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By Father Roger LandryReligion & Spirituality Christianity

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November 26, 2023Reigning Now and Forever with Christ the King, Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, November 26, 2023
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, Year A
November 26, 2023
Ezek 34:11-12.15-17, Ps 23, 1 Cor 15:20-26.28, Mt 25:31-46

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.26.23_CCM_homily.mp3

The following text guided today’s homily:
Today the Church celebrates with great joy the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. It is the last Sunday of the liturgical year and, in many ways, the culmination of everything we have marked up until now — the goal of Advent and Christmas, Lent and Easter, Pentecost and Corpus Christi and of all the Sundays and feasts throughout the year. They have all pointed toward this reality, that Christ is the King of the Universe, the Lord of all, the judge of the living and the dead. All of time, all of history, is heading toward this climax when Christ will be revealed to people of every race, nation and religion as the universal King of Kings. This is what is alluded to in today’s Gospel and second reading when he see that at Christ’s second coming, he will sit upon his glorious throne, all the nations will be assembled before him, he will destroy “every sovereignty and every authority and power,” put all those who have made themselves his enemies “under his feet,” destroy death, subject everything to himself and at last present the kingdom to God the Father so that God may be all in all. This moment is what is jubilantly anticipated in the famous climax of Handel’s Messiah Oratorio, when we sing: “Hallelujah! (10x) … For the Lord omnipotent reigneth. … Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! (5x) … The kingdom of the Lord is begun, the kingdom of the Lord and of his Christ. … And he shall reign forever and ever! (4x) … King of Kings — forever and ever, Hallelujah! Hallelujah! — and Lord of Lords — forever and ever, Hallelujah! Hallelujah! (3x) … King of Kings and Lord of Lords… And he shall reign forever and ever! (2x) … King of Kings — forever and ever, Hallelujah! Hallelujah! — and Lord of Lords — forever and ever, “Hallelujah! Hallelujah! And He shall reign forever and ever! King of Kings and Lord of Lords! And he shall reign forever and ever. Forever and ever. Forever and ever. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” The first thing we celebrate today is, indeed, that the Lord is king and he shall reign forever and ever! The angels in heaven, as we see in the book of Revelation, now stand around his glorious throne and chant, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen” (Rev 7:12). And today we join them in that hymn of jubilant praise.
But that eschatological revelation of Christ the King doesn’t change the reality that the Lord Jesus is already king. The Son of God entered the world as the long-awaited Messiah, the descendant of King David according to his humanity, was acknowledged as king in Bethlehem by the angels, shepherds and wise men, in a way that King Herod took as a threat to his own desire for despotic control. After decades of hidden life, Jesus emerged proclaiming that the kingdom of God was at hand and urging people to repent, believe in the Gospel, and enter that kingdom. He taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come” and then revealed to us that the kingdom of heaven belongs to those who receive it on good and fruitful soil, who convert and become like little children, who are “poor in spirit,” who value it more than all the wealth of the world and seize it like a pearl of great price or treasure buried in a field. He stated that it grows like a mustard seed or yeast, imperceptible to people on the outside but with an explosive potential to become huge, worldwide and even other worldly, and that it grows despite evil in the world, just like a net cast into a sea brings in good and rotten fish and a field has wheat and weeds. He added that it is ultimately comparable to a wedding banquet full of joy, just a bride and groom at their nuptials. Summarizing Jesus’ teaching, the future Pope Benedict XVI said in a powerful 2000 homily to catechists from across the world, “The kingdom of God … is ‘not a thing.’ The Kingdom of God is God. The Kingdom of God means: God exists. God is alive. God is present and acts in the world, in our – in my — life. God is not a faraway ‘ultimate cause,’ God is not the ‘great architect’ of deism, who created the machine of the world and is no longer part of it; on the contrary: God is the most present and decisive reality in each and every act of my life, in each and every moment of history.” The Kingdom over which Jesus rules, the Kingdom into which he invites us to enter, the kingdom he has sent us and the whole Church to proclaim, is one in which each of us relates to God as the most decisive reality in my life, as my Lord and God, as my King and Savior. It’s when we are able to echo in life not just the words, “Thy kingdom come!,” but “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” not as some type of dry, external obedience, but as a desire of grateful, loving adhesion.
That’s why today’s first reading and Psalm emphasize that the way Christ the King seeks to reign in our life is as a shepherd. It’s not by coincidence that King David was first a shepherd, because in God’s eternal plan, God envisioned his service of us according to the model by which a shepherd serves his sheep. Through the prophet Ezekiel, God tell us of the personal relationship he wishes to have with each of us. He declares, “I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out… I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. … I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak. I will feed them with justice.” In response to those amazing words, we sing in the Psalm, “The Lord — the Universal King — is my shepherd. There is nothing I shall want.” We express our confidence that with him, we lack for nothing, we have it all. We praise him for leading by restful waters, refreshing our soul, anointing our head with oil, and filling our cup to overflowing. We proclaim that even though we sometimes may have to walk through the scariest and darkest pits, we fear no evil, for we trust that the Lord himself is with us as our shepherd and king, conforting us with his strong staff and rod. We profess that as long as we’re with him, we believe that only goodness and kindness will follow us all the days of our life; as long as we stay close to him, we shall dwell in the Lord’s house for millennia to come! All of these Old Testament words find their fulfillment when God himself would take on our humanity and say, in St. John’s Gospel, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (Jn 10:11), and then put that love into body language on Good Friday. Our King loved us so much that he came down from heaven to seek us out when we were lost, to take us back to his fold, and to die for us so that we might have life eternally, so that we might always remain with him in the verdant pastures of heaven. So the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven, begins here on earth when we begin to relate to Christ the King as our Shepherd, as we hear his voice calling us and follow him, as we allow him to rescue us, bind our wounds, lead us, feed us, and ultimately to transform us. We enter most into the Kingdom of God when we become like the King himself, when we live by the virtues and values of the King, when we seek to give the king homage by imitating the homage the Shepherd amazingly gives to his sheep. That’s why today’s Gospel is so important for us to grasp if we’re actually going to understand and live Christianity 101. Jesus tells us that when he comes as King to judge the living and the dead, we will be judged on the basis of whether we have served him by feeding and tending his own sheep and lambs, whether we have loved him by loving our neighbors as he has loved us. He makes plain that for us to “inherit the kingdom prepared for [us] since the foundation of the world” — the Kingdom he has wanted to give us since before he created the heavens the earth! — we need to make the choice to spend our time here on earth reigning with him in loving, sacrificial service. God’s kingdom, as Pope Francis has been saying to us throughout his pontificate, is a kingdom in which we care for each other, in which we feel responsible for each other, in which we behave as Good Samaritans crossing the road for each other, inconveniencing ourselves for each other, and sacrificing ourselves for each other’s welfare. At our judgment the King will separate us into two groups, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. This division will be as stark as the separation between light from darkness and truth from falsity. He will place his sheep, the saved, on his right and the goats, the damned, on his left. Then he will say to those on his right, among whom, God-willing, we hope to be numbered: “For I was hungry, and you gave me food; thirsty and you gave me drink; naked and you clothed me; a stranger and you welcomed me; ill and you cared for me; in prison and you visited me.” Those on his right will respond, in effect, “Lord, when did we do any of this for you?” And the King will reply, “Whatever you did for the least of my brothers and sisters, you did for me!” Jesus did not mean to give us an exhaustive list of good deeds or even very hard things to accomplish, like giving away huge sums of money or making extraordinary acts of heroic sacrifice. He named six simple actions that any of us can do and most of us, especially here in New York, have the opportunity to do almost every day. He said that if we wish to serve and honor him, then we must do so by doing him loving homage in the disguise of the hungry, the thirsty, naked, poor, afflicted, imprisoned, persecuted, and those in any way in need. He said that whatever we do out of love for another he will take personally. Just as the King cares for us as our Shepherd, so we live in his Kingdom as his faithful subjects when we care for him in others as their shepherd. It can’t be more concrete. It can’t be more doable. But the question is: Do we do it? Do we live this way? Or do we live by the standards and values of the world?
Christ the King makes plain in today’s Gospel that, as straightforward as it is to seize his kingdom and live in it, in this world and forever, it is nevertheless tragically possible to fail the exam of life. It is possible to choose not to live in the kingdom Christ has inaugurated. Some, he declares, by their own free choice will behave in such a way that they will one day hear those terrifying words that will doubtless break his shepherdly and sacred heart to enunciate, “Depart from me, you accursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” They will earn those words by failing to live by love, failing to take advantage of the opportunities Christ the King gives them to imitate him in serving others, failing to take others as seriously as he does. These are not necessarily the people we would call evil. To some, they might even seem holy. By their question to the King in today’s Gospel image — “Lord, when did we see youhungry, or thirsty, naked or a stranger, ill or in prison and not attend to your needs?” — they imply that had they known it was the Lord they would have spared no effort. But because all they saw was basically someone else, someone unworthy of their love and sacrifice, perhaps just a beggar or a “nobody,” they did nothing. The great test of whether we’re living in God’s kingdom in this world and are preparing ourselves to live in it at Jesus’ right eternally is our love for each other, especially those people who are hardest to love. The servant of God Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker Movement who was born in Brooklyn and died in Manhattan and spent most of her life serving the poor throughout New York City, once hauntingly said, “We love God to the extent that we love the person we like the least.” We love God to the extent that we love a poor ravenous beggar, or a homeless drunk, or a felon on death row, or an AIDS-infected drug user, or an illegal alien, or a classmate with no friends, or an obnoxious family member. John wrote in his first epistle that we cannot love the God we have not seen if we don’t love the brother or sister we do see (1 John 4:20). And Jesus wants to help us to grow in the capacity for love by making it “easier” for us, calling us to treat others the way we would treat him, since he presumes that if we knew we were caring for him directly most of us would indeed give it our best.
Therefore, the great question for us on this Solemnity — in fact, the single most important question of our life — is whether we have been serving or ignoring Christ in our brothers and sisters. The last thing our beloved King wants to do is to judge us. In St. John’s Gospel, he makes crystal clear that he came not to condemn but to redeem us, but he also emphasizes that we will essentially judge ourselves by our actions, by whether or not we conform our choices and actions to his word. “I do not judge anyone who hears my words and does not keep them,” he tells us, “for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my word has a judge; on the last day the word that I have spoken will serve as judge” (Jn 12:47-48). The judgment will be nothing more than a revelation of how we have used our freedom to live by Jesus’ words or not, how we have chosen to love Christ our King or to reject him directly or in disguise. Jesus tells us all of this now so that we might use our freedom to learn to reign with him.
If we sincerely proclaim Christ as our King, if we cry out in prayer, “Thy Kingdom come!,” if we sing “To Jesus Christ our Sovereign King who is the world’s salvation” and “Crown him with many crowns,” then we must make a decisive choice to live by the principles of his kingdom here on earth, what the Eucharistic Preface today says is a “kingdom of truth and life, a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, love and peace. Even if most other people live according to the values of the world and strive to hallow their own name, to build their own kingdom rather than the Lord’s, to do their own will rather than God’s or anyone else’s, and basically to do the little or nothing for others, we Christians are called to be Christ-like and live in truth, holiness, justice, peace and sacrificial love — and to do so without delay, without excuses and without apology. We remember what happened when Jesus was on the Cross. He was needy in all of the ways he described in tonight’s Gospel. He was hungry and cried out, “I thirst!” He was stripped totally naked and exposed before all (the loin cloth with which he’s vested on the Crucifix is merely for our sense of decorum). He was a stranger even in the world he created, kicked out of his own city of Jerusalem to die as a malefactor at the place of the skull. He was sick and wounded, having had his flesh ripped open by a brutal Roman scourging, having been beaten and crowned with thorns. He was imprisoned not only in the high priest’s dungeon but pinned to the cross with nails. And the vast majority of those present did nothing. The Blessed Mother, Mary Magdalene, John the Evangelist, Salome and the wife of Clopas were there at least to pray and console. The Good Thief did what he could to stick up for Jesus and begged to be remembered when Jesus entered his kingdom, and Jesus, with the largesse of a king, gave him so much more, promising him paradise. The more we enter into that scene of the King on the Cross, the more sensitized and responsive we’re supposed to become to the sufferings of others, the indifference of so many, and the need for us, not someone else, to respond with the love of the Good Shepherd and for the Good Shepherd.
Tonight at Mass, we ask the Lord Jesus, whom we will soon behold under the appearances of simple bread and wine, to help us to recognize him in the disguise of the poor we’ll meet later this week. We thank him for the way he, our King and Shepherd, has never failed to are for us in our need. To the hungry, he gives his own flesh to eat. To all of us who are thirsty, he quenches us with his own blood. To all of us who are alienated from his kingdom, he welcomes us and reconciles us to the Father. To those of us are were ill and afflicted, he comforts us by joining us to him in our sufferings and gives our sufferings infinite redemptive value. To those of us imprisoned by sin, he not only visits us, but frees us from our cells, breaking down the bars once and for all and showing us the way out. Jesus repeatedly fulfills each of these corporal works of mercy by giving himself in love. This shows what the fulfillment of human life is: to give of ourselves out of love to God and others in such a way that this self-gift of ours becomes the gift of Christ himself to others. He calls us to give not just bread and water, not just medicine, welcome, care and clothing, but ourselves together with him. This is the way his kingdom will reign in us. This is the way our prayer, “Thy Kingdom come!,” will be fulfilled. So let us now commit ourselves wholeheartledly to respond to the saving graces Christ gives us today to reign with him by serving others, so that at the end of our earthly pilgrimage, we will see the King of the Universe, the great Shepherd of the sheep, my shepherd, wave us to his eternal right and say those extraordinary words he’s been waiting to declare since before he said, “Let there be light”: “Come, you — you! — who are blessed of my Father: inherit the kingdom prepared for you since the foundation of the world.”

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
Ez 34:11-12, 15-17
Thus says the Lord GOD:
I myself will look after and tend my sheep.
As a shepherd tends his flock
when he finds himself among his scattered sheep,
so will I tend my sheep.
I will rescue them from every place where they were scattered
when it was cloudy and dark.
I myself will pasture my sheep;
I myself will give them rest, says the Lord GOD.
The lost I will seek out,
the strayed I will bring back,
the injured I will bind up,
the sick I will heal,
but the sleek and the strong I will destroy,
shepherding them rightly.As for you, my sheep, says the Lord GOD,
I will judge between one sheep and another,
between rams and goats.
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 23:1-2, 2-3, 5-6
R. (1) The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
In verdant pastures he gives me repose.
R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
Beside restful waters he leads me;
he refreshes my soul.
He guides me in right paths
for his name’s sake.
R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
You spread the table before me
in the sight of my foes;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
Only goodness and kindness follow me
all the days of my life;
and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD
for years to come.
R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
Reading 2
1 Cor 15:20-26, 28
Brothers and sisters:
Christ has been raised from the dead,
the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
For since death came through man,
the resurrection of the dead came also through man.
For just as in Adam all die,
so too in Christ shall all be brought to life,
but each one in proper order:
Christ the firstfruits;
then, at his coming, those who belong to Christ;
then comes the end,
when he hands over the kingdom to his God and Father,
when he has destroyed every sovereignty
and every authority and power.
For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.
The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
When everything is subjected to him,
then the Son himself will also be subjected
to the one who subjected everything to him,
so that God may be all in all.
Alleluia
Mk 11:9, 10
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!
Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is to come!
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Mt 25:31-46
Jesus said to his disciples:
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory,
and all the angels with him,
he will sit upon his glorious throne,
and all the nations will be assembled before him.
And he will separate them one from another,
as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.
He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
Then the king will say to those on his right,
‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father.
Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
For I was hungry and you gave me food,
I was thirsty and you gave me drink,
a stranger and you welcomed me,
naked and you clothed me,
ill and you cared for me,
in prison and you visited me.’
Then the righteous will answer him and say,
‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you,
or thirsty and give you drink?
When did we see you a stranger and welcome you,
or naked and clothe you?
When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’
And the king will say to them in reply,
‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did
for one of the least brothers of mine, you did for me.’
Then he will say to those on his left,
‘Depart from me, you accursed,
into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
For I was hungry and you gave me no food,
I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
a stranger and you gave me no welcome,
naked and you gave me no clothing,
ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.’
Then they will answer and say,
‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty
or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison,
and not minister to your needs?’
He will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you,
what you did not do for one of these least ones,
you did not do for me.’
And these will go off to eternal punishment,
but the righteous to eternal life.”
The post Reigning Now and Forever with Christ the King, Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, November 26, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
30 min
November 25, 2023Christ the King (A), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, November 25, 2023
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Solemnity of Christ the King, A, Vigil
November 25, 2023

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.25.23_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us as we celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King this Sunday.
Christ the King is, by the standard of Church history, still a very young feast. It’s only 98 years old. It was instituted by Pope Pius XI during the 1925 Jubilee in response to the rise of communism, fascism and aggressive secularism, all of which were trying to eliminate Christian influence in society to be supplanted by communist, fascist or secularist pseudo-religious ideologies. Pope Pius XI stressed both the importance of Christian believers influencing society for the good as salt of the earth, light of the world and leaven, but also cautioning them to recall that Christ had not come into the world to inaugurate a political but a spiritual kingdom. That’s a lesson Pontius Pilate didn’t get when he asked Jesus whether he was a king. That’s a point that most Jews didn’t get when they anticipated the long-awaited Messiah would rule in the way that his ancestor David had ruled, defeating all foreign powers and triumphing over all who opposed him. That’s a truth that not even the apostles grasped as they jockeyed for the choicest cabinet secretariats in what they presumed would be earthly administration. That’s a truth we still have to confront when people ask how Christ can be King while there’s still so much evil and violence in the world as we see in Ukraine, in the Holy Land, or even in American cities where lawlessness is metastasizing.
The King we celebrate does not fit into any of those earthly categories of power. As St. Paul wrote in his letter to the Philippians, Christ the King “even though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave and being born in human likeness. He humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross” (Phil 2:6-8). Christ’s whole kingship is caught up in his saving service until death. Whereas most terrestrial kings have slews of servants caring for their every need, Jesus came “not to be served but to serve” even those who by creation ought to be his servants. Whereas earthly leaders regularly have sacrificed their subjects as soldiers for their personal royal aggrandizement, Christ the King came to die for his subjects, “to give his life as a ransom for the many.” That’s the king we fête. That’s the kingdom he has established. That’s the way we’re called to reign with him.
In the Gospel for the feast, Christ the King of the universe identifies as the one who will come with glory, accompanied by his angels, to judge all the nations. But then he identifies as someone who hungers and thirsts, as a stranger, as someone naked, imprisoned or sick, as someone suffering or in need, and says that whatever we do to anyone in these circumstances he will take personally. These are not just words for Jesus. When Jesus was on the Cross, for example, he himself was needy in all of the ways he described. He was hungry and cried out, “I thirst!” He was stripped naked. He was a stranger even in the world he created, kicked out of his own city of Jerusalem to die as a malefactor at the place of the skull. He was sick and wounded, having had his flesh ripped open by a brutal Roman scourging, having been beaten and crowned with thorns. He was imprisoned not only in the high priest’s dungeon but pinned to the cross not by chains but by nails. The more we look to him on his throne of the Cross, the easier it is supposed to be for us to see his sufferings in the suffering members of his Mystical Body.
Just as it shocked the people 2,000 years ago that Jesus crucified was really the King of Jews, so people remain shocked that he humbles himself to identify personally with the little ones and wants his subjects to make themselves the servants of these least ones. Christ the King wants us to grasp and live this lesson, that to enter his kingdom, to reign with him, we must like him serve and lay down our life in love of the poor, the outcast, the weak.
God’s kingdom is ultimately one in which we care for each other, in which we feel responsible for each other, in which we behave as Good Samaritans crossing the road for each other, inconveniencing ourselves for each other, and sacrificing ourselves for each other’s welfare. He tells us that when he comes at the end of time in his glory as King to judge the living and the dead, he will separate us into two groups, as a shepherd separates sheep from goats. This division will be as stark as the separation between light from darkness and truth from lies. He will place his sheep, the saved, on his right and the goats, the accursed and damned, on his left. Then he will say to those on his right, among whom, God-willing, we hope to be numbered: “For I was hungry, and you gave me food; thirsty and you gave me drink; naked and you clothed me; a stranger and you welcomed me; ill and you cared for me; in prison and you visited me.” Those on his right will respond, in effect, “Lord, when did we do any of this for you?” And the King will reply, “Whatever you did for the least of my brothers and sisters, you did for me!” Jesus did not mean to give us an exhaustive list of good deeds or even very hard things to accomplish, like giving away huge sums of money or extraordinary acts of heroic sacrifice that will earn us one day a Wikipedia page. He gave us six simple actions that any of us can do and have the opportunity to do almost every day as a sign of what he’s asking. And he said that is the path for us to “inherit the kingdom prepared for [us] since the foundation of the world.”
He also said that it’s possible to fail this final exam of life when some will hear those horrible words, “Depart from me you accursed into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” Those who will hear them are not necessarily people we would call evil. To some, they might even seem holy. By their question to the King in today’s parable — “Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, naked or a stranger, ill or in prison and not attend to your needs?” — they imply that had they known it was the Lord they would have spared no effort. But because all they saw was a “nobody,” they did nothing. The great test of our love for God is our love for each other, especially those people who are challenging to love. The Servant of God Dorothy Day once said, “We love God to the extent that we love the person we like the least.” We love God to the extent that we love a poor hungry beggar, or a homeless drunk, or a felon on death row, or an AIDS-infected drug user, or an illegal alien. St. John wrote in his first epistle that we cannot love the God we have not seen if we don’t love the brother or sister we do see (1 John 4:20). And Jesus wants to help us to grow in the capacity for love by making it “easier” for us, calling us to treat others the way we would treat him, since he presumes that if we knew we were caring for him directly most of us would give it our best.
The single most important question of our life is whether we serve or ignore Christ in our brothers and sisters. The judgment will be nothing more than a revelation of how we have used our freedom to live by Jesus’ words or not, how we have chosen to love Jesus or to reject Jesus directly or in disguise. And so it behooves us to ask:
When we see someone who’s hungry or thirsty, for example, do we try to help get him food or do we tell him to go get a job? Since Jesus identifies with the hungry, is it enough for us to wait for someone who is starving to approach us for food or do we go out in search of Jesus in the disguise of the man or woman or child with hunger pains?
Do we welcome strangers or do we resent their presence? If we would never deport Jesus or the Holy Family, or forcibly separate the infant Jesus from his parents, can we look the other way when this happens at our borders?
Do we clothe the naked or do we take advantage of their nudity through pornography? If we see someone shivering without a jacket, or shoes, or a winter hat in the frigid winter, would we give ours?
Do we give preferential care for those who are sick or do we ignore them lest we catch what they have?
Do we care for prisoners or just think of them as a bunch of thugs toward whom our only reaction should be fear and vengeance? Do we pray for those who are incarcerated, even those on death row, or do we clamor for their death like the mobs called for Pontius Pilate to give Jesus the death penalty?
When we examine our consciences on the basis of the Gospel, probably most of us can recall those times when we really have lived up to our call as Christians to serve the “least” of our brothers and sisters with Christ-like love but also some explicit occasions when we stiffed a homeless person, or were cheap to a missionary, or refused to open our heart to a family member or colleague who really needed our assistance. This feast is an opportunity for us to ask for Jesus’ mercy that we may begin to carry out better the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. He, our King, has never failed to care for us in our need. To those of us who are hungry, he gives his own flesh to eat. To those of us who are thirsty, he quenches us with his own blood. To all of us who are naked, he clothes us in his virtues. To those of us who were alienated from his kingdom, he welcomed us and reconciled us to the Father. To those of us who were ill and afflicted, he comforted us by joining us to him in our sufferings and thereby giving our sufferings redemptive meaning and value. To those of us imprisoned by sin, he not only visited us, but freed us from our cells, breaking down the bars once and for all and showing us the way out. Jesus fulfilled each of these corporal works of mercy by giving of himself in love. This shows what the fulfillment of human life is: to give of ourselves out of love to God and others in such a way that this self-gift of ours becomes the gift of Christ himself to others. We’re called to give not just bread and water, not just medicine and clothing, but ourselves together with Christ. This is the way Christ’s kingdom will reign in us. This is the fulfillment of our prayer, “Thy Kingdom come!”

The Gospel passage on which the homily was based was:
Gospel
Mt 25:31-46
Jesus said to his disciples:
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory,
and all the angels with him,
he will sit upon his glorious throne,
and all the nations will be assembled before him.
And he will separate them one from another,
as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.
He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
Then the king will say to those on his right,
‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father.
Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
For I was hungry and you gave me food,
I was thirsty and you gave me drink,
a stranger and you welcomed me,
naked and you clothed me,
ill and you cared for me,
in prison and you visited me.’
Then the righteous will answer him and say,
‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you,
or thirsty and give you drink?
When did we see you a stranger and welcome you,
or naked and clothe you?
When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’
And the king will say to them in reply,
‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did
for one of the least brothers of mine, you did for me.’
Then he will say to those on his left,
‘Depart from me, you accursed,
into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
For I was hungry and you gave me no food,
I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
a stranger and you gave me no welcome,
naked and you gave me no clothing,
ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.’
Then they will answer and say,
‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty
or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison,
and not minister to your needs?’
He will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you,
what you did not do for one of these least ones,
you did not do for me.’
And these will go off to eternal punishment,
but the righteous to eternal life.”
The post Christ the King (A), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, November 25, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
10 min
November 22, 2023Investing God’s Gifts with Courage, 33rd Wednesday (I), November 22, 2023
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Wednesday of the 33rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Cecilia
November 22, 2023
2 Mc 7:1.20-31, Ps 17, Lk 19:11-28

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.22.23_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
Today in the Gospel we have the Parable of the Coins, which is similar to that of the more famous Parable of the Talents, but the main difference is in this Parable, ten people all get the same investment on the part of the nobleman. One multiplies it by 10, another by 5, 7 we don’t know about, and the tenth buries it. Whereas with the Parable of the Talents, which we heard on Sunday, we can focus on how many talents we have received relative to others, today’s Parable has us concentrate on the fact that the greatest gifts we’ve received, we have received to a large degree equally with others: the gift of our life, the gift of time, and, for us as Catholics, the gift of God’s word, the gift of the Sacraments, the gift of the faith, the gift of so many opportunities for charity. How are we investing these divine gifts? Are we bearing great dividends from them? We all know that there are some people who really profit from these common gifts and others who place them in handkerchiefs. Most of us might say we give the Lord somewhere between 1-10. But the impact of this Parable is to get us to take the risks necessary to bear a windfall.
Before we analyze and apply the Parable to our lives more incisively, let’s first handle a couple of things with the setting of the Parable. The first is about life in general. Jesus told the people the Parable “because he was near Jerusalem and they thought that the Kingdom of God would appear there immediately.” The Parable of the Coins was given to help people know why the Kingdom of God they were expecting politically wasn’t going to appear, but rather, how the Kingdom among them, as it was awaiting fulfillment, was a place in which some people were growing the kingdom by investing the King’s gifts and others were not. How important this point is for us to grasp: time is a kairos of investing in and for the kingdom. The second introductory point involves the setting of the story, which involves history known to Jesus’ listeners but not to people today. Jesus was taking advantage of the infamous story of how after King Herod the Great’s death — who was king at his birth and murdered the Holy Innocents — his kingdom was divided into three parts, but each needed to go to Rome to be confirmed by the emperor in the kingship. The king of Judah, Herod Archelaus, went to Rome but the people sent a delegation saying that they didn’t want him as king. The emperor confirmed him without the title king — he named him tetrarch — and upon the return, Archelaus executed those who didn’t want him to be king. In this month of November, in which we meditate on death and judgment and prepare for the Solemnity of Christ the King this Sunday, there’s a spiritual equivalent for those who don’t want to accept God as King. He doesn’t punish or slay them because in a sense he doesn’t have to: they’re already spiritually dead because they’ve self-alienated from the source of life. Similarly, hell is not merciless but merciful, for as CS Lewis once said, there are only two types of people, those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “Thy will be done.” Hell is for those who want self-separation, and choose it continually through their actions.
Let’s get into the heart of the Parable and what Jesus is teaching. The nobleman gives the ten servants a treasure of a gold coin. The coin is actually a mina, which is one-sixtieth of a Talent. Since a talent was 6,000 days wages, a Mina is 100 days wages or a third of a year’s salary; if someone is making $100 a year, it’s $10,000, not an enormous sum but substantial enough. Those entrusted by the King with this Mina make different yields: the first one makes ten, the second five, and the last just conceals the coin in a handkerchief. We don’t know what the other seven did. We see the incredible reward given to those who proved themselves trustworthy in these little matters, the one who made ten — $100,000, or more than three years’ work — was entrusted with ten cities and the one who made five with five cities. But then we encounter someone who out of fear refused to invest the coin. In St. Matthew’s Parable of the Talents, the Master called the one who buried the talent a “wicked, lazy servant.” Today the newly crowned king says, “With your own words I shall condemn you, you wicked servant.” It would have been interesting if Jesus had given us the example of a servant who had tried to make a profit but actually lost money. My hunch is that the King and Master would have treated that servant rather well, since that would have been a result of bad luck or bad training. He may have been an incompetent servant or an unfortunate one, but he wouldn’t have been lazy and wicked. The Lord is not necessarily requiring us to be successful, but he certainly is asking us to make the effort, almost showing by both parables that if we try to invest, if we don’t bury what he’s given us, we’re bound to make dividends. In the case of the wicked servant, the lazy servant, the problem was his fear. “I was afraid of you, because you are a demanding man; you take up what you did not lay down and you harvest what you did not plant” and for that reason he kept it in a handkerchief. His fear led to his slothful omissions. Jesus, on the other hand, is encouraging us not to be afraid to take risks to invest what he’s given us. He has made us in his image and we see in the Parable that God reaps where he doesn’t sow, taking the risk of giving us freedom. He wants us to do the same. Fear cripples us and is not of God. We need to have the courage to put all that God has given us at the service of him and others, not comparing ourselves to those who are making more or less, just doing the best we can. The reality is, from God’s perspective, that when we get to the most important talents or gold coin involved in life, it seems that it’s impossible not to “make a profit” if we actually make the effort to “trade” with it in life. The most important talent of all is God himself. We have the ability to pray to him and be guided each day, to enter into his life in the Sacraments, to enflesh his word in Sacred Scripture, to be strengthened by his Body the Church (the communion of saints in heaven, the presence of a family of faith here on earth, and the instruction of the magisterium), and to serve him in others. If we make the effort, we will bear great dividends. Jesus promised us about prayer, that the one who seeks finds, the one who asks receives and the one who knocks has the door opened. We could say that the one who invests God spiritually reaps a spiritual windfall. But we have to invest that relationship. The more we invest, the more we receive God’s guidance, the more we really allow him to transform us in sacramental encounters, the more we insert ourselves into the communion of holiness and charity, the more fruit we’ll bear.
In order to bear great dividends, however, we cannot be overwhelmed by fear about what could go wrong. Just like those on Wall Street, we need to be willing to task risks. We need to confront and overcome our fears, not cave into them like the man with the handkerchief. And we receive so much inspiration from today’s first reading, where we see the courage of this family — a mother and her seven sons — in remaining faithful to God. They refused to eat pork because in the Old Testament God had forbidden it, and they wouldn’t sin against the Lord even in the least way in order to save their lives from torture and death. They illustrate for us the saying of waves of martyrs in Church history: “Better to die than to sin.” Because they were faithful in keeping their Covenant with the Lord in small things — like what they would or would not eat — they were faithful even when threatened with death. There’s a great lesson here. If we’re going to bear great dividends, we need to be faithful in little things, which means we need to be willing to die to ourselves for God each day, to go the way of the grain of wheat, to save our life by losing it. Because the seven sons were faithful in not eating pork normally, they were strengthened to remain true to God when they would have to say no to their persecutors at the risk of their life. The early Church used to prepare catechumens to remain faithful under torture and martyrdom; if they were prepared to remain faithful with God’s help in the supreme tests, they would begin to pour themselves into their relationship with God in the daily tests. We also see in this scene something beautiful about spiritual maternity. Their mother, rather than being overwhelmed by this worldly sentimentality, encouraged all of her sons to remain faithful, speaking in their mother tongue a language they could understand, and reminding them both about the cost of fidelity to God and the reward. She was the one who emboldened them to be faithful. God wants us all not only to be faithful ourselves but to encourage others to similar courage and fidelity.
Another example of fidelity and of encouraging others toward faithfulness in the risk of suffering is the feast of the holy one we celebrate today, St. Cecilia. She was one whose investment of the gold coin God gave her continues to bear fruit centuries after her death. Cecilia was a young girl of a noble Christian family who fasted, wore a hair shirt, and desired to give herself always as a virgin to God, but her father had plans for a good marriage to a young pagan patrician named Valerian. During their wedding, among the music and rejoicing of the guests, Cecilia stayed apart, singing to God within and praying for help. When she and Valerian retired to the place where he was prepared to consummate the marriage, Cecilia told him a secret that she has an angel watching over her and that if he touched her in the way of marriage, the angel would make his suffer, but if he respected her and got baptized, he would see the angel. Valerian received instruction, got baptized by Pope Urban I, and then saw the angel standing by Cecilia’s side who put on both of their heads a crown of roses and lilies, a sign (like we’d see much later in the life of St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe) of martyrdom and purity, respectively. The fact that Valerian could see Cecilia’s angel shows that we’re never abandoned by the presence of the Angel God sends each of us. Valerian eventually helped his brother Tiburtius to convert and the two of them began to care for the bodies of all the martyrs, seeking to bury them. That exposed them as Christians and both were brought to martyrdom with the guard, Maximus, who witnessed their supreme testimony and became a Christian on the spot and almost immediately a fellow martyr. Cecilia buried all three bodies and herself was exposed as a Christian and brought to trial before Almachius. She was unable to be threatened out of her faith and after they tried to suffocate her by fire, ended up trying to behead her, but the axe wouldn’t penetrate through her entire neck. The blow, however, turned out to be fatal after three days and she was buried close to the popes in the catacombs that would eventually be named after St. Callistus. Her relics were translated by Pope St. Paschal in the early 800s to the area that was believed to have been her house and where a Church had been built after the age of persecutions. In 1599, the Cardinal in charge of the Church of St. Cecilia (Cardinal Paulo Emilio Sfondrati), in doing various renovations, decided to re-inter Cecilia with SS. Valerian, Tiburtius and Maximus, and, as he opened her tomb, he found her incorrupt. He had the great renaissance sculptor Stefano Maderno make a sculpture identical to what was seen in the tomb. That statue is now found before her tomb as well as a copy has been placed in the catacombs closed to where her bodied had rested for nearly six centuries. Her remains looked as if she were sleeping. You could see the axe marks in her neck. But what has always struck me — and many others — is the way she seemed to be prophesying even in death. In her right hand, she had two fingers and her thumb extended. In her left, she had her index finger extended. This was a means by which she appeared to be proclaiming her faith in her Triune God, one God in three persons. This was the supreme witness she was giving that not even Roman executioners could cut her off from her attachment to God, because she was united with him even in martyrdom. What St. Ambrose said famously in his treatise on virginity for the feast of St. Agnes is certainly apropos for her: “Virginity is praiseworthy not because it is found in [the virgin] martyrs, but because it makes [the virgin] martyrs.” Her daily choice for Christ strengthened her to choose him until the end! She kept investing her daily gold coin until she had become so rich in God that she didn’t fear a thing!
Today Jesus has brought us here not to slay us before him but to show us that he was willing to be slain before us and to allow us to enter into communion with his loving courage. This is the secret to St. Cecilia’s great eternal dividends. This is what the great mother and her sons now have in fulfillment as a result of their faith. This is what will lead to something far greater than ten earthly cities. This is what will likewise make us strong so that today we might invest our time and through praying our work and action be able to appear before the Lord with great returns in response to his extraordinary trust!

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 2 MC 7:1, 20-31
It happened that seven brothers with their mother were arrested
and tortured with whips and scourges by the king,
to force them to eat pork in violation of God’s law.
Most admirable and worthy of everlasting remembrance was the mother,
who saw her seven sons perish in a single day,
yet bore it courageously because of her hope in the Lord.
Filled with a noble spirit that stirred her womanly heart with manly courage,
she exhorted each of them
in the language of their ancestors with these words:
“I do not know how you came into existence in my womb;
it was not I who gave you the breath of life,
nor was it I who set in order
the elements of which each of you is composed.
Therefore, since it is the Creator of the universe
who shapes each man’s beginning,
as he brings about the origin of everything,
he, in his mercy,
will give you back both breath and life,
because you now disregard yourselves for the sake of his law.”
Antiochus, suspecting insult in her words,
thought he was being ridiculed.
As the youngest brother was still alive, the king appealed to him,
not with mere words, but with promises on oath,
to make him rich and happy if he would abandon his ancestral customs:
he would make him his Friend
and entrust him with high office.
When the youth paid no attention to him at all,
the king appealed to the mother,
urging her to advise her boy to save his life.
After he had urged her for a long time,
she went through the motions of persuading her son.
In derision of the cruel tyrant,
she leaned over close to her son and said in their native language:
“Son, have pity on me, who carried you in my womb for nine months,
nursed you for three years, brought you up,
educated and supported you to your present age.
I beg you, child, to look at the heavens and the earth
and see all that is in them;
then you will know that God did not make them out of existing things;
and in the same way the human race came into existence.
Do not be afraid of this executioner,
but be worthy of your brothers and accept death,
so that in the time of mercy I may receive you again with them.”
She had scarcely finished speaking when the youth said:
“What are you waiting for?
I will not obey the king’s command.
I obey the command of the law given to our fathers through Moses.
But you, who have contrived every kind of affliction for the Hebrews,
will not escape the hands of God.”
Responsorial Psalm PS 17:1BCD, 5-6, 8B AND 15
R. (15b) Lord, when your glory appears, my joy will be full.
Hear, O LORD, a just suit;
attend to my outcry;
hearken to my prayer from lips without deceit.
R. Lord, when your glory appears, my joy will be full.
My steps have been steadfast in your paths,
my feet have not faltered.
I call upon you, for you will answer me, O God;
incline your ear to me; hear my word.
R. Lord, when your glory appears, my joy will be full.
Keep me as the apple of your eye;
hide me in the shadow of your wings.
But I in justice shall behold your face;
on waking, I shall be content in your presence.
R. Lord, when your glory appears, my joy will be full.
Alleluia SEE JN 15:16
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
I chose you from the world,
to go and bear fruit that will last, says the Lord.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel LK 19:11-28
While people were listening to Jesus speak,
he proceeded to tell a parable because he was near Jerusalem
and they thought that the Kingdom of God
would appear there immediately.
So he said,
“A nobleman went off to a distant country
to obtain the kingship for himself and then to return.
He called ten of his servants and gave them ten gold coins
and told them, ‘Engage in trade with these until I return.’
His fellow citizens, however, despised him
and sent a delegation after him to announce,
‘We do not want this man to be our king.’
But when he returned after obtaining the kingship,
he had the servants called, to whom he had given the money,
to learn what they had gained by trading.
The first came forward and said,
‘Sir, your gold coin has earned ten additional ones.’
He replied, ‘Well done, good servant!
You have been faithful in this very small matter;
take charge of ten cities.’
Then the second came and reported,
‘Your gold coin, sir, has earned five more.’
And to this servant too he said,
‘You, take charge of five cities.’
Then the other servant came and said,
‘Sir, here is your gold coin;
I kept it stored away in a handkerchief,
for I was afraid of you, because you are a demanding man;
you take up what you did not lay down
and you harvest what you did not plant.’
He said to him,
‘With your own words I shall condemn you,
you wicked servant.
You knew I was a demanding man,
taking up what I did not lay down
and harvesting what I did not plant;
why did you not put my money in a bank?
Then on my return I would have collected it with interest.’
And to those standing by he said,
‘Take the gold coin from him
and give it to the servant who has ten.’
But they said to him,
‘Sir, he has ten gold coins.’
He replied, ‘I tell you,
to everyone who has, more will be given,
but from the one who has not,
even what he has will be taken away.
Now as for those enemies of mine who did not want me as their king,
bring them here and slay them before me.’”
After he had said this,
he proceeded on his journey up to Jerusalem.
This image of St. Cecilia with St. Peter’s in the background was painted by my friend, Sr. Mary Angelica Neenan, OP, of the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia in Nashville.
The post Investing God’s Gifts with Courage, 33rd Wednesday (I), November 22, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
24 min
November 21, 2023Perseveringly Longing to See God, 33rd Tuesday (I), November 21, 2023
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Tuesday of the 33rd Week of Ordinary Time, Year I
November 21, 2023
2 Mc 6:18-31, Ps 3, Lk 19:1-10

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.21.23_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
Today the Church celebrates the Memorial of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin. Since 1953, this feast is the occasion on which the Church marks Pro Orantibus Day, the annual observance begun by Pope Pius XII and expanded by St. John Paul II in 1997, on which the whole Church prays in a special way “For Those Praying,” for all of those in convents, cloisters, monasteries and hermitages who intercede for us without ceasing before God. It’s held purposefully on the feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is the model of total dedication to a life of prayer and intercession in God’s service. It’s a day on which we thank God for the contemplatives’ silent, hidden, generous and beautiful vocation. It’s an occasion on which we recognize them, thank them, encourage them and commit to give the material support they need. It’s a day on which we ponder their example of consecration and of following Christ and prioritizing him through prayer. Contemplative life is a great and indispensable gift of God. All of us benefit spiritually from the orantes’ prayers and sacrifices, even if many of us are unaware of their intercession or naively think that their hidden life is being wasted. They remind us — ensnared by the frenetic, noisy and provisional — that God is truly the “pearl of great price” and the “one thing necessary.” In a world that seeks to structure itself without God, their very existence helps us to recall that God is real, provident, and worth our all. They teach us how to adore Christ with all our mind, heart, soul and strength. Today, as every day, communities of contemplatives are before God constantly praying for us, that we may long — like them and our Lady — to see the Lord’s face and give whatever we have, even if it seems small, to God and his glory. Today we pray for them, thank them and thank God for them. We’ll never know until heaven how many of the graces we’ve received — and disasters we’ve averted — have happened because of their incessant prayers.
We mark this day on the feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary because we ponder Mary’s presentation and life prior to our first encounter with her in Sacred Scripture at the Annunciation. Most of the liturgical elements for today’s feast come from the Pseudogospel of St. James (and even later pseudogospels like the Pseudoevangelium of Matthew and the Pseudogospel of the Nativity of Mary) that attest that Mary was presented as a young girl of three into the Temple in Jerusalem where she was raised until the time she was betrothed to Joseph. We read in the Pseudogospel of St. James, written about 200 years after the events and so historically useless according to the details but useful in terms of the traditions based upon it later, “And the child became three years old, and Joachim said: ‘Call for the daughters of the Hebrews that are undefiled, and let every one of them take every a lamp, and let them be burning, that the child turn not backward and her heart be taken captive away from the temple of the Lord.’ And they did so until they were gone up into the temple of the Lord. And the priest received her and kissed her and blessed her and said: ‘The Lord has magnified your name among all generations: in you in the latter days shall the Lord make manifest his redemption unto the children of Israel.’ And he made her to sit upon the third step of the altar. And the Lord put grace upon her and she danced with her feet and all the house of Israel loved her. And her parents sat down marveling, and praising the Lord God because the child did not turn away backward. And Mary was in the temple of the Lord like a dove that is nurtured: and she received food from the hand of an angel.” The essential point of the passage was Mary’s being consecrated to the Lord from the beginning of her life, her joy in the Lord’s presence, and the fact that she spent her early years in God’s presence becoming herself eventually the Temple in whom God would dwell, the Ark of the New and Eternal Covenant. It’s during these years, the early Church knew, that Mary’s heart was prepared to treasure God’s word, to piece it together as tesserae in a mosaic whole, to respond to the Lord in purity of heart, and more. Mary is the model of all contemplative life and the one who more than any other is praying for us.
Today’s readings help us to ponder two great virtues of Mary and all of the contemplatives praying for us.
The first is their overcoming obstacles, like Zacchaeus, to see the Lord and their desire to welcome him fully into their homes. The motto of the consecrated life is Ps 27:1, “Faciem tuam, Domine, requiram!,” “I long, O Lord, to see your face!” That’s what we see in Zacchaeus. But his longing was surpassed by Jesus’ to look on us with merciful love. Jesus’ love for sinners was so profound that he literally went to the deepest place on earth in search of perhaps the greatest public sinner of that city, to reconcile him to the Father. Jericho is the lowest city on the planet — 853 feet below sea level — and Jesus went there to find Zacchaeus, who was not just one of a bunch of tax-collectors loathsome to the Jewish authorities, but the chief tax collector of the region. Jesus had promised that he, the Good Shepherd, would leave the ninety-nine sheep in his fold to search out and save one lost sheep, and this is what he did, leaving the crowds behind and entering alone with Zacchaeus into his home and into his life. He called Zacchaeus, his lost sheep, by name and heaven rejoiced on that day more for him than for all the others. So, too, today and everyday, Jesus takes the initiative of knocking at the door of our souls, asking for entry, coming to us wherever we are, no matter the depths to which we’ve sunk, no matter the fact that perhaps everyone else around us might despise us. His calling of Zacchaeus has elements of every vocational call, including those of contemplatives. The diminutive Zacchaeus’ climbing of the tree, moreover, is more than (merely) an interesting detail. The text tells us that he was trying to see Jesus, but could not because of the crowd, so he ran ahead and climbed a tree along Jesus’ route in order to be able to see him. We, too, often cannot see the Lord because other people get in the way. They block our sight in countless ways. We’re often too small of stature to see over such obstacles, and, unfortunately, too often others are too selfish, distracted, sinful, judgmental or out-of-it, to do anything to help us and bring us into the presence of the Lord. Like a little child, however, Zacchaeus climbs a tree to see the Lord. Such an act could have led to great mockery for a middle-aged public figure. Think about if you saw the head of the IRS or some cabinet official climbing a telephone pole in order to get a better glimpse of the Pope. But Zacchaeus didn’t care. He wanted to see the Lord and none of these obstacles was going to stop him. His example challenges each of us to consider what is the extent to which we go, what trees or obstacles we’ll climb, in order to see Jesus more clearly. Are we capable of being accounted fools for Christ for following those means that others might consider silly if they will bring us into greater relationship with Jesus? Contemplatives are those who seek to overcome all obstacles to come to be with Jesus, to be perpetually looking at him who is passing by. Monasteries are like great tree houses in which they can be looking out for the Lord and praying for all of us. Similarly, Zacchaeus is a model of immediate receptivity. Jesus said to him, “Come down quickly,” and that’s precisely what he did. He didn’t delay. He received Jesus into his home in a consequential way, doing reparation for whatever wrong he had done in a super-compensatory way. God wants our quick response as well. And when we welcome him, we welcome the salvation that the Savior brings. Contemplatives show us the priority of this welcome!
The second virtue we can ponder in contemplatives is their perseverance. It’s not easy for many people to persevere a holy hour. It’s a big struggle for people to endure a retreat weekend, or eight or 30 days. Monks, nuns, hermits and other contemplatives commit themselves to prayer for life. That takes courage. That takes the grace of perseverance, seeking to grow in response to Jesus’ summons all their days. And in today’s first reading we have an extraordinary example of this type of holy, bold perseverance until death, someone who kept his eyes on God until the very end, despite so many tempters and trials. In today’s first reading, we encounter Eleazar, a nonagenarian Jew whom the Greeks in 142 BC were trying to force to eat pork in violation of the Mosaic Law. He gives us unforgettable lessons about fidelity, courage, and the importance of setting good example. The Greek authorities opened up Eleazar’s mouth and jammed it with pork, but he spat it out, knowing that the penalty for doing so was death. I’ll let the author of the Second Book of Maccabees take it from there: “Those in charge of that unlawful ritual meal took the man aside privately… and urged him to bring meat of his own providing… and to pretend to be eating some of the meat of the sacrifice prescribed by the king; in this way he would escape the death penalty, and be treated kindly because of their old friendship with him. But he made up his mind in a noble manner, worthy of his years, the dignity of his advanced age, the merited distinction of his gray hair, and of the admirable life he had lived from childhood; and so he declared that above all he would be loyal to the holy laws given by God: ‘At our age it would be unbecoming to make such a pretense; many young men would think the ninety-year-old Eleazar had gone over to an alien religion. Should I thus dissimulate for the sake of a brief moment of life, they would be led astray by me, while I would bring shame and dishonor on my old age. Even if, for the time being, I avoid the punishment of men, I shall never, whether alive or dead, escape the hands of the Almighty. Therefore, by manfully giving up my life now, I will prove myself worthy of my old age, and I will leave to the young a noble example of how to die willingly and generously for the revered and holy laws.’ Those who shortly before had been kindly disposed, now became hostile toward him because what he had said seemed to them utter madness. When he was about to die under the blows, he groaned and said: ‘The Lord in his holy knowledge knows full well that, although I could have escaped death, I am not only enduring terrible pain in my body from this scourging, but also suffering it with joy in my soul because of my devotion to him.’ This is how he died, leaving in his death a model of courage and an unforgettable example of virtue not only for the young but for the whole nation” (2 Macc 6:18-31). Eleazar hungered for the Lord and lived by God’s transient dietary decrees in the Old Covenant. He accounted the example he would leave to others as far more important than saving his life by an accommodation. I’ve always been impressed by the witness of older nuns as they prepare to die, what an extraordinary example of longing love they show for younger sisters, as they prepare for the consummation of their spousal love for God. They keep their eyes fixed on the Bridegroom who comes to them and says, “Come quickly, I want you to stay in my Father’s house!” They’re models for all of us of persevering through sometimes the intense agony of physical pain knowing that it’s nothing compared to the glory to be revealed.
At Mass today, we turn to the Lord and thank him for the example of Zacchaeus, Eleazar and all contemplatives. We thank him for continually coming to save us, no matter how far we’ve sunk, and no matter how many times we’ve fallen, for calling us by name, and for inviting himself literally inside of us to abide in us and have us abide in him. We thank him in advance as well for the graces he’ll give us so that we can with him climb whatever sycamores or redwoods we have to in order to see him more clearly. We thank him for the witness of those who show us how to keep our eyes fixed on him. But most of all we can thank him for going one step further. When we and the whole human race were incapable of seeing him on account of the great weight of sin that was reducing our humanity to smaller and smaller images of what we are called to be, and thereby when we were incapable of climbing any tree at all, he, out of his great love for us, climbed one on our behalf, so that each of us, dying and wailing like the serpent-bit Jews in the desert, might still be able to see him, perched upon his glorious wooden throne. He invites each of us here and now in this Eucharistic participation in his death and resurrection, to be lifted up by him onto that life-giving tree. Today, with Zacchaeus, with Eleazar, with the Blessed Mother, and with all those contemplatives praying for us, let us pick up that Cross — our cross! — and thereby be picked up by it, so that as God’s children we might spend eternity in that celestial tree house built upon the Cross’ firm foundation.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 2 Mc 6:18-31
Eleazar, one of the foremost scribes,
a man of advanced age and noble appearance,
was being forced to open his mouth to eat pork.
But preferring a glorious death to a life of defilement,
he spat out the meat,
and went forward of his own accord to the instrument of torture,
as people ought to do who have the courage to reject the food
which it is unlawful to taste even for love of life.
Those in charge of that unlawful ritual meal took the man aside privately,
because of their long acquaintance with him,
and urged him to bring meat of his own providing,
such as he could legitimately eat,
and to pretend to be eating some of the meat of the sacrifice
prescribed by the king;
in this way he would escape the death penalty,
and be treated kindly because of their old friendship with him.
But Eleazar made up his mind in a noble manner,
worthy of his years, the dignity of his advanced age,
the merited distinction of his gray hair,
and of the admirable life he had lived from childhood;
and so he declared that above all
he would be loyal to the holy laws given by God.
He told them to send him at once
to the abode of the dead, explaining:
“At our age it would be unbecoming to make such a pretense;
many young people would think the ninety-year-old Eleazar
had gone over to an alien religion.
Should I thus pretend for the sake of a brief moment of life,
they would be led astray by me,
while I would bring shame and dishonor on my old age.
Even if, for the time being, I avoid the punishment of men,
I shall never, whether alive or dead,
escape the hands of the Almighty.
Therefore, by manfully giving up my life now,
I will prove myself worthy of my old age,
and I will leave to the young a noble example
of how to die willingly and generously
for the revered and holy laws.”
Eleazar spoke thus,
and went immediately to the instrument of torture.
Those who shortly before had been kindly disposed,
now became hostile toward him because what he had said
seemed to them utter madness.
When he was about to die under the blows,
he groaned and said:
“The Lord in his holy knowledge knows full well that,
although I could have escaped death,
I am not only enduring terrible pain in my body from this scourging,
but also suffering it with joy in my soul
because of my devotion to him.”
This is how he died,
leaving in his death a model of courage
and an unforgettable example of virtue
not only for the young but for the whole nation.
Responsorial Psalm PS 3:2-3, 4-5, 6-7
R. (6b) The Lord upholds me.
O LORD, how many are my adversaries!
Many rise up against me!
Many are saying of me,
“There is no salvation for him in God.”
R. The Lord upholds me.
But you, O LORD, are my shield;
my glory, you lift up my head!
When I call out to the LORD,
he answers me from his holy mountain.
R. The Lord upholds me.
When I lie down in sleep,
I wake again, for the LORD sustains me.
I fear not the myriads of people
arrayed against me on every side.
R. The Lord upholds me.
Alleluia 1 Jn 4:10b
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
God loved us, and sent his Son
as expiation for our sins.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel Lk 19:1-10
At that time Jesus came to Jericho and intended to pass through the town.
Now a man there named Zacchaeus,
who was a chief tax collector and also a wealthy man,
was seeking to see who Jesus was;
but he could not see him because of the crowd,
for he was short in stature.
So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus,
who was about to pass that way.
When he reached the place, Jesus looked up and said,
“Zacchaeus, come down quickly,
for today I must stay at your house.”
And he came down quickly and received him with joy.
When they saw this, they began to grumble, saying,
“He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner.”
But Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord,
“Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor,
and if I have extorted anything from anyone
I shall repay it four times over.”
And Jesus said to him,
“Today salvation has come to this house
because this man too is a descendant of Abraham.
For the Son of Man has come to seek
and to save what was lost.”
The post Perseveringly Longing to See God, 33rd Tuesday (I), November 21, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
17 min
November 20, 2023Investing Our Life Well, Thirty-Third Sunday (A), November 19, 2023
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
November 19, 2023
Prov 31:10-13.19-20.30-31, Ps 128, 1 Thess 5:1-6, Mt 25:14-30

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.19.23_CCM_Homily_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
The Parable of the Talents that Jesus gives us in today’s Gospel is an image of human life between the time of his Ascension into heaven and his second coming. Jesus is the master who departs on a “journey” and entrusts his “possessions,” what he values most, so many gifts and the completion of his Mission, to us in the Church. He wants us to use those gifts, to develop them and develop through developing them. The Parable is really about how we respond to that trust and that responsibility, whether the Lord’s trust motivates us to go out “immediately” like the first two servants in the Parable and begin to put those gifts to use, or whether it frightens and paralyzes us to bury those gifts together with our potential in the ground. This Parable has relevance to all of us, insofar as it depicts the final exam of life, given to us in the month of November, when the Church focuses our attention on the four last things — death, judgment, heaven and hell — so that we might always be ready for the first two, enter into the third and avoid the fourth. But the Parable has always had particular relevance for young people, as they reflect on their gifts and make big choices about the direction of their life. So it’s super important for us to get to know it well, to understand its various elements and drama, and to learn the lessons upon which Jesus is hoping we will act.
The first thing we have to understand is about the talents entrusted, because if we misunderstand them, we risk misunderstanding Jesus’ message. We can sometimes identify with the servant given just one talent and think that, unlike the servants who had received five and two, there was no margin of error and hence we can deem his fear and caution justified. But the word “talent” Jesus used referred to a weight measurement. One talent of silver was equal to 6,000 days wages or 16-and-two-thirds years of work; in today’s money, if someone made $100 per day, even a servant who received one talent would have had $600,000 to invest, a truly sizeable amount.
The second question we can have is why did the Master entrust his possessions to his servants disparately. In our egalitarian age, we’re tempted to cry out, “Unfair!,” as if the Master is playing favorites. But what was involved was love. In the Parable, Jesus says the Master distributed his possessions to the servants, “each according to his ability.” It’s a simple fact that people have different skills, experiences, capacities. In most circumstances, it would be cruel to give the same amount of responsibility to a 25-year-old as we do a ten-year-old, if we treated someone with twenty years of experience in a field the same way we do someone just getting started. The main point of the Parable is the enormous trust given to each person.
The third thing is what is meant to be understood by talent. Sometimes, confusion with the English word that is a synonym for skills or aptitudes can make us concentrate on what distinguishes us from other people — our capacity at math, languages, singing, athletics, making friendships, music, sculpture, poetry, and so on. But the greatest talents we’ve received we have in common with others. The gift of life, of new life in Baptism, the pearl of great price that is Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, the gift of the Holy Spirit in Confirmation, the ability to start anew each Confession, the graces of Marriage or Holy Orders, the Word of God, the intercession of Mary, Joseph and the saints, our friendship with God and our ability to turn to God in prayer, so many opportunities for charity, the crosses with which God caresses us, the gift of the Church, and much more. We’re not immaculately conceived like the Blessed Virgin Mary, we may not be as smart as Saint Thomas Aquinas, as brave as many of the martyrs, or as holy as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, but God has given us all enormous gifts. None of us is a pauper in the endowment category. God has given to each of us according to our abilities, and he has given us a lot.
The fourth element is how did the servants respond to the Master’s trust. Jesus says that those who had received the five talents ($3 million) and two ($1.2 million) “immediately went out” and started to make the gifts grow. They both received a one-hundred percent return from their one-hundred percent effort and investment, giving back ten and four talents, respectively. The parable almost implies that all they had to do was make the effort, because the conditions for investment were that favorable. The servant who had received the one talent, on the other hand, buried that huge weight of silver out of fear, fear to take a risk, fear of the master because, he said, the Master reaped where he didn’t sow and gathered where he didn’t scatter. Rather than sensing the confidence given to him by the Master, he was afraid of failure, even eventually blaming him for his own inaction by accusing the master of being demanding, cruel, and even tyrannical. We see depicted here a huge contrast between the way the servants related to the Master, an image of how disciples can relate to God. The first two were emboldened by the Master’s trust to take risks. They saw opportunities. They recognized that the Master reaped where he didn’t sow and wanted, indeed, through his sowing of trust in them, to reap abundantly. They stand for disciples who live strengthened by the love of God not to be afraid, to put out into the deep. The third servant is an image of those who regard God with a servile fear, as if God is out to get and punish them, just waiting for the opportunity to flunk and condemn them. There are some Christians who, out of cowardice or a false sense of humility, bury their gifts “under a bushel basket” (Mt 5:15-16). They never take a risk investing, growing and sharing the faith. They strive not to “lose the state of grace,” not to commit any mortal sins, not to set bad example, not to make any mistakes, but they don’t realize that they may be failing to do the good that God wants and has made possible. They don’t grow, because the only way one grows in faith, hope and love is through acts of faith, hope and love (with the help of God’s grace). Rather than developing themselves and the Lord’s gifts and making the world a better and holier place by living up their vocations, they succumb to the devil’s wiles and set their goal on simply not harming the world or just leaving it like they found it. Do we look at the Lord as someone who loves and trusts us as his precious children or as someone who fundamentally judges us and finds us a failure?
The fifth element is about the reward. After the first servant brings the Master ten talents and the second four, the Master congratulates them in identical words. “Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your Master’s joy!” We might have expected for the joy to have been greater for the one who earned the greater amount, but the Master was evidently not primarily concerned with the amount of talents returned, but at the development of the servant. Both had fully developed, it seems, according to their abilities. And the reward he gave them is really important to grasp. It wasn’t a free all expenses paid vacation at a Dead Sea or Mediterranean resort. It was greater responsibilities. That would be the means by which they would share in the Master’s joy. The Master was overjoyed to allow them to share more and more in his responsibilities, as their abilities developed precisely through the work they had done. Just like a loving father delights when he can delegate greater responsibilities to his sons and daughters, just like a coach loves it when the captain is able to take on more and more of the play calling, just like a piano teacher rejoices when a pupil can take on more challenging pieces, so God delights when we prove to be good stewards of his trust and gifts. The one who returned the buried talent, however, received a totally different response. The Master called him “wicked,” “slothful” and “useless,” asked why he didn’t at least put it in the bank to gain interest, had the talent taken from him and given to the one with ten, and then had him thrown into the outer darkness, which was an image of the lightless definitive self-alienation we call hell. It might seem in the language of the Parable that this was a punishment, but it was really the Master’s granting the choice of the servant. He had already withdrawn from the Master’s trust and mentality. He had cut himself off, it seems, from the other servants, who would have been able to help him, at least by their example of prudent risk-taking and success. He didn’t remain truly idle, but in fact dug the hole to bury the huge weight of silver and it seems buried himself with it. He had chosen to make himself “useless” and the Master just ratified his choice, giving him a dark hole in which to separate and hide himself. What happened to him in the story is a reminder of the possibility of human freedom. It is possible to bury the gifts we’ve been given, wasting our life on frivolities rather than making true commitments to develop those gifts that God has given, especially the gift of our relationship with him. If that’s been our general approach until now, Jesus gives us this parable to provoke in us what he was trying to do with his first hearers: to have us unbury the gifts and start to use them for the purpose for which God entrusted us with them.
So the Parable of the Talents leaves us with a sense of urgency. The gifts God has given us are not supposed to be buried until later, but used now. Just like the first two servants, we’re called to go out “immediately” and trade them, live by them. That’s what St. Paul was emphasizing in today’s second reading. He tells us, as he told the Christians in Thessalonika, that “the day of the Lord” — the day when the Lord comes for us — “will come like a thief in the night … as labor pains upon a pregnant woman.” But he adds: “You, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness for that day to overtake you like a thief. You are all children of light and children of the day… So let us not sleep as the rest do but let us stay alert and sober.” Now’s not the time of sleep but of investing, of not hiding our talents but bringing them out of darkness into the broad daylight. And so today is a time for prayerful resolution on how to invest our gifts. To know what they are. To value them appropriately. And, with the Lord’s help, to make them grow.
I’d like to apply the lessons of these readings briefly to two contexts.
The first is to today’s seventh observance of the World Day of the Poor. Three years ago, Pope Francis made a powerful connection between Jesus’ Parable and the poor when he said in a homily at St. Peter’s Basilica: “The master tells the faithless servant: ‘You ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest’ (v. 27).” The Holy Father asked: “Who are the ‘bankers’ who can provide us with long-term interest?” He answered: “They are the poor. … The poor are like Jesus himself, who, though rich, emptied himself, made himself poor, even taking sin upon himself: the worst kind of poverty. The poor guarantee us an eternal income. Even now they help us become rich in love.” In other words, the poor are like our eternal investors. Their presence in our life is like a talent we’re called to invest by our loving care for them, for they help us to become rich when we empty ourselves to care for them. This is the love that characterizes the life of worthy wife in today’s first reading from the Book of Proverbs, who “reaches out her hands to the poor and extends her arms to the needy.” Pope Francis says that we see at the end of the Parable a glimpse of the end of life: “The pretense of this world will fade, with its notion that success, power and money give life meaning, whereas love – the love we have given – will be revealed as true riches.”
In his Message for today’s observance, the Holy Father wrote with concern, “We are living in times that are not particularly sensitive to the needs of the poor. The pressure to adopt an affluent lifestyle increases, while the voices of those dwelling in poverty tend to go unheard. … We disregard anything that is unpleasant or causes suffering and exalt physical qualities as if they were the primary goal in life. … The poor become a film clip that can affect us for a moment, yet when we encounter them in flesh and blood on our streets, we are annoyed and look the other way. Haste, by now the daily companion of our lives, prevents us from stopping to help care for others. …It is easy to delegate charity to others, yet the calling of every Christian is to become personally involved.” He says often when we speak of the poor, we give into the “insidious temptation to remain at the level of statistics and numbers,” but, he emphasizes, “the poor are persons; they have faces, stories, hearts and souls. They are our brothers and sisters, with good points and bad, like all of us, and it is important to enter into a personal relation with each of them.” He underlines that “our concern for the poor always [must] be marked by Gospel realism. Our sharing should meet the concrete needs of the other, rather than being just a means of ridding ourselves of superfluous goods. … The poor need … our humanity, our hearts open to love. … Faith teaches us that every poor person is a son or daughter of God and that Christ is present in them.” In his homily at Mass this morning, he focused on the “multitude” of the poor with faces, all loved by the Lord, and said, “the message of the Gospel is clear: let us not bury the Lord’s goods! Let’s put charity into circulation, let’s share our bread, let’s multiply love! … When the Lord returns, he will ask us to account and, as Saint Ambrose writes, he will tell us: ‘Why did you tolerate so many poor people dying of hunger, when you possessed gold with which to obtain food to give to them?’” At the end of Mass today, Matthew Jedron, one of our service chairs, will speak about opportunities for us to care for the poor after Thanksgiving. Please be generous.
The second context is to the celebration of thanksgiving that we will mark on Thursday. Thanksgiving is an annual opportunity for us to reflect on all of the talents, riches, and blessings that God and others have entrusted to us, and to turn to Him and to them and say thanks. The greatest way we say thanks is to invest the gifts of love that have been given, to be transformed by them and to share them lavishly with others. Thanksgiving is a day in which we think not about what we don’t have but about what we do. And we celebrate those gifts at the altar with God and at the dinner table with family, friends, and, if we’re Christian, with those who have nowhere else to go. When it comes to our investment portfolio, thanksgiving — not just the fourth Thursday of November, but regularly — has to be our most important mutual fund, because it helps us to remember our gifts and inspires us to share them.
Today, the same Jesus who emptied himself, taking on our humanity to give it for our salvation, and who upon his ascension entrusted us with his mission of love and salvation, returns to meet us in the treasure of his word and even greater gift of his Body and Blood. Each Mass is an occasion to bring what we’ve earned and offer it, together with Jesus, to the Father. Each Mass is a time in which we also ponder our omissions, of what we could have done, and ask for his forgiveness and help. Each Mass is a time to recommit ourselves, with his blessing, to go out like the servants who received five and two talents to invest immediately the divine treasure with which God entrusts us here, by truly loving and serving others, especially those in greatest need. Each Mass is an opportunity to wake up so that we may live, fully alive, as children of the light and of the day. The Mass is our greatest talent of all, and God, out of love, has entrusted it to you and to me. Investing what God invests in us at Mass is the means by which, at the end of this life, the Lord Jesus will be able to say to us what he said to the first two servants in the Gospel Parable: “Well done, good and faithful servants. … Come, share your Master’s joy!”

The readings for this Sunday’s Mass were:
Reading 1
Prv 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31
When one finds a worthy wife,
her value is far beyond pearls.
Her husband, entrusting his heart to her,
has an unfailing prize.
She brings him good, and not evil,
all the days of her life.
She obtains wool and flax
and works with loving hands.
She puts her hands to the distaff,
and her fingers ply the spindle.
She reaches out her hands to the poor,
and extends her arms to the needy.
Charm is deceptive and beauty fleeting;
the woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.
Give her a reward for her labors,
and let her works praise her at the city gates.
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 128:1-2, 3, 4-5
R. (cf. 1a) Blessed are those who fear the Lord.
Blessed are you who fear the LORD,
who walk in his ways!
For you shall eat the fruit of your handiwork;
blessed shall you be, and favored.
R. Blessed are those who fear the Lord.
Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine
in the recesses of your home;
Your children like olive plants
around your table.
R. Blessed are those who fear the Lord.
Behold, thus is the man blessed
who fears the LORD.
The LORD bless you from Zion:
may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem
all the days of your life.
R. Blessed are those who fear the Lord.
Reading 2
1 Thes 5:1-6
Concerning times and seasons, brothers and sisters,
you have no need for anything to be written to you.
For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come
like a thief at night.
When people are saying, “Peace and security, ”
then sudden disaster comes upon them,
like labor pains upon a pregnant woman,
and they will not escape.But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness,
for that day to overtake you like a thief.
For all of you are children of the light
and children of the day.
We are not of the night or of darkness.
Therefore, let us not sleep as the rest do,
but let us stay alert and sober.
Alleluia
Jn 15:4a, 5b
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Remain in me as I remain in you, says the Lord.
Whoever remains in me bears much fruit.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Mt 25:14-30
Jesus told his disciples this parable:
“A man going on a journey
called in his servants and entrusted his possessions to them.
To one he gave five talents; to another, two; to a third, one–
to each according to his ability.
Then he went away.
Immediately the one who received five talents went and traded with them,
and made another five.
Likewise, the one who received two made another two.
But the man who received one went off and dug a hole in the ground
and buried his master’s money.
“After a long time
the master of those servants came back
and settled accounts with them.
The one who had received five talents came forward
bringing the additional five.
He said, ‘Master, you gave me five talents.
See, I have made five more.’
His master said to him, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant.
Since you were faithful in small matters,
I will give you great responsibilities.
Come, share your master’s joy.’
Then the one who had received two talents also came forward and said,
‘Master, you gave me two talents.
See, I have made two more.’
His master said to him, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant.
Since you were faithful in small matters,
I will give you great responsibilities.
Come, share your master’s joy.’
Then the one who had received the one talent came forward and said,
‘Master, I knew you were a demanding person,
harvesting where you did not plant
and gathering where you did not scatter;
so out of fear I went off and buried your talent in the ground.
Here it is back.’
His master said to him in reply, ‘You wicked, lazy servant!
So you knew that I harvest where I did not plant
and gather where I did not scatter?
Should you not then have put my money in the bank
so that I could have got it back with interest on my return?
Now then! Take the talent from him and give it to the one with ten.
For to everyone who has,
more will be given and he will grow rich;
but from the one who has not,
even what he has will be taken away.
And throw this useless servant into the darkness outside,
where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.’”
The post Investing Our Life Well, Thirty-Third Sunday (A), November 19, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
31 min
November 19, 2023Sharing the Master’s Joy, Thirty-Third Sunday (A), November 19, 2023
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
November 19, 2023
Prov 31:10-13.19-20.30-31, Ps 128, 1 Thess 5:1-6, Mt 25:14-30

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.19.23_MCs_Homily_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
In this month of November, as you know, the Church has us focus our attention on the four last things — death, judgment, heaven and hell — so that we might always be ready for the first two, enter into the third and avoid the fourth. This Sunday is no exception. In the Gospel, Jesus gives a parable about a man going on a journey for a long time before returning, which is an image of the time between the Ascension and his second coming. In it, with great confidence, the man entrusts his possessions to three servants, and the parable is about how we live our life in response to that trust and endowment. In the second reading, St. Paul tells us, as he told the Christians in Thessalonika, that “the day of the Lord” — the day of our death or the end of the world, whichever comes first — “will come like a thief in the night … as labor pains upon a pregnant woman.” An expectant mother never knows for sure when contractions will start. Many women — like the worthy wives praised by the Book of Proverbs in today’s first reading — prepare a “go bag” of necessary items for the hospital in mid-pregnancy in case the contractions come prematurely so that they’re ready to go to the hospital at a minute’s notice. St. Paul says we need to prepare in the same way for the contractions of death that lead us from the womb of the earth to the next dimension of life intended by God. Death can come when we least expect it. It could come for some or all of us as fast as today. This reality scares some people, because they fear they won’t be ready, much like students who don’t study regularly fear flunking a pop quiz. But St. Paul calls the Thessalonians and us not to be afraid by telling us what we need to do. “You, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness for that day to overtake you like a thief.” He exhorts us, “You are all children of light and children of the day… So let us not sleep as the rest do but let us stay alert and sober.” He doesn’t want us to hide ourselves in darkness but live in the broad daylight. He wants us always to be alert, ready, even eager, so that we might go with joy to the Father’s house. The question for us is: How do we prepare? What do we have to have in our “go bag” so as not to be caught off-guard when the contractions for eternal life begin?
In the Gospel, Jesus answers that question. He gives us a parable about how we are to be judged and how to get ready for it. In doing so, Jesus tells us so much more about who we are in God’s eyes, where we fit into His plans, and how we should live. The entire history of the world and the vocation of each of us is found in this short story.
The Parable of the Talents is well-known. A rich man going on a journey calls in his servants and entrusts his possessions to them: to one he gave five talents, another two, and the third one. On the man’s return, the servant who had received five gave him ten back; the servant who received two likewise doubled it and gave him four back; but the servant who had received one buried the talent and just gave him back the one at the end. The first two receive the same reward with the exact same words. The Master says, “Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master’s joy.” The one who returned the buried talent, however, received a totally different response. The Master called him “wicked and slothful,” asked why he didn’t at least put it in the bank to gain interest, had the talent taken from him and given to the one with ten, and then had him thrown into the outer darkness, which was an image of the lightless definitive self-alienation we call hell. Whole retreats can be preached on the elements of this parable, but we can ponder the biggest points.
First, however, we must get an objection out of the way. Sometimes, in our egalitarian culture, we can object to the fact that the Master entrusted his possessions disparately, according to what he deemed each servant’s ability. It can seem that there was far greater risk to the servant who had received just one talent, since it appears that he had no margin of error compared to those who had received five or two. But we have to remember that the word “talent” Jesus uses referred to a weight measurement. One talent of silver was equal to 6,000 days wages or 16-and-two-thirds years of work; in today’s money, if someone made $100 per day, even a servant who received one talent would have had $600,000 to invest, a truly sizeable amount. We see the difference in how the first two servants and the third responded to the trust of the master. Jesus says that those who had received the five talents ($3 million) and two ($1.2 million) “immediately went out” and started to make it grow. They both received a one-hundred percent return from their one-hundred percent effort and investment. The parable almost implies that all they had to do was try, because the conditions for investment were that favorable. The servant who had received the one talent, however, buried that huge weight of silver out of fear, fear to take a risk, fear of the master because, he said, the Master reaped where he didn’t sow and gathered where he didn’t scatter. Rather than sensing the confidence given to him by the Master, he was afraid of him, even eventually blaming him for his own failure by accusing the master of being demanding, cruel, and even tyrannical. As a result he buried himself, all his potential, and even the master’s trust, along with the talent. God does indeed give to us “according to [our] ability,” but no matter what, each of us has been invested with much. God trusts us. And he wants us to develop his gifts. He desires that we grasp that we are his most valuable possessions and, in giving us his trust and his gifts, he wants us to develop ourselves as we develop those gifts. We might not be as smart as Saint Thomas Aquinas, or as brave as many of the martyrs, or as holy as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, but God has given us all enormous gifts. None of us is a pauper in the endowment category. And the greatest talents God has given us are spiritual: the gift of Baptism, the Holy Eucharist, our Confirmation, the ability to start anew each Confession, the gifts of Marriage or Holy Orders, the Word of God, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, so many opportunities for charity, the Crosses with which he caresses us, the intercession of Mary, Joseph and the saints, our friendship with God and our ability to turn to God in prayer, the gift of the Church, and so much more. This is real “capital.” We’re called not to waste or bury these treasures, but to invest them, because each of them contains such potential that if we even try to invest them, the parable implies, we can’t lose.
The crucial application that the Lord wants us to make in this month of November as we ponder the last things is to determine whether we have been like the first two servants or like the third. If Jesus were to come right now as a thief in the night and call us to account, would he praise us for having used the gifts he has given us to build up his kingdom, to make his world a more sacred and loving place, to spread his salvific joy to others, or would we recognize in his presence that we’ve really buried most of his gifts, especially the greatest spiritual ones? Have we responded to the unbelievable trust the Lord has shown us in his lavish blessings as a motivation to do good works to the glory of our heavenly Father (cf. Mt 5:16) or have we feared his judgment and done little or nothing? There are some Christians who, out of fear or a false sense of humility, bury their gifts “under a bushel basket” (Mt 5:15-16). They never take a risk of sharing the faith. They strive not to “lose the state of grace,” not to commit any mortal sins, not to set bad example, not to make any mistakes, but they don’t realize that they may be failing to do the good that God wants and has made possible. They don’t grow, because the only way one grows in faith, hope and love is through acts of faith, hope and love (with the help of God’s grace). Rather than developing themselves and the Lord’s gifts and making the world a better and holier place by living up their vocation as salt, light and leaven, they succumb to the devil’s wiles and set their goal on simply not harming the world or leaving it like they found it. If that’s been our general approach until now, Jesus gives us this parable to provoke in us what he was trying to do with his first hearers: to have us unbury the gifts and start to use them for the purpose for which God entrusted us with them.
I want to apply these lessons briefly to two contexts.
The first is to today’s seventh observance of the World Day of the Poor. Three years ago, Pope Francis made a powerful connection between Jesus’ Parable and the poor when he said in a homily at St. Peter’s Basilica: “The master tells the faithless servant: ‘You ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest’ (v. 27).” The Holy Father asked: “Who are the ‘bankers’ who can provide us with long-term interest?” He answered: “They are the poor. … The poor are like Jesus himself, who, though rich, emptied himself, made himself poor, even taking sin upon himself: the worst kind of poverty. The poor guarantee us an eternal income. Even now they help us become rich in love.” In other words, the poor are like our eternal investors. They help us to become rich when we empty ourselves to care for them. This is the love that characterizes the life of worthy wife in today’s first reading from the Book of Proverbs, who “reaches out her hands to the poor and extends her arms to the needy.” Pope Francis says that we see at the end of the Parable a glimpse of the end of life: “The pretense of this world will fade, with its notion that success, power and money give life meaning, whereas love – the love we have given – will be revealed as true riches.”
In his Message for today’s observance, the Holy Father wrote with concern, “We are living in times that are not particularly sensitive to the needs of the poor. The pressure to adopt an affluent lifestyle increases, while the voices of those dwelling in poverty tend to go unheard. … We disregard anything that is unpleasant or causes suffering and exalt physical qualities as if they were the primary goal in life. … The poor become a film clip that can affect us for a moment, yet when we encounter them in flesh and blood on our streets, we are annoyed and look the other way. Haste, by now the daily companion of our lives, prevents us from stopping to help care for others. …It is easy to delegate charity to others, yet the calling of every Christian is to become personally involved.” He says often when we speak of the poor, we give into the “insidious temptation to remain at the level of statistics and numbers,” but, he emphasizes, “The poor are persons; they have faces, stories, hearts and souls. They are our brothers and sisters, with good points and bad, like all of us, and it is important to enter into a personal relation with each of them.” He underlines that “our concern for the poor always [must] be marked by Gospel realism. Our sharing should meet the concrete needs of the other, rather than being just a means of ridding ourselves of superfluous goods. … The poor need … our humanity, our hearts open to love. … Faith teaches us that every poor person is a son or daughter of God and that Christ is present in them.” In his homily at Mass this morning, he focused on the “multitude” of the poor with faces, all loved by the Lord, and said, “the message of the Gospel is clear: let us not bury the Lord’s goods! Let’s put charity into circulation, let’s share our bread, let’s multiply love! … When the Lord returns, he will ask us to account and, as Saint Ambrose writes, he will tell us: ‘Why did you tolerate so many poor people dying of hunger, when you possessed gold with which to obtain food to give to them?’”
Pope Francis in his Message specifically thanks “the Lord that so many men and women are devoted to caring for the poor and the excluded” and describes them as “persons of every age and social status who show understanding and readiness to assist the marginalized and those who suffer.” He says about you and many of the others who have given their lives to care for the poor that “they are not superheroes but ‘next door neighbors,’ ordinary people who quietly make themselves poor among the poor. They do more than give alms: they listen, they engage, they try to understand and deal with difficult situations and their causes.” He says, “The Kingdom of God becomes present and visible in their generous and selfless service; like the seed that falls on good soil, it takes root in their lives and bears rich fruit (cf.Lk 8:4-15). On this World Day of the Poor, the whole Church thanks you, Sisters, for your leadership in the Church’s mission of charity.
The second context is to the celebration of thanksgiving that we will mark on Thursday. Thanksgiving is an annual opportunity for us to reflect on all of the talents, riches, and blessings that God and others have entrusted to us, and to turn to Him and to them and say thanks. The greatest way we say thanks is to invest the gifts of love that have been given, to be transformed by them and to share them lavishly with others. Thanksgiving is a day in which we think not about what we don’t have but about what we do. And we celebrate those gifts at the altar with God and at the dinner table with family, friends, and, if we’re Christian, with those who have nowhere else to go. When it comes to our investment portfolio, thanksgiving — not just the fourth Thursday of November, but regularly — has to be our most important mutual fund, because it helps us to remember our gifts and inspires us to share them.
Today, the same Jesus who emptied himself, taking on our humanity to give it for our salvation, and who upon his ascension entrusted us with his mission of love and salvation, returns to meet us in the treasure of his word and even greater gift of his Body and Blood. Every Mass is a time to bring what we’ve earned and offer it, together with him, to the Father. Every Mass is a time in which we also ponder our omissions, of what we could have done, and ask for his forgiveness and help. Every Mass is a time to recommit ourselves, with his blessing, to go out like the servants who received five and two talents to invest immediately the divine treasure with which God entrusts us here, by truly loving and serving others, especially those in greatest need. He gives us, here, every day our “go bag” so that we live, fully awake, as children of the light and of the day. This is the means by which, at the end of this life, when we meet our Eucharistic Lord face-to-face, he will be able to say to us what he said to the first two servants in the Gospel Parable: “Well done, good and faithful servants. … Come, share your Master’s joy!”

The readings for this Sunday’s Mass were:
Reading 1
Prv 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31
When one finds a worthy wife,
her value is far beyond pearls.
Her husband, entrusting his heart to her,
has an unfailing prize.
She brings him good, and not evil,
all the days of her life.
She obtains wool and flax
and works with loving hands.
She puts her hands to the distaff,
and her fingers ply the spindle.
She reaches out her hands to the poor,
and extends her arms to the needy.
Charm is deceptive and beauty fleeting;
the woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.
Give her a reward for her labors,
and let her works praise her at the city gates.
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 128:1-2, 3, 4-5
R. (cf. 1a) Blessed are those who fear the Lord.
Blessed are you who fear the LORD,
who walk in his ways!
For you shall eat the fruit of your handiwork;
blessed shall you be, and favored.
R. Blessed are those who fear the Lord.
Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine
in the recesses of your home;
Your children like olive plants
around your table.
R. Blessed are those who fear the Lord.
Behold, thus is the man blessed
who fears the LORD.
The LORD bless you from Zion:
may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem
all the days of your life.
R. Blessed are those who fear the Lord.
Reading 2
1 Thes 5:1-6
Concerning times and seasons, brothers and sisters,
you have no need for anything to be written to you.
For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come
like a thief at night.
When people are saying, “Peace and security, ”
then sudden disaster comes upon them,
like labor pains upon a pregnant woman,
and they will not escape.But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness,
for that day to overtake you like a thief.
For all of you are children of the light
and children of the day.
We are not of the night or of darkness.
Therefore, let us not sleep as the rest do,
but let us stay alert and sober.
Alleluia
Jn 15:4a, 5b
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Remain in me as I remain in you, says the Lord.
Whoever remains in me bears much fruit.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Mt 25:14-30
Jesus told his disciples this parable:
“A man going on a journey
called in his servants and entrusted his possessions to them.
To one he gave five talents; to another, two; to a third, one–
to each according to his ability.
Then he went away.
Immediately the one who received five talents went and traded with them,
and made another five.
Likewise, the one who received two made another two.
But the man who received one went off and dug a hole in the ground
and buried his master’s money.
“After a long time
the master of those servants came back
and settled accounts with them.
The one who had received five talents came forward
bringing the additional five.
He said, ‘Master, you gave me five talents.
See, I have made five more.’
His master said to him, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant.
Since you were faithful in small matters,
I will give you great responsibilities.
Come, share your master’s joy.’
Then the one who had received two talents also came forward and said,
‘Master, you gave me two talents.
See, I have made two more.’
His master said to him, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant.
Since you were faithful in small matters,
I will give you great responsibilities.
Come, share your master’s joy.’
Then the one who had received the one talent came forward and said,
‘Master, I knew you were a demanding person,
harvesting where you did not plant
and gathering where you did not scatter;
so out of fear I went off and buried your talent in the ground.
Here it is back.’
His master said to him in reply, ‘You wicked, lazy servant!
So you knew that I harvest where I did not plant
and gather where I did not scatter?
Should you not then have put my money in the bank
so that I could have got it back with interest on my return?
Now then! Take the talent from him and give it to the one with ten.
For to everyone who has,
more will be given and he will grow rich;
but from the one who has not,
even what he has will be taken away.
And throw this useless servant into the darkness outside,
where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.'”
The post Sharing the Master’s Joy, Thirty-Third Sunday (A), November 19, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
23 min
November 19, 2023Investing the Trust and Gifts of the Master, Thirty-Third Sunday (A), November 18, 2023 (Vigil)
Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Margaret of Scotland Parish, Selden, New York
Parish Day of Recollection:
“Faith-filled Gratitude for the Gift of the Lord: A Parish Eucharistic Revival”
Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
November 18, 2023
Prov 31:10-13.19-20.30-31, Ps 128, 1 Thess 5:1-6, Mt 25:14-30

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.18.23_Vigil_Homily_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
It’s a great joy for me to celebrate this Mass with you at the end of our Parish Day of Recollection on the Eucharistic Revival, on the vigil of St. Margaret of Scotland’s 75th Anniversary, marking 75 years in which Jesus Christ, the Lord of Lords, King of Kings and Savior of the World has taken up his abode here in Selden among you. It’s an incredible gift the Lord has given, one that has been received by generations of faithful here, and one that has strengthened parishioners and families from within to grow in love for God and others and to be inspired to go out as salt, light and leaven and continue Jesus’ loving work of the salvation of the world.
Today’s Gospel is all about what we do with the Lord’s gifts and especially with the trust those gifts imply. The context of the Gospel is how to prepare for the final exam of life. Every November, as you know, the Church has us focus our attention on the four last things — death, judgment, heaven and hell — so that we might be always prepared for the first two, enter into the third and avoid the fourth. This Sunday is no exception. In the second reading, St. Paul tells us, as he told the Christians in Thessalonika, that “the day of the Lord” — the day of our death or the end of the world, whichever comes first — “will come like a thief in the night … as labor pains upon a pregnant woman.” An expectant mother never knows for sure when contractions will start. Many women —like the worthy wives praised by the Book of Proverbs in today’s first reading — prepare a “go bag” of necessary items for the hospital in mid-pregnancy in case the contractions come prematurely so that they’re ready to go to the hospital at a minute’s notice. St. Paul says we need to prepare in the same way for the contractions of death that lead us from the womb of the earth to the next dimension of life intended by God. Death can come when we least expect it. It could come for some or all of us as fast as today. This reality scares some people, because they fear they won’t be ready, much like students who don’t study regularly fear flunking a pop quiz. But St. Paul calls the Thessalonians and us not to be afraid by telling us what we need to do. “You, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness for that day to overtake you like a thief.” He exhorts us, “You are all children of light and children of the day… So let us not sleep as the rest do, but let us stay alert and sober.” He tells us always to have what we need ready, so that we might go with joy to the Father’s house. The question for us is: What do we need to do to be ready, what do we have to have in our “go bag” so as not to be caught off-guard when the contractions for eternal life begin?
In the Gospel, Jesus answers that question. He gives us a parable about how we are to be judged and how to prepare for it. But in doing so, he tells us so much more about who we are in God’s eyes, where we fit into His plans, and how we should live. The entire history of the world and the vocation of each of us is found in this short story.
It’s called the Parable of the Talents. Most of us know it well. A rich man going on a journey calls in his servants and entrusts his possessions to them: to one he gave five talents, another two, and the third one. On the man’s return, the servant who had received five gave him ten back; the servant who received two likewise doubled it and gave him four back; but the servant who had received one buried the talent and just gave him back the one at the end. The first two receive the same reward. The Master says, “Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your Master’s joy.” The one who returned the buried talent, however, received a totally different response. The Master called him “wicked and lazy,” asked why he didn’t at least put it in the bank to gain interest, had the talent taken from him and given to the one with ten, and then had him thrown into the outer darkness, which was an image of the lightless definitive self-alienation we call hell. Whole retreats can be preached on the elements of this parable, but let’s ponder the bigger points.
Sometimes, in our egalitarian culture, we can object to the fact that the Master entrusted his possessions disparately, according to each servant’s ability. Some can wonder whether there was far greater risk to the servant who had received one losing the little he had than those who received five and two. We have to remember, however, that the word “talent” Jesus used referred to a measurement of weight. One talent of silver was equal to 6,000 days wages or 16-and-two-thirds years of work; in today’s money, if someone made $100 per day, even a servant who received one talent would have had $600,000 to invest. We see the difference in how the first two servants and the third responded to the trust of the master. Jesus says that those who had received the five talents ($3 million) and two ($1.2 million) “immediately went out” and started to make it grow. They both received a one-hundred percent return from their one-hundred percent effort and investment. The parable almost implies that all someone had to do was try, because the conditions for investment were that favorable. The servant who had received the one talent, however, buried that huge weight of silver out of fear, fear to take a risk, fear because the Master reaped where he didn’t sow and gathered where he didn’t scatter. Rather than sensing the confidence given to him by the Master, he was afraid of him, even blaming him and accusing him of being demanding, cruel, and tyrannical. As a result buried himself and his potential along with the talent. God does indeed give to us “according to [our] ability,” but no matter what, each of us has been invested with much. God trusts us. And he wants us to develop his gifts. We might not be as smart as Saint Thomas Aquinas, or as brave as many of the martyrs, or as holy as Saint Margaret of Scotland or Saint Teresa of Calcutta, but God has given us all enormous gifts. None of us is a pauper in the endowment category. And the greatest talents God has given us are spiritual: the gift of Baptism, the Holy Eucharist, our Confirmation, the ability to start anew each Confession, the gifts of Marriage or Holy Orders, the Word of God, so many opportunities for charity, the Crosses with which he caresses us, the intercession of the saints, our friendship with God and our ability to turn to God in prayer, and so much more. We’re called not to waste or bury these treasures, but to invest them, because each of them contains a potential that if we even try, the parable implies, we can’t lose.
The crucial application that the Lord wants us to make in this month of November as we ponder the last things is to determine whether we have been like the first two servants or like the third. If Jesus were to come right now as a thief in the night and call us to account, would he praise us for having used the gifts he has given us to build up his kingdom, to make his world a much better and more sacred place, to spread his salvific joy to others, or would we recognize in his presence that we’ve really buried most of his gifts, especially the greatest spiritual ones? Have we responded to the unbelievable trust the Lord has shown us in his lavish blessings as a motivation to do good works to the glory of our heavenly Father (cf. Mt 5:16) or have we feared his judgment and done nothing? There are some Christians who, out of fear or a false sense of humility, bury their gifts “under a bushel basket” (Mt 5:15-16). They never take a risk of sharing the faith. They strive not to “lose the state of grace,” not to commit any mortal sins, not to set bad example, not to make any mistakes, but they don’t realize that they may be failing to do the good that God wants. They don’t grow, because the only way one grows in faith, hope and love is through acts of faith, hope and love (with the help of God’s grace). Rather than make the world a better and holier place by living up their vocation as salt, light and leaven, they succumb to the devil’s wiles and make their goal simply not to harm the world or just leave it like they found it. If that’s been our attitude up until now, Jesus gives us this parable in order to provoke in us what he was trying to do with his first hearers: to have us unbury the gifts and start to use them for the purpose for which God entrusted us with them.
I want to apply these lessons briefly to three contexts. The first is to the World Day of the Poor, which takes place tomorrow. Pope Francis made a powerful connection between Jesus’ Parable and the poor three years ago, when he said in a homily at St. Peter’s Basilica: “The master tells the faithless servant: ‘You ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest’ (v. 27).” And he asks: “Who are the ‘bankers’ who can provide us with long-term interest? They are the poor. … The poor are like Jesus himself, who, though rich, emptied himself, made himself poor, even taking sin upon himself: the worst kind of poverty. The poor guarantee us an eternal income. Even now they help us become rich in love.” In other words, the poor are our eternal investors. They help us to become rich when we empty ourselves to care for them. Only what is given away in love can fit through the eye of the needle. This is what characterizes the life of worthy wife in today’s first reading from the Book of Proverbs, who “reaches out her hands to the poor and extends her arms to the needy.” Pope Francis says that we see at the end of the Parable a glimpse of the end of life: “Some will be wealthy, while others, who had plenty and wasted their lives, will be poor. At the end of our lives, then, the truth will be revealed. The pretense of this world will fade, with its notion that success, power and money give life meaning, whereas love – the love we have given – will be revealed as true riches.” This is what was revealed in the life of your patroness, St. Margaret of Scotland, famous for her charity. On her way home from daily Mass she would wash the feet of six poor persons and give them alms. She never refused beggars. And just like loving moms and dads never eat until their children have eaten, she never sat down to eat without first feeding orphans and poor adults around the castle. Her example is a reminder to us of the charity to which we are called.
The second context is to the celebration of thanksgiving that we will mark on Thursday. Thanksgiving is an annual opportunity for us to reflect on all of the talents, riches, and blessings that God and others have entrusted to us, and to turn to Him and to them and say thanks. The greatest way we say thanks is to invest the gifts of love that have been given, to be transformed by them and to share them lavishly with others. Thanksgiving is a day in which we think not about what we don’t have but about what we do. And we celebrate those gifts at the altar with God and at the dinner table with family, friends, and, if we’re generous and wise, with the poor and those who have nowhere else to go. When it comes to our investment portfolio, thanksgiving — not just the fourth Thursday of November, but regularly — has to be our most important mutual fund, because it helps us to remember our gifts and inspires us to share them.
The third context is to Jesus in the Eucharist as the source, summit, root and center of our faith. As we pondered throughout this afternoon, for 75 years, Jesus has taken up his abode in the tabernacle of this parish, he has come to feel generations of parishioners with himself, and he has sent them out to love others with the same lavish love with which he loves us. It wasn’t enough for him merely to take on our human nature in the wonder of the Incarnation in Mary’s immaculate womb. It wasn’t enough for him to live a hidden life for three decades and then crisscross the ancient Holy Land preaching, teaching, healing, exorcising and rendering the kingdom of God at hand among them. It wasn’t enough for him to be tortured, crucified and raised. He wanted to give himself for us each day in the Holy Eucharist so that we could be united with him in this world and come to share the Resurrection and Life with him forever. How have we invested this greatest of all talents, this Pearl of Great Price? How do we invest it now? How do we want to invest this gift tomorrow and for the rest of our life? Just like the Lord entrusted his gifts to the servants in today’s Parable, so he entrusts something far more valuable to us, humbly taking on extraordinary vulnerability. If we invest this Eucharistic gift of Jesus well, if we really harness all of the power that Jesus wishes to give us through adoration and communion, then we will become saints.
Today, as he has done here faithfully over the last 75 years, Jesus blesses us with the treasure of his word and the even greater gift of his Body and Blood. As we prepare to receive him, let us get ready to go out immediately after Mass like the one who received five and two talents to invest that treasure with gratitude, by truly loving and serving others, especially those in greatest need, who will help us to become rich in what alone matters. Then, we pray, at the end of this life, when we meet the Lord face-to-face, he will say to us what he said to the first two servants in the Gospel: “Well done, good and faithful servants. You have been trustworthy in small matters. Now I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your Master’s joy!”

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
Prv 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31
When one finds a worthy wife,
her value is far beyond pearls.
Her husband, entrusting his heart to her,
has an unfailing prize.
She brings him good, and not evil,
all the days of her life.
She obtains wool and flax
and works with loving hands.
She puts her hands to the distaff,
and her fingers ply the spindle.
She reaches out her hands to the poor,
and extends her arms to the needy.
Charm is deceptive and beauty fleeting;
the woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.
Give her a reward for her labors,
and let her works praise her at the city gates.
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 128:1-2, 3, 4-5
R. (cf. 1a) Blessed are those who fear the Lord.
Blessed are you who fear the LORD,
who walk in his ways!
For you shall eat the fruit of your handiwork;
blessed shall you be, and favored.
R. Blessed are those who fear the Lord.
Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine
in the recesses of your home;
Your children like olive plants
around your table.
R. Blessed are those who fear the Lord.
Behold, thus is the man blessed
who fears the LORD.
The LORD bless you from Zion:
may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem
all the days of your life.
R. Blessed are those who fear the Lord.
Reading 2
1 Thes 5:1-6
Concerning times and seasons, brothers and sisters,
you have no need for anything to be written to you.
For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come
like a thief at night.
When people are saying, “Peace and security, ”
then sudden disaster comes upon them,
like labor pains upon a pregnant woman,
and they will not escape.But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness,
for that day to overtake you like a thief.
For all of you are children of the light
and children of the day.
We are not of the night or of darkness.
Therefore, let us not sleep as the rest do,
but let us stay alert and sober.
Alleluia
Jn 15:4a, 5b
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Remain in me as I remain in you, says the Lord.
Whoever remains in me bears much fruit.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Mt 25:14-30
Jesus told his disciples this parable:
“A man going on a journey
called in his servants and entrusted his possessions to them.
To one he gave five talents; to another, two; to a third, one–
to each according to his ability.
Then he went away.
Immediately the one who received five talents went and traded with them,
and made another five.
Likewise, the one who received two made another two.
But the man who received one went off and dug a hole in the ground
and buried his master’s money.
“After a long time
the master of those servants came back
and settled accounts with them.
The one who had received five talents came forward
bringing the additional five.
He said, ‘Master, you gave me five talents.
See, I have made five more.’
His master said to him, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant.
Since you were faithful in small matters,
I will give you great responsibilities.
Come, share your master’s joy.’
Then the one who had received two talents also came forward and said,
‘Master, you gave me two talents.
See, I have made two more.’
His master said to him, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant.
Since you were faithful in small matters,
I will give you great responsibilities.
Come, share your master’s joy.’
Then the one who had received the one talent came forward and said,
‘Master, I knew you were a demanding person,
harvesting where you did not plant
and gathering where you did not scatter;
so out of fear I went off and buried your talent in the ground.
Here it is back.’
His master said to him in reply, ‘You wicked, lazy servant!
So you knew that I harvest where I did not plant
and gather where I did not scatter?
Should you not then have put my money in the bank
so that I could have got it back with interest on my return?
Now then! Take the talent from him and give it to the one with ten.
For to everyone who has,
more will be given and he will grow rich;
but from the one who has not,
even what he has will be taken away.
And throw this useless servant into the darkness outside,
where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.'”
The post Investing the Trust and Gifts of the Master, Thirty-Third Sunday (A), November 18, 2023 (Vigil) appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
23 min
November 19, 2023 Letting Our Gratitude Overflow in Love of Others, St. Margaret of Scotland Parish, Selden, NY, November 18, 2023
Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Margaret of Scotland Parish, Selden, New York
Parish Day of Recollection:
“Faith-filled Gratitude for the Gift of the Lord: A Parish Eucharistic Revival”
November 18, 2023
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.18.23_Gratitude_to_Overflowing_1.mp3
The post Letting Our Gratitude Overflow in Love of Others, St. Margaret of Scotland Parish, Selden, NY, November 18, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
1 hr 7 min
November 19, 2023 Growing In, and Expressing, Our Gratitude for the Eucharistic Jesus, St. Margaret of Scotland Parish, Selden, NY, November 18, 2023
Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Margaret of Scotland Parish, Selden, New York
Parish Day of Recollection:
“Faith-filled Gratitude for the Gift of the Lord: A Parish Eucharistic Revival”
November 18, 2023
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.18.23_Right_and_Just_Mass_and_Adoration_1.mp3
The post Growing In, and Expressing, Our Gratitude for the Eucharistic Jesus, St. Margaret of Scotland Parish, Selden, NY, November 18, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
1 hr 3 min
November 18, 2023Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, November 18, 2023
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Thirty-Third Sunday of Ordinary Time, A, Vigil
November 18, 2023

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.18.23_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday as he teaches us about human life and death, about the gifts he’s given us and how he wants us to use them, about how we are to be judged at the end of our life, how we are to prepare for that final exam, and what the reward will be for our acing it. In some ways, the history of the world, the whole arc of our life, and the vocation God has given us are all found in Jesus’ short story.
It’s called the Parable of the Talents. Most of us know it. A rich man going on a journey calls in his servants and entrusts his possessions to them: to one he gave five talents, another two, and the third one. On the man’s return, the one who had received five gave him ten back; the one who received two likewise doubled it and gave him four back; but the one who had received one buried the talent and just gave him back the one at the end. The first two receive the same reward. The Master says, “Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your Master’s joy.” The one who returned the buried talent, however, received a totally different response. The Master called him “wicked and lazy,” asked why he didn’t at least put it in the bank to gain interest, had the talent taken from him and given to the one with ten, and then had him thrown into the outer darkness, which was an image of the self-alienation where God’s light doesn’t shine we call hell. Whole retreats can be preached on the elements of this parable, but let’s highlight the bigger points.
Sometimes, in our egalitarian culture, we can object to the fact that the Master entrusted his possessions disparately, according to each servant’s ability. Some can wonder whether there was far greater risk to the servant who had received one losing the little he had than those who received five and two. We have to remember, however, that the word “talent” Jesus used referred to a measurement of weight. One talent of silver was equal to 6,000 days wages or 16-and-two-thirds years of work; in today’s money, if someone made $100 per day, even someone who received one talent would have had $600,000 to invest. We see the difference in how the first two servants and the third responded to the trust of the master. Jesus says that those who had received the five talents ($3 million) and two ($1.2 million) “immediately went out” and started to make it grow. They both received a one-hundred percent return from their one-hundred percent effort and investment. It almost implies that all one had to do was try, because the conditions for investment were so favorable. The one who had received the one talent, however, buried that huge weight of silver out of fear, fear to take a risk, fear because the Master reaped where he didn’t sow and gathered where he didn’t scatter. Rather than sensing the confidence given to him by the Master, he was afraid of him, deeming him demanding, cruel, tyrannical, and as a result buried himself and his potential along with the talent. God gives to each of us “according to [our] ability,” but no matter what, each of us has been invested with much. God trusts us. And he wants us to develop his gifts. We might not be as smart as Einstein, or as brave as many of our veterans, or as holy as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, but God has given us all enormous gifts. None of us is a pauper in the endowment category. And the greatest talents God has given us are spiritual: the gift of Baptism, the Holy Eucharist, our Confirmation, the ability to start anew each Confession, the gifts of Marriage or Holy Orders, the Word of God, so many opportunities for charity, the Crosses with which he caresses us, the intercession of the saints, our friendship with God and our ability to turn to God in prayer, and so much more. We’re called not to waste or bury these treasures, but to invest them, because each of them contains a potential that if we even try, the parable implies, we can’t lose.
The crucial application that the Lord wants us to make in this month of November as we ponder the last things is to determine whether we have been like the first two servants or like the third. If Jesus were to come right now as a thief in the night and call us to account, would he praise us for having used the gifts he has given us to build up his kingdom, to make his world a much better and more sacred place, to spread his salvific joy to others, or would we recognize in his presence that we’ve really buried most of his gifts, especially the greatest spiritual ones? Have we responded to the unbelievable trust the Lord has shown us in his lavish blessings as a motivation to do good works to the glory of our heavenly Father (cf. Mt 5:16) or have we feared his judgment and done nothing? There are many Christians who, out of fear or a false sense of humility, bury their gifts “under a bushel basket” (Mt 5:15-16). They never take a risk of sharing the faith, of living the faith to overflowing. They strive not to “lose the state of grace,” not to commit any mortal sins, not to set bad example, not to make any mistakes, but they don’t realize that they may be failing to do the good that God wants. They never grow, because the only way one grows in faith, hope and love is through acts of faith, hope and love (with the help of God’s grace). Rather than make the world a better and holier place, they succumb to the devil’s temptations and make their goal simply not to harm the world or to leave it like they found it. If that’s been our attitude up until now, Jesus gives us this parable in order to provoke in us what he was trying to do with his first hearers: to have us unbury the gifts and start to use them for the purpose for which God entrusted us with them.
I want to apply these lessons to two contexts. The first is to the World Day of the Poor, which is taking place this Sunday. Pope Francis made a powerful connection between Jesus’ Parable and the poor three years ago, when he said in a homily at St. Peter’s Basilica: “The master tells the faithless servant: ‘You ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest’ (v. 27). Who are the “bankers” who can provide us with long-term interest? They are the poor. … The poor are like Jesus himself, who, though rich, emptied himself, made himself poor, even taking sin upon himself: the worst kind of poverty. The poor guarantee us an eternal income. Even now they help us become rich in love.” The poor are our eternal investors. They help us to become rich when we empty ourselves to care for them. Only what is given away in love can fit through the eye of the needle. The Pope says that we see at the end of the Parable a glimpse of the end of life: “Some will be wealthy, while others, who had plenty and wasted their lives, will be poor. At the end of our lives, then, the truth will be revealed. The pretense of this world will fade, with its notion that success, power and money give life meaning, whereas love – the love we have given – will be revealed as true riches.”
The second context is to the celebration of thanksgiving that we will mark on Thursday. Thanksgiving is an annual opportunity for us to reflect on all of the talents, all of the riches, all of the blessings that God and others have entrusted to us, and to turn to Him and to them and say thanks. The greatest way we say thanks is to invest the gifts of love that have been given, to be transformed by them, and to share them lavishly with others. Thanksgiving is a day in which we think not about what we don’t have but about what we do and we celebrate those gifts at the altar with God and at the dinner table with family, friends, and, if we’re generous and wise, with the poor and those who have nowhere else to go. When it comes to our investment portfolio, thanksgiving — not just the fourth Thursday of November, but regularly — has to be our most important mutual fund, because it helps us to remember our gifts and inspires us to share them.
The Lord has given us individually so much and the Lord has given us collectively so much more to build up his kingdom. He has done it because he has confidence in us, trusting us with the carrying out of this saving work in our part of his worldwide vineyard and beyond it. Whether up until now we have been faithful in all these matters or timidly buried his gifts, now is the time to respond to God’s grace to begin to invest the treasures he’s given us so as to help him save the world and redeem our brothers and sisters one by one. If we do so, if we inspire each other in this way, then there’s no reason for us ever to fear death or be terrified of judgment; for when the Lord returns we will be able to present to the Lord the ways that the gifts he’s given us have grown in us and through us in the lives of others and he will be able to say to each the words he created our ears to hear, “Well done, my good and faithful servant; you have been trustworthy in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities; Come, share your Master’s joy.” Our reward will be to share even more in God’s gifts as stewards of his saving plan. This Sunday he will bless us with the treasure of his word and the even greater gift of his Body and Blood. Let us prepare to go out immediately after Mass like the one who received five talents to invest these gifts by truly loving and serving others, especially those in greatest need, who will help us to become rich in what alone matters, as we seek to enrich them with the enormous wealth of God’s love.

The Gospel passage on which the homily was based was:
Gospel
Mt 25:14-30
Jesus told his disciples this parable:
“A man going on a journey
called in his servants and entrusted his possessions to them.
To one he gave five talents; to another, two; to a third, one–
to each according to his ability.
Then he went away.
Immediately the one who received five talents went and traded with them,
and made another five.
Likewise, the one who received two made another two.
But the man who received one went off and dug a hole in the ground
and buried his master’s money.
“After a long time
the master of those servants came back
and settled accounts with them.
The one who had received five talents came forward
bringing the additional five.
He said, ‘Master, you gave me five talents.
See, I have made five more.’
His master said to him, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant.
Since you were faithful in small matters,
I will give you great responsibilities.
Come, share your master’s joy.’
Then the one who had received two talents also came forward and said,
‘Master, you gave me two talents.
See, I have made two more.’
His master said to him, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant.
Since you were faithful in small matters,
I will give you great responsibilities.
Come, share your master’s joy.’
Then the one who had received the one talent came forward and said,
‘Master, I knew you were a demanding person,
harvesting where you did not plant
and gathering where you did not scatter;
so out of fear I went off and buried your talent in the ground.
Here it is back.’
His master said to him in reply, ‘You wicked, lazy servant!
So you knew that I harvest where I did not plant
and gather where I did not scatter?
Should you not then have put my money in the bank
so that I could have got it back with interest on my return?
Now then! Take the talent from him and give it to the one with ten.
For to everyone who has,
more will be given and he will grow rich;
but from the one who has not,
even what he has will be taken away.
And throw this useless servant into the darkness outside,
where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.'”
The post Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, November 18, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
10 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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