Fr. Roger J. Landry

Diocese of Toledo Diocesan Pastoral Conference

“Participants and Catalysts of the Eucharistic Revival”

September 14, 2023

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.14.23_Source_and_Summit_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Diocese of Toledo Diocesan Pastoral Conference

“Participants and Catalysts of the Eucharistic Revival”

September 14, 2023

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.14.23_Eucharistic_Charity_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Wednesday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. John Chrysostom

September 13, 2023

Col 3:1-11, Ps 145, Lk 6:20-26

 

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

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The following points were attempted in today’s homily:

* Throughout this week, as mentioned on Monday, we have a chance to prepare for tomorrow’s feast of the Triumph of the Cross and ponder the cruciform life  Christians are called to live, yoked to the crucified Christ. The Cross is the new tree of life, the way of the Cross is the path that leads to happiness, holiness and heaven. God has given it to us as a means by which to share in Christ’s redemption, but he requires that we freely embrace and venerate it. It’s a choice to overcome worldly standards and embrace Christ’s. It’s a summons to metanoia, conversion, literally a revolution in our way of looking at things. Today’s readings and memorial of St. John Chrysostom teach us how this is done.

* St. Paul in his Letter to the Colossians is helping those in Colossae to set their hearts and minds on the things of God rather than the values the pagans seek or the Gnostics teach. He’s charting out for them the path to make up what is lacking in their flesh of Christ’s sufferings, to experience the mystery of Christ in them, to walk in him, to be firmly rooted, built upon, and firm in faith in Christ, abounding in gratitude. Today he advances the argument. He says, with words we hear every Easter Sunday morning, “If you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.” We have been raised with Christ through baptism and that reality must be consequential in what we think about, what we choose, what we do. Our heart should be where our treasure is, and if our treasure is in God, then our heart should be seeking to hallow his name, to enter and advance his kingdom, to do his will. St. Paul reminds the first Christians in Colossae of what happened in baptism as they took off their clothes, were baptized, and then vested with a white garment symbolic of Christ’s virtues: “You have taken off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed, for knowledge, in the image of its creator.” They have put on the mind of Christ and are called to seek him. This is the path to life, to living “hidden with Christ,” to having Christ be “all in all,” even if the world doesn’t recognize. But that path involves the Cross. It involves death to the old Adam in us, to the way they “once conducted” themselves. That’s why he says that in saying yes to God we’re saying no to other gods and must make that no firm. “Put to death, then,” he says, “the parts of you that are earthly: immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and the greed that is idolatry. You must put them all away: anger, fury, malice, slander, and obscene language, … lying.” This is the choice a Christian makes. To die with Christ so as to live with him risen from the dead.

* To seek the things that are above, to ponder them and live them, is to treasure what Christ treasures, to yearn for his wisdom and to live by it. In today’s Gospel, Jesus reveals to us what is truly valuable — and it’s contradictory to worldly standards. He gives us in the Sermon on the Plain a different version of the Beatitudes, which are a snap shot of Jesus’ face and values. Jesus tells us we’re blessed when, like him, we’re spiritually poor and find in God our true wealth; when we hunger, recognizing that material hunger helps to make us more dependent on and grateful for God’s provi...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Tuesday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

The Holy Name of Mary

September 12, 2023

Col 2:6-15, Ps 145, Lk 6:12-19

 

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

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The following points were attempted in the homily:

* Today the Church celebrate the feast of the Holy Name of Mary, a name we invoke every day when we cry out, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners!” The feast originated in Spain in 1513, but it was extended to the whole Church in 1683 by Pope Innocent XI to mark the great victory of King Jan Sobieski of Poland in the Battle of Vienna on September 11 of that year, a victory that most historians believed kept Europe Christian against the invading Muslim Turks. When we turn to Mary and invoke her holy name in the battles we’re fighting, we recall the fact that God wants us to be able to have an I-Thou relationship with her, that she seeks to help us the same way she helped the Church in Vienna, in Lepanto, in Cana and so many other places.

* Just like God called Mary by name through the Archangel Gabriel, so he calls us by name. Our name, too, is meant to become holy, to be preceded by the word  and reality “saint.” Today we ponder our calling by name in the Gospel. We notice in the calling of the apostles that our vocation, like theirs, is a direct result of the prayer of the Lord Jesus. We see him at the beginning of the Gospel go up a mountain and spend all night in prayer to his Father. Jesus seems to have been praying in discernment about whom he should choose as his apostles and praying in intercession for those whom he was about to choose. We should never forget that Jesus likewise prays for us. He’s ascended into heaven in order to intercede for us “night and day.” For that reason, we should never really be afraid of living up to the vocation that God has given us, because just as much as Jesus prayed for the apostles, and prayed for Peter in particular that his faith may not fail but that after his conversion he would strengthen his brothers (Lk 22), he prayed to the Father for all those who would hear the Gospel through the work of the Apostles (Jn 17), and prays for us still.

* From among his disciples, he selected twelve apostles. It says he “called [them] to himself” and “named [them] Apostles,” another way of saying what St. Mark describes: “he called them to be with him and so that they might be sent out” (Mk 3:14). We come here face-to-face with the mystery of divine election. God calls us all to him, but among all of us he chooses some for more intensely intimate cooperation with him. Out of all people he created, he chose the Jews; out of all the Jews, some became his disciples; out of all those disciples, 12 became apostles; out of all 12, he chose three (Peter, James and John) to be with him in many of the most pivotal moments of his public life (healing the daughter of Jairus, the Transfiguration, and the Agony in the Garden); and out of the three, he chose one, Peter, on whom to build his Church. Likewise we can say that Jesus calls all 8 billion alive today to come to the knowledge of the truth, but only 2.5 out of 8 is Christian and only half of them are Catholic. These facts don’t make us better than anyone else, but we are certainly fortunate! To whom more is given, Jesus said elsewhere, more is to be expected. And just as the apostles responded to Jesus’ invitation and left other things to be with him and made themselves available to be sent out on mission, so he summons us.

* We also see in the Gospel is the way Jesus trained the twelve to carry on his mission: he taught the crowds,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Monday of the 23rd Week of Ordinary Time, Year I

22nd Anniversary of 9/11

September 11, 2023

Col 1:24-2:3, Ps 62, Lk 6:6-11

 

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

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The following points were attempted in this homily:

* We begin today a very powerful week in the liturgy. On Thursday we will celebrate the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, the day after Our Lady of Sorrows, on Wednesday, the memorial of St. John Chrysostom, who suffered much for preaching the truth out of season, and on Saturday we will commemorate the martyrs Saints Cyprian and Cornelius and remember the dry martyr Cardinal François Xavier Nguyen van Thuan. It’s a week during which we will ponder our “spes unica,” our only hope, which is Christ on the Cross and our summons to pick up our Cross every day and unite ourselves to him. It’s a week to help us to recall that the Cross is not so much a sign of pain but of the love that bears pain, a curse but a caress, a privilege not a punishment.

* In the Gospel we see Jesus suffering for doing good, for saving, for giving witness to the true meaning of the Sabbath. This would be a foretaste of Good Friday when the Sanhedrin, Pharisees, Scribes, Saduccees and Herodians all conspired to execute Jesus. The Scribes and Pharisees had totally misunderstood the meaning of the Sabbath, which was to restore us, to liberate us from self-imposed slavery. They thought that the prohibition against servile work meant that Jews couldn’t even morally do acts of love on the Sabbath. Jesus asked the rather absurd question as to whether God would be pleased or displeased if people did good on the Sabbath rather than evil, to save life rather than to destroy it. They didn’t answer, for obvious reasons. The truth is that the Pharisees, on the Sabbath, were precisely there trying to do evil, to entrap Jesus, to plot to destroy his life, but they thought that that was somehow acceptable while Jesus’ healing the withered hand of a man was somehow what God wanted to prevent. Nevertheless, Jesus was willing to embrace the Cross, the sufferings, in order to restore this man and to restore us all to health.

* Another who was willing to embrace the Cross was St. Paul, who would elsewhere eventually learn to boast in the Cross of the Lord through which the world was crucified to him and him to the world, the Cross he said was God’s “power and wisdom,” the Cross by which he was crucified by Christ so that the life he now lived in the flesh he lived by faith in the Son of God who loved him and gave his life for him. He embraced the Cross in his manifold sufferings — whippings, stonings, shipwrecks, persecution, anxiety for the Churches, imprisonment and eventually beheading. But despite all of this, he said, in words on which Christians should never cease to ponder, “I rejoice in my sufferings.” His sufferings filled him with joy. He rejoiced, he said, in them because he was making up what was lacking in his own flesh of the sufferings of Christ. This is a much misinterpreted passage because many translations aren’t accurate. Christ’s sufferings aren’t lacking, but our participation in them is. Our suffering, however, helps us to enter into Christ’s sufferings, and this is part of our own restoration. St. Paul was also rejoicing in his sufferings “for [the Colossians’] sake.” He knew that our sufferings, united to Christ’s, are co-redemptive, and so that, rather than any masochistic delight in pain, was the reason he was able to rejoice. This mystery of co-redeeming love, St. Paul said, is the great mystery hidden for centuries, “Christ in you,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Mass of the Holy Spirit for the Inauguration of the Academic Year

September 10, 2023

Ezek 33:7-9, Ps 95, Rom 13:8-10, Mt 18:15-20

 

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

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

* At the beginning of an academic year, it’s routine to celebrate a Mass of the Holy Spirit in which we ask God the Father together with, and in the name of Jesus, God the Son, to send us God the Holy Spirit, to guide us throughout the entire year. How much we need the Holy Spirit’s gifts of wisdom, knowledge, understanding and prudence in our academic work, so that we do not merely become smarter but enlightened by the light of God. How much we need the gift of courage in so many aspects of campus life. In an age in which so many marginalize God and there are so many offenses against those made in his image and likeness in speech, social media and behavior, how much we need the gifts of reverence and fear of the Lord. Since we are not normally able to celebrate Pentecost together because it generally falls after the end of the academic year, we start the academic year by asking the Holy Spirit to come down upon us like he did upon Mary and the first Christians in the Upper Room. We ask him to help teach us how to pray, since we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Holy Spirit intercedes for us. We ask him to help us to understand Sacred Scripture better, since he inspired each of its Sacred Authors and also helps us to interpret it aright through the Church. We ask him to help us to recognize the particular gifts, charisms and manifestations of the Spirit he’s given each of us are for the common good and move us to use them as he intends. We ask him to help us to learn how to live according to the Spirit, which is a summary of the entire Christian moral life, rather than according to the flesh. And we ask him to give us a tongue of fire so that, like the first Christians, we may proclaim the Gospel on campus with ardent love for God and others. As we begin this new year, we ask for all of these gifts as well as for the help we need to live by them.

* In Trinitarian theology, the Holy Spirit is normally understood as the personal love between the Father and the Son. The Father and the Son have sent him to us so that he might bring us in to the internal life of our Trinitarian God. He seeks to fill us with the fire of his love so that we might love God in return and begin to love others as God has loved us. That’s what the essence of today’s readings is all about. The love that the Holy Spirit seeks to ignite.

* Paul tells us in today’s second reading: “Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” Basing himself on Jesus’ words that the law and the prophets all flow from the two-fold commandment to love God with all of our mind, heart, soul and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mt 22:40), St. Paul describes how the second tablet of the Decalogue — honoring our father and mother, sacrificing for rather than killing others, loving rather than using others for sexual pleasure, giving rather than stealing, telling the truth rather than lying, and rejoicing at others’ blessings rather than coveting what they have — can all be summed up in the phrase, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love is our duty. We owe it others. We owe it precisely God commanded us to love one another as Jesus himself has loved us. We owe it because Jesus told us that whatever we do to the least of our br...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY

Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

September 10, 2023

Ezek 33:7-9, Ps 95, Rom 13:8-10, Mt 18:15-20

 

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

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The following text guided the homily: 

* Today St. Paul tells the Christians in Rome and all of us words that, on the 77th anniversary of Inspiration Day, underline the importance of the mission of the Missionaries of Charity: “Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” Basing himself on Jesus’ words that the law and the prophets all flow from the two-fold commandment to love God with all of our mind, heart, soul and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mt 22:40), St. Paul describes how the second tablet of the Decalogue can all be summed up in the phrase, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love is our duty. We owe it others. We owe it precisely God commanded us to love one another as Jesus himself has loved us. We owe it because Jesus told us that whatever we do to the least of our brothers and sisters, we do to him. And so today is a day in which we focus on Jesus’ infinite loving thirst for souls and how he wants us to satiate that thirst by thirsting as he thirsts, by fulfilling the law of love for those who in the world are most forgotten and abandoned. We ponder with gratitude our common call within our baptismal call, to fulfill all of God’s commandments through the perfection of charity.

* We see that path to love in today’s Gospel in the call to communion. Love unites and hence Jesus wants our communion to be the flourishing of divine and human love. “Where two or three are gathered together in my name,” he says, “there am I in the midst of them.” If we are living in love, we will be living in communion. Jesus would say during the Last Supper, “By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (Jn 13:35) and would pray that we would be one as the Persons of the Blessed Trinity are one, so that the world would know that God the Father sent the Son and loves us just as much as he loves the Son. And so Jesus wants us to gather in his name, to pray together his name, even making the extraordinary promise that if two of us gather in his name — meaning together with his Person — to pray for something, it will be granted by God the Father. He also wants us to live together in his name, to eat together in his name, to recreate together in his name, and to do everything, whether in word or deed, in loving communion with Jesus and each other.

* In the first part of today’s Gospel, however, Jesus makes clear that he’s calling us to something far more challenging that getting together at a campfire and singing kumbaya. He gives us one of the most challenging aspects of fraternal love, one many are tempted not to fulfill: namely, his teaching on fraternal correction. Jesus directs us: “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault.” He instructs us to do so first one-on-one, out of respect for the person. But if that doesn’t work, he tells us not to give up, but out of love to return with a couple of others who have observed the same fault, in the hope that the collective concern might help the person get over his or her denial or stubbornness to change. If that doesn’t work, Jesus tells us to persevere and go to our superiors, to the leaders of the Church, to pray for the person and to intervene with greater authority. And if that, too, is unsuccessful, Jesus tells us to treat the person as we would a tax collector or sinner, which doesn’t mean to write the person off — after all,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Church of the Holy Trinity, Poughkeepsie, New York

Nuptial Mass for Paul Von Uffel and Aimee Giguere

September 9, 2023

Ruth 1:16-17, Ps 23, 1 Cor 12:31-13:8, Mt 5:1-12

 

To listen to an audio recording of the homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.9.23_Nuptial_Mass_Paul_Von_Uffel_and_Aimee_Giguere_1.mp3

 

 

The following text guided the homily: 

It was just over ten years ago, at freshman orientation for Pace University, that Paul and Aimee met for the first time. The motto of the University, founded in 1906, is “Opportunitas,” and it prides itself on being at the forefront of creating academic, professional and socioeconomic opportunities for its students. The Latin word opportunitas comes from roots ob portus, a nautical expression which means “toward the port,” describing favorable winds to bring a boat to harbor. Well, the wind of the Holy Spirit was at work that last week of August 2013 and guided Aimee and Paul to meet for the first time at an orientation activity. Paul was a few minutes late to the meeting and headed to his table. He saw a seat free close to Aimee and, because he was immediately attracted to her, knew where he had to sit down. He says he tried to hit on her “a little,” but Aimee didn’t pick up on the clues. At the beginning of their sophomore year, however, with the help of a friend, they started dating, and the wind that blows where it wills, as Jesus describes it, has happily kept them together since as today they put up their sails and set out together for the seas of married life.

St. Paul, doubtless because he spent so much time on the seas sailing from port to port to preach the Gospel, used the word opportunitas often in his letters. He told the Colossians to “conduct [them]selves wisely,” “making the most of the opportunity” (Col 4:5). He made a similar point to the Ephesians, saying “Watch carefully how you live, not as foolish persons but as wise,” once again, “making the most of the opportunity” (Eph 5:14-16). He told the Galatians, “Therefore, as we have the opportunity, let us do good to all people” (Gal 6:10). And he crowned his advice by saying, “Pray at every opportunity in the Spirit” (Eph 6:18). His point was that we are to take advantage of the favorable winds God gives us to pray, to live morally, to do good to others. He urges us not just to do something, but to “make the most” of the time and graces God provides. Paul, you did so, seizing the moment on June 12, 2021, when, mischievously conspiring with your parents, you proposed to Aimee at the Long Island Arboretum. Today, we’re so happy that you have come here before God so that you might make the most out of the opportunity he has given you both, thanking him for the gift of each other and asking him to join you as husband and wife for the rest of your days in a sacred covenant of life and love.

The readings you’ve chosen for your Nuptial Mass are full of advice as to how to maximize the gift of love you have received. In the Gospel, Jesus describes for you the path to happiness, and it’s very countercultural advice. In a world that seeks after money, that places its faith, hope and love in material positions and in things that can be bought, Jesus tells us that the truly blessed are those who are poor in spirit, who treasure his kingdom above all. In a world that relies on force, that bullies its way to power, Jesus tells us that real happiness comes from being meek, from making peace, from being merciful. In a world addicted to the lust of the flesh, in which consequently so many hearts, lives and families are broken, Jesus proclaims the importance of purity of heart that sees God and reverences and loves him in others.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

September 9, 2023

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.9.23_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday, when he will discuss with us two important realities in our faith: prayer and fraternal correction.

* The first is prayer. Jesus says, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there will I be in their midst.” This is an incredible promise given to us by Jesus, yet we have to understand first what it means and why he said it. It does not mean that whenever two or more Christians are in the same place doing anything whatever that Jesus is automatically there. It doesn’t mean that whatever we ask him together will be heard when we want and the way we want, which is why, sometimes, when family members gather to pray for a loved one’s recovery from a terminal illness, the person does not always get better in this world. Jesus, rather, promises to be present when we are gathered “in his name.” To gather in Jesus’ name means to gather in his person seeking what Jesus seeks. While we can obviously pray to Jesus when we’re alone and should, Jesus particularly incentivizes gathering together in his name. Many people today think it’s sufficient to have a so-called “private” relationship with Jesus, to pray on their own and sometimes claim that’s an adequate substitution for coming to Mass or praying as a family. It’s very clear, however, that Jesus wanted us to come together to pray. When his disciples asked him to teach them how to pray, he taught them to pray “Our Father,” not “My Father” … “who art in heaven,” for the obvious reason that he wanted us to pray it with others. Even when we pray the “Our Father” alone, he wants us to remember others, which is why he taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive…,” etc. Jesus came down from heaven to earth to found a family, and he wants us to live and to pray as a loving family.

* This leads us to the second thing he teaches us in the Gospel this Sunday, which is what the saints have traditionally called “fraternal correction.” Whenever we gather together with others in the name of the One who saves us from our sins, as a family whose members deeply love each other, then it’s obvious that we should always desire lovingly to help the other members of the family to overcome any obstacles flowing from sin that prevent communion with God or each other. Jesus tells us, “If your brother sins [against you], go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother. If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you. … If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector.” These stages show us the effort the Lord asks of us to accompany those who make mistakes, those who sin, so that they’re not lost. Whenever a brother or sister has wandered through sin, whenever he or she is going off the deep end, Jesus tells us to gather with that brother or sister in his name and try to help that sibling realize and begin to overcome his or her sin.

* Jesus’ teaching on fraternal correction is challenging. We are living in a culture that thinks the greatest value is to be “nice.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

September 8, 2023

Rom 8:28-30, Ps 13, Mt 1:18-23

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.8.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* As today we celebrate the feast of the Nativity of our Lady, we can ponder how great was the joy of this day not only for Saints Joachim and Anne but also for God. If we accept what the second-century gnostic Pseudogospel of James says, Joachim and Anne, as we ponder each July 26, were aged in years and begging God to remove the shame of sterility from their life, as Joachim went into the desert to fast and pray and Anne wept a double lamentation. When the Angel appeared in response to their prayers, when she conceived, when she gave birth, and when she began to nurse Mary, St. Anne was ebullient with joy. But I’m sure that was nothing compared to what it must have been like for the eternal Son of God to be looking at the birth of the little girl who about 14 years later would become his own mother and give birth to him in the Gospel scene we’ve just heard. We can look at the baby Mary with the joy-filled eyes and hearts of her parents as well as of her Son as she was an infant and began to grow, thoughts that even many with strong Marian devotions seldom contemplate. We can also think about how Jesus and Joseph celebrated Mary’s birthday each year, recognizing that they are with us now, together with all the angels and saints, as we fete here anew today.

* God the Father had had Mary in his sights since the beginning of time. St. Paul tells us that he has “chosen us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world to be holy and immaculate in his sight” (Eph 1:4), and how could he not be thinking of Mary as the icon of this divine election? We know that at the very instant of the fall, her advent was prophesied as the one in whom God would place an enmity for the serpent. Today, she who had been immaculately conceived was born full of grace.

* She was born according to a template. St. Paul tells us in today’s first reading that “those [God] foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.” Mary was most certainly conformed to the image of the Holy One who would become the blessed Fruit of her womb and he, according to his humanity, would be conformed, mysteriously, to her earthly image. And this was a “shaping together” (literally con-formation) that would be manifested mutually throughout life, as her fiat would anticipate his, as her desire to help a young married couple would become his first miracle, as her pierced heart would emulate his heart pierced with a lance, as his glory would become reflected in her forever.

* It’s important for us whenever we celebrate a Marian feast to make explicit Mary’s Christocentric conformation, not just to avoid Protestant misinterpretations that we give Mary the homage that is only due to God, but also to help us deepen our own appreciation not only for our spiritual mother’s vocation and mission but for our own. Normally for us the celebration of a birthday is always an occasion to think with gratitude to God and to our parents for the gift of human life — and that is a very good thing to do! — but Mary’s birthday is a celebration of something more. As we see in today’s Gospel and know from throughout her life, she was born with a purpose, to be the Mother of God according to his humanity. This is alluded to in the other possible first reading for this feast, when the Prophet Micah says “You, Bethlehem-Ephrathah, too small to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel,...