Catholic Preaching

Catholic Preaching

By Father Roger LandryReligion & Spirituality Christianity

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November 17, 2023Following the Signs of the Kingdom of God, 32nd Friday (I), November 17, 2023
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Friday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Feast of St. Elizabeth of Hungary
November 17, 2023
Wis 13:1-9, Ps 19, Lk 17:26-37

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.17.23_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
Yesterday we pondered how the Kingdom of God is among — and supposed to be within — us, because the King is here. It’s not supposed to be something that’s sought all over the place in spectacle but discerned and found in ordinary circumstances.
In today’s first reading we see that everything is meant to be a reminder of the King and the Kingdom. The Book of Wisdom tells us that from the “good things seen” we’re supposed to succeed in “knowing him who is.” From studying the “works of the artisan,” we’re supposed to discern the Creator. Everything — fire, wind, air, stars, water, planets — is supposed to remind us of the one who created them, “for from the greatness and the beauty of created things their original author, by analogy, is seen.” The problem is that often we lose the connection between sign and signified, we stop at the work and fail to get to the Creator. We “search busily among his works but are distracted by what [we] see because the things seen are fair.” This was the experience of St. Augustine, when he said, “In our unloveliness, we stopped at the loveliness of your creatures.” We sometimes fail to see the created world as the footprints of God, following them back to the Creator. We fail to see God’s fingerprints all over creation. That’s why it’s key for us to reconnect everything in the kingdom to its King. St. John Paul II, in 2002, toward the end of his papacy, returned to his love of poetry and gave us three poems. The first is called “The Stream” and is broken down into two parts, the first on wonder and the second on following things to their “source.” He wrote, “The undulating wood slopes down to the rhythm of mountain streams. To me this rhythm is revealing You, the Primordial Word. … What are you saying to me, mountain stream? … If you want to find the source, you have to go up, against the current, tear through, seek, don’t give up, you know it must be somewhere here. Where are you, source? Where are you, source?! Silence…. Stream, stream in the wood, tell me the secret of your beginning! … How carefully you have hidden the secret of your beginning.” The Book of Wisdom is calling us to go from the created world to its Source, to find the fingerprints and footprints of the Creator everywhere.
This is what the Gospel is all about, the contrast between living in the kingdom and being oblivious to it. Jesus contrasts Noah with those who perished in the flood, and Lot and those who perished in Sodom. Some were attentive to God through the signs of Creation and some were not. Jesus encourages us to be similarly on guard. He says that when he comes we shouldn’t head down into the house to get possessions or come in from the field, because we shouldn’t leave the Creator for creatures. Two will be sleeping, two will be cooking, but only one will be taken. This isn’t to be misinterpreted as if God’s going to do an arbitrary 50/50 split. Rather, it’s saying some in the very same circumstances will be ready because they’re connecting sleeping or cooking to God, and others won’t be ready, because all they think they’re doing is sleeping or cooking rather than doing it in communion with God, in the kingdom. When they ask where this will take place, Jesus uses an aphorism, “Where the body is, there also the vultures will gather,” to indicate that just as vultures find a corpse, so we should find the kingdom! But I think in his images he’s motivating us to respond morally to a factual situation. The two people in bed together point to a married couple, the two women grinding grain for a meal, to two friends, perhaps sisters, preparing for a big family meal. These are people we care about. God doesn’t want one left behind, but many are just not paying attention to the most important things. By this image, Jesus is not merely reminding us of the need to be alert but to help others wake up from the ways they sleepwalk through existence.
Someone who was constantly going from sign to signified in her life, from the created world to God, from the gifts of the kingdom to the King who never stops giving was St. Elizabeth of Hungary (1207-1231) whose feast the Church celebrates today. She was the daughter of the King of Hungary and when she was four she was betrothed to 11-year-old Louis, the son of the Landgrave of Thuringia. She was raised with him for the next 10 years until the marriage, when she was 14 and he 21. Louis always supported St. Elizabeth’s piety and charity. In the opening prayer of the Mass, we noted that by God’s grace, Elizabeth was able to “recognize and revere Christ in her neighbor,” and because of that capacity to see and to love Jesus with passion even in the midst of the most distressing disguises, she is truly one of the most outstanding examples of charity in history. During a severe famine, she exhausted her treasury and distributed all her own store of corn to the poor. She founded a hospital at the foot of the tall, rocky promontory on which the Wartburg Castle was built so that the infirm and weak wouldn’t have to climb it. She fed them with her own hands — as well as 900 others every day — made their beds and cared for them in various ways. She provided for orphans and helpless children. When many criticized her material benefactions as being excessive, her husband said that her charities would bring upon the whole realm divine blessings. But even he reached his limit once when Elizabeth brought a leper to the castle and had him sleep in their protected quarters as a type of quarantine. He rushed into the bedroom to drag away all of the bedclothes and other things that might carry the dreaded disease, but as he was doing so, he recognized that the leper had stigmata. Through his wife, he learned to recognize and revere Christ, to see and love him, in his neighbor, including the most revolting. She wants to help us to learn the same, as we like vultures around corpses always seek out and find Christ in the hungry, thirst, naked, stranger, ill, imprisoned and otherwise poor and in need.
The greatest way we have to acquire this capacity to view the whole world as sacramental, as signs leading us to the Signified, is here at Mass. This is where we recognize Jesus hidden under the appearances and bread and wine and learn how to respond. Jesus comes here and we should leave the rooftop, the field, the kitchen and the classroom to come to meet him! The more we grasp that this is the most important thing that ever happens in the world on a given day, and the more we keep communion and awareness of him during the day, the easier it will be go from created things to him always. Today we pray that we may respond to this grace as St. Elizabeth of Hungary did, and begin living and showing others to live with this way of sacramental seeing!

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 WIS 13:1-9
All men were by nature foolish who were in ignorance of God,
and who from the good things seen did not succeed in knowing him who is,
and from studying the works did not discern the artisan;
But either fire, or wind, or the swift air,
or the circuit of the stars, or the mighty water,
or the luminaries of heaven, the governors of the world, they considered gods.
Now if out of joy in their beauty they thought them gods,
let them know how far more excellent is the Lord than these;
for the original source of beauty fashioned them.
Or if they were struck by their might and energy,
let them from these things realize how much more powerful is he who made them.
For from the greatness and the beauty of created things
their original author, by analogy, is seen.
But yet, for these the blame is less;
For they indeed have gone astray perhaps,
though they seek God and wish to find him.
For they search busily among his works,
but are distracted by what they see, because the things seen are fair.
But again, not even these are pardonable.
For if they so far succeeded in knowledge
that they could speculate about the world,
how did they not more quickly find its Lord?
Responsorial Psalm PS 19:2-3, 4-5AB
R. (2a) The heavens proclaim the glory of God.
The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Day pours out the word to day,
and night to night imparts knowledge.
R. The heavens proclaim the glory of God.
Not a word nor a discourse
whose voice is not heard;
Through all the earth their voice resounds,
and to the ends of the world, their message.
R. The heavens proclaim the glory of God.
Alleluia LK 21:28
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Stand erect and raise your heads
because your redemption is at hand.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel LK 17:26-37
Jesus said to his disciples:
“As it was in the days of Noah,
so it will be in the days of the Son of Man;
they were eating and drinking,
marrying and giving in marriage up to the day
that Noah entered the ark,
and the flood came and destroyed them all.
Similarly, as it was in the days of Lot:
they were eating, drinking, buying,
selling, planting, building;
on the day when Lot left Sodom,
fire and brimstone rained from the sky to destroy them all.
So it will be on the day the Son of Man is revealed.
On that day, someone who is on the housetop
and whose belongings are in the house
must not go down to get them,
and likewise one in the field
must not return to what was left behind.
Remember the wife of Lot.
Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it,
but whoever loses it will save it.
I tell you, on that night there will be two people in one bed;
one will be taken, the other left.
And there will be two women grinding meal together;
one will be taken, the other left.”
They said to him in reply, “Where, Lord?”
He said to them, “Where the body is,
there also the vultures will gather.”
The post Following the Signs of the Kingdom of God, 32nd Friday (I), November 17, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
18 min
November 15, 2023 Supreme in Mission, Knights of Columbus Leadership Retreat, November 15, 2023
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Knights of Columbus Senior Leadership Retreat
“Supreme in Prayer, Work and Mission”
Villa Maria Guadalupe Retreat House, Stamford, Connecticut
November 15, 2023
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.15.23_Supreme_in_Mission_1.mp3
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54 min
November 15, 2023Out Sweet Duty and Salvation, 32nd Wednesday (I), November 15, 2023
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Knights of Columbus Senior Leadership Retreat
“Supreme in Prayer, Work and Mission”
Villa Maria Guadalupe Retreat House, Stamford, Connecticut
Wednesday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Votive Mass for the Sanctification of Human Labor
November 15, 2023
Wis 6:1-11, Ps 82, Lk 17:11-19

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
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The following text guided the homily:
As we come to the end of this Senior Leadership Retreat, it’s providential that our Gospel reading is all about gratitude. Ten miserable victims of Hansen’s disease perseveringly cried out in desperation, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!,” and Jesus heard and had mercy. All ten were cured of a disease that had been eating away their flesh and bones, that had made them stink worse than skunks, that had made them the worst of outcasts, forcing them to stay at least 50 feet away from any non-leper, and to have to yell out, whenever anyone drew near, “unclean!, unclean!” It cut them off from their family members. It also cut them off from the communal worship of God, as they could never go to the Synagogue on Saturday or to the Temple on the major holy days. At their cry for mercy, however, Jesus healed them all and sent them to the priests, which was the means set up in the Mosaic Law for their cure to be verified by affirming that the disease had stopped growing, that they were no longer contagious, and that they could be reintegrated. The text of St. Luke states that while they were heading to the priest, they were completely cured. They no longer had their leprous sores and their bodies had been made whole again. After recognizing that the miracle for which they had prayed and longed had been granted, we would have expected that all of them would have been rejoicing almost as if they had been raised from the dead. But only one of the ten returned to thank the Lord Jesus who had given them this gift. Jesus poignantly asks, “Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine?”
Jesus wished them all to return not because he had worked the miracle with impure motives to solicit their gratitude, but so that he might give them an even greater gift than the stupendous physical cure. He wanted to give them all what he gave the Samaritan who returned: the grace of salvation by faith. After the healed man had fallen down at Jesus’ feet to thank him, Jesus told him, “Stand up and go. Your faith has saved you!” Jesus came into the world not fundamentally to heal our bodies but to restore our souls. He came not to remedy our maladies but to redeem our life. In order to receive these greater gifts, however, we need gratefully to be in relationship with God. While all ten men were cured of the physical leprosy, nine retained a type of leprosy of the soul, an ingratitude that took for granted the greatest gift they had received in life until then. Only the grateful leper would receive the gift of salvation because only he had a heart that was opened to receive it. The other nine didn’t and Jesus made note of it, saying, “Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?” The other nine lepers were presumably Jews and Jesus was implying that it was shocking that only the Samaritan returned because the Jews had been trained by God for centuries in the prayers of the Psalms and in the incredible events of salvation history to give thanks to the Lord for he is good, for his merciful love endures forever (Ps 118:1 ff). If anyone should have learned how to say thanks to God, it should have been the Jews. But many of them at Jesus’ time took God’s generosity, God’s goodness, for granted.
I’ve always believed that the nine who didn’t return likely looked at their disease with anger toward God, as if he had somehow sadistically chosen them for unjust punishment such that when they were cured they looked at it the way people might view getting released from an kidnapper: they would be grateful for the liberation but they likely wouldn’t send a thank-you note to the one who had held them in captivity. But the Samarian, even though his body had been disintegrating, his soul hadn’t been destroyed by leprosy of bitterness, complaining, cursing, or ingratitude. His fundamental relationship with God was still there. He likely thanked God for all the little things he received from his hands, like the generosity of people who would provide food, or give a kind word of compassion, or promise to pray for him. And when he received the huge grace of his cure, he did what he probably always did, and immediately sought to thank the Giver. He probably grew to thank God even for his years of leprosy, because if he hadn’t been a leper, he may never have encountered Jesus the way he did and never would have received the gift of salvation by faith.
It’s important for us as Christians to focus on gratitude, because, as St. Paul reminds us in his First Letter to the Thessalonians (1 Thess 5:18), rendering constant thanks is indeed our vocation in Christ Jesus. We have been blessed with gifts of faith through Jesus far greater than the Jews ever received, but do we readily thank God for his gifts and, through that gratitude, open ourselves even more profoundly to a life-changing relationship with the Divine Giver? Or do we behave like the nine other lepers? Couldn’t Jesus say about Christians today, “Where are the other nine?” with regard to the gift of our Baptism, since so few really thank him for this most important day in our life? Couldn’t Jesus query, “Where are the other nine?” with regard to Sunday Mass, since five of six Catholics in the United States don’t come on Sunday when we must, and so many more don’t come during the week, when we could but choose not to? Couldn’t he ask, “Where are the other nine?” with respect to the Sacrament of his Mercy that restores us to the way to salvation, because so many never or seldom come, even to confess ingratitude? Couldn’t Jesus wonder, “Where are the other nine?” about Sacred Scripture, which bathes us in the cleansing, saving power of his word, because so few of us take up the Bible each day to read it and hear God’s voice. Couldn’t he say, “Where are the other nine?,” with regard to so many tabernacles where the majority of his people leave him alone? Rather than gratitude, some Catholics would be eligible for honorary doctorates in complaining. Some regularly behave as if the glass is never full, the beach is too sunny, and the water is too wet. Like the Jews in the desert, we can often be complainers, who obsess about what we don’t have rather than gratefully thank God for what we do. When asked about how we’re doing, we moan about a slight toothache rather than express gratitude that our eyes, ears, nose and every joint of our body is without pain. Some even complain at the menu at the Last Supper. Many of us similarly grumble about what we don’t have, rather than rejoice with appreciation at what we do. We can be eaten alive by envy such that even when those we love are blessed, we can be upset about it, because we personally don’t have those same blessings. Like children, we may say a “quick word of thanks” when God gets us out of a jam, but then not really remain in a perpetual attitude of gratitude. That’s what we’re called to be as Christians, people who are constantly thanking God for the gift of our faith, of Creation, of Redemption, of his Son in the Sacraments, of the ability to pray, of the opportunities for us to love others, of the promise of heaven, of our family members, of our fellow Christians, of our Pope, bishops, priests, and deacons, and so many other things.
We become a person who thanks God always and everywhere — and learns how to thank others too! — in our prayer. Some can think that some people are born naturally bubbly and grateful and that others are born with bad digestion such that they’re regularly complaining. Others say certain cultures, like the Filipinos, are more expressively grateful while others, like Scandanavians, are more stern and moaning. It’s not principally a thing of temperament or culture, however. I think it begins with our prayer. In our prayer, do we spend most of our time praising and thanking God, or do we spend it begging for mercy, asking for things for others or ourselves, or even whining? If we’re ever going to be able to thank God always and everywhere, the majority of our time in prayer should be in praise and thanksgiving. That’s a habit we can form. It’s a habit I’ve needed to form over many years, where we count our blessings and thank God for each of them. The more we do so, the more we see these blessings, and the more we acquire that attitude of gratitude that is essential for someone who is fully Catholic.
Today in the Book of Wisdom, God tells us that he holds to a greater responsibility those to whom he has given more. He reminds kings and magistrates that he will hold them to a more “rigorous scrutiny,” and so challenges them to desire and long for his words, be instructed in them, and keep holy his precepts in order to become holy. Likewise for us, who have received the greatest blessings in the world — which are not mansions and lands and bank accounts, but the Sacraments, Sacred Scripture, and faith — he will hold us to a more rigorous scrutiny of how grateful we are for these gifts that are so much more valuable even than a miraculous cure from leprosy. He will give us all the grace we need to meet those higher standards of thanksgiving, but we need to desire and long for those graces and be grateful for them when they come. Leaders in the largest Catholic fraternal organization in the world have a vocation not just to be grateful but to be supreme in gratitude.
The saint the whole Church celebrates today gives us a great lesson about how we can become people who live up to this standard of gratitude. St. Albert the Great, the 13th century Dominican Doctor of the Church, ended up writing 38 huge volumes on theology, Biblical interpretation, physics, geography, astronomy, mineralogy, chemistry and biology and because of that prodigious output, it might be presumed that everything came easy for him. It didn’t. He needed to persevere through various struggles in his studies. He confessed much later in life that as a young Dominican he had become so discouraged that he was strongly tempted to return to secular life but our Lady appeared to him and promised to ask for him illuminating grace in his studies if only he would persevere. He decided to persist, he received that light, and he bore tremendous fruit. His writings on science all began with wonder and gratitude for the way God the Creator had ordered the gift of his creation. His writings on the natural world were not just scientific but were an act of Thanksgiving. Even more so his writings on the gift of Sacred Scripture and on the mystery of who God is. He was able to pass on that wonder and gratitude for the gift of learning, wisdom and study to so many students, including St. Thomas Aquinas, and in his poverty, chastity and obedience, he became a living thanksgiving for God who is the true wealth, true love, and true source of freedom. We ask his intercession today that we, like him, might be grateful for everything, including our challenges.
At every Mass, including once again in a few minutes, one of the most important dialogues in human life occurs. The priest says, “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.” Everyone responds, “It is right and just.” And then the priest replies with a saying of great theological depth: “It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Lord, Holy Father, almighty and ever-living God.” It’s right, it’s just, it’s fitting, it’s appropriate for us to give God thanks, “always and everywhere.” It’s right, just, fitting and appropriate for us to do so on sunny days and rainy days, on days we feel like a million bucks and days we’re in the hospital, on days we’re attending weddings and those we’re attending funerals of loved ones, on days we ace exams and those we bomb them, on days when we get promotions and bonuses at work and days we get pink slips, on days when we win and days we lose. It’s right and just to thank God always and everywhere. It’s our duty to thank God because he has directly willed or permitted everything that has happened to us, both what the world considers good and what the world considers bad, because even out of the bad — like leprosy for those in today’s Gospel — he seeks to draw spiritual good, for “everything works out for the good for those who love God” (Rom 8:28).
The Mass is Jesus’ own prayer of Thanksgiving to the Father. The Greek word from which we derive the word “Eucharist,” as you know, means “thanksgiving.” I’ve always been struck by the words of consecration. “At the time he was betrayed, … Jesus took bread, and giving thanks … said, ‘… This is my body … given… for you.’” “In a similar way, when supper was ended, he took the chalice and once more giving thanks, gave it to his disciples, saying, … ‘This is the chalice of my blood.’” He gave thanks, because it is right always and everywhere, our duty and our salvation, to do so. He gave thanks because he knew that the Father would bring the greatest good out of the greatest evil of all time, which would happen to him after the Mass was done. He gave thanks because it would be through his passion, death and resurrection, that he would institute the means by which we would be able to enter into his own relationship with the Father. The Mass is the school in which we participate in Jesus’ own thanksgiving, the thanksgiving the Church makes continuously from the rising of the sun to its setting. The Lord has done far more for us than he ever did for the ten lepers. At Mass he gives us in a concrete way even more than what he gave to the one grateful leper when he said, “Your faith has saved you!” This is where Jesus — literally “God saves” — gives himself to us as salvation-in-the-flesh. No matter what challenges we’re enduring, no matter what problems we’re facing, no matter what illnesses we’re bearing, God comes into our world, to accompany us, to strengthen us, to heal us, to help us. He comes down to save us. And so, at the end of this leadership retreat, as we prepare to receive our Savior, we say the only worthy thing we can to such incredible generosity: “Thanks be to God!” “Te alabamos, Señor!” “Deo gratias!” It is truly right, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give God this thanks and praise! Amen!

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
WIS 6:1-11
Hear, O kings, and understand;
learn, you magistrates of the earth’s expanse!
Hearken, you who are in power over the multitude
and lord it over throngs of peoples!
Because authority was given you by the Lord
and sovereignty by the Most High,
who shall probe your works and scrutinize your counsels.
Because, though you were ministers of his kingdom, you judged not rightly,
and did not keep the law,
nor walk according to the will of God,
Terribly and swiftly shall he come against you,
because judgment is stern for the exalted–
For the lowly may be pardoned out of mercy
but the mighty shall be mightily put to the test.
For the Lord of all shows no partiality,
nor does he fear greatness,
Because he himself made the great as well as the small,
and he provides for all alike;
but for those in power a rigorous scrutiny impends.
To you, therefore, O princes, are my words addressed
that you may learn wisdom and that you may not sin.
For those who keep the holy precepts hallowed shall be found holy,
and those learned in them will have ready a response.
Desire therefore my words;
long for them and you shall be instructed.
Responsorial Psalm
PS 82:3-4, 6-7
R. (8a) Rise up, O God, bring judgment to the earth.
Defend the lowly and the fatherless;
render justice to the afflicted and the destitute.
Rescue the lowly and the poor;
from the hand of the wicked deliver them.
R. Rise up, O God, bring judgment to the earth.
I said: “You are gods,
all of you sons of the Most High;
yet like men you shall die,
and fall like any prince.”
R. Rise up, O God, bring judgment to the earth.
Gospel
LK 17:11-19
As Jesus continued his journey to Jerusalem,
he traveled through Samaria and Galilee.
As he was entering a village, ten lepers met him.
They stood at a distance from him and raised their voice, saying,
“Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!”
And when he saw them, he said,
“Go show yourselves to the priests.”
As they were going they were cleansed.
And one of them, realizing he had been healed,
returned, glorifying God in a loud voice;
and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him.
He was a Samaritan.
Jesus said in reply,
“Ten were cleansed, were they not?
Where are the other nine?
Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?”
Then he said to him, “Stand up and go;
your faith has saved you.”
The post Out Sweet Duty and Salvation, 32nd Wednesday (I), November 15, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
20 min
November 14, 2023 Supreme in Work, Knights of Columbus Leadership Retreat, November 14, 2023
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Knights of Columbus Senior Leadership Retreat
“Supreme in Prayer, Work and Mission”
Villa Maria Guadalupe Retreat House, Stamford, Connecticut
November 14, 2023
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.14.23_Supreme_in_Work_1.mp3
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54 min
November 14, 2023 Supreme in Prayer, Knights of Columbus Leadership Retreat, November 14, 2023
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Knights of Columbus Senior Leadership Retreat
“Supreme in Prayer, Work and Mission”
Villa Maria Guadalupe Retreat House, Stamford, Connecticut
November 14, 2023
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.14.23_Supreme_in_Prayer_1.mp3
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55 min
November 14, 2023Useless Good and Faithful Servants Until Death, 32nd Tuesday (I), November 14, 2023
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Knights of Columbus Senior Leadership Retreat
“Supreme in Prayer, Work and Mission”
Villa Maria Guadalupe Retreat House, Stamford, Connecticut
Tuesday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Votive Mass for the Grace of a Happy Death
November 14, 2023
Wis 2:23-3:9, Ps 34, Lk 17:7-10
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
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The following text guided the homily:
A retreat is normally a chance to reflect upon the big picture of human life. To look at it with the eyes of faith. And part of that reflection is on death.
During November, dedicated to praying for our faithful departed and also preparing for the time that the Lord will come for us, it is important that we learn to face death and the process of dying that lead to it in the light of faith. This is part of the formation of Knights of Columbus from the very beginning, as every Knight is instructed, “Tempus fugit. Memento mori,” “Time flies. Remember that you will die.”
Today’s first reading taken from the Book of Wisdom is by far the most common Old Testament passage used for funeral Masses and it manifests what happens when we look at suffering and death with faith. Referring to those who have died, Wisdom says, “They seemed in the view of the foolish to be dead; their passing away was thought an affliction; their going forth from us, utter destruction.” The worst insult that a Jew could hurl was to call someone a “fool,” because this meant someone who did not look at things the way God sees them. To those who do not look at things from the light of God’s revelation, Wisdom teaches us, the dead are simply dead. They’re gone. They’re decomposing. Their sufferings were just worthless afflictions leading to annihilation. Today there are still many who look at suffering, dying and death in this same “foolish” way. They believe there’s no meaning to human suffering and that once someone is diagnosed with a terminal illness or is experiencing chronic pain, the only compassionate and humane response is to treat them the way we do our pets, to “put them out of their misery” through “physician-assisted suicide” or “medical assistance in dying,” euthanasia or other euphemisms. They often treat their mortal remains as anything but sacred, incinerating them like we burn garbage, grinding the bones, and scattering them like chaff that the wind blows away, or totally dissolving them by alkaline hydrolysis. That all begins with the way the foolish “view” things.
Those who look with the eyes of faith see something altogether different. They perceive, according to the Book of Wisdom, that “the souls of the just are in the hands of God and no torment shall touch them.” They perceive that even if they suffer, “their hope is full of immortality.” They grasp that their chastisements become blessings through which God tests them “as gold in the furnace,” burning off the dross and impurities so that at the “time of their visitation they shall shine.” Those who look with Christian faith see all of these realities and more as they view death through the prism of Christ’s own sufferings, his own chastisements, his own death and resurrection. They recognize that Good Friday precedes Easter Sunday, that to experience the resurrection we first must endure the passion, and that in our suffering, dying, death and resurrection, Christ seeks to unite us to his own. The passage finishes by reminding us, “Those who trust in [God] shall understand truth and the faithful shall abide with him in love, because grace and mercy are with his holy ones and his care is with his elect.” Those who live by faith in God to the end will see the truths in which they’ve believed manifest as they by God’s mercy experience his love, presence and care forever. November is an opportunity for us to beg the Lord to increase our faith with regard to the way we regard end-of-life issues. It is also an opportunity for us each day, if we hope to have just souls eternally embraced by the Father’s strong and loving hands, to imitate Jesus here on earth by living with our faces fixed on Jerusalem, on Calvary, and on what comes after Calvary.
One of the most important spiritual practices is to ponder our death in the light of faith. Jesus is constantly calling us to be vigilant, like the wise Bridesmaids in the Gospel this past Sunday, for his return. We know from the life of Father McGivney that we’re not all destined to live to 100. In one of the great classics of Christian spirituality, which has forged and formed many saints, The Imitation of Christ, Thomas à Kempis reminds us, “Very soon your life here will end; consider, then, what may be in store for you elsewhere. … In every deed and every thought, act as though you were to die this very day. … If you are not prepared today, how will you be prepared tomorrow? Tomorrow is an uncertain day; how do you know you will have a tomorrow? … Blessed is he who keeps the moment of death ever before his eyes and prepares for it every day. … In the morning consider that you may not live till evening, and when evening comes do not dare to promise yourself the dawn. Be always ready, therefore, and so live that death will never take you unprepared. Many die suddenly and unexpectedly, for in the unexpected hour the Son of God will come. When that last moment arrives, you will begin to have a quite different opinion of the life that is now entirely past and you will regret very much that you were so careless and remiss. How happy and prudent is he who tries now in life to be what he wants to be found in death.… The present is very precious; these are the days of salvation; now is the acceptable time. … Try to live now in such a manner that at the moment of death you may be glad rather than fearful. Learn to die to the world now, that then you may begin to live with Christ. Learn to spurn all things now, that then you may freely go to Him.”
Cardinal Justin Rigali, the former Archbishop of Philadelphia, wrote in 2011 A little over ten years ago, two days before he would retire as Archbishop of Philadelphia, wrote for the priests of his archdiocese an extraordinarily beautiful meditation on Christian preparation for death. “Preparing for death is the greatest opportunity in our lives,” Cardinal Rigali wrote somewhat provocatively. Rather than dreading death as the inexorable occasion in which our life will be taken from us, we can all learn from Jesus, he said, how to make our death an act of supreme self-giving love. He advised we focus on two passages. The first is Jesus’ words, “No one takes [my life] from Me; I freely lay it down” (Jn 10:18). Just as Jesus made his death an act of self-giving love, so we can do the same. “Seen in this perspective,” the Cardinal continued, “death is the moment to give all, to surrender all with Jesus and in union with His sacrifice. … When anticipated by an act of loving acceptance, death is an opportunity to say ‘yes’ to the Father, just as Jesus did; to say ‘yes’ with all our heart, as Jesus did.” That leads us to the second passage, Jesus’ last words from the Cross, when he said, “Father, into your hands I commend My spirit” (Lk 23:46). Our self-giving love is a self-entrustment to the Father, something the Cardinal urges us to do every day before we go to bed, as the Church does in Compline. He comments, “When the hour of death comes, we may not be conscious. It may come very suddenly, by reason of an accident, by reason of a heart attack; there are a million and one possibilities left to our imagination, but this does not matter. The point is: the surrender will have been made thousands of times! The Father will understand that each of us had the power, which we exercised, the power, with His Son Jesus, to lay down our life freely, lovingly and definitively. Then there will be no obstacle to the consummation of our love. Life and holiness will be ours forever in the communion of the Most Blessed Trinity.”
Having that perspective, allows us to live and work differently than others. It allows us to live for God rather than for ourselves. That perspective obviously helps us to understand the initially difficult lesson that Jesus is trying to teach us in today’s Gospel. We live in an affirmation culture, in which we are constantly trying to give everyone ribbons and awards and recognition not principally for merit but just for showing up. This cultural shift is not altogether bad and in some ways it’s a helpful corrective to an excessively Darwinian competitive culture of yesteryear when there was one winner and everyone else was considered losers. But to the members of this culture of Stuart Smalleys — the former star in Al Franken’s Saturday Live “Daily Affirmation” skit who used to repeat, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggonit, people like me!” — Jesus’ words in the Gospel almost seem cruel. They seem to be the exact opposite of this a culture of affirmation — and we believe that if anyone is going to affirm us, it’s going to be God who created, created, loves and awaits us! But we need to look at what Jesus is saying not with the eyes of the world but with those of faith. Jesus gives us an image of a hard-working servant who has just come in from plowing the field by hand and tending sheep. All of us can imagine the person’s exhaustion. Jesus asks whether the person’s boss would typically say to him, “Come here immediately and take your place at table,” and then proceed to wait on him. The obvious answer is no. Rather, Jesus says, he would say to him, “Prepare something for me to eat. Put on your apron and wait on me while I eat and drink. You may eat and drink when I am finished.” In the culture of the time and in our time, this type of treatment of slaves, hired hands and other employees has been standard. Jesus even seems to be affirming it. But he ups the ante with the moral he draws from the story. He asks, “Is he grateful to that servant because he did what was commanded?,” implying that the answer is a definitive “no.” Then he adds, “So should it be with you. When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done what we were obliged to do.’” Unprofitable servants. The same phrase can be translated as “useless.” To our modern ears it seems that Jesus — whom we proclaim in the Psalm as “close to the brokenhearted” and who saves “those who are crushed in spirit” — is basically engaging in verbal abuse, saying that no matter how hard we work for him, no matter how hard we try, no matter how much we succeed, at the end of the day we’re just useless. He even implies that he isn’t “grateful” for anything we’ve done, but that all we’ve done is what we were obliged to do and should expect no thanks.
The point Jesus was making in the Gospel is not that God isn’t grateful for efforts or that we likewise should not be grateful for others’ efforts. He was trying to change our motivations. Our life is not ultimately about us, it’s not an egocentric pursuit, but ultimately it is about living in God’s love, receiving it, and reciprocating it, by seeking to love God with all our mind, heart, soul, strength and elbow grease and loving our neighbor, including through the love with which we work for them. Jesus does not want us doing our work for recognition but doing it out of love for God and others. During the Sermon on the Mount, with words we hear every Ash Wednesday, Jesus told us not to pray, fast or give alms “so that others may see them,” because if that were our motivation, we would already have received our reward. He told us, rather, to do them with purity of intention, to do them for God, to do them out of love, promising us that “the Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward” us. Jesus even in these words is not encouraging us to do good things just to receive this reward from the Father but rather he’s encouraging us to do good things out of love for God and others, reminding us that the Father is never blind to our actions and motivations and will in fact remember and reward us for all that we do with the proper motivations. He’s also encouraging us toward humility and gratitude. The Christian life is about serving, rather than being served, it’s about charity, unity and fraternity, and Jesus is calling us to seek to continue to serve, even after a long day’s work, something exemplified by many hard working moms and dads who continue to care for their families after long days of work. The Christian serves with the life, the talents, and the energy God has given, and so the first response of the Christian ought to be to thank God for these gifts and for the trust he has placed in us by giving us a share in his salvific work. Yes, in one sense, we’re “useless servants,” but he has given us all the help he knows we need so that we can prove to be “good and faithful servants,” who are “no longer called servants but friends” and who will inherit as a reward the kingdom prepared since the foundation of the world. So when we read this Gospel with the eyes of faith, in light of the purpose of our life, we grasp a particular call. Even though many of us may have worked hard until now to glorify God and spread the faith, to plow God’s fields and tend his sheep, to build up God’s kingdom and prosper the mission for which Father McGivney founded the Knights in service of God, Church, men and their families, it’s not time for us to retire, put up our feet and let others serve us. It’s time for us to continue working, even if the type of work required in different stages of our life may be different.
And if we work this way for God and others, if we live each day as if it is our last and try to spend it in love, unity and fraternity, then we will experience a mind-blowing reversal of today’s Gospel parable. According to human logic, as Jesus indicates, no slave would ever be invited in from working the fields in order to be served by the Master, yet that’s exactly what God the Father promises to do for all those how in fact serve him and others to the extreme. Just as Jesus put on an apron and washed the feet of the apostles during the Last Supper, Jesus promises that at the eternal wedding banquet, those who have always been vigilant in working, he will seat at table, gird himself with an apron and proceed to wait on them. (Lk 12:37). Today, as we celebrate on this retreat a Votive Mass for the Grace of a Happy Death, through Blessed Michael’s intercession, we ask Christ whom we’re about to receive to give us the grace to see things as he does, with the eyes of faith, to entrust ourselves freely into his hands, to bless him at all times, and to continue to do our work until the day when, God-willing, Christ with gratitude will welcome, wait upon and feed us with himself at the eternal banquet!

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
WIS 2:23–3:9
God formed man to be imperishable;
the image of his own nature he made them.
But by the envy of the Devil, death entered the world,
and they who are in his possession experience it.
But the souls of the just are in the hand of God,
and no torment shall touch them.
They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead;
and their passing away was thought an affliction
and their going forth from us, utter destruction.
But they are in peace.
For if before men, indeed, they be punished,
yet is their hope full of immortality;
Chastised a little, they shall be greatly blessed,
because God tried them
and found them worthy of himself.
As gold in the furnace, he proved them,
and as sacrificial offerings he took them to himself.
In the time of their visitation they shall shine,
and shall dart about as sparks through stubble;
They shall judge nations and rule over peoples,
and the Lord shall be their King forever.
Those who trust in him shall understand truth,
and the faithful shall abide with him in love:
Because grace and mercy are with his holy ones,
and his care is with his elect.
Responsorial Psalm
PS 34:2-3, 16-17, 18-19
R. (2a) I will bless the Lord at all times.
I will bless the LORD at all times;
his praise shall be ever in my mouth.
Let my soul glory in the LORD;
the lowly will hear me and be glad.
R. I will bless the Lord at all times.
The LORD has eyes for the just,
and ears for their cry.
The LORD confronts the evildoers,
to destroy remembrance of them from the earth.
R. I will bless the Lord at all times.
When the just cry out, the LORD hears them,
and from all their distress he rescues them.
The LORD is close to the brokenhearted;
and those who are crushed in spirit he saves.
R. I will bless the Lord at all times.
Gospel
LK 17:7-10
Jesus said to the Apostles:
“Who among you would say to your servant
who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field,
‘Come here immediately and take your place at table’?
Would he not rather say to him,
‘Prepare something for me to eat.
Put on your apron and wait on me while I eat and drink.
You may eat and drink when I am finished’?
Is he grateful to that servant because he did what was commanded?
So should it be with you.
When you have done all you have been commanded, say,
‘We are unprofitable servants;
we have done what we were obliged to do.’”
The post Useless Good and Faithful Servants Until Death, 32nd Tuesday (I), November 14, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
21 min
November 13, 2023Increasing in Faith Along the Everlasting Way, 32nd Monday (I), November 13, 2023
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Monday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini
November 13, 2023
Wis 1:1-7, Ps 139, Lk 17:1-6

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click here:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.13.23_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
Today we encounter one of the most important of all aspirations we should be praying constantly: audage nobis fidem! — “Lord, increase our faith!” And in the Gospel, there is a clear context for why we need faith. The apostles ask for it immediately after Jesus talks about the evil of scandal and the need constantly to ask for forgiveness of God and others and to give it when someone asks it of us. One of the most important parts of our life of faith is our recognition that just as God never tires of forgiving us, we should never tire of asking him for forgiveness and of sharing a similar mercy with others. This is hard. It requires great humility to ask for forgiveness. It requires greater humility to give it. Jesus is calling us not merely to give people a second chance, but an eighth chance. And in another part of the Gospel he says, depending upon the translation, that we need to give a 78th chance or a 491st chance. In order to be capable of forgiving always, no matter the offense, we need his help and the strength that comes from faith. That’s why we humbly beg, “Increase our faith!”
There’s also another aspect to today’s Gospel for which we need increased faith. Jesus describes someone who gives scandal to another and says not that we should forgive seven times a day but that the person should have a millstone tied around his neck and thrown into the sea. A few years ago Pope Francis said in a homily on this passage that there is a big difference between a “sinner” who needs to be forgiven and a “scandalizer.” A sinner repents and comes to say to God and others from the heart, “I’m sorry.” A scandalizer doesn’t repent. He just continues the sinful behavior, settling an example of sin for others. Jesus says, “Woe” to him. Pope Francis said that the one who causes scandal has become corrupt. He’s no longer sinning because of weakness, but because of choice. He no longer is humbly coming to ask for mercy, because he has begun to think that his sinful conduct doesn’t need to be forgiven, that it’s precisely the right thing to do. A scandalizer sins proudly, with an air of self-righteous defiance of God and others. We see it, for example, in those politicians who support abortion and claim that they’re just following their conscience. We see it in those people who proudly make excuses for not coming to Church or to Confession. We see it in those people who relate to illegal immigrants with hearts full of stone, calling for policies in their regard that they would never ask for if they were dealing with people whom they looked at as brothers and sisters whom they should love. To this circumstance as well, the disciples cry out, “Lord, increase our faith!,” because we, too, can be in a situation of setting scandal for others — not just setting bad example by weakness, but setting it with supposed justification. As we ask the Lord for an increase in faith, we are asking him for the light that comes from faith so that we may examine our consciences appropriately, see our spiritual blind spots and look at our behavior from God’s perspective, and come, even seven times a day, to say, “Lord, have mercy on me!”
In the first reading from the Book of Wisdom, God describes for us the life of faith that he intends. He calls us to “love justice,” “think of the Lord in goodness,” “seek the Lord in integrity of heart.” These are all expressions that say that our hearts, our minds, and our actions should be aligned with God and his holy wisdom. The greatest criticisms Jesus gave in the Gospel were for those “hypocrites” who said one thing, but did another, who on the outside were beautiful in terms of their religious practice but who on the inside were sepulchers full of dead men’s bones. They were people, to use the words of the Book of Wisdom, whose souls plotted evil, regardless of what their lips claimed. They caused great scandal, leading others to a totally false way of relating to God and others. Jesus calls us, rather, to genuine integrity. That’s what the life of faith is all about. As we call out today for an increase in faith, we similarly beg, “Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way!” The everlasting way is the way of faith and the exact opposite of the way of scandal! We remember that he probes us, he understands our thoughts from afar, he scrutinizes us and is familiar with all our ways. We recognize that he is everywhere around us, wants to guide us, and hold us fast with his right hand. For many of us, the Lord has a mustard seed’s portion of our life. He wants our union with him to grow into such a large plant that many others can rest in the our limbs.
Someone who journeyed along the everlasting way, who constantly grew in faith and sought to help others grow in faith, whose life because a giant tree in which many could find rest and solace, is the saint we celebrate today: St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, who lived and worked for part of her life here in New York and is buried just north of here in Washington Heights. She was born in 1850 near the Italian city of Lodi. From her earliest days, she had a deep love for the faith and a deep desire to spread it as a missionary. The youngest of 13 children, her family would read each night from the Annals of the Propagation of the Faith and her young heart became inflamed. She used to make paper boats, fill them with flowers symbolizing the flourishing life of missionaries, and float them down the river, hoping that they would reach China. After the death of both of her parents when she was 18, she applied to enter various religious communities —including those who ran the school from which she graduated — but was refused because her health was poor. Eventually her parish priest, who appreciated her piety, zeal and organizational ability, asked her to help save a mismanaged orphanage. She assented and did all she could, forming around her a community of women to assist in the work of loving these orphans into the kingdom, but after three years of hard work the charitable institution was not able to be resuscitated. But it was through that grain of wheat’s falling to the ground that Frances’ life-long aspiration was able to be fulfilled. Her bishop summoned her and said, “I know you want to be a missionary. Now is the time. I don’t know any institute of missionary sisters, so found one yourself.” And with the group of seven women who had collaborated with her at the orphanage, she did: the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, erected to seek the Christian education of girls. It was suggested to her by many that her new community should head to the United States to work among the Italian immigrants. In the 1880s, there were 50,000 Italians in New York City alone, but fewer the 1,200 had ever been to a Mass or learned the elements of Christian doctrine. They didn’t know how to make the Sign of the Cross, not to mention how to go from created things to the Kingdom. Ten of the 12 priests working among them had been kicked out of their Italian dioceses for problems; they had similar issues in seeing God even among the sacred! Archbishop Corrigan of New York wrote her a formal letter asking her assistance, but at first she wouldn’t hear of it. She had set her heart on evangelizing China. But one night she had a powerful dream that induced her to consult Pope Leo XIII himself. The holy and wise pontiff, after hearing of the dream and her discernment, told her, in words that would change the history of Catholicism in America, “Not to the East, but to the West.” With six of her sisters, she set off for New York in 1889.
When they arrived, a poor and humbling reception awaited them. They had been asked initially to organize an Italian orphanage and elementary school, but during their voyage, the benefactress underwriting the institutions had reneged on her commitments. There was no place for them or the orphans to live and no building for them to hold classes. Archbishop Corrigan told Mother Cabrini it was probably best for her and her sisters to return to Italy. Despite her disappointment at the chaos she found in New York, this tiny, strongly-accented Lombardian replied with a determination that ever after impressed the prelate, “No. The pope sent me here, and here I must stay.” From that point forward, Mother took some matters into her own hands. She went to see the benefactress to persuade her to change her mind, brought about her reconciliation with the archbishop, founded a house for the sisters and successfully began the orphanage. She began to receive vocations to her community almost immediately and that allowed her community’s apostolate to spread far and wide. She soon opened up a hospital in New York and several institutions in New Orleans, where the integration of Italians was going particularly poorly. Requests for her help were coming from all over the world, and she traveled with sisters to open up homes, schools, hospitals and orphanages in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, France and England. She also founded institutions in most American cities where there was a heavy concentration of Italian immigrants. By 1907, when the constitutions of her community were finally approved, there were more than a thousand sisters working in over fifty institutions in eight countries. She died ten years later at the age of 67 while visiting her community in Chicago. In 1946, she became the first American citizen to be canonized a saint. Her future canonization had been foretold by Pope Leo XIII fifty years before when, asked about her, he replied, “Mother Cabrini is a woman of fine understanding and great holiness. She is a saint.” Mother Cabrini’s zeal for the faith and her sanctity were seen in her willingness to put out into the deep waters and lower her nets for a catch for Christ all over the globe. As a little girl, she had fallen into a river and almost drowned. Despite her fear of water from that point forward, she spent much of her adult life aboard ship sailing across rough seas — 30 cross Atlantic trips — or over rivers to open schools for the fish she and her community would catch in those nets. Her whole life is a commentary on the plea, “Lord, increase our faith!,” the faith by which she could conquer her fears and become someone God could use to increase the faith of multitudes and guide them along the everlasting way, even in our own age.
“Lord, increase our faith!” The greatest way to grow in faith is through the Mass. In the Opening Prayer of the Mass, we prayed that through St. Frances Cabrini’s intercession, we might see Christ in our brothers and sisters. As we behold the Lamb of God here at Mass, we ask him to help us to recognize him more easily in others, so that together with them, we may faithfully journey along the everlasting way, setting good example, and forgiving as God forgives. What the Lord does here is a greater miracle than moving a mulberry tree into the sea!

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
WIS 1:1-7
Love justice, you who judge the earth;
think of the Lord in goodness,
and seek him in integrity of heart;
Because he is found by those who test him not,
and he manifests himself to those who do not disbelieve him.
For perverse counsels separate a man from God,
and his power, put to the proof, rebukes the foolhardy;
Because into a soul that plots evil, wisdom enters not,
nor dwells she in a body under debt of sin.
For the holy Spirit of discipline flees deceit
and withdraws from senseless counsels;
and when injustice occurs it is rebuked.
For wisdom is a kindly spirit,
yet she acquits not the blasphemer of his guilty lips;
Because God is the witness of his inmost self
and the sure observer of his heart
and the listener to his tongue.
For the Spirit of the Lord fills the world,
is all-embracing, and knows what man says.
Responsorial Psalm
PS 139:1B-3, 4-6, 7-8, 9-10
R. (24b) Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.
O LORD, you have probed me and you know me;
you know when I sit and when I stand;
you understand my thoughts from afar.
My journeys and my rest you scrutinize,
with all my ways you are familiar.
R. Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O LORD, you know the whole of it.
Behind me and before, you hem me in
and rest your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
too lofty for me to attain.
R. Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.
Where can I go from your spirit?
From your presence where can I flee?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I sink to the nether world, you are present there.
R. Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.
If I take the wings of the dawn,
if I settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
Even there your hand shall guide me,
and your right hand hold me fast.
R. Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.
Gospel
LK 17:1-6
Jesus said to his disciples,
“Things that cause sin will inevitably occur,
but woe to the one through whom they occur.
It would be better for him if a millstone were put around his neck
and he be thrown into the sea
than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin.
Be on your guard!
If your brother sins, rebuke him;
and if he repents, forgive him.
And if he wrongs you seven times in one day
and returns to you seven times saying, ‘I am sorry,’
you should forgive him.”
And the Apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.”
The Lord replied, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed,
you would say to this mulberry tree,
‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”
The post Increasing in Faith Along the Everlasting Way, 32nd Monday (I), November 13, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
20 min
November 13, 2023Our Desire for Christ, 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), November 12, 2023
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, New York
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
November 12, 2023
Wis 6:12-16, Ps 63, 1 Thess 4:13-18, Mt 25:1-13
To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click here:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.12.23_CCM_Homily_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
What are our greatest desires? What do we want the most? Youth and young adulthood is a time in which we try to clarify what our deepest desires are, what they ought to be, and how we can best order our life in accordance with them. Today’s readings help us to do that within the context of the Last Things on which the Church meditates every November. They help us to see whether we really desire God and order our life to that desire.
The first reading helps us to look at the pursuit of truth, which ought always to be at the heart of any university. It describes how anyone who seeks and loves true wisdom, the way God has made and sees reality, will perceive and find it. It urges us to seek wisdom with vigil at night and vigil before dawn. But then it says that this desire is met by another. Wisdom, it says, “hastens to make herself known in anticipation of their desire,” and “makes her own rounds, seeking those worthy of her,” “graciously appears to them in the street,” sits at the gate waiting to be discovered and “meets them with all solicitude.” God who is Wisdom seeks us even before we seek him. His desire is to enrich us with his wisdom even before we find ourselves hungry for that gift.
In the Psalm, we build on the reality of the desire God has placed within us for him, which is at the deepest root of the search for truth and the desire for love and beauty. We pray out of this desire: “O God, you are my God whom I seek; for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water.” Like a thirsty man in the desert we thirst for God and, as the Psalm continues, we seek to find him in the sanctuary, through prayer in ordinary life, even as we sit upon our couch at night.
The second reading, from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians, builds on this, giving us the consoling word that God’s eternal plans for us are that we will always be with him, if only we desire it, if only we seek the Lord.
And in the Gospel, with the Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids, Jesus gives us a very powerful parable about our desire and how it should influence our entire life. The story that he tells about the practices involving a wedding might seem a little strange, but the details would have been very well understood by his contemporaries and by many of those still living in Palestine. There were two main stages in a marriage. The first would be the exchange of vows. When this took place, the couple was married, but the spouses would continue to live apart for a while, up to a year or more, while the husband earned the money and prepared everything to welcome his new wife into his home and underwrite the wedding reception. It was during this time, for example, that the Archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary; she was already wedded to Joseph but they had not started to live under the same roof. The second stage was when the bridegroom, the husband, would come to the house of the bride to pick her up and take her to his home. He would be accompanied by all the guests from his side as he went to her home. There he would meet her and all the guests from her side, her bridesmaids and others, who would be waiting for him along the way. Both groups would process back together to his home and when they arrived, they would celebrate the nuptials for eight days with all their friends and family — something they would consider far more enjoyable than leaving all of them behind for a honeymoon.
The bridegroom could come at any time to pick up his bride and so people needed to be ready. Before he would come, he would send out a herald who would announce along the path, “Behold the bridegroom is coming,” but the husband himself could come within hours, days, up to a week. He could come in the middle of the night. There was a law that said that if one were out at night, one had to have a lamp, which was not only common sense but prevented any ambushes, etc. People who knew both bride and groom could either wait with the bride or accompany the bridegroom, but most would prefer the former because it was less walking! As soon as the bridegroom took the bride into his house, the doors really would be shut, to prevent latecomers crashing their party. This wedding tradition, which was universal at Jesus’ time, is still found today in certain parts of the Holy Land and Middle East.
Jesus uses this image as the background to communicate to us about our desire for him in this world and in anticipation of his second coming. Jesus contrasts five wise bridesmaids versus five foolish ones, wanting us to imitate the lessons we see in the five wise ones. We learn three crucial lessons about desires from the wise virgins.
The first lesson is vigilance for the Bridegroom’s coming. Our desire is meant to be shown in waiting and in anticipation. The heralds have already gone out to announce not just that Jesus is coming but is here. He is already married to his bride the Church, he regularly invites her to come with him each day, but he’s also awaiting the time in which he will be able to celebrate with her the wedding banquet that will last not just eight twenty-four hour periods, but be an eternal eighth day (the day of resurrection, the new and eternal “first day of the week”). But we have to be ready to go with him whenever he arrives. Death, for a Christian, is not meant to be a scary thing. It’s the time when Jesus the Bridegroom comes for us to take us to the home he has prepared where we will celebrate with him forever. We’re called to await him with eager longing, with great expectation. He wants the lamps of our hearts burning for him, full of the oil of love. Because Christian death is the return of the Bridegroom and the entrance of one who deeply longs for his return into the eternal nuptial banquet, Christians, St. Paul tells us in the second reading, should “not grieve as those who have no hope” after the death of loved ones. We always have hope, not just for them if they lived in expectation of the Lord’s return, but we have hope ourselves that one day he will come for us. The best way for us to stay alert for the return of the Bridegroom is for us to be ready, with hearts burning with love, for the presence of the Bridegroom now. The more we long for Jesus in the Eucharist, the more we will long to share eternal communion with him. The more we attentively listen to his Word in Sacred Scripture, the more prepared we will be to hear even the faintest footsteps of his advent. The more we seek to recognize him in the persons and events of each day, and love and embrace them as we would love and embrace Christ, the more ready we will be ready to embrace Christ when he appears without disguise.
The second thing Jesus teaches us about desire in the image of the ten bridesmaids is that we cannot borrow it from others. Just as the unwise virgins didn’t have enough oil for their own lamps — and oil stands for expectant love for the Lord — so we can’t borrow anyone else’s faith, hope, love or desire. We need to have our own, otherwise we’ll be caught unready and be left outside. This lesson is particularly important for the people of our age. One of my favorite authors, Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, now Trappist Father Simeon of Spencer Abbey, describes in his classic commentary on St. Matthew’s Gospel, Fire of Mercy, that the “foolish virgins are foolish not only because they neglected to bring their own supply of oil with them to the momentous encounter with the Bridegroom, but also because they possess a naïve and perhaps even subtly manipulative and self-indulgent view of the society to which they belong. They are spiritual freeloaders. They simply assume that they do not have to work for their own oil, that in a pinch, anyone’s oil will burn just as nicely in their own lamps, that they should not strain themselves too much because there are many others … who will gladly do their work for them and that they, therefore, can relax in an attitude of entitlement and allow others to fill in the gap for them.” In other words, they fail in their own responsibility, to prioritize their own personal relationship with the Bridegroom. I can’t count how many times people who aren’t faithful to the practice of the faith say when I am trying to cajole them into greater fidelity, “I don’t come to Mass, father, but my wife comes all the time.” On other occasions, people who are ineligible for a sponsor certificate to become a godparent because they don’t practice the faith, have said, “But my grandmother is one of the most active parishioners in the parish.” Sometimes they will try to name-drop to obtain one, by saying, “But my great uncle is a monsignor.” To all of them, I explain to them that there are certain things we cannot borrow, and one of them is another’s relationship with the Lord. We can’t borrow another’s soul or spiritual life. And for those who are faithful to Christ, there’s a lesson here, too, that there are certain things we cannot lend. While Jesus wants us to give of ourselves to others, to share with others freely the gifts He has so lavishly shared with us, there are certain things that we cannot give even to those we love. There are certain things that they must do for themselves. Each one is called to develop this eager, expectant, vigilant, faithful, loving relationship with the Lord. Those who think that they can borrow other’s relationships with the Lord when the Lord comes are indeed foolish, as Jesus says about the unwise bridesmaids.
There is something in the parable we shouldn’t miss. All ten virgins have some desire to encounter the Bridegroom. They all show up. They all have lamps. They all have some oil in the lamps. They are all tired and fall asleep. But what distinguishes the wise virgins is that they have brought extra flasks. They were prudent precisely in their having brought more. The oil represents, we could say, the unique thing each one of the bridesmaids has to offer the Bridegroom. Each one’s oil is the gift of oneself, an all-inclusive personal act of pure love. The unwise have not committed in the same way. There is some self-giving, but not to overflowing. There’s a partial commitment, but a partial commitment to love is not enough. There’s some desire, but not an all-consuming one. The Lord wants us to have flasks of desire.
The third lesson is that there is a time that can be too late. We can’t put off stoking our desire because certain things cannot be obtained at the last minute. The unwise virgins were caught off guard. They couldn’t borrow oil, so they had to try to obtain some on their own, but they missed the bridegroom and were locked out. They knocked on the door saying, “Lord, lord, open to us.” But then he replied with the words that I think are the saddest and most frightening in all of Sacred Scripture: “Truly I tell you, I do not know you.” The Bridegroom cannot know them because the would-be brides are offering only a borrowed facsimile of love that is not flowing from their heart. Their hearts are hollow like the emptied lamps they carry. God is looking for one thing in us, the unique flame that can flare up only if we have allowed our heart and soul to catch the fire of his love. For the Lord to know us, for us to be on time for the wedding banquet, we have to spend our time here getting to know him intimately, as a friend, as a savior, as God. Many can put off this most important thing in life, which is to make God number one in our lives. We can allow the devil to deceive us by saying, “There’s always time.” We can allow him to insinuate that we can behave like the Good Thief, commit our sins, do our own thing in this life, and that the Lord Jesus will give us the chance at the end to say one prayer and everything we will work out. If we were to think that, though, we would be as foolish as the foolish virgins in the parable. Jesus tells us that there will be a time when there will be no time left. There will be a time when the door will be shut. The lesson of the parable is that now is the time for us to get to know the Lord so that the Lord may never say, “I don’t know you.” Now is the time for us to prepare for his return. Now is the time to desire him. All of us have known people who have died unexpectedly, even young people. Even the healthiest person is this chapel could die today. The Lord in today’s Gospel tells us that the wise among us will always be prepared. The moral he gives at the end of today’s parable is crystal clear: “Keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” To be awake means never to be asleep to God, but always to be alert, full of love, waiting for him.
The Eucharistic procession we had today across the Columbia campus features many of the elements of what Jesus describes today. He is the Bridegroom who comes to meet us, the Church his Bride, in the Eucharist. Then he seeks to lead us on pilgrimage all the way to the place he has gone to prepare for us, heaven. He wants us to hunger for him, to be like a tabernacle lamp or one of these altar candles, burning as a sign of our desire. He wants to reinforce that it’s not enough for someone else we know to follow Jesus in his Eucharistic journey in every place and time, but we ourselves need to make the choice to join. And he really wants to get know us intimately through his Eucharistic presence, by means of prayer, adoration and especially through the mind-blowing reality of receiving the eternal Son of God within in Holy Communion. Opportunities like the Eucharistic Procession we just had are opportunities for us to manifest what is the state of our longing. Not everyone is, of course, able to come because of other unbreakable commitments, but those who love the Lord will strive to come and take part. And then as we do things like that together, we begin to identify much more with the Bridegroom as he seeks, every time we receive him in Holy Communion, to make of us a monstrance for a Corpus Christi procession wherever we go, just like Mary, after the Annunciation, took Jesus within her to her cousins Elizabeth and Zachariah and to their infant son, John the Baptist.
So we have today three lessons: an eager, expectant waiting for the Lord’s coming in all his ways; a recognition that we can’t borrow what we’re going to need to meet the Lord when we comes; and a loving admonition from the Lord not to procrastinate on our preparations until it’s too late. This Mass is meant to help us with each of the three. If we’re truly ready to meet the Lord here, with our souls clean from serious sins, with our hearts hungering for Him, with the Lord himself, the Light of the World, burning inside of us fueled by the oil of love, we’ll never be caught off guard, whether he comes today, tomorrow, or several decades from now. Our reaction to today’s word of the Lord, and to the tremendous gift that is the Eucharist, will therefore determine whether in the final analysis we’re actualy wise. Is our soul thirsting for the living God more than a desert pants for water? Are we keeping perpetual vigil seeking Wisdom incarnate? Have we come asking the Lord to fill not just our lamps but our flasks so that we can make a total self offering? The Lord who knows us, desires to give us all these gifts. Let’s meet his desire for us with our desire. The Bridegroom, the long-desired of the nations, indeed is here. Let us go out with joy to meet Christ the Lord and follow him all the way to the Father’s house!

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 WIS 6:12-16
Resplendent and unfading is wisdom,
and she is readily perceived by those who love her,
and found by those who seek her.
She hastens to make herself known in anticipation of their desire;
Whoever watches for her at dawn shall not be disappointed,
for he shall find her sitting by his gate.
For taking thought of wisdom is the perfection of prudence,
and whoever for her sake keeps vigil
shall quickly be free from care;
because she makes her own rounds, seeking those worthy of her,
and graciously appears to them in the ways,
and meets them with all solicitude.
Responsorial Psalm PS 63:2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8
R. (2b) My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God.
O God, you are my God whom I seek;
for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts
like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water.
R. My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God.
Thus have I gazed toward you in the sanctuary
to see your power and your glory,
For your kindness is a greater good than life;
my lips shall glorify you.
R. My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God.
Thus will I bless you while I live;
lifting up my hands, I will call upon your name.
As with the riches of a banquet shall my soul be satisfied,
and with exultant lips my mouth shall praise you.
R. My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God.
I will remember you upon my couch,
and through the night-watches I will meditate on you:
You are my help,
and in the shadow of your wings I shout for joy.
R. My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God.
Reading 2 1 THES 4:13-18
We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters,
about those who have fallen asleep,
so that you may not grieve like the rest, who have no hope.
For if we believe that Jesus died and rose,
so too will God, through Jesus,
bring with him those who have fallen asleep.
Indeed, we tell you this, on the word of the Lord,
that we who are alive,
who are left until the coming of the Lord,
will surely not precede those who have fallen asleep.
For the Lord himself, with a word of command,
with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God,
will come down from heaven,
and the dead in Christ will rise first.
Then we who are alive, who are left,
will be caught up together with them in the clouds
to meet the Lord in the air.
Thus we shall always be with the Lord.
Therefore, console one another with these words.
Alleluia MT 24:42A, 44
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Stay awake and be ready!
For you do not know on what day your Lord will come.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel MT 25:1-13
Jesus told his disciples this parable:
“The kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins
who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.
Five of them were foolish and five were wise.
The foolish ones, when taking their lamps,
brought no oil with them,
but the wise brought flasks of oil with their lamps.
Since the bridegroom was long delayed,
they all became drowsy and fell asleep.
At midnight, there was a cry,
‘Behold, the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’
Then all those virgins got up and trimmed their lamps.
The foolish ones said to the wise,
‘Give us some of your oil,
for our lamps are going out.’
But the wise ones replied,
‘No, for there may not be enough for us and you.
Go instead to the merchants and buy some for yourselves.’
While they went off to buy it,
the bridegroom came
and those who were ready went into the wedding feast with him.
Then the door was locked.
Afterwards the other virgins came and said,
‘Lord, Lord, open the door for us!’
But he said in reply,
‘Amen, I say to you, I do not know you.’
Therefore, stay awake,
for you know neither the day nor the hour.”

The post Our Desire for Christ, 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), November 12, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
25 min
November 12, 2023Christ Our Peace, Homily for the Columbia Campus Ministry Eucharistic Procession, November 12, 2023
Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Paul’s Chapel, Columbia University, New York
Reflection during Eucharistic Procession
November 12, 2023

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.12.23_Fervorino_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
As we make our Eucharistic procession today, we come here to St. Paul’s Chapel, and pray in a special way for peace on our Columbia campus.=
Lately our campus has been plagued by some real acts of hatred. The lack of peace in the Middle East has metastasized here and brought division and pain. There have been rallies in which some students have sought to justify and cheer the brutal terrorist killings of the innocent. Various students have been harassed because of their religion and national identity. Other students have been doxed outside the gate we passed through a few minutes ago. It has led to some feeling besieged rather than at home on campus. There’s a need for reparation and reconciliation. There’s a need for peacemakers and peacemaking. We come here with Jesus, the Prince of Peace, each of us asking him to make me an instrument of peace.
Our campus has likewise experienced so far six deaths, one because of a tragic accident, another because of illness, but others because of a lack of interior peace such that they concluded life was no longer worth living. We come here with Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life, praying in a special way for all of them as well as for students who might be experiencing similar temptations.
In the Gospel we just heard, Jesus describes that the ruler of this world, meaning the devil, was coming and the evil one would wreak his destruction, getting archenemies to co-conspire to put Jesus to death on the Cross. In the midst of all of it, however, and knowing just how flustered the apostles and anyone would become witnessing Life himself being executed on Calvary, Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you,” stressing, “not as the world gives do I give it to you.” He was at peace through it all because he was doing exactly as the Father wanted and he knew that the greatest good of all time would come out of the situation of his death and resurrection. He wanted his apostles, and all of us, to have that peace that the world can’t give or take away. Peace with him. That’s why, he said, the Holy Spirit was being sent to remind us of everything Jesus taught. That’s why he said these words after he had celebrated the Eucharist and given his own Body and Blood to them. Both gifts were so that they would be able to keep their communion with him in the midst of all of the chaos, in the midst of the evil of the mobs shouting out “Crucify him! Crucify him!” and beyond. Jesus offers us that peace. As we receive him in Holy Communion, we enter into communion with the Prince of Peace, who helps us from within to become not just a peace wisher but a peace maker, seeking to bring him, his peace, his reconciliation, ultimately his love to others. All peace ultimately flows from the tranquility of order that flows from being right with God and that’s what he wants to offer us so that we can be his instruments to share that gift with all those who long for peace.
Someone who was an apostle of peace is the one after whom this Chapel is named. Saul of Tarsus, we remember, was once a man who brought terror to the first Christians, supervising St. Stephen’s execution by stoning, ripping Christians out of their homes and bringing them for trial, even asking for a commission to head 137 miles north of Jerusalem to Damascus to do the same to the Christians there. But Christ met him outside the gates of Damascus and the trajectory of his life, and all of human history, was changed. He became thereafter not only the greatest evangelizer in history but also one of the greatest peacemakers of all time, seeking to bring Christ and his peace to others.
He starts eight of his letters (Romans, First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Second Thessalonians and Philemon) with the words that are a fitting summary of all that he was trying to bring to those who would accept the Gospel: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
He was quite clear where our peace comes from. As he told the Romans, “Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 5:1). Christ, he told the Ephesians, “is our peace, he who made both one and broke down the dividing wall of enmity, through his flesh” (Eph 2:14), reconciling, he told the Colossians, “all things for him, making peaceby the blood of his cross (1:20). He summarized the purpose of Christ’s incarnation and the substance of the Kingdom of God he established by declaring that Jesus “came and preached peaceto you who were far off and peace to those who were near” (Eph 2:17).
Christ’s mission of peace, reconciling us to the Father through the forgiveness of sins and reconciling us to others, St. Paul said, must have consequence for each of us. He told the Corinthians, “God has called you to peace” (1 Cor 7:15). He defined peace as a fruit of the Holy Spirit whom Jesus sent to us to remind us of him (Gal 5:22).
He prayed for those in Thessalonika, “May the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and in every way” (2 Thess 3:16). Therefore, he told the Colossians, “Let the peace of Christ control your hearts, the peace into which you were also called in one body” (Col 3:15).
But the gift of peace was likewise supposed to lead to action. He told the Christians in Rome, “Let us then pursue what leads to peace and to building up one another” (Rom 14:19). And he urged the Ephesians to lace up their sandals to have their feet read to bring the “gospel of peace” to others (Eph 6:15).
So today, we have indeed put on our footwear, to bring Jesus in the Eucharist, the Gospel of Peace incarnate, here to campus. We ask him to give and leave us his peace at all times and in every way, so that it may control our hearts and change them, and help us pursue always what leads to peace and building each other up. Christ is indeed our peace and has given us that peace through his Eucharistic sacrifice culminated by the shedding of his blood on Calvary. We thank him for that gift. We ask him to help us to receive it and remain in it. We ask him to help us help others come to experience it, because the same Christ who has called us to peace calls them.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! Amen!

The Gospel passage on which the homily was based was:
A Reading from the Holy Gospel according to John
Jesus said to his apostles, “The Advocate, the holy Spirit that the Father will send in my name — he will teach you everything and remind you of all that [I] told you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid. … I will no longer speak much with you, for the ruler of the world is coming. He has no power over me, but the world must know that I love the Father and that I do just as the Father has commanded me. Get up, let us go.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
The post Christ Our Peace, Homily for the Columbia Campus Ministry Eucharistic Procession, November 12, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
10 min
November 12, 2023The Personal Desire for Jesus the Bridegroom, Thirty-Second Sunday (A), November 12, 2023
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, New York
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
November 12, 2023
Wis 6:12-16, Ps 63, 1 Thess 4:13-18, Mt 25:1-13

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.12.23_MCs_Homily_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
In today’s Gospel, Jesus uses an image that perhaps to us might seem a little strange about the practices involving a wedding, but the details would have been very well understood by his contemporaries and by many of those still living in Palestine. There were two main stages in a marriage. The first would be the exchange of vows. When this took place, the couple was married, but the spouses would continue to live apart for a while, up to a year or more, while the husband earned the money and prepared everything to welcome his new wife into his home and underwrite the wedding reception. It was during this time, for example, that the Archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary; she was already wedded to Joseph but they had not started to live under the same roof. The second stage was when the bridegroom, the husband, would come to the house of the bride to pick her up and take her to his home. He would be accompanied by all the guests from his side as he went to her home. There he would meet her and all the guests from her side, her bridesmaids and others, who would be waiting for him along the way. Both groups would process back together to his home and when they arrived, they would celebrate the nuptials for eight days with all their friends and family — something they would consider far more enjoyable than leaving all of them behind for a honeymoon.
The bridegroom could come at any time to pick up his bride and so people needed to be ready. Before he would come, he would send out a herald who would announce along the path, “Behold the bridegroom is coming,” but the husband himself could come within hours, days, up to a week. He could come in the middle of the night. There was a law that said that if one were out at night, one had to have a lamp, which was not only common sense but prevented any ambushes, etc. People who knew both bride and groom could either wait with the bride or accompany the bridegroom, but most would prefer the former because it was less walking! As soon as the bridegroom took the bride into his house, the doors really would be shut, to prevent latecomers crashing their party. This wedding tradition, which was universal at Jesus’ time, is still found today in certain parts of the Holy Land and Middle East.
Jesus uses this image as the background to communicate to us how we should be living our life in preparation for his return as Bridegroom at the end of our life or at the end of the world, whichever comes first. Jesus contrasts five wise bridesmaids versus five foolish ones, wanting us to imitate the lessons we see in the five wise ones. November is the month in which the whole Church reflects on the four last things — death, judgment, heaven and hell. By this image Jesus tries to help us prepare well for the first two, so that we may experience the third and avoid the fourth. But for this to happen, we need to learn three crucial lessons from the wise virgins.
The first lesson is vigilance for the Bridegroom’s coming. The heralds have already gone out to announce not just that Jesus is coming but is here. He is already married to his bride the Church, he regularly invites her to come with him each day, but he’s also awaiting the time in which he will be able to celebrate with her the wedding banquet that will last not just eight twenty-four hour periods, but be an eternal eighth day (the day of resurrection, the new and eternal “first day of the week”). All of us have been given invitations and are members of the wedding party. Jesus wants us there. But we have to be ready to go with him whenever he arrives. Death, for a Christian, is not meant to be a scary thing. It’s the time when Jesus the Bridegroom comes for us to take us to the home he has prepared where we will celebrate with him forever. We’re called to await him with eager longing, with great expectation. He wants the lamps of our hearts burning for him, full of the oil of love. In today’s second reading, St. Paul says he wants us “to encourage one another with these words,” the words he gave us about the meaning of Christian death. Because Christian death is the return of the Bridegroom and the entrance of one who deeply longs for his return into the eternal nuptial banquet, Christians should “not grieve as those who have no hope” after the death of loved ones. We always have hope, not just for them if they lived in expectation of the Lord’s return, but we have hope ourselves that one day he will come for us. He wants us to live by the words we prayed in the Psalm: “You are my God whom I seek, for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water.” He wants us to long for him like in the first reading we are called to hunger for wisdom. She is “readily perceived by those who love her, and found by those who seek her. She hastens to make herself known in anticipation of their desire; Whoever watches for her at dawn shall not be disappointed, for he shall find her sitting by his gate.” And relevant to the adjective Jesus uses to refer to the five he calls wise, the Book of Wisdom says, “For taking thought of wisdom is the perfection of prudence, and whoever for her sake keeps vigil shall quickly be free from care, because she makes her own rounds, seeking those worthy of her, and graciously appears to them in the ways, and meets them with all solicitude.” For certain, the best way for us to stay alert for the return of the Bridegroom is for us to be ready, with hearts burning with love, for the presence of the Bridegroom now. The more we long for Jesus in the Eucharist, the more we will long to share eternal communion with him. The more we attentively listen to his Word in Sacred Scripture, the more prepared we will be to hear even the faintest footsteps of his advent. The more we seek to recognize him in the persons and events of each day, and love and embrace them as we would love and embrace Christ, the more ready we will be ready to embrace Christ when he appears without disguise.
The second thing Jesus teaches us in the image of the ten bridesmaids is that there are certain things that we cannot borrow. Just as the unwise virgins didn’t have enough oil for their own lamps — and oil stands for expectant love for the Lord — so we can’t borrow anyone else’s faith, hope or love. We need to have our own, otherwise we’ll be caught unready and be left outside. This lesson is particularly important for the people of our age. One of my favorite authors, Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, now Trappist Father Simeon of Spencer Abbey, describes in his classic commentary on St. Matthew’s Gospel, Fire of Mercy, that the “foolish virgins are foolish not only because they neglected to bring their own supply of oil with them to the momentous encounter with the Bridegroom, but also because they possess a naïve and perhaps even subtly manipulative and self-indulgent view of the society to which they belong. They are spiritual freeloaders. They simply assume that they do not have to work for their own oil, that in a pinch, anyone’s oil will burn just as nicely in their own lamps, that they should not strain themselves too much because there are many others … who will gladly do their work for them and that they, therefore, can relax in an attitude of entitlement and allow others to fill in the gap for them.” In other words, they fail in their own responsibility, to prioritize their own personal relationship with the Bridegroom. I can’t count how many times people who aren’t faithful to the practice of the faith say when I am trying to cajole them into greater fidelity, “I don’t come to Mass, father, but my wife comes all the time.” On other occasions, people who are ineligible for a sponsor certificate to become a godparent because they don’t practice the faith, have said, “But my grandmother is one of the most active parishioners in the parish.” Sometimes they will try to name-drop to obtain one, by saying, “But my great uncle is a monsignor.” To all of them, I explain to them that there are certain things we cannot borrow, and one of them is another’s relationship with the Lord. We can’t borrow another’s soul or spiritual life. And for those who are faithful to Christ, there’s a lesson here, too, that there are certain things we cannot lend. While Jesus wants us to give of ourselves to others, to share with others freely the gifts He has so lavishly shared with us, there are certain things that we cannot give even to those we love. There are certain things that they must do for themselves. One is to develop this eager, expectant, vigilant, faithful, loving relationship with the Lord. Those who think that they can borrow other’s relationships with the Lord when the Lord comes are indeed foolish, as Jesus says about the unwise bridesmaids.
There is something in the parable we shouldn’t miss. All ten virgins have the desire to encounter the Bridegroom. They all show up. They all have lamps. They all have some oil in the lamps. They are all tired and fall asleep. But what distinguishes the wise virgins is that they have brought extra flasks. They were prudent precisely in their having brought more. The oil represents, we could say, the unique thing each one of the bridesmaids has to offer the Bridegroom. Each one’s oil is the gift of oneself, an all-inclusive personal act of pure love. The unwise have not committed in the same way, prepared to wait upon him. There is some self-giving, but not to overflowing. There’s a partial commitment, but a partial commitment to love is not enough.
The third lesson is that there is a time that can be too late. Certain things cannot be obtained at the last minute. The unwise virgins were caught off guard. They couldn’t borrow oil, so they had to try to obtain some on their own, but they missed the bridegroom and were locked out. They knocked on the door saying, “Lord, lord, open to us.” But then he replied with the words that I think are the saddest and most frightening in all of Sacred Scripture: “Truly I tell you, I do not know you.” The Bridegroom cannot know them because the would-be brides are offering only a borrowed facsimile of love that is not flowing from their heart. Their hearts are hollow like the empty lamps they carry. God is looking for one thing in us, the inimitable light that he has wanted to kindle in us and bring forth, the unique flame that can flare up only if we have allowed our heart and soul to catch the fire of his love. For the Lord to know us, for us to be on time for the wedding banquet, we have to spend our time here getting to know him intimately, as a friend, as a savior, as God. Many can put off this most important thing in life, which is to make God number one in our lives. We can allow the devil to deceive us by saying, “There’s always time.” We can allow him to insinuate that we can behave like the Good Thief, commit our sins, do our own thing in this life, and that the Lord Jesus will give us the chance at the end to say one prayer and everything we will work out. If we were to think that, though, we would be as foolish as the foolish virgins in the parable. Jesus tells us that there will be a time when there will be no time left. There will be a time when the door will be shut. The lesson of the parable is that now is the time for us to get to know the Lord so that the Lord may never say, “I don’t know you.” Now is the time for us to prepare for his return. All of us have known people who have died unexpectedly, even young people. Even the healthiest person is this chapel could die today. The Lord in today’s Gospel tells us that the wise among us will always be prepared. The moral he gives at the end of today’s parable is crystal clear: “Keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” To be awake means never to be asleep to God, but always to be alert, full of love, waiting for his return. Do I live as if today could be my last?
Three lessons: an eager, expectant waiting for the Lord’s coming in all his ways; a recognition that we can’t borrow what we’re going to need to meet the Lord when we comes; and a loving admonition from the Lord not to procrastinate on our preparations until it’s too late. This Mass is meant to help us with each of the three. If we’re truly ready to meet the Lord here, with our souls clean from serious sins, with our hearts hungering for Him, with the Lord himself, the Light of the World, burning inside of us fueled by the oil of love, we’ll never be caught off guard, whether he comes today, tomorrow, or several decades from now. Our reaction to today’s word of the Lord, and to the tremendous gift that is the Mass which is offered here every day, will therefore determine whether in the final analysis we’re stupid or we’re wise. Is our soul thirsting for the living God more than a desert pants for water? Are we keeping perpetual vigil seeking Wisdom incarnate? Have we come asking the Lord to fill not just our lamps but our flasks so that we can make a total self offering? The Lord who knows us desires to give us all these gifts. “The Bridegroom is here. Let us go out to meet Christ the Lord!”

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 WIS 6:12-16
Resplendent and unfading is wisdom,
and she is readily perceived by those who love her,
and found by those who seek her.
She hastens to make herself known in anticipation of their desire;
Whoever watches for her at dawn shall not be disappointed,
for he shall find her sitting by his gate.
For taking thought of wisdom is the perfection of prudence,
and whoever for her sake keeps vigil
shall quickly be free from care;
because she makes her own rounds, seeking those worthy of her,
and graciously appears to them in the ways,
and meets them with all solicitude.
Responsorial Psalm PS 63:2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8
R. (2b) My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God.
O God, you are my God whom I seek;
for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts
like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water.
R. My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God.
Thus have I gazed toward you in the sanctuary
to see your power and your glory,
For your kindness is a greater good than life;
my lips shall glorify you.
R. My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God.
Thus will I bless you while I live;
lifting up my hands, I will call upon your name.
As with the riches of a banquet shall my soul be satisfied,
and with exultant lips my mouth shall praise you.
R. My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God.
I will remember you upon my couch,
and through the night-watches I will meditate on you:
You are my help,
and in the shadow of your wings I shout for joy.
R. My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God.
Reading 2 1 THES 4:13-18
We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters,
about those who have fallen asleep,
so that you may not grieve like the rest, who have no hope.
For if we believe that Jesus died and rose,
so too will God, through Jesus,
bring with him those who have fallen asleep.
Indeed, we tell you this, on the word of the Lord,
that we who are alive,
who are left until the coming of the Lord,
will surely not precede those who have fallen asleep.
For the Lord himself, with a word of command,
with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God,
will come down from heaven,
and the dead in Christ will rise first.
Then we who are alive, who are left,
will be caught up together with them in the clouds
to meet the Lord in the air.
Thus we shall always be with the Lord.
Therefore, console one another with these words.
Alleluia MT 24:42A, 44
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Stay awake and be ready!
For you do not know on what day your Lord will come.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel MT 25:1-13
Jesus told his disciples this parable:
“The kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins
who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.
Five of them were foolish and five were wise.
The foolish ones, when taking their lamps,
brought no oil with them,
but the wise brought flasks of oil with their lamps.
Since the bridegroom was long delayed,
they all became drowsy and fell asleep.
At midnight, there was a cry,
‘Behold, the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’
Then all those virgins got up and trimmed their lamps.
The foolish ones said to the wise,
‘Give us some of your oil,
for our lamps are going out.’
But the wise ones replied,
‘No, for there may not be enough for us and you.
Go instead to the merchants and buy some for yourselves.’
While they went off to buy it,
the bridegroom came
and those who were ready went into the wedding feast with him.
Then the door was locked.
Afterwards the other virgins came and said,
‘Lord, Lord, open the door for us!’
But he said in reply,
‘Amen, I say to you, I do not know you.’
Therefore, stay awake,
for you know neither the day nor the hour.”

The post The Personal Desire for Jesus the Bridegroom, Thirty-Second Sunday (A), November 12, 2023 appeared first on 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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