a marriage celebration, the joy of the father who embraces his son returning from a prodigal life, and the joy of the woman who has just brought her child into the world. For Jesus, these joys are real because for Him they are the signs of the spiritual joys of the kingdom of God: the joy of people who enter this kingdom return there or work there, the joy of the Father who welcomes them. … His happiness is above all to see the Word accepted, the possessed delivered, a sinful woman or a publican like Zacchaeus converted, a widow taking from her poverty and giving. He even exults with joy when He states that the little ones have the revelation of the kingdom that remains hidden from the wise and clever. Yes, because Christ was ‘a man like us in all things but sin,’ He accepted and experienced affective and spiritual joys, as a gift of God. And He did not rest until ‘to the poor he proclaimed the good news of salvation…and to those in sorrow, joy,’” as we pray in the fourth Eucharistic prayer.
But St. Paul VI wanted us to grasp that “secret of the unfathomable joy that dwells in Jesus and that is special to Him.” He says it is because of the “inexpressible love by which He knows that He is loved by His Father. When He is baptized on the banks of the Jordan, this love, which is present from the first moment of His Incarnation, is manifested: ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; my favor rests on you.’ This certitude is inseparable from the consciousness of Jesus. It is a presence that never leaves Him all alone. It is an intimate knowledge that fills Him. … In return, the Son gives the Father immeasurable love: ‘I love the Father…. I am doing exactly what the Father told me.’ He always does what is pleasing to His Father: it is His food and drink. His availability goes even to the gift of His human life.” Jesus’ joy came from his abiding in the love of the Father and Jesus wants to communicate to us that joy by helping us to know and experience that love. Paul VI says, “This joy of living in God’s love begins here below. It is the joy of the kingdom of God!”
At the same time, however, Paul VI makes plain that this joy is not some spiritual cotton candy. This Christ-like joy, he said, “is granted on a steep road that requires a total confidence in the Father and in the Son, and a preference given to the kingdom. The message of Jesus promises above all joy [but it is a] demanding joy; Does it not begin with the beatitudes?” People today think joy comes from being rich but Jesus says it comes from spiritual poverty; the world says it comes from the laughter of comedians, but Jesus says it comes through mourning; the world says it comes from being popular and admired, but Jesus says real joy comes from being persecuted, reviled and hated on his account. That’s the path for us to “rejoice and be glad,” for our reward in heaven will be great. Christian joy is a demanding joy. We see this in Jesus’ own joy. “In a mysterious way,” St. Paul VI writes, “Christ Himself accepts death at the hands of the wicked and death on the cross, in order to eradicate from man’s heart the sins of self-sufficiency and to manifest to the Father a complete filial obedience. But the Father has not allowed death to keep Him in its power. The resurrection of Jesus is the seal placed by the Father on the value of His Son’s sacrifice: it is the proof of the Father’s fidelity.” And so Paul VI draws a conclusion: “The joy of the kingdom brought to realization can only spring from the simultaneous celebration of the death and resurrection of the Lord. This is the paradox of the Christian condition that sheds particular light on that of the human condition: neither trials nor sufferings have been eliminated from this world, but they take on a new meaning in the certainty of sharing in the redemption wrought by the Lord and of sharing in His glory. This is why the Christian, though subject to the difficulties of human life, is not reduced to groping for the way; nor does he see in death the end of his hopes. As in fact the prophet foretold: ‘The people that walked in darkness has seen a great light; on those who live in a land of deep shadow a light has shone.’ … The Easter Exultet sings of a mystery accomplished beyond the hopes of the prophets: in the joyful announcement of the resurrection, even man’s suffering finds itself transformed, while the fullness of joy springs from the victory of the Crucified, from His pierced heart and His glorified body. This victory enlightens the darker souls. … Here below this joy will always include to a certain extent the painful trial of a woman in labor and a certain apparent abandonment, like that of the orphan: tears and lamentation, while the world parades its gloating satisfaction. But the disciples’ sadness, which is according to God and not according to the world, will be promptly changed into a spiritual joy that no one will be able to take away from them.”
While no one can rob us of true Christian joy, we can squander it. St. Paul VI takes up two ways that we do that are important for us to ponder. He says the first way is through seeking to find our joy in material things. “Technological society,” he noted with words that have only grown more prophetic in the last 48 years, “has succeeded in multiplying the opportunities for pleasure, but it has great difficulty in generating joy. For joy comes from another source. It is spiritual. Money, comfort, hygiene and material security are often not lacking; and yet boredom, depression and sadness unhappily remain the lot of many. These feelings sometimes go as far as anguish and despair, which apparent carefreeness, the frenzies of present good fortune and artificial paradises cannot assuage.” CS Lewis once wrote in Surprised by Joy, “I doubt whether anyone who has tasted [joy] would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world.” We can’t find joy through things. We can’t find joy through winning the lottery. We can’t find joy through Christmas gifts or by spending the rest of our life at Disney World. All of those pleasures have expiration dates whereas joy endures. The second way we squander or prevent joy, St. Paul VI said, is through secularism, through living as if God didn’t exist, through abiding in spiritual worldliness rather than with God. When this happens to man, he says, “the meaning of life escapes him, … he is no longer sure of himself or of his transcendent calling and destiny. He desacralizes the universe and now he desacralizes humanity; he has at times cut the vital link that joined him to God.” We strip God from our worldview, we eliminate him from our daily life, we eliminate him from our understanding of what it means to be human, and when this happens we lose the essential foundation for true and lasting joy. That’s why Advent is so important. In Advent, we contemplate deeply the meaning of Jesus’ incarnation. We prepare for Emmanuel, God-with-us, God who comes to bring us joy, always and full-time. Religious men and women, in particular, are signs that God is real, present among us, so attractive that he is capable of drawing people to give up families of their own, lucrative careers, and even their own autonomy in order to give themselves wholly and entirely to God and his kingdom. They are able to witness that the path to true love, true wealth and true freedom comes through living the evangelical counsels and uniting ourselves to Jesus’ own chastity, poverty and obedience for and in the Kingdom. Meeting John at the Jordan as we do each Advent is an opportunity for each of us to ponder the meaning of our baptismal consecration, of our belonging to God, so that we may be in the midst of the world be like them signs that God exists, that he continues to save and forgive, to love, to walk beside us and lead us to our heavenly home. Wherever there are Christians, there’s supposed to be joy, because Christians are aware and witness that we are never alone, but Emmanuel, the source of our joy, is with us always.
The greatest means of all to be filled with joy here on earth is the encounter we have with Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. We call what we’re doing the “celebration” of the Mass because it’s supposed to be a truly joy-filled feast. It’s here that God comes to speak with us. It’s here that God comes to be with us. It’s here that he comes to hear our prayers. It’s here that he comes to feed us and sanctify us from the inside out. We pray at every Mass, “Blessed are those called to the Supper of the Lamb,” because we are the most blessed people on the planet, receiving today the greatest Gift we could ever receive. In Holy Communion, we are receiving Joy-to-the-world-in-the-Flesh, the one who came so that his joy might be in us and our joy may be brought to perfection. Today as we prepare to receive within us the same Jesus whom Mary carried within her womb for nine months, we are urged to make our own her words, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my savior,” for he is about to fill the spiritually hungry with the greatest nourishment of all! We repeat with Isaiah, “I rejoice heartily in the Lord, in my God is the joy of my soul,” as he is about to do far more than clothe us with the “robe of salvation,” and bedeck us like a bride with jewels, but instead he is about to clothe us with himself and give himself to us as the pearl of great price. God’s desire to enter into a Holy Communion with us is the most profound reason of all to act on St. Paul’s words in today’s second reading, to “rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and in all circumstances give thanks!”

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
Is 61:1-2A, 10-11
The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
because the LORD has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor,
to heal the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives
and release to the prisoners,
to announce a year of favor from the LORD
and a day of vindication by our God.
I rejoice heartily in the LORD,
in my God is the joy of my soul;
for he has clothed me with a robe of salvation
and wrapped me in a mantle of justice,
like a bridegroom adorned with a diadem,
like a bride bedecked with her jewels.
As the earth brings forth its plants,
and a garden makes its growth spring up,
so will the Lord GOD make justice and praise
spring up before all the nations.
Responsorial Psalm
Lk 1:46-48, 49-50, 53-54
R. (Is 61:10b) My soul rejoices in my God.
My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord;
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked upon his lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed:
R. My soul rejoices in my God.
the Almighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his Name.
He has mercy on those who fear him
in every generation.
R. My soul rejoices in my God.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has come to the help of his servant Israel
for he has remembered his promise of mercy,
R. My soul rejoices in my God.
Reading 2
1 Thes 5:16-24
Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing.
In all circumstances give thanks,
for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.
Do not quench the Spirit.
Do not despise prophetic utterances.
Test everything; retain what is good.
Refrain from every kind of evil.
May the God of peace make you perfectly holy
and may you entirely, spirit, soul, and body,
be preserved blameless for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The one who calls you is faithful,
and he will also accomplish it.
Alleluia
Is 61:1 (cited in Lk 4:18)
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring glad tidings to the poor.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Jn 1:6-8, 19-28
A man named John was sent from God.
He came for testimony, to testify to the light,
so that all might believe through him.
He was not the light,
but came to testify to the light.
And this is the testimony of John.
When the Jews from Jerusalem sent priests
and Levites to him
to ask him, “Who are you?”
He admitted and did not deny it,
but admitted, “I am not the Christ.”
So they asked him,
“What are you then? Are you Elijah?”
And he said, “I am not.”
“Are you the Prophet?”
He answered, “No.”
So they said to him,
“Who are you, so we can give an answer to those who sent us?
What do you have to say for yourself?”
He said:
“I am the voice of one crying out in the desert,
‘make straight the way of the Lord,’”
as Isaiah the prophet said.”
Some Pharisees were also sent.
They asked him,
“Why then do you baptize
if you are not the Christ or Elijah or the Prophet?”
John answered them,
“I baptize with water;
but there is one among you whom you do not recognize,
the one who is coming after me,
whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie.”
This happened in Bethany across the Jordan,
where John was baptizing.
The post Making Straight the Path to Joy, Third Sunday of Advent (B), December 17, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
28 min
December 16, 2023Third Sunday of Advent (B), Conservations with Consequences Podcast, December 16, 2023
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Third Sunday of Advent, B, Vigil
December 16, 2023

To listen to an audio recording of the brief homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.17.23_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us this Sunday, when, like every Advent, for the second Sunday in a row, we encounter St. John the Baptist who proclaims to us, “I am the voice of one crying out in the desert, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.” The Old Testament priests and Levites from Jerusalem who came the great distance downhill into the Jordan valley were engaging in a tense conversation with him trying to figure him out. “Who are you?,” they asked. John replied that he wasn’t the Messiah. He wasn’t Elijah come to life again. He wasn’t the Prophet Moses, the three figures Jews had been waiting for as a result of Old Testament prophecies. So they asked him again, “Who are you, so we can give an answer to those who sent us? What do you have to say for yourself?” That’s when John announced he was the forerunner of another, the voice of One calling all of us to conversion, of One who was coming after him who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and whose sandal strap he was not worthy to untie. Church tradition has always referred to John the Baptist as the precursor of the Lord, because as his father Zechariah said at his birth, he would “go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give his people knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of sins.” The interrogation of the forerunner of the Lord is one that we do every Advent, as we focus, first, on his identity and divine mission and heed his summons to make straight the paths for the Lord’s coming; then, we ponder how we are interrogated about what who we are and what we have to say for ourselves, since each of us, like John, is meant to be a voice of Jesus the Word, announcing him to others and helping them clear the path for Jesus to come into their life.
John the Baptist was a herald. In the ancient world, before X, Instagram and Facebook, before text messages and websites, before televisions and radios, before newspapers and posters, how would people be informed that a dignitary was coming to their town? Heralds would be sent out to alert everyone, to call them to attention, so that the one coming might be expected and desired, so that they could repair the roads and the bridges or build new ones, so that they could clean everything up, and so that the people could notice and greet the one who was coming when he arrived. This is the service that John the Baptist fulfilled for the Lord’s coming 2000 years ago and the Church has him do for us every Advent.
As Catholics, however, we’re called not merely to receive and be grateful for the work of the Lord’s forerunner, but we’re also called to imitate him in becoming precursors in our own right. Jesus constantly has need of heralds to announce his existence, his coming, his kingdom, and his presence as God-with-us. All of us, by our baptism and strengthened by our confirmation, have been consecrated to carry out this role. Jesus went to John and sanctified him from the beginning in the womb of his mother Saint Elizabeth. The same Lord has chosen us, redeemed us and sanctified us at the beginning of our lives in the womb of our mother, the Church, (which is the baptismal font), so that we might be his witnesses in the world, so that we might smooth out his paths and prepare others for his coming. We are called, as John the Baptist said in today’s Gospel, to be a voice for Christ, to announce to others, “In your midst there is one whom you do not know, one for whom you are searching, who can make you happy, one who will never deceive you, the only one who has the words of eternal life.”
The renewal that is meant to take place in us each Advent begins with our receiving John the Baptist’s call and making straight the paths for Christ to come to us, but it doesn’t stop there. The fruit is for us to echo John the Baptist’s call and help others likewise to prepare the way for the Lord. This is the greatest gift we could give to anyone at Christmas. We’re now living in a world in which so many of the baptized are living day-to-day and even on Sundays as if God doesn’t exist, as if Jesus hasn’t come, as if God-with-us is not really here to save us, sanctify us, and shepherd us to be with him forever. Some may say they believe in him, they may profess themselves to be Christian, but at a concrete level, the practice of the faith has grown cold. They’ve ceased to live a sacramental life. In many cases, they’ve ceased to pray, both individually or in their families. They’ve ceased, in short, to live as a Christian, even if they remember the words of various Advent and Christmas hymns and maintain a nostalgia for Christian values and past experiences. Many of them have just drifted away from Christ because, for one reason or another, they didn’t really experience the fullness of his burning love. Or they turned away because they were scandalized by the behavior of someone was supposedly Jesus’ follower or ambassador. This is a people that very much needs precursors to introduce them anew to Jesus Christ!
And we’re called to be those forerunners. Popes Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis have for the last 60 years been calling everyone in the Church to a new evangelization, which begins with our entering into a new and full loving relationship with Christ and then together with Christ and the Holy Spirit inviting the whole world to enter into loving friendship with him and with us in him. This relationship with Christ is what everyone in the world needs, and yet so many people are so distracted about what’s most important that they’re no more alert than the ancient inn keepers to Christ’s coming.
What are the steps in this new evangelization, to our being precursors, to our becoming the voice of Christ, to our helping others to make straight the paths for Christ to save them? The Popes have mentioned several. It’s important for us to note them as we ask the Lord for his help that we may be effective and faithful precursors like John the Baptist before us.
The first step is prayer. All methods are empty, all words are cheap, without the foundation of prayer. This Advent we pray for our fallen away family members, friends and parishioners that they may receive the grace of conversion and a renewed desire to enter into a full-time relationship with God.
The second step is witness. People today trust witnesses more than teachers. Because we’re often cynical from seeing so many hypocrites in politics, at work, and among the clergy, people pay more attention to those who walk the walk rather than those who just talk the talk. That’s why it’s so important for us not just to call ourselves Christians but to live and behave as Christians. To put God first. To pray. To love Jesus in the Mass. To be humble enough to go to confession when we sin. To be charitable and sacrifice ourselves for others. To live by the commandments. To enflesh the Beatitudes. In short, to be men and women who remind others of Jesus Christ. For this witness to be effective, it must be marked by profound joy, something we pray for on the Third Sunday of Advent, which is called Gaudete Sunday or the Sunday of joy. People are looking for true and lasting happiness. Jesus came so that his joy may be in us and our joy be made complete. We must be walking advertisements of the Good News.
The third part of the new evangelization is actually to speak about God, to have the courage to tell others about Jesus, his burning love and the truth that sets us free, to remind them that he is very much alive and active in prayer and the sacraments.
Fourth, to be an effective precursor, we can’t merely speak to the masses. We need to be willing to become a true friend of the ones to whom we’re introducing Jesus, the ones for whom Jesus died but of whose love they may be unaware. This type of one-on-one work is indispensable, like Jesus himself used with Nicodemus, with Zacchaeus, with the Samaritan woman, with Simon the Pharisee. Like Jesus did with them and with the disciples on the Road to Emmaus, we need to be able to enter into their conversations, to make their hearts burn as we interpret their pains within the light of the Scriptures and Jesus’ own suffering, death and resurrection.
Lastly, we should do all of this knowing that the Holy Spirit has been given us so that we might do so with tongues of fire, hearts full of love for those with whom we’re speaking, and the gifts of knowledge, wisdom, understanding, prudence, courage, reverence and awe of the Lord.
The ongoing Eucharistic Revival taking place in the Church in the United States is a grace-filled opportunity for us to do this. Now in its Parish Phase, each of us has been asked by the US Bishops to invite at least one person back to the practice of the Sacraments, to help them to recognize that among us is one they don’t recognize, namely, Jesus Christ himself, who is with us in our monstrances and tabernacles to enter regularly into consequential conversations with us, who wants to nourish us with himself in Holy Communion, who wants to strengthen us to become his precursors in the middle of the world so that we, like John, might be able to introduce them to him, who has come so that his joy might be in us and our joy perfected. This Advent, during the Eucharistic Revival’s parish phase, is a tremendous opportunity for us to respond to the gifts of the Holy Spirit to become like John.
The most beautiful moment in St. John the Baptist’s life was when he encountered Jesus, coming toward him at the Jordan. He shouted out, “Behold the Lamb of God! Behold Him who takes away the sins of the world! Behold the One of whom I was speaking!” On Sunday we will have this same encounter. May the Lord fill our hearts with joy and courage so that we might be able to be the precursors of Christ’s saving, Eucharistic, loving presence in the world, in the lives of our friends and family, and make straight the way for them to receive and embrace with love that Lamb who is coming to save us and fill us with himself!

The Gospel passage on which the homily was based was:
Gospel
Jn 1:6-8, 19-28
A man named John was sent from God.
He came for testimony, to testify to the light,
so that all might believe through him.
He was not the light,
but came to testify to the light.
And this is the testimony of John.
When the Jews from Jerusalem sent priests
and Levites to him
to ask him, “Who are you?”
He admitted and did not deny it,
but admitted, “I am not the Christ.”
So they asked him,
“What are you then? Are you Elijah?”
And he said, “I am not.”
“Are you the Prophet?”
He answered, “No.”
So they said to him,
“Who are you, so we can give an answer to those who sent us?
What do you have to say for yourself?”
He said:
“I am the voice of one crying out in the desert,
‘make straight the way of the Lord,’”
as Isaiah the prophet said.”
Some Pharisees were also sent.
They asked him,
“Why then do you baptize
if you are not the Christ or Elijah or the Prophet?”
John answered them,
“I baptize with water;
but there is one among you whom you do not recognize,
the one who is coming after me,
whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie.”
This happened in Bethany across the Jordan,
where John was baptizing.
The post Third Sunday of Advent (B), Conservations with Consequences Podcast, December 16, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
10 min
December 15, 2023Moving From the Marketplace to the Lord’s Light, Second Friday of Advent, December 15, 2023
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Friday of the Second Week of Advent
December 15, 2023
Is 48:7-19, Ps 1, Mt 11:16-19

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.15.23_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
As we have been pondering, Advent involves a triple dynamism: the Lord comes, we go out to meet him with lighted lamps, and then transformed by the encounter with the Bridegroom we continue to journey with him and finish together with him his mission.
When we go out to meet him, it’s key that we are open to that transformation. In the Gospel today, Jesus says that many of us don’t encounter him with that in mind. He describes his generation — and frankly every generation — like children in marketplaces “sitting,” in other words, not wanting to move. They’re playing different music and wanting everyone to respond to that music: if they play the flute, they want people to dance; if they play a dirge, they want people to mourn. The key is that they want to set the terms of the interaction. They want the others to move. That’s what Jesus was saying they were doing with God’s messenger and God himself. They criticized John the Baptist for his ascetical fasting; and when Jesus wasn’t fasting because he was showing us how to rejoice because the Bridegroom was with us, they criticized him for drawing close in mercy to the hedonists like the tax collectors and other sinners, who were enjoying the things of this world in a disordered way. They failed to grasp that it’s we who should be dancing to the Lord’s music and not the other way around.
Often we, too, try to play the music for our relationship with the Lord. We play soft, sentimental hits and want the Lord just to touch our emotions. Or we’ll play marches and want the Lord to ship others around us into shape and boss them around like a drill sergeant. Or we’ll play horror movie music to try to “scare the hell” out of people. Or we’ll play heavy metal at high volume to drown out the Lord’s whisper. Or we won’t play any music at all, because we’re in a bad mood, or hate music, or can’t sing, or anything else. The point is that we need to attune ourselves to what the Lord is playing.
In the first reading, God tells us through Isaiah, “I, the Lord, your God, teach you what is for your good, and lead you on the way you should go.” We need to allow him to teach and guide us, rather than our seeking to teach him how the world, our life and the lives of those around us should run. We need to follow him rather than try to lead him, like Peter did when Jesus had to call him “Satan.” We need to learn in all of these ways to sing with him a new song. In this age in which Popes John Paul II and Francis have called kairos of mercy, the Lord hopes that we’ll besinging, “Misericordias tuas in aeternum cantabo!,” “I will sing of your mercies forever!” In this time where faith is needed, he wants us chanting “Let it be done to me according to your word” and “Faith of our Fathers.” In this time in which there’s such a need for the joy of the Gospel, he wants us to be singing our own “Magnificat.” But as we sing them, we’re supposed to be singing them in a new way, with all we have.
The Psalmist describes the type of fruit we’ll produce when we align ourselves to the Lord’s music, when we delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on his law day and night: we will be like a tree planted near running water, yielding its fruit in due season, and whose leaves never fade. When we listen to what the Lord teaches us for our own good and allow him to lead us on the way we should go, hearkening to his commandments, as Isaiah tells us, we will spiritually prosper like a river. But if we don’t, if we want to remain in control, the Psalmist tells us we will be like chaff, dead airy matter with no holy solidity, blown away by our whims.
Today we ask the Lord to help us have the same transition, to leave behind our desire to sing at our speed, at our pitch, with our version of the lyrics, with the melody that might please us most, to singing his Song which is ever new. We ask him to help us to synchronize ourselves to the Lord’s music and help us synchronize the world.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 IS 48:17-19
Thus says the LORD, your redeemer,
the Holy One of Israel:
I, the LORD, your God,
teach you what is for your good,
and lead you on the way you should go.
If you would hearken to my commandments,
your prosperity would be like a river,
and your vindication like the waves of the sea;
Your descendants would be like the sand,
and those born of your stock like its grains,
Their name never cut off
or blotted out from my presence.
Responsorial Psalm PS 1:1-2, 3, 4 AND 6
R. (see John 8:12) Those who follow you, Lord, will have the light of life.
Blessed the man who follows not
the counsel of the wicked
Nor walks in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the company of the insolent,
But delights in the law of the LORD
and meditates on his law day and night.
R. Those who follow you, Lord, will have the light of life.
He is like a tree
planted near running water,
That yields its fruit in due season,
and whose leaves never fade.
Whatever he does, prospers.
R. Those who follow you, Lord, will have the light of life.
Not so the wicked, not so;
they are like chaff which the wind drives away.
For the LORD watches over the way of the just,
but the way of the wicked vanishes.
R. Those who follow you, Lord, will have the light of life.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The Lord will come; go out to meet him!
He is the prince of peace.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel MT 11:16-19
Jesus said to the crowds:
“To what shall I compare this generation?
It is like children who sit in marketplaces and call to one another,
‘We played the flute for you, but you did not dance,
we sang a dirge but you did not mourn.’
For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they said,
‘He is possessed by a demon.’
The Son of Man came eating and drinking and they said,
‘Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard,
a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’
But wisdom is vindicated by her works.”
The post Moving From the Marketplace to the Lord’s Light, Second Friday of Advent, December 15, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
13 min
December 14, 2023Greater than the Greatest, Second Thursday of Advent, December 14, 2023
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Thursday of the Second Week of Advent
Memorial of St. John of the Cross
December 14, 2023
Is 41:13-20, Ps 145, Mt 11:11-15

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
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The following text guided the homily:
The Jews were waiting in the long Advent for two figures. The most important was the Messiah. The second was Elijah, whom God had said through the Prophet Malachi, “Behold, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes” (Mal 4:5; Mal 3:1). Jesus in today’s Gospel identified the work of Elijah with St. John the Baptist, telling us, “If you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah, the one who is to come.” Later in St. Matthew’s Gospel, as we will hear on Saturday, after Elijah appeared with Moses speaking to Jesus during the Transfiguration, Jesus was even more explicit, pointing out how they had manhandled his precursor: “Elijah will indeed come and restore all things, but I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him but did to him whatever they pleased. So also will the Son of Man suffer at their hands” (Mt 17:12). “Elijah” pointed out the “Messiah” and the “Messiah” was pointing out “Elijah.” The fulfillment of the Advent for the one who would come in the person of Elijah was an indication of the even greater fulfillment.
But because of John the Baptist’s role in pointing out the Messiah, not to mention because of his personal holiness and witness to the point of martyrdom, Jesus said something astonishing in today’s Gospel: “Amen, I say to you, among those born of women, there has been none greater than John the Baptist, yet the least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” First, Jesus was saying that up until then John was the greatest human being who had ever lived. We need to ponder that. There were lots of heroic martyrs and faithful Israelites, but he had the role to make straight the paths of the Lord. He was one born of a woman having already been blessed by God in the womb. No one had been born so exalted as to have pointed out by his leaping the Messiah. And he was still pointing him out, at the Jordan, through preaching repentance and faith, through martyrdom. But Jesus goes on to say that the littlest in the kingdom of God was even greater than John, that the one sanctified in the womb of the Kingdom is greater than all those born just of women. This is not so much a testimony about moral greatness, but about objective greatness, and a reminder to us of just how lucky we are to have been reborn in that womb of the Church soon after birth or whenever we entered into the sacred waters. We’re also greater because we’ve seen and received the full revelation of Christ to which John was still in some sense prophesying, because John hadn’t seen what would come later: Jesus’s incredible love revealed for us on the Cross that gave us the power to become children of God.
But just as there was a cost for John’s becoming the greatest born of woman — his suffering on account of pointing out not only the Lamb but the Bridegroom and therefore the truth about marriage before Herod — so there’s a cost for our Christian greatness in fully entering the kingdom. Jesus describes both sufferings in the Gospel: “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the Kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent are taking it by force.” There are two types of violence Jesus describes: violence against the Kingdom and violence for the Kingdom. We see the violence against the Kingdom from the beginning: the slaughter of the Holy Innocents; Jesus’ neighbors in Nazareth trying to murder him by throwing him off the Nazarene cliff; the collusion of the arch-inimical Sadducees, Pharisees and Romans to have Jesus executed; the sufferings of the apostles; the slaughter of so many martyrs; the persecution of the Church throughout time right down to what our brothers and sisters are suffering today, especially in northern Nigeria. Jesus told us that we would be hated by all because of his name and that what they did to him they would try to do to us. The Kingdom will suffer violence against it until the end of time and we need to be prepared. But there’s also a violence Jesus describes for the Kingdom. St. Luke says in a similar passage, “The kingdom of heaven has suffered violence and men of violence take it by force” (Lk 16:16). We need to seize the Kingdom. We need to be able to do violence to ourselves, to our earthly values, in order to enter into it. We need to agonize to enter through the narrow gate. We need to deny ourselves, pick up our Cross and follow Jesus. We need to sell what we have, give the money to the poor, and follow Jesus up close. We need to lose our life to save it. We need to love him more than our parents, families and even ourselves to be worthy of it. None of this is easy, but when we recognize the value of the kingdom, we’re able to give up everything else to seize this pearl of great price. We’re able to do violence to gain that lasting peace.
Many of us, however, when we hear about this violence against and for the Kingdom shudder. Many of us don’t like to get shots at the doctors office because we’re afraid of needles, yet Jesus calls to us — with nails through his limbs on the Cross — to come follow him. It can be hard to take. It can seem as if it’s not really part of the “good news.” The suffering itself is not part of the good news any more than suffering and death are ontological goods. What is part of the good news is what God says to us today through the Prophet Isaiah. We don’t suffer alone. With words that would deeply console the Jews in Babylon during the exile, God tells them, “Fear not, I will help you. … I am the Lord, your God, who grasp your right hand.” He promises that he will answer the prayers of those who are parched in search of water, and not just give them a few drops, but open up rivers on mountain tops, fountains in valleys, turn deserts into marshlands, dry ground into springs, “so that all may see and know, observe and understand that the hand of the Lord has done this.” These words of God — “Fear not, I will help you,” “Do not be afraid I am with you” — are often repeated throughout salvation history. God said them to Moses at the burning bush when he asked how he, a simple shepherd, could go before Pharaoh. He said them to Joshua when he feared how a group of nomads could defeat the fortified city of Jericho. He said them to Paul when he was in jail in Corinth. He said them to the apostles who were frightened on the sea. “Do not be afraid I am with you.” Every Advent we pray for the triple coming of God-with-us, and Jesus comes not in a static way, but comes to save us, to rescue us, to redeem us, to strengthen us, to take away our fears, to make us great, to quench our thirst, and to help us to take the Kingdom of God by force by being willing to suffer violence for it.
Someone who shows us the violence we will suffer and need to do to ourselves in order to seize the kingdom, someone whose life manifests the the tenderness of God in grasping us by the hand and helping us confront and overcome our fears, is the great saint and doctor of the interior life the Church celebrates today: St. John of the Cross. John’s father died when he was two and he, his mom and two brothers grew up in poverty. Eventually he began working in a hospital while taking simple classes as the hospital administrator paid for his education. He eventually became a Carmelite, but the worldliness and in some places sinfulness of the Carmelites led him to think that he might be called to be a Carthusian. That’s when he met with St. Teresa of Avila, the foundress of the Discalced Carmelites, who asked him to work with her to reform the whole order. He did. And he suffered violence for it. Many of the Carmelites did not want to be reformed and they weren’t open to the fact that this reform was coming from God. On one occasion, the unreformed Carmelites essentially imprisoned him for months in a dirty, dank cell with just a sliver of light coming in. On a second occasion, they brutalized him as he prepared for death. But the religious name he had taken as a reformed Carmelite, St. John of the Cross, was well chosen: and it was through bearing that Cross that he discovered God’s power and wisdom and wrote some of his greatest spiritual works — his four great poems on the interior life that led to his four great commentaries — during those sufferings. He persevered in faithful, hopeful, loving prayer despite terrible persecutions from within; he feared not because God was with him. He wrote once, in a short series of aphorisms called The Degrees of Perfection, “Remember that everything that happens to you, whether prosperous or adverse, comes from God, so that you become neither puffed up in prosperity nor discouraged in adversity.” He saw that even the violence he suffered was permitted by God and so he maintained his courage to the end, where he died maltreated and abandoned by seemingly everyone but God. And in the process, John became Jesus the Master’s greatest teaching assistant in the school of prayer and life. In the passage the Church gives us in the Office of Readings for his feast, he teaches us about the need for the violence of the Cross in order to enter the kingdom of God, to become holy, and to advance into the depth of prayer. He writes, “Would that men might come at last to see that it is quite impossible to reach the thicket of the riches and wisdom of God except by first entering the thicket of much suffering, in such a way that the soul finds there its consolation and desire. The soul that longs for divine wisdom chooses first, and in truth, to enter the thicket of the cross. … The gate that gives entry into these riches of his wisdom is the cross; because it is a narrow gate, while many seek the joys that can be gained through it, it is given to few to desire to pass through it.” We ask St. John of the Cross to help us learn how to do and endure the violence necessary to enter into the thicket of the Cross, to correspond to our great dignity as baptized into the Kingdom, to bear sufferings like Christ and how to agonize to enter through the narrow gate into the fullness of the kingdom and of life.
The way we experience all the lessons in today’s readings is in the Mass. This is where our real greatness shines. We come here where God feeds us, but he feeds us in such a way that we can enter into his suffering for the salvation of the world. Some of us need to suffer violence to come here, violence from family members or roommates or friends who mock our practicing the faith or doing more than the minimum. Some of us need to suffer violence to walk across the city on a cold morning in between exams. Some of us need to suffer other forms of violence in order to align our schedules to the value of the kingdom. But in some sense all of us need to do more violence if we’re going to receive more from the kingdom. At the offertory, we present all of that violence endured and chosen, together with Christ’s, to the Father. The Mass is the supreme sacrifice of Christ and his Body to the Father; for us to pray the Mass and to get what God wants to give us out of it we need to go all in, “violently,” seizing this incredible gift and ordering our whole life to this source and summit of our faith and our Christian life. But the Mass is also a means that encourages us to be able to make this sacrifice of our life. The more and the better we receive Jesus worthily in Holy Communion, the more we’re able to make our whole life a commentary on the words of consecration, offering our body, our blood, our sweat, our tears, our breath together with Christ for others and their salvation. Today as we come to receive the Body and Blood of Christ, violently shed for us on the Cross, he tells us, “Fear not. I will help you!,” as he seeks to strengthen us to go out to seize and proclaim his kingdom and, like St. John of the Cross, live in accordance with the greatness we have received from our gracious, merciful, patient and greatly kind God.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Is 41:13-20
I am the LORD, your God,
who grasp your right hand;
It is I who say to you, “Fear not,
I will help you.”
Fear not, O worm Jacob,
O maggot Israel;
I will help you, says the LORD;
your redeemer is the Holy One of Israel.
I will make of you a threshing sledge,
sharp, new, and double-edged,
To thresh the mountains and crush them,
to make the hills like chaff.
When you winnow them, the wind shall carry them off
and the storm shall scatter them.
But you shall rejoice in the LORD,
and glory in the Holy One of Israel.
The afflicted and the needy seek water in vain,
their tongues are parched with thirst.
I, the LORD, will answer them;
I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them.
I will open up rivers on the bare heights,
and fountains in the broad valleys;
I will turn the desert into a marshland,
and the dry ground into springs of water.
I will plant in the desert the cedar,
acacia, myrtle, and olive;
I will set in the wasteland the cypress,
together with the plane tree and the pine,
That all may see and know,
observe and understand,
That the hand of the LORD has done this,
the Holy One of Israel has created it.
Responsorial Psalm
145:1 and 9, 10-11, 12-13ab
R.   (8) The Lord is gracious and merciful; slow to anger, and of great kindness.
I will extol you, O my God and King,
and I will bless your name forever and ever.
The LORD is good to all
and compassionate toward all his works.
R.   The Lord is gracious and merciful; slow to anger, and of great kindness.
Let all your works give you thanks, O LORD,
and let your faithful ones bless you.
Let them discourse of the glory of your Kingdom
and speak of your might.
R.   The Lord is gracious and merciful; slow to anger, and of great kindness.
Let them make known to men your might
and the glorious splendor of your Kingdom.
Your Kingdom is a Kingdom for all ages,
and your dominion endures through all generations.
R.   The Lord is gracious and merciful; slow to anger, and of great kindness.
Alleluia
See Is 45:8
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Let the clouds rain down the Just One,
and the earth bring forth a Savior.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Mt 11:11-15
Jesus said to the crowds:
“Amen, I say to you,
among those born of women
there has been none greater than John the Baptist;
yet the least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
From the days of John the Baptist until now,
the Kingdom of heaven suffers violence,
and the violent are taking it by force.
All the prophets and the law prophesied up to the time of John.
And if you are willing to accept it,
he is Elijah, the one who is to come.
Whoever has ears ought to hear.”
The post Greater than the Greatest, Second Thursday of Advent, December 14, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
20 min
December 13, 2023Coming to Him Who Comes to Give Us Rest, Second Wednesday of Advent, December 13, 2023
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Wednesday of the Second Week of Advent
Memorial of St. Lucy, Virgin and Martyr
December 13, 2023
Is 40:25-31, Ps 103, Mt 11:28-30

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.13.23_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in this homily:
As we have been discussing, in Advent there is a triple dynamism: Christ comes to us in history, mystery and majesty; we run out to embrace him; and then, having encountered him, we go out united with him to complete the work he wants to do in us and through us for the salvation for the world. We ponder this triple reality in today’s readings. As Jesus is coming to us, he says, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened and I will give you rest.” Jesus calls us in the midst of our work, he calls us in the context of all our struggles and difficulties, to come to him to find the rest our bodies and souls need. But the rest Jesus offers is not what normally we would anticipate. For most of us we would anticipate that rest would mean a vacation from our labors or the elimination or a respite from our burdens. Jesus offers something else. It’s a yoke: “Take my yoke upon you,” he says, “and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy and my burden light.” The yoke Jesus offers is something that will harness us to him, so that, just as a yoke binds two oxen to work together, we will do everything — including the work of salvation — together with him. That yoke is his Cross, which is not so much a sign of pain but of the love that makes even the pain of crucifixion somehow bearable. To be united with the Lord who comes and calls us to come to him is to be united to that love that makes even the yoke of the Cross easy-fitting and light — and whatever burdens and labors we carry to the yoke easier and lighter.
Jesus calls us to yoke ourselves to him in such a way that we will learn meekness and humility directly from him. God’s great strength is not exercised in the way the strong of the world often flex their muscles. We see the way Jesus himself exercises his strength in the Gospel. Meekness is not weakness. The Greek word for “meek” means the self-discipline and power of a martial arts expert or tremendously agile athlete, or of a well-trained, docile horse, capable of action and reaction at a simple bump of the heel. Real strength is not shown in pummeling any and all adversaries, but often in resisting doing so even though one could. That’s why St. Paul will say that Christ crucified is the power and the wisdom of God. Yoking ourselves to Jesus allows us to learn this meekness from him, so that in the midst of our labors and burdens we will not be beaten down but, like a black belt in the martial arts, will use what is thrown at us to help us achieve what we want to rather than to obstruct that goal. When we are yoked to Jesus, our sufferings and work help purify us and help sanctify the world. Likewise yoked to Jesus we learn how to grow in humility through offering our work and burdens for the service of others. The Season of Advent helps us to focus on humility as we prepare for Christmas and the unbelievable humility that God showed not only in taking on our human nature, but taking on great poverty, being born in a borrowed cave, placed in an animal trough, wrapped in swaddling clothes rather than regal garments, eventually working himself as a carpenter, and experiencing the normal burdens of life. In all of these humbling circumstances, Jesus was carrying out his work of salvation, which is something each of us can and ought to learn from him, because we, too, united to him, can convert all the ordinary, humble circumstances of our day into opportunities to glorify God, love others, and grow in God’s image and likeness.
The consequences of being yoked to Jesus are beautifully expressed by God through the prophet Isaiah in today’s first reading. The Israelites are questioning whether they are “disregarded” by their God as they languish in exile. God first speaks about “his great might and the strength of his power” and then reminds them, “The Lord is the eternal God, creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint nor grow weary.” After that God took on our nature to be yoked to us in an eternal communion, those divine properties could be gradually assimilated by us. Isaiah tells us that God “gives strength to the fainting; for the weak he makes vigor abound. Though young men faint and grow weary, and youths stagger and fall, they that hope in the Lord will renew their strength, they will soar as with eagles’ wings; they will run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint.” When we are united to the Lord, when we learn from him humility and meekness, when we yoke ourselves to his love, then our burdens and labors don’t weary us the way they weary others. We get a holy stamina to keep running without tiring, to keep walking without fainting, to keep giving and serving without counting the cost, just as Jesus did with regard to us. This doesn’t mean that a deep spiritual life takes away the physical necessities of sleep, rest, eating and normal care, but it does give us an energy, a motivation that can keep us going. The fundamental reason is because we start to do things for God and for others rather than for ourselves. We start focusing on God’s glory and others’ good more than our own comfort, and we find within not just a deeper human reserve than we were aware of, but a vastly greater spiritual reserve given by God. When we do things motivated by love, those burdens are not only lighter but sweeter. This is the source of the energy of the great saints, what made St. John Paul II vigorous and willing to continue flying across the Globe with Parkinson’s season. This is what led St. Mother Teresa to keep serving until her late 80s. This is what allows Pope Francis to keep the schedule he does, today on the 54th anniversary of his priestly ordination and four days from his 87th birthday. This is what helps so many priests and religious, lay leaders of St. Vincent de Paul conferences and many other disciples to continue teaching and caring and serving well past closing time or retirement age with an infectious joy that constantly rejuvenates. That happens because they’re yoked to Jesus in prayer, in the sacraments, in the Word, in charity and that’s where they get their energy.
Today we celebrate the feast of someone who was yoked to God in life and in death. St. Lucy, like all the saints, was characterized by seeking to be in communion with God throughout her life. She turned to the Lord early in life and offered her virginity to him, but her mother Eutychia had made plans to marry her off to a rich pagan. After her spurned suitor grasped that her vow of virginity likely meant that she was a Christian and turned her over to Diocletian’s persecutorial administration, she was condemned to death in Syracuse, Sicily. What St. Ambrose said of St. Agnes’ virginity we could likewise say of St. Lucy’s: “Virginity is not praiseworthy because it is found in martyrs, but because it itself makes martyrs.” The type of love that leads one to yoke oneself totally to God in response to his love is what makes a person strong in loving him to the end, loving him despite suffering, torture and even execution. She remains yoked.
Today Christ invites us to yoke ourselves to him in a similar way. The word in Latin for yoke is jugum and the expression to be yoked with someone is conjugum. That’s where we get our term “conjugal,” or “spousal,” because husbands and wives are yoked together for the rest of their life in one flesh. It’s here at Mass, in the consummation of Jesus the Bridegroom’s spousal union with us, his Bride, that we are yoked to him. It’s here in the Eucharist that he yokes himself to us with all our labors and burdens. It’s here he gives us repose. It’s here that we ponder in a special way his incredible humility hiding under the appearances of bread and wine and his meekness in adapting his care to us just as we are today. It’s here we’re strengthened to remain bound to him even in suffering, like St. Lucy. It’s from here that he wishes to send us out yoked to him to do our work, to run without growing weary and to walk without fainting, all the way home to heaven!

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 IS 40:25-31
To whom can you liken me as an equal?
says the Holy One.
Lift up your eyes on high
and see who has created these things:
He leads out their army and numbers them,
calling them all by name.
By his great might and the strength of his power
not one of them is missing!
Why, O Jacob, do you say,
and declare, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the LORD,
and my right is disregarded by my God”?
Do you not know
or have you not heard?
The LORD is the eternal God,
creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint nor grow weary,
and his knowledge is beyond scrutiny.
He gives strength to the fainting;
for the weak he makes vigor abound.
Though young men faint and grow weary,
and youths stagger and fall,
They that hope in the LORD will renew their strength,
they will soar as with eagles’ wings;
They will run and not grow weary,
walk and not grow faint.
Responsorial Psalm PS 103:1-2, 3-4, 8 AND 10
R. (1) O bless the Lord, my soul!
Bless the LORD, O my soul;
and all my being, bless his holy name.
Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits.
R. O bless the Lord, my soul!
He pardons all your iniquities,
he heals all your ills.
He redeems your life from destruction,
he crowns you with kindness and compassion.
R. O bless the Lord, my soul!
Merciful and gracious is the LORD,
slow to anger and abounding in kindness.
Not according to our sins does he deal with us,
nor does he requite us according to our crimes.
R. O bless the Lord, my soul!
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Behold, the Lord comes to save his people;
blessed are those prepared to meet him.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel MT 11:28-30
Jesus said to the crowds:
“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am meek and humble of heart;
and you will find rest for yourselves.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”
The post Coming to Him Who Comes to Give Us Rest, Second Wednesday of Advent, December 13, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
18 min
December 12, 2023The Mission of Our Merciful Mother, Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, December 12, 2023
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe
December 12, 2023
Rev 11:19.12:1-6.10, Judith 13:18-19, Lk 1:39-47

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.12.23_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in this homily:
“How does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” This question asked by St. Elizabeth in the Visitation ought to be asked by each of us today on this great feast of the Patroness of America, Our Lady of Guadalupe. Mary identified herself to St. Juan Diego in Tepeyac as the “Mother of God” and then later as our “Merciful Mother” and she came there as a woman on a mission. A specific type of mission. She’s pregnant with Jesus seeking to bring him to others. In the Gospel, we see what she does as soon as she became pregnant by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit: she went with haste to care for her cousin Elizabeth, forming her embryonic son to be the itinerant missionary he would become before he even had developed the tiniest of feet. And when she arrived in Ein Karim, Jesus blessed his in utero cousin John the Baptist in the womb, preparing him for his own mission as the precursor of the Messiah, as the great Advent prophet sent to prepare the way for Christ to come. Likewise in the first reading from the Book of Revelation, we see Mary pregnant once again, this time with the Church — we know it’s the Church because she “wailed aloud in pain as she labored to give birth,” something that didn’t happen in Bethlehem, but certainly happened on Calvary as Jesus announced to her that she was to be the mother of the human race — seeking to help bring to birth in all of God’s children the image and likeness of her Son Jesus. Mary seeks to do for us what Jesus entrusted her to do as he was dying on the Cross: to help bring him, her Son, to birth in us. When Mary appeared to St. Juan Diego, when she imprinted her image in his tilma 492 years ago today, she did so as a pregnant Aztec princess, a symbol that she was about to give birth to her Son here in our continent, in our hemisphere. Christianity had arrived in Mexico just ten years before but there were relatively few converts because most of the indigenous people were turned off by the conquistadors rather than turned on by the Franciscan missionaries to the Lord both groups claimed to believe in. But after her appearance and seeing the image of this mestiza woman — which was an harmoniously beautiful mix between Indian and Spanish features, showing the compatibility of the Gospel being announced by the Spanish Franciscans and the Indian nature — there started to be converts by the millions. Ten million came to the faith in just the next decade.
The mission Our Lady of Guadalupe gave to St. Juan Diego shows us how Mary sought to give birth to her Son in his hemisphere. It wasn’t merely bringing people to baptism and the sacraments. It was incorporating them into her Son’s saving mission. It was helping them to continue her own work of bringing Christ to birth in others. When she identified herself to St. Juan Diego, she said, “Am I not here who am your Mother?” She later identified herself as his merciful Mother and told him she wanted a place built where she could “hear [her sons’ and daughters’] weeping, their complaints and heal all their sorrows, hardships and sufferings.” In this kairos of Mercy in which we’re living in the Church and the world, Mary wants to show herself to be our merciful Mother, to hear our sorrows, hardships and sufferings, and to help us to become like Juan Diego, facilitating her doing that for so many others. She wants us to help bring people to her so that she can help bring them to her Son so that they might all experience his merciful love. As we mark today a marathon day in which the Sacrament of Penance is being offered, St. Juan Diego’s vocation story shows us all how each of us, no matter how unworthy we think we are, are asked to cooperate in this missionary work of Christ — Mercy incarnate — and his Merciful mother.
When the Blessed Mother appeared to Juan Diego on Tepeyac Hill on December 9, 1531, he was a simple, humble, 57 year-old widower known for walking with his head down and shuffling his feet. He had been baptized only seven years before by the Franciscan missionaries. He soon became a fervent believer. Every Saturday and Sunday he would walk fifteen miles each way to Mass. As he was journeying one cold Saturday morning, he heard a voice calling from the top of a hill, in his native Nahuatl “Juantzin,” “Juan Diegotzin,” — little Juan — “Come here!” He scaled the rocky slope, where at the top he saw the Blessed Virgin Mary arrayed in splendor. Our Lady announced she was on a mission of mercy and wanted him to be her emissary to Bishop Juan de Zumárraga of Mexico City to have him build a church on Tepeyac Hill. She said, “Know for sure, my dearest, littlest, and youngest son, that I am the perfect and ever Virgin Holy Mary, Mother of the God of truth through Whom everything lives, the Lord of all things near us, the Lord of heaven and earth. I want very much to have a little house built here for me, in which I will show Him, I will exalt Him and make Him manifest. I will give Him to the people in all my personal love, in my compassion, in my help, in my protection: because I am truly your merciful Mother, yours and all the people who live united in this land and of all the other people of different ancestries, my lovers, who love me, those who seek me, those who trust in me. Here I will hear their weeping, their complaints and heal all their sorrows, hardships and sufferings. And to bring about what my compassionate and merciful concern is trying to achieve, you must go to the residence of the Bishop of Mexico and tell him that I sent you here to show him how strongly I wish him to build me a temple here on the plain; you will report to him exactly all you have seen, admired and what you have heard. Know for sure I will appreciate it very much, be grateful and will reward you. And you? You will deserve very much the reward I will give you for your fatigue, the work and trouble that my mission will cause you. Now my dearest son, you have heard my breath, my word; go now and put forth your best effort.”
Obeying simply and immediately, in his simple peasant’s outfit, he went to the episcopal residence, where he was forced to wait for hours in an outdoor courtyard. Eventually the bishop received him, treated him with kindness, but basically, despite Juan Diego’s obvious sincerity, as probably a little deluded. Juan Diego left feeling like a complete failure. Returning at once to Our Lady on Tepeyac Hill, he said that he had struck out. “I beg you, Noble Lady,” he implored, “to entrust this message to someone of importance, someone well-known and respected, so that your wish will be accomplished. For I am only a lowly peasant and you, my Lady, have sent me to a place where I have no standing. Forgive me if I have disappointed you for having failed in my mission.”
Our Lady smiled tenderly on him and said, “Listen to me, my dearest son, and understand that I have many servants and messengers whom I could charge with the delivery of my message. But it is altogether necessary that you should be the one to undertake this mission and that it be through your mediation and assistance that my wish should be accomplished. I urge you to go to the Bishop again tomorrow. Tell him in my name and make him fully understand my disposition, that he should undertake the erection of the teocalli (temple) for which I ask. And repeat to him that it is I in person, the ever Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, who send you.” We see here that Mary didn’t, strictly speaking, need Juan Diego. She could have appeared to the Bishop herself. But she wanted to incorporate Juan Diego in this saving mission. Likewise she wants to involve each of us, no matter how unqualified we feel or may in fact be.
So after that second meeting with our Lady, Juan Diego went with trepidation to see the bishop again. He feared what the bishop’s overprotective servants might do to him. They greeted him with ill-concealed exasperation. He was told the bishop was busy with more important matters. He told them he was willing to wait — and he did, for several hours in the frigid outdoor courtyard. When he finally met the bishop again, he repeated, with fervor and tears, the message of Our Lady entrusted to him. The bishop asked some questions. Though moved by Juan Diego’s sincerity, he wasn’t going to build a church in a desolate spot on the basis of one person’s unsubstantiated word. To test the message, the bishop asked him for a special secret sign from Our Lady. Juan Diego left at once to ask for the sign. Arriving back at Tepeyac, the Virgin told him to return the following day to receive the sign to bring the bishop: “That is fine, my youngest and dearest son; you will return here tomorrow so that you may take the sign he asked for. Then, he will believe and no longer doubt or be suspicious of you; and know, my dear son, I shall reward your care, work and fatigue in my behalf. Go now; tomorrow I shall be here waiting for you.” That sign turned out to be Castillian roses, which had not yet been introduced to Mexico, growing on the top of a stony hill in frigid December temperatures. Juan Diego was instructed to bring them back to the bishop in his tilma, or outer parka. When he returned to the bishop, as he opened up his tilma, the bishop saw the roses from his native Castille, the sign he was seeking. He and everyone else also saw something even more miraculous: some of the roses had melted into the tilma and produced the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe: Dressed like a pregnant Aztec princess, Our Lady was giving witness that she was ready to give birth to Christ among the Mexican people.
For me one of the most impressive elements of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe and an incredible sign of its authenticity is what has happened when they’ve done modern scientific tests on the tilma. Various tilmas like it of maguey-fiber (ayate) fabric have been made as controls and they all begin decomposing, even behind glass, after about 20 years, and yet the image itself is present without any decomposition after 492 years. Studies have been done about how an image could get and stay on a tilma like that, showing that it defies human means; infrared studies have shown that there was no trace of paint at all and that the fabric hadn’t been treated with a means to receive paint. And my favorite is what has been discovered with regard to the eyes. With high-tech zooms magnifying the image 2,500 times, it’s been discovered that 13 highly detailed figures are present in the iris and pupil of her eyes, in the left and right eyes, as would happen when human eyes reflect the objects before them. The figures seem to be all those who would have been present in the Bishop’s room when Juan Diego unfurled the tilma, including the Bishop himself, shown as a balding, elderly man with a white beard, matching portraits of him at the time. Such optical information would be impossible for anyone to paint, not only because of the microscopic detail but also because the science of the eye and how images are processed in reflection (the Purkinje effect) were not known at the time. At a theological level, it shows that the Blessed Virgin always has us in the apple of the eye. She’s looking at all of us now with love. We’re not only in her eyes but in her heart. She really is our merciful mother.
And just like she gave birth to Jesus among the Mexicans in the 1530s, so she wants that Christ be born within us, she wants to teach us how to relate to him within us like she did as he was growing within her. And she has that chance here at Mass, particularly daily Mass, as she appeared to St. Juan Diego as he was heading to daily Mass, taking advantage of the love he had for her Son in the Eucharist. It’s here at Mass that she gives us a chance to enter into communion with her Merciful Son and together with him, united with her and all the saints, offer to the Eternal Father Christ’s body, blood, soul and divinity, in expiation for our sins and the sins of the world stretching from the beginning to the end of time! O Merciful Mother, our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us!

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
RV 11:19A; 12:1-6A, 10AB
God’s temple in heaven was opened,
and the ark of his covenant could be seen in the temple.
A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun,
with the moon under her feet,
and on her head a crown of twelve stars.
She was with child and wailed aloud in pain as she labored to give birth.
Then another sign appeared in the sky;
it was a huge red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns,
and on its heads were seven diadems.
Its tail swept away a third of the stars in the sky
and hurled them down to the earth.
Then the dragon stood before the woman about to give birth,
to devour her child when she gave birth.
She gave birth to a son, a male child,
destined to rule all the nations with an iron rod.
Her child was caught up to God and his throne.
The woman herself fled into the desert
where she had a place prepared by God.
Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:
“Now have salvation and power come,
and the Kingdom of our God
and the authority of his Anointed.”
Responsorial Psalm
JDT 13:18BCDE, 19
R. (15:9d) You are the highest honor of our race.
Blessed are you, daughter, by the Most High God,
above all the women on earth;
and blessed be the LORD God,
the creator of heaven and earth.
R. You are the highest honor of our race.
Your deed of hope will never be forgotten
by those who tell of the might of God.
R. You are the highest honor of our race.
Gospel
LK 1:39-47
Mary set out
and traveled to the hill country in haste
to a town of Judah,
where she entered the house of Zechariah
and greeted Elizabeth.
When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting,
the infant leaped in her womb,
and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit,
cried out in a loud voice and said,
“Most blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
And how does this happen to me,
that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears,
the infant in my womb leaped for joy.
Blessed are you who believed
that what was spoken to you by the Lord
would be fulfilled.”And Mary said:
“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord;
my spirit rejoices in God my savior.”
The post The Mission of Our Merciful Mother, Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, December 12, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
19 min
December 11, 2023The Healing Needed to Follow Jesus Along the Holy Way, Second Monday of Advent, December 11, 2023
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Monday of the Second Week of Advent
December 11, 2023
Is 35:1-10, Ps 85, Lk 5:17-26

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.11.23_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
Throughout the first week of Advent, we’ve been speaking of the triple dynamism of Christ’s coming to us, our going to meet him, and, having been transformed by the encounter, traveling with him forward. Yesterday, St. John the Baptist reminded us of our need to prepare the way for this encounter and make straight the paths. On Saturday, Isaiah prophesied that the Messiah who will feed us, quench our thirst and teach us, will speak to us from behind and say, “This is the path. Walk in it!” Today the Prophet Isaiah tells us that this path Jesus will come into our world to indicate is a special one: it’s a highway called “the holy way.” And Isaiah says that this way of sanctity has several characteristics:
First, “no one unclean may pass over it.” It’s not only for those who desire holiness, but those who have been cleansed. God’s mercy, in other words, precedes our repentance, our making straight the paths.
Second, it’s “for those with a journey to make.” It’s not for the inert who desire to remain exactly where they are, who don’t want to change, who don’t want to move.
Third, it’s an exodus route on which “the redeemed will walk.” Even when we’re redeemed, that is not the end of the journey, but in a sense the beginning. Once we’ve been redeemed, now we can begin that journey. “Salvation,” as we prayed in the Psalm, is “along the way of his steps.”
But this journey along the highway of holiness is something that sometimes we don’t have the strength to journey on our own. Jesus said elsewhere in the Gospel that the road that leads to life is narrow and few find it but the way that leads to perdition is broad and there are many on it. The highway to hell, in other words, is congested and the eternal express has little traffic. Many of us need the help not only of God but of others to get on the path of holiness. We can think of those who first taught us the faith, those who nourished us in faith, those who continue to pray for us, and guide us, and inspire us, correct us with love, and set the example for us. We can think about those people who really helped us when we couldn’t move, when we were neck-deep in uncleanness. We can think about those who are constantly picking us up as we fall and helping us anew. And we can think about the way as Catholics we’re called to assist others to come to God’s mercy, to gain the strength for the journey, and to walk with us on the pilgrimage of the redeemed.
Today’s Gospel is about that. We see how the friends of the paralyzed man perseveringly and faithfully overcame every obstacle to bring their friend to Jesus. When they couldn’t get him in through the front door, they did what was very difficult — keep him balanced on his stretcher as they lifted him up on the roof and then lowered him right on top of Jesus. In the case of the paralyzed man, he needed more than to fill in valleys and level mountains. He needed friends to help him overcome the obstacle of too many people in the way and to climb roofs. But he got that help. And when Jesus saw him, he helped him with the first condition: he made him clean, saying to him, on account of the true friends’ faith, “Your sins are forgiven.” To show in the face of criticism he had that power and that desire to make us all clean, he cured him of his paralysis and sent him on a journey: “Rise, pick up your stretcher, and go home.” He began the journey of the redeemed: St. Luke tells us, “He stood up immediately before them, picked up what he had been lying on, and went home, glorifying God.” And that praise was contagious. St. Luke adds: “Astonishment seized them all and they glorified God, and, struck with awe, they said, ‘We have seen incredible things today.’”
During this Advent season, we need not only to thank God for all those who have brought us to Jesus so that we may be cleansed, healed, strengthened, and begin the walk of the redeemed following the Redeemer, but become true friends of others, bringing them to Jesus in our prayers, through our invitations, even in our cars or other ways of transportation. Like the friends of the paralytic, we have to be willing to break social convention, to do something others might consider crazy, in order to help them come to Jesus, especially to receive the forgiveness of their sins through his mercy in the Sacrament he established for that purpose. (Tomorrow will be a great opportunity to act on this summons as we will have marathon confessions from 9 am to 6 pm.) We also need to allow others, including each other, to carry us in this way rather than out of shame prefer to stay paralyzed in our own problems. Jesus came into the world to transform and change us, but sometimes to receive what he wants to give, we need to allow others to help us. Jesus has the power to make deserts, parched lands and steppes bloom with abundant flowers, and shine like the splendor of the forests of Lebanon. He has the power and desires to strengthen feeble hands, make firm weak knees, embolden frightened hearts, open blind eyes, clear deaf ears, make the lame leap and the mute sing. No matter how injured we or others are, he wants to touch us and make it possible for us to journey with the redeemed along the highway of holiness, the way of the saints.
That journey of the redeemed always leads to and from the altar, where we meet the same Jesus who healed the paralyzed man. It’s here that we bring all our loved ones in our prayers. It’s here that they bring us. It’s to get here that we should overcome every obstacle. It’s here that the Lord wants to strengthen our hands in prayer and in work, fortify our knees for kneeling in adoration and in service, make our frightened hearts steadfast in love, our eyes see him in others, our ears hear his voice and the cries of those in need, and help us to sing and to leap with joy. It’s here that kindness and truth meet, that justice and peace kiss. It’s here that the Lord wants to help us rise with his Risen Body, pick up our stretcher rather that continue to use it as a crutch, and go not only home but throughout the world proclaiming God’s glory to every creature and helping them to join us on the road of the redeemed. It’s here that astonishment should seize us all as we glorify God and, struck with awe, say, “We have seen incredible things today,” and “heard incredible things,” and most amazing of all, we have received within the one who not only has power on earth to forgive sins, but power to make us saints.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 IS 35:1-10
The desert and the parched land will exult;
the steppe will rejoice and bloom.
They will bloom with abundant flowers,
and rejoice with joyful song.
The glory of Lebanon will be given to them,
the splendor of Carmel and Sharon;
They will see the glory of the LORD,
the splendor of our God.
Strengthen the hands that are feeble,
make firm the knees that are weak,
Say to those whose hearts are frightened:
Be strong, fear not!
Here is your God,
he comes with vindication;
With divine recompense
he comes to save you.
Then will the eyes of the blind be opened,
the ears of the deaf be cleared;
Then will the lame leap like a stag,
then the tongue of the mute will sing.
Streams will burst forth in the desert,
and rivers in the steppe.
The burning sands will become pools,
and the thirsty ground, springs of water;
The abode where jackals lurk
will be a marsh for the reed and papyrus.
A highway will be there,
called the holy way;
No one unclean may pass over it,
nor fools go astray on it.
No lion will be there,
nor beast of prey go up to be met upon it.
It is for those with a journey to make,
and on it the redeemed will walk.
Those whom the LORD has ransomed will return
and enter Zion singing,
crowned with everlasting joy;
They will meet with joy and gladness,
sorrow and mourning will flee.
Responsorial Psalm PS 85:9AB AND 10, 11-12, 13-14
R. (Isaiah 35:4f) Our God will come to save us!
I will hear what God proclaims;
the LORD –for he proclaims peace to his people.
Near indeed is his salvation to those who fear him,
glory dwelling in our land.
R. Our God will come to save us!
Kindness and truth shall meet;
justice and peace shall kiss.
Truth shall spring out of the earth,
and justice shall look down from heaven.
R. Our God will come to save us!
The LORD himself will give his benefits;
our land shall yield its increase.
Justice shall walk before him,
and salvation, along the way of his steps.
R. Our God will come to save us!
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Behold the king will come, the Lord of the earth,
and he himself will lift the yoke of our captivity.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel LK 5:17-26
One day as Jesus was teaching,
Pharisees and teachers of the law,
who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem,
were sitting there,
and the power of the Lord was with him for healing.
And some men brought on a stretcher a man who was paralyzed;
they were trying to bring him in and set him in his presence.
But not finding a way to bring him in because of the crowd,
they went up on the roof
and lowered him on the stretcher through the tiles
into the middle in front of Jesus.
When Jesus saw their faith, he said,
“As for you, your sins are forgiven.”
Then the scribes and Pharisees began to ask themselves,
“Who is this who speaks blasphemies?
Who but God alone can forgive sins?”
Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them in reply,
“What are you thinking in your hearts?
Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’
or to say, ‘Rise and walk’?
But that you may know
that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”–
he said to the one who was paralyzed,
“I say to you, rise, pick up your stretcher, and go home.”
He stood up immediately before them,
picked up what he had been lying on,
and went home, glorifying God.
Then astonishment seized them all and they glorified God,
and, struck with awe, they said,
“We have seen incredible things today.”
The post The Healing Needed to Follow Jesus Along the Holy Way, Second Monday of Advent, December 11, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
17 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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