Fr. Roger J. Landry

Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx

Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

August 27, 2023

Is 22:19-23, Ps 138, Rom 11:33-36, Mt 16:13-20

 

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The following text guided the homily: 

* Last Sunday St. Paul in the second reading revealed to us that God’s plans for our salvation were linked to the Jews and in some sense to their disobedience, and that their salvation is linked us and to our obedience in manifesting God’s mercy. That whole complicated mystery led St. Paul to exclaim what we have at the beginning of today’s second reading: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” God’s ways are not our ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts, God tells us through the prophet Isaiah. We are called to admire and follow God’s ways even though we cannot fathom them. “As high as the heavens are above the earth,” God tells us, “so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts” (Is 55:8-9).

* God has shown us repeatedly how he surpasses all our expectations. There were great longings for coming of the Messiah, but God shocked us by sending us as the Messiah his own incarnate Son. There were hopes for redemption, but no one could have ever imagined that God would love us so much as to allow his Son to be crucified so that we might live redeemed. In salvation history, God so often chose not the most sensible path according to our human standards, but one that far surpassed human logic. He chose the least likely people to be his prophets and leaders: from Gideon who was the least of his family, which was the least of his tribe, which was the least of his people; to Amos, a dresser of Sycamore Trees; to Isaiah, whose lips were too unclean to announce God’s words; to David the King, the least in his family; to so many of the apostles, who would have never popped up on a head-hunters’ list of likely people to change the world; to St. Paul himself, who went from the worst persecutor of Christians to become the greatest evangelist. St. Paul would write in his first letter to the Corinthians that this truth about the unsearchable ways of God’s vocational summons pertains to almost every single Christian: “For the foolishness of God,” he wrote, “is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. Consider your own calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God (1 Cor 1:25-29). All of this — as well as the circumstances that led to our own vocations — leads us to exclaim with St. Paul, “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!”

* Today in the Gospel, we see God’s wisdom, his inscrutable ways, and his unsearchable judgments from three different angles.

* The first is in Peter’s confession of Jesus’ real identity. Jesus began by taking a poll of who the crowds thought that he was. They replied by saying the people were numbering Jesus among the greatest figures, past and present, in Jewish history. Some, like the murderous Herod Antipas who had decapitated the Lord’s precursor, were saying Jesus was John the Baptist risen from the dead. Others were claiming he was Elijah, the greatest of all the prophets,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Twenty-First Sunday of Ordinary Time, A, Vigil

August 26, 2023

 

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The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday. In it, he’s going to ask us the same two momentous questions he asked the apostles 2,000 years ago in Caesarea Philippi: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” and “Who do you say that I am.” These get to Jesus’ real identity: Who is Jesus? And who is he in my life?

* In response to the first question, the apostles said that their informal poll showed that the people were numbering Jesus among the greatest figures, past and present, in Jewish history. Some, like the murderous Herod Antipas who had decapitated the Lord’s precursor, were saying Jesus was John the Baptist risen from the dead. Others were claiming he was Elijah, the greatest of all the prophets, the one whose return they believed would set the stage for the Messianic age. Others said he was Jeremiah, the one whom they believe had hidden the ark and the altar of sacrifice before the destruction of the Temple and the one they anticipated would return to reinstitute true worship. At the time Jesus asked the question, many of the Jews were accustomed to say that there had not been prophets for 400 years, and therefore, whoever Jesus was, the crowds believed that he was likely the greatest figure in four centuries. But as exalted as those estimations of Jesus’ reputation were, they weren’t even close. We can hear similar things today about Jesus. Many, including Christians, say that Jesus was a very good man, compassionate, kind, encouraged people to love, imparted a peaceful philosophy of life, or even was the holiest guy who ever lived. In short, they admire Jesus, but Jesus didn’t take on our human nature and die on Calvary for people’s approval or admiration. As CS Lewis once famously wrote, Jesus was either who he said he was — the Son of God made man — or a lunatic who mistakenly thought he was, or a fraud and one of the worst liars of all time. Merely a good man he wasn’t and simply couldn’t be.

* That’s why Jesus’ second question is so important. He asked his closest followers, “Who do you say that I am?” It’s clear that each of the apostles would have been grappling with the question of Jesus’ identity as they heard him preach, watched him heal the sick, cleanse lepers, exorcise demons, multiply food, walk on water and calm storms, but eleven of the 12 apostles stayed silent. They probably feared going on record, even if every ounce of their being recognized that Jesus was someone beyond what the mob was murmuring. Nathaniel, in fact, the first time he met Jesus cried out, “Rabbi, you are the son of God. You are the king of Israel” (Jn 1:49), pointing both to Jesus’ reality as son of David and son of the eternal Father. But for whatever reason, he was too reticent to say in front of the others what he had said to Jesus directly. Peter, however, took that risk. He stood up and boldly replied that Jesus was far more than a great prophet, far more than the greatest figure in centuries, far more even than Moses. He was the Messiah in Hebrew, the Christ in Greek, the anointed one in English, the long-awaited Savior whom the Jews had been expecting for a millennium. He was also, Peter said significantly, the Son of the Living God, the God who is alive and gives and holds us in li...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Feast of St. Bartholomew, Apostle and Martyr

August 24, 2023

Rev 21:9-14, Ps 145, Jn 1:45-51

 

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The following text guided the homily: 

* Today the Church celebrates the feast of St. Bartholomew, a holy disciple of the Lord Jesus who became a great apostle, bringing the Gospel, as the great early Church historian Eusebius tells us, first to India (which in ancient usage included Arabia, Ethiopia, Libya, Parthia, Persia and India proper) and then Armenia, where he converted many people before being flayed alive by the barbarians in Albanopolis, on the west coast of the Caspian Sea. In the Gospel, we have the Gospel of Jesus’ encounter with Nathanael because from the earliest days of the Church Nathanael (a first name which means “God has given”) and Bartholomew (an Aramaic patronym that means “Son of Tolmay”) have been identified as the same person. The synoptics all mention Bartholomew, but never Nathanael; St. John uses Nathanael but never Bartholomew. And so it is almost certain the two names included in the different lists of apostles almost certainly refer to the same person.

* His feast allows us to focus on a couple of important aspects of living the faith. The first thing we can focus on is the great accolade Jesus gives him in the Gospel. Jesus does not give too many compliments in the Gospel. He praises his mother as someone who heard the word of God and observed it. He lauds a Centurion and a Syro-Phoenician woman for their faith. He commends Simon Peter for having cooperated with God the Father’s promptings to confess him to be the Messiah and Son of God. But here he compliments St. Bartholomew for being a “true Israelite” in whom there was “no duplicity” or “guile.” There was no deception in him. Jesus could see right away that he was forthright, honest, open, plainspoken, straightforward, upfront, earnest, innocent, and unpretentious. The Suffering Servant, who was prophesied by Isaiah as a man in whom “no deceit was in his mouth” (Is 53:9), recognized Bartholomew as a man praised by the Psalms: “Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no inquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit” (32:2). This candor, this lack of deception, is an attribute that should be able to be said about each of us as Christians, since Christians ought to recognize that lies flow from the one Jesus calls “father of lies,” who is a murderer and a liar from the beginning. One of the greatest corruptions that can happen in a person, in the Church or in society is when people stop telling the truth and cease to have candid consciences. People start to gossip, to connive, to evade, as if Jesus told us something other than “let your yes mean yes and your no mean no, everything else is from the devil.” The great dissidents of 20th century communism, like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Vaclav Havel, said that the power of the powerless was to live not by lies, because the communists sought to have everyone not say, think, or live the truth. The feast of St. Bartholomew every year is an opportunity for us to make a greater commitment to truth telling.

* The second great lesson from today’s feast is about the fig tree. The initial encounter of Jesus with St. Bartholomew reaches another level when Jesus said he saw him under the fig tree. Jesus’ words to Nathanael have been much commented upon in the reflections of the fathers of the Church. I think Pope Benedict’s explanation of it in his 2006 catechesis on St. Bartholomew shows how important it is for us in our prayer and one day in our preaching.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Convent of St. Birgit Vikingsborg Retreat House, Darien, CT

Retreat Day for the Teachers and Staff of Regina Pacis Academy

August 23, 2023

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.23.23_Eucharistic_Revival_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Convent of St. Birgit Vikingsborg Retreat House, Darien, CT

Retreat Day for the Teachers and Staff of Regina Pacis Academy

August 23, 2023

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.23.23_Eucharistic_Integration_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Convent of St. Birgit Vikingsborg Retreat House, Darien, CT

Retreat Day for the Teachers and Staff of Regina Pacis Academy

Wednesday of the 20th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Rose of Lima

August 23, 2023

Judges 9:6-15, Ps 21, Mt 20:1-16

 

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today during this Day of Recollection in preparation for the upcoming school year, we enter more deeply into the school of the Master, who today teaches us a couple of important lessons about his kingdom.

* The first is that we need to desire him to rule. In the first reading from the Book of Judges, we see how when we don’t want the Lord to rule over us, we will be vulnerable to being ruled by rogues and basically even by the devil in disguise. Throughout the desert, God was teaching the Israelites to obey him and let him lead them, but they often resisted, longing to return to Egypt in slavery under Pharaoh rather than trust in the Lord. After they crossed into the Promised Land, they often totally forgot the Lord or rebelled against him. The Lord routinely raised up judges to deliver them, to show them how to obey him anew, to call them to conversion, but as soon as the judges died they rebelled again. After Gideon (as we would have seen yesterday if we didn’t celebrate the Coronation) defeated 135,000 Midianites with 300 soldiers, they asked him to rule over them, but he reminded them that they already had a ruler, God himself. But as soon as he died, his son by a concubine, Abimelech, desirous of being king and knowing that the people wanted someone to rule over them, decided to seize the opportunity and kill all seventy of his half-brothers and assume the throne. He killed 69, with only his youngest half-brother Jotham escaping. And the carnage was just beginning. Later he would burn down the tower with various elders meeting in it, wiping them out in the process. Those who want to rule like a god rather than a servant of God often cannot tolerate any other sources of authority, which is what we’ve seen with tyrants across the centuries and how they’ve persecuted the Church, religious believers in general and all those who follow a conscience rather than their whims. But the people basically accepted Abimelech’s homicidal rule. Eventually Jothan, his half-brother, would come out from hiding, go to the top of Mount Gerizim, and give the parable we hear in today’s first reading. The trees wanted a ruler, but the olive tree, the fig tree, and the vine refused, and so they got the buckthorn, representing Abimelech, who replied, “‘If you wish to anoint me king over you in good faith, come and take refuge in my shadow. Otherwise, let fire come from the buckthorn and devour the cedars of Lebanon.’” It was his shadow, not God’s, and anyone not beholden to him was fit to be burned down and devoured. The same history would take place later with the Jews in the desire for a king. They wanted to be like the other nations rather than singularly the Lord’s special people. Eventually they got Saul who himself would become a paranoid megalomaniac. They were susceptible to getting the leaders they deserved precisely because they were intent not to have the Lord rule them. They wanted to decide. There are still many lessons for us about our own political leaders, especially today when a presidential debate will take place, and what we get when we begin to think not about how individuals can help create the context for everyone to follow God’s lead, but rather about how to take the place of God.

* The second lesson about the kingdom is given in the Gospe...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, New York

Coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

August 22, 2023

Is 9:1-6, Ps 113, Lk 1:26-38

 

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The following text guided the homily: 

Today we celebrate the Memorial of the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was placed in the 1970 reform of the liturgical calendar at the end of the Octave from her Assumption, because it’s on the Coronation that we celebrate the enduring purpose of the Assumption. Mary was raised body and soul into heaven not so much as an honor but with a mission, a mission flowing from the vocation. As the Second Vatican Council taught, at the culmination of her earthly life, Mary “was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory… and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son” (LG 59). She was assumed and crowned in order to intensify further her conformity to her Son in glory. Mary is, as we remember, first and foremost a disciple of her Son. She sought to conform her existence to him in everything. God’s having crowned her Queen of heaven and earth — Queen of Angels, Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, Martyrs, Confessors, Virgins, all Saints, Families, and Peace, as we proclaim in the Litany of Loreto — is so that she may first share in his glory and in his heavenly reign and work.

There are two grounds for Mary’s queenship. The first is her maternity. Isaiah in today’s first reading prophesied that the child to be born to us would have from David’s throne a vast dominion, and as a result of his reign, the people in darkness would see a wonderful light. We see that fulfillment in the Gospel, when that “child to be born for us” would be “called holy, the Son of God” and “Son of the Most High.” The Archangel says he would simultaneously receive “the throne of David his father and rule over the house of Jacob forever and of whose kingdom there would be no end.” Our Lady would give to the light in Bethlehem the light of the world so that all those in the darkness of despair and even death would see the greatest light of all. We know that in most realms the mother of the King is traditionally called Queen and in many of them has some real authority. Mary would have that type of service. Her lap would become the king’s throne. And since his reign is eternal, so would be her queenship. She would exercise her maternal queenship, for example, in Cana of Galilee, interceding with confidence. And at the end of her life on earth, Jesus took her up to heaven so that she could continue that work. At St. Mary Major Basilica in Rome, in the beautiful 13th century apse mosaic, Jesus is depicted crowning Mary while the two of them were seated on Jesus’ throne. With his right hand, Jesus is placing a crown on Mary’s head; with his left, he has an open book with the words that describe what he was in fact doing: “Veni, electa, ponam te super thronum meum,” “Come, chosen one, I will place you on my throne.” Jesus once sat on Mary’s lap as the throne on which he reigned as an infant king of heaven and earth. At the end of her life, Jesus took her and sat her on his throne.

This humble Nazarene teenager, growing up in humble circumstances in a place where Nathaniel would later wonder whether any good could come, is now the queen of the universe. As we prayed in Psalm 113, the Lord indeed raises up the lowly to seat them with princes. As Mary prayed in her Magnificat, that’s because the Lord casts down the mighty, exalts the humble, and never ceases to do great things for her for which all generati...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Triduum for the Missionaries of Charity

Gift of Love Convent

Greenwich Village, New York City

August 21, 2023

 

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Fr. Roger J. Landry

Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

August 20, 2023

Is 56:1.6-7, Ps 67, Rom 11:13-15.29-32, Mt 15:21-28

 

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The following text guided the homily: 

* In today’s Gospel Jesus gives a pagan woman the greatest compliment he could give to anyone, the type of tribute he wanted to give to every one of his fellow Jews, the accolade he wants to give every Christian, the salutation he wants to give to people from all nations (the subject of the first reading and psalm), and the commendation he wants to say about each of us now and when we meet him face-to-face: “Great is your faith!”

* Jesus’ praise was not cheap. It was a result of the way the woman responded to the terrible problem of having a possessed daughter and all the issues that likely led to her possession and followed it. It was the result of a dialogue with Jesus that would have tested her faith to the limit. It was the end of a process of growth in faith that culminated with Jesus’ amazed acclaim.

* In today’s Gospel we are able to enter the scene and learn from this Syro-Phoenician woman how we, too, can grow in faith so that our faith may genuinely become great.

* The question we ought to ask at the outset, however, is whether our faith is great or small or just average right now. Are we living by faith full-time or only part-time? Is our faith the most important aspect of our self-identity? Do we want it to be? If Jesus were to come, would he compliment us like he praised the Canaanite woman or would he say of us what he often said to some of his closest followers, including the apostles last week in the crash course on faith he gave them during a storm on the Sea of Galilee: “O you of little faith!”? Jesus once wondered aloud whether we he returned whether he would find faith on earth at all (Lk 18:8). He said those words at the end of a parable about an importune woman who bothered an unjust judge so much that he finally did right by her, suggesting that if he finds faith, he’ll find us persevering like that bothersome widow or today’s Canaanite mother. Do we have that type of resolve that flows from faith and helps it to grow? And if we have that resolve, how, practically, can we grow in faith?

* We see the various steps involved in that growth in today’s dramatic Gospel scene, which is at the surface one of the most confusing and even disturbing in all of Sacred Scripture, when Jesus subjects a woman to a test in faith. But he did so because she was capable of it, and in helping her to grow in faith, Jesus would help his disciples and all of us. There are four essential steps to the boot camp of faith in which Jesus trained her, each one of which was a bigger challenge, and all of which she passed.

* The first test happened when she went up to Jesus and called out, “Have pity on me Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon.” She began with an act of faith in his power and goodness. The fact that she used the language she did showed already how much she was prepared to do and to risk. Canaanites, especially those in Tyre, had nothing to do with Jews. They were considered enemies all the way back to the time of the Phoenicians who battled against David. For her to call Jesus “Son of David!” was almost an act of treason for the people of her region and for her to call him “Lord” was an act of apostasy against the region’s system of pagan worship. But as Jesus was coming into this pagan territory to get away from the intrigue of those seeking to entrap him, she was going out to meet him in what seems to be a divinely arranged encounter.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Triduum for the Missionaries of Charity

Gift of Love Convent

Greenwich Village, New York City

August 20, 2023

 

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