Catholic Preaching

Catholic Preaching

By Father Roger LandryReligion & SpiritualityChristianity
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Catholic Preaching episodes

  • Eucharistic Charity: Making Our Lives a Commentary on the Words of Consecration, Parish Eucharistic Revival for St. Anthony of Padua Parish, Hillsdale, MI, November 4, 2023

    Fr. Roger J. Landry

    St. Anthony of Padua Parish, Hillsdale, MI
    Parish Day of Recollection: “Working for the Food that Endures to Eternal Life: A Parish Eucharistic Revival”
    November 4, 2023

    https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.4.23_Eucharistic_Charity_2.mp3

    The post Eucharistic Charity: Making Our Lives a Commentary on the Words of Consecration, Parish Eucharistic Revival for St. Anthony of Padua Parish, Hillsdale, MI, November 4, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

    36 min
  • Prioritizing Time with the Lord in Prayer and Adoration, Parish Eucharistic Revival for St. Anthony of Padua Parish, Hillsdale, MI, November 4, 2023

    Fr. Roger J. Landry

    St. Anthony of Padua Parish, Hillsdale, MI
    Parish Day of Recollection: “Working for the Food that Endures to Eternal Life: A Parish Eucharistic Revival”
    November 4, 2023

    https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.4.23_Adoration_1.mp3

    The post Prioritizing Time with the Lord in Prayer and Adoration, Parish Eucharistic Revival for St. Anthony of Padua Parish, Hillsdale, MI, November 4, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

    49 min
  • Making the Mass the Source and Summit of Our Existence, Parish Eucharistic Revival for St. Anthony of Padua Parish, Hillsdale, MI, November 3-4, 2023

    Fr. Roger J. Landry

    St. Anthony of Padua Parish, Hillsdale, MI
    Parish Day of Recollection: “Working for the Food that Endures to Eternal Life: A Parish Eucharistic Revival”
    November 4, 2023

     

    https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.4.23_Mass_1.mp3

    The post Making the Mass the Source and Summit of Our Existence, Parish Eucharistic Revival for St. Anthony of Padua Parish, Hillsdale, MI, November 3-4, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

    58 min
  • The Urgency and Importance of Eucharistic Revival, Parish Eucharistic Revival for St. Anthony of Padua Parish, Hillsdale, MI, November 3-4, 2023

    Fr. Roger J. Landry

    St. Anthony of Padua Parish, Hillsdale, MI
    Parish Day of Recollection: “Working for the Food that Endures to Eternal Life: A Parish Eucharistic Revival”
    November 3, 2023

    https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.3.23_Introduction_1.mp3

    The post The Urgency and Importance of Eucharistic Revival, Parish Eucharistic Revival for St. Anthony of Padua Parish, Hillsdale, MI, November 3-4, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

    1 hr 4 min
  • The Humble, Eucharistic Path to Exaltation, 30th Saturday (I), November 4, 2023

    Fr. Roger J. Landry

    St. Anthony of Padua Parish, Hillsdale, Michigan
    Parish Eucharistic Revival: “Working for the Food that Endures to Eternal Life”
    Saturday of the 30th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
    Memorial of St. Charles Borromeo
    November 4, 2023
    Rom 11:1-2.11-12.25-29, Ps 84, Lk 14:1.7-11

     

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

    https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.4.23_Homily_1.mp3

     

    The following points were attempted in the homily:

    • Today as St. Anthony’s hosts a Parish Retreat on the Eucharist as part of the national Eucharistic Revival, Jesus focuses our attention in the Gospel on the virtue of humility. The Eucharist is the greatest manifestation of all of Jesus’ loving humility. It wasn’t enough for the Son of God to humble himself and take on our humanity. It wasn’t sufficient for him merely to humble himself by taking upon the form of a slave and come not to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom for ours. It wasn’t adequate for him to humble himself by becoming obedient even to death on the Cross. He humbled himself so much more, willing to become our food and conceal his divine majesty and his sacred humanity under the appearances of bread and wine. For us to live a truly Eucharistic life means to live with the humility of Jesus who is meek and humble of heart. Before Jesus in the Eucharist, we humble ourselves before God himself. And then, from the inside, the Eucharistic Jesus seeks to make us humble like him so that we may be like bread broken for others in humble service. And this is the path, Jesus says, that leads to eternal exaltation.
    • By means of a parable on seats at a dinner gathering, Jesus teaches us about the humility necessary for us to come to the eternal banquet. The parable flat contradicts the way many in the world, including sometimes many of us Christians, behave. We see it in the ever-growing number of award shows indulging the egos of those in film, television, and music, all giving out awards for best actors, actresses, directors, producers, graphic artists, costume designers, film editors, hairstylists, production designer, sound mixers, screen play writers, and more. We see it in the honors we give to the students who are  “Most Popular” “Most Friendly, and “Most Likely to Succeed,” to the “Best Looking” women in pageants, to the “Most Successful” sales representatives, to the “Most Valuable Player” not just of the year but of the week, and even to the “best groomed” dogs. So many of us have been raised with a burning desire not just to be the best, but even more so to be acknowledged as the best. And if we recognize begrudgingly that we’re not the best, we at least want to be better than those with whom we come into contact or are in competition. We want to get our own way, rather than conceding to the wishes of another. We want everyone to acknowledge our rights and their responsibilities. We want to get the last word, rather than humble give it to someone else. We want to be the ones noticed and thanked, and resent it if others get the credit we think we deserve. In short, we hunger to be noticed, esteemed, and exalted. We want the places of honor at table, first class seats on airplanes and front row seats and back stage passes at concerts. We want waiters and butlers to serve us, chauffeurs to drive us, and the rich, famous and important to call us. We long for positions of power and influence and titles of status and worldly honor.
    • Today, however, Jesus calls us to a different standard, a much higher standard that is at the same time, paradoxically, a lower one. He tell us, “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” Jesus, who elsewhere told us what we heard in today’s Alleluia verse, “Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart” (Mt 11:29) and whose whole life was a lesson in humility, wants to help us learn from him how to serve rather than to be served, to seek the lowest place rather than the highest, to treasure God’s esteem rather than others’ adulation so that God may say to us, in this world and the next,  “My friend, come up higher!” The way to be exalted at Jesus’ right side forever is humbly to serve at Jesus’ side here on earth, and to follow him not just in seeking the lowest places at table but in getting up from the table like he did at the Last Supper, picking up the basin and towel to wash others’ feet, and serving them in such self-effacing ways.
    • St. Paul was someone who became truly holy because of his humility. At first he had a strong personality who would tell people off to their face. He was filled with learning, one of the best students of the Great Rabbi Gamaliel, someone who had received big commissions at a young age to try to destroy the Church. But the Lord converted him. And Saul of Tarsus humbly allowed himself to be led and baptized. He disappeared into the desert for 14 years to pray and learn anew. Because others didn’t trust his conversion, he returned to making tents. Eventually after Barnabas came to get him, he eventually poured himself out like a libation for the sake of others, seeking to become all things to all people so as to save some. He had a humiliating “thorn” in his flesh, which he never specified, but it was through bearing it that he learned that God’s grace was sufficient for him. He proclaimed that God called nobodies, the humble of the world, to shame those who thought they were somebodies. And he grasped that it was truly when he was weak that he was strong, because then God’s power was able to work through him with no resistance. He calls us to have in us the “same mind that was in Christ Jesus” who “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped” but “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave” and “humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name,  that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,  and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” In today’s first reading we see one aspect of the way he had put on the mind of Christ and was following him down the road of humility. Chapters 9-11 of the Letter to the Romans are all about the salvation of the Jews and, as daily Massgoers heard yesterday, Paul was willing to be cut off from Christ if by doing so he could save his fellow Jews, some of whom were plotting to kill him just like others had conspired to kill Jesus. He saw his whole life as an offering for their salvation. He said God’s plan was to subject everyone to disobedience so that he could have mercy toward all: first the disobedience of so many Jews so that the Gospel could be taken to the Gentiles and then, through the humble example of the love of Christians fulfilling the Covenants God had begun with the Jews, through Christian lowly service like St. Paul’s, the Jews might be humbled from seeking salvation through their works to accept the fullness of revelation and come to salvation with the Gentiles. God indeed humbled himself in this way and Paul was following Christ down that road of rejection, receiving it in such a way that it might be salvific and bring others through humility toward holiness.
    • Another saint who lived this humility was Saint Charles Borromeo, whom the Church celebrates today. Born of the incredibly wealthy and influential Medici family, he could have easily become inflated and arrogant. At 22, because his uncle was Pope Pius IV, he was made a Cardinal without ordination. God brought good out of this nepotism, however, because St. Charles — even at a ridiculously young age — quickly became the principal figure in reforming the Church after the Protestant Reformation through helping to bring the Council of Trent to conclusion. When his elder brother died, his family expected him to resign his offices and return to run the family estate, but he preferred God to them and he made the definitive choice for Holy Orders. He had been appointed Administrator of the Archdiocese of Milan — then the largest diocese in the world — as a benefice, but as soon as Pius IV had died and the Council completed, he was able to be ordained subdeacon, deacon, priest and bishop and take up the charge as Archbishop. There he encountered a very corrupt situation throughout, where most people, including priests and religious, were not acting in accordance with their Christian dignity. His famous phrase was, “Be who you promised you would be,” in baptism, in marriage, and in holy orders. He corrected and fought abuses out of love for them and those harmed, calling clergy to care for their flock against wolves and to help heal their wounds. He formed priests and religious and built seminaries to train priests well so that they might be good shepherds, since many of the problems that afflicted lay people had to do with clergy who were setting a scandalous example. Such reform led to his receiving much opposition. One religious community that didn’t want to be reformed actually sent some monks to try to murder him while he was praying in his chapel. Miraculously, however, the bullet that hit him in the back simply fell to the ground. Because of his hard work, however, the Catholics of Milan experienced the fruits of reform. More than anything, he sought to help the clergy recognize that to be a good shepherd required them to be willing to risk their lives for the flock. In 1576, when Milan was undergoing mass starvation and the ravages of the plague, the governor, most of his officials, and most of the nobles, all fled. But St. Charles remained and begged the clergy and the religious not to abandon the sheep entrusted to them, urging them to prefer a holy death to a late one. He had already been giving most of his earnings to the care of the poor, but to meet this crisis, he exhausted his personal fortune, even taking on large debts. He similarly sold many of the Church’s vessels. Each day he was feeding 60,000 to 70,000 poor and often contagious people daily. He challenged the clergy and religious: “The same Son of God, who for the sake of the salvation of all men, including his enemies and the impious, was fixed to the cross and died in the greatest shame and the bitterest torment, invites us to go forward into the danger of a quiet and glorious death for devout brethren. He to whom we owe as much repayment as we could not obtain by dying a thousand times without end, does not even request this pathetic life of ours, but only that we put it at risk. … It is indeed a desirable time now when without the cruelty of the tyrant, without the rack, without fire, without beasts, and in the complete absence of harsh tortures that are usually the most frightful to human weakness, we can obtain the crown of martyrdom.” Because of all of these ministrations, St. Charles ended up dying of exhaustion at 46, but in his relatively short life of humble, loving service, he accomplished so much more than most people who have lived far longer.
    • St. Charles Borromeo learned humility through his daily contact with the humility of Jesus in the Eucharist and he sought to help reform the Church through helping, first, the priests and religious, and then the faithful of Milan, to live truly Eucharistic lives and learn from the Eucharistic Lord how to be meek and humble of heart. He preached a homily on Holy Thursday in 1567 on how we’re called to imitate Christ’s Eucharistic example. He pondered how Jesus began the Last Supper by taking on the form of a slave and humbly washing his apostles’ feet, doing so as an example so that, just as he has washed our feet, we may go to do the dirty work in washing others’ feet, souls and lives. From there, he continued, he humbly fed the apostles with his own Body and Blood. He even showed kindness to Judas, not exposing his treachery to the others, sitting him at the place of honor at his left, and even feeding him. He finished that homily by saying, “Let us be moved by such humble submission in such majesty and let us humble ourselves with the Lord, if we desire to be exalted with him. With him let us serve the poor, if we wish to reign with him. Let us wash one another’s feet, if we wish to be considered disciples of Christ. Let us conform ourselves in life to our head, and he will deign to conform us to himself in glory.”
    • Today at this Mass, as we prepare to receive the food that helped make Charles Borromeo a saint, we ask our Eucharistic Lord to help us to enter into communion with his humility as he instructs us, “Do this in memory of me!” May we receive Humility Incarnate with faith and learn from Jesus’ self-abasement the path to eternal exaltation with Charles, Paul, Anthony, Mary, Joseph, and all the Saints, so that from our humility here Jesus will one lady be able to say to us, forever, “Friend, come up higher!”

      •  

      The readings for today’s Mass were:

      Reading 1 ROM 11:1-2A, 11-12, 25-29
      Brothers and sisters:
      I ask, then, has God rejected his people?
      Of course not!
      For I too am a child of Israel, a descendant of Abraham,
      of the tribe of Benjamin.
      God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.
      Do you not know what the Scripture says about Elijah,
      how he pleads with God against Israel?
      Hence I ask, did they stumble so as to fall?
      Of course not!
      But through their transgression
      salvation has come to the Gentiles,
      so as to make them jealous.
      Now if their transgression is enrichment for the world,
      and if their diminished number is enrichment for the Gentiles,
      how much more their full number.
      I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers and sisters,
      so that you will not become wise in your own estimation:
      a hardening has come upon Israel in part,
      until the full number of the Gentiles comes in,
      and thus all Israel will be saved, as it is written:
      The deliverer will come out of Zion,
      he will turn away godlessness from Jacob;
      and this is my covenant with them
      when I take away their sins.
      In respect to the Gospel, they are enemies on your account;
      but in respect to election,
      they are beloved because of the patriarch.
      For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.
      Responsorial Psalm PS 94:12-13A, 14-15, 17-18
      R. (14a) The Lord will not abandon his people.
      Blessed the man whom you instruct, O LORD,
      whom by your law you teach,
      Giving him rest from evil days.
      R. The Lord will not abandon his people.
      For the LORD will not cast off his people,
      nor abandon his inheritance;
      But judgment shall again be with justice,
      and all the upright of heart shall follow it.
      R. The Lord will not abandon his people.
      Were not the LORD my help,
      my soul would soon dwell in the silent grave.
      When I say, “My foot is slipping,”
      your mercy, O LORD, sustains me.
      R. The Lord will not abandon his people.

      Alleluia MT 11:29AB

      R. Alleluia, alleluia.

      Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
      for I am meek and humble of heart.
      R. Alleluia, alleluia.

      Gospel LK 14:1, 7-11
      On a sabbath Jesus went to dine
      at the home of one of the leading Pharisees,
      and the people there were observing him carefully.
      He told a parable to those who had been invited,
      noticing how they were choosing the places of honor at the table.
      “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet,
      do not recline at table in the place of honor.
      A more distinguished guest than you may have been invited by him,
      and the host who invited both of you may approach you and say,
      ‘Give your place to this man,’
      and then you would proceed with embarrassment
      to take the lowest place.
      Rather, when you are invited,
      go and take the lowest place
      so that when the host comes to you he may say,
      ‘My friend, move up to a higher position.’
      Then you will enjoy the esteem of your companions at the table.
      For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled,
      but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

      The post The Humble, Eucharistic Path to Exaltation, 30th Saturday (I), November 4, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

      18 min
    • Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, November 4, 2023

      Fr. Roger J. Landry

      Conversations with Consequences Podcast
      Homily for the Thirty-First Sunday of Ordinary Time, A, Vigil
      November 4, 2023

       

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

      https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.4.23_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, with super strong language, he will make clear that we ultimately have only one Father, one Teacher and one Spiritual Guide — God himself. God is our Father, and any human fatherhood (physical for the dads listening, and spiritual for the priests) is derivative and vicarious of the Eternal Father’s paternity. Jesus is our one Teacher or Master and any other teaching must point to Him who is the Truth. The Holy Spirit is our one Spiritual Guide, or Rabbi, and any other guide must cooperate with the Holy Spirit to point the person along the straight path to true life and love. Intentionally using hyperbole, Jesus tells us to call no one on earth our father, or teacher, or rabbi, because he wants us first and foremost to be sons of the Father, students of Jesus the Teacher, and docile followers of the Holy Spirit’s guidance. Jesus himself refers to Abraham as father and tells us to honor our father and mother, and so he’s not saying that we can’t ever use the title father, or teacher, or rabbi, but rather he wants everyone to recognize that all authority, truth and guidance comes ultimately from God. So often human parents, instructors, or guides, rather than leading us to God, sometimes can seem to want to take God’s place. Jesus’ concern is not really one of vocabulary, but of mentality. As he says at the end of the passage, “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” He wants us to become great through loving service rather than through arrogance. He wants us to know that no one can take God’s place as the giver of life, as our teacher and our guide — and to the extent that any parent, teacher, or guide is worthy of the name, they must first be a good child, student and follower of the one Father, Teacher and Guide.
      • That said, Jesus also stresses, paradoxically, that God doesn’t work alone. Throughout salvation history, he has used many others as his instruments to bless us with the gifts of fatherhood, truth and direction. He illustrates this by what he says about the scribes and Pharisees. It’s not shocking that he tells us not to follow the Pharisees’ example, because, as he makes clear in this Sunday’s Gospel and many times elsewhere, they were hypocrites. What is surprising is that he nevertheless tells us to follow these hypocrites’ teaching. He says that they sit on “Moses’ seat.” We know that God raised up Moses to pass on to the chosen people God’s own words and direction, leading them from slavery into the promised land. The scribes were those people who made their entire living out of knowledge of the Law of the Covenant God gave through Moses. The Pharisees were the group of people who publicly dedicated themselves full-time to trying to live by that law. Jesus said that since they sit on Moses’ seat, “do whatever they teach you and follow it,” because it is not their words that one’s following, but God’s words through them. Their hypocrisy doesn’t invalidate God’s word. And we can’t use their failure to live it as a reason for us to ignore it or not live it either.
      • At the same time, Jesus also gave a stern warning, which must have pained him to say: “But do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.” They were indeed hypocrites, the Greek word for actors, who were not acting on the words of God but just pretending to be faithful. They used their sitting on Moses’ seat to put burdens on others but had no love for those to whom they were preaching; they didn’t “lift a finger,” didn’t make the least effort, to help others understand how — as we discussed last week — every one of God’s commands is given out of love and meant to help us to learn how to love God and love others. Their knowledge of God’s word, rather than making them holier, rather than making them humbler, rather than making them more loving of others with whom they were attempting to share God’s word, it had made them proud. While God’s word was not annulled, their personal failure to live it invalidated the authority of their example.
      • What does this mean for us today? If Jesus, who said that we have only one Father, Teacher and Guide, told us that God works vicariously to pass on to us his words and guidance though those sit on Moses’ seat, how much more would he say the same thing about those who sit not on Moses’ seat but on Christ’s own cathedra! The Pope is Christ’s own earthly vicar. Each bishop is a successor of the apostles. The priest is ordained by Christ through a bishop to be his collaborators. All of them, to varying degrees, sit on Christ’s own chair and are called to transmit not just the law of Moses, given by God to the Jewish people, but the law of Jesus Christ, given by God to the whole human race. So much did Jesus identify with them as his messengers that, before he sent them out to preach, he said, “Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me” (Lk 10:16). So Jesus is clearly saying to everyone in the Church relative to the Pope, our bishops and our priests, “Insofar as they sit on my chair or stand in my pulpit, ‘do whatever they teach you and follow it,’ for it is not just they speaking, but I speaking through them.” The Gospel that our Holy Father or our bishop or even a simple parish priest proclaims is not to be accepted as merely a “human word,” but at it really is, God’s word. The same for parents passing on the faith. The same for catechists and other teachers of the faith. To the extent that they truthfully pass on God’s word, we must heed the message regardless of the qualities of the messenger.
      • That’s the first powerful truth Jesus wants us to grasp this Sunday. But there’s another. Just as Jesus 2,000 years ago didn’t stop with a simple affirmation of the divine provenance of his preachers’ words, so today too Jesus, with great pain, likely would say about some of the clergy he has chosen and ordained, some of the parents he has blessed with children, and some of those to whom he has given the vocation to teach the faith as religious educators: “But do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.” There have certainly been popes, bishops, priests, parents, and catechists, who, like the scribes and Pharisees, have failed to live the word they preach to others. There are certainly those who burden others with the word, without showing them how it leads them to love God and others. There are those whose knowledge of the word has made them proud rather than holy. There are those who vainly seek for status, rather than humbly hunger to serve. While the example of hypocritical clergy obviously comes to mind as especially egregious, we can similarly deplore the un-Christian behavior of various prominent Catholic politicians, celebrities, judges, teachers, and parents.
      • But there’s even a greater evil that spiritual fathers and mothers, teachers and guides can commit. Jesus didn’t even mention it in Sunday’s Gospel, because, despite their defects, the scribes and the Pharisees reverenced the word of God so much that they never would have succumbed to this evil. They may have misunderstood God’s word, but they would never have tried to change it, or ignore it, or lie about it. That’s what some prominent Catholics, clergy, theologians, or prominent Catholics in public life or the family have done. While sitting on Moses’ and Christ’s seat, rather than passing on his teaching, they substitute their own. I could cite hundreds of examples of these false instructions, but here are some of the most common ones: “Jesus didn’t really work miracles;” “Scripture really isn’t the word of God, but the word of men;” “The Eucharist is not really Jesus’ body and blood, but just a symbol;” “It’s no longer necessary to go to confession;” “Catholics no longer believe in Hell, because no God who loved us could possibly allow us to go to Hell;” “It’s not a mortal sin to miss Mass on Sunday;” “The Church has no good reason not to ordain women as priests;” “Everyone, including non-Catholics, no matter what the state of one’s soul or marital situation, can and should come to Holy Communion at Mass;” “There’s really no such thing any more as a mortal sin, especially in the realm of sexuality;” “The Church’s teachings on marriage are homophobic and immoral, discriminating against those of the same-sex who just want to love each other and have their loved sanctioned;” “You don’t have to follow the teachings of the Pope and the bishops; you just have to follow your conscience;” “It’s possible to be a good Catholic and be pro-choice, as long as you wouldn’t have an abortion yourself.” We could go on with these falsehoods — I’m sure you’ve heard others — but I hope that the point if clear. This type of preaching malpractice and theological abuse may be the worst and most harmful damage a priest or teacher or parent can cause. Of course, we need to pray for these false prophets, but we also need to be on-guard against such falsehoods from those in authority; the greatest defense we could have is to know our faith well, so that we would never be gullible to such deceptions masquerading as truths.
      • What does the Lord want from all of us who are called to pass on the faith to others? It’s obvious that Jesus wants us to have integrity, to preach His words — all of them, including the more challenging messages — and to practice what he wants us to preach. In the rite of the ordination of deacons, there’s a beautiful moment when the candidate kneels before the bishop in front of the altar. The prelate takes the Book of the Gospel and places it in the candidates’ hands, saying, “Receive the Gospel of Christ whose herald you have become. Believe what you read. Teach what you believe. Practice what you teach.” Each of us, like the deacon, is called to become one with the word, to believe it, teach it and live it. The greatest way we proclaim the Gospel is by humbly putting it into practice. Our example is worth a thousand homilies or books or treatises.
      • As we prepare for Sunday, we remember that each Mass is meant to help us live the lessons Jesus gives in the Gospel. We come to listen to the Word of God as words to be done. We’re called to believe what we read, teach what we believe and practice what we teach. And that integration takes its model from Jesus in the Eucharist, the Word made flesh, as he seeks to take up his teaching chair within our own body and soul as we go out faithfully to proclaim and live the truth. From within, he wants to help us become sons and daughters of the Father from whom all biological and spiritual parenthood derives; to become ever greater students of Jesus the Master; and ever more fired up and faithful followers of the Holy Spirit’s guidance. He wants to be able to say about us: observe and do all things whatsoever they tell you and follow their example.

        •  

        The Gospel on which the homily was based was: 

        Gospel
        MT 23:1-12

        Jesus spoke to the crowds and to his disciples, saying,

        “The scribes and the Pharisees
        have taken their seat on the chair of Moses.
        Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you,
        but do not follow their example.
        For they preach but they do not practice.
        They tie up heavy burdens hard to carry
        and lay them on people’s shoulders,
        but they will not lift a finger to move them.
        All their works are performed to be seen.
        They widen their phylacteries and lengthen their tassels.
        They love places of honor at banquets, seats of honor in synagogues,
        greetings in marketplaces, and the salutation ‘Rabbi.’
        As for you, do not be called ‘Rabbi.’
        You have but one teacher, and you are all brothers.
        Call no one on earth your father;
        you have but one Father in heaven.
        Do not be called ‘Master’;
        you have but one master, the Christ.
        The greatest among you must be your servant.
        Whoever exalts himself will be humbled;
        but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

        The post Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, November 4, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

        11 min
      • Christian Sorrow, Anguish and Urgent Charity, 30th Friday (I), November 3, 2023

        Fr. Roger J. Landry

        Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
        Friday of the 30th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
        Memorial of St. Martin de Porres
        November 3, 2023
        Rom 9:1-5, Ps 147, Lk 14:1-6

         

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

        https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.3.23_Homily_1.mp3

         

        The following points were attempted in the homily: 

        • After the proper readings for All Saints and All Souls Days, we return to the normal daily Mass readings and today we have a shift in St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, which we have been praying for almost three weeks. We turn to the second part of this epistle. In the first 8 chapters, we’ve pondered what it means to be justified before God and how the Holy Spirit seeks to bring that about. Chapters 9-11 are about God’s plan for the justification of the Jews, particularly those who — unlike Mary, Mary Magdalene, the disciples and apostles — have rejected Jesus as Messiah. Unfortunately, however, the Church gives us only two days to ponder these three important chapters! St. Paul describes his suffering for the Jews: “I speak the truth in Christ, I do not lie; my conscience joins with the Holy Spirit in bearing me witness that I have great sorrow and constant anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh.” Just like Christ died for us, St. Paul was willing even to be cut off from Christ that the Jews come to salvation, so much did he love them. His heart was filled with anguish and sorrow because of their state, even though some of them were seeking to kill him as others had plotted — with all sinners of all time — to kill Christ. He loved them with the heart of Christ. He pondered all that God had given them: descendancy from Jacob, adoption as God’s children, his holy shekinah or glory, the covenants (with Noah, Abraham, Moses, David), the law, the worship at the Temple written out by him in Leviticus, the promises, the patriarchs and the genealogy of the Messiah. But his heart was filled with anguish because despite all that preparation, they had not embraced the fulfillment in Christ, in whom there is filiation, glory, the new and eternal covenant, the Legislator, true worship and the down payment on all God’s promises and all the hopes God had given the Jews. This anguish is what led him to become all things to all people, including to his fellow Jews, so that each might come to Christ. Later in these three chapters he will describe God’s plans for the salvation of the Jews, and it’s fundamentally, through seeing God’s goodness working among the Gentiles, they might come to embrace it and be saved. Paul — and God! — wishes all of us have a similar anguish of heart for the salvation of others, the anguish that beat in Paul’s heart and in Christ’s Sacred Heart.
        • We see a similar anguish in Jesus in the Gospel and it led Jesus to urgent action. Jesus wouldn’t wait until the following day to heal the man with dropsy, because the Sabbath day in particular was a day of the love of God and the love of neighbor. He also expressed his sorrow at the way so many of the Scribes and Pharisees had distorted the notion of the Sabbath. Various of them began to conspire to get Jesus murdered precisely because of the “work” he did on the Sabbath, healing people, freeing them of infirmities, as if concrete acts of love toward others would displease God on the Lord’s Day. Jesus sought to help his listeners see that if something dear to them — a child, an animal — had fallen into a cistern, was injured, was in danger of drowning, they would immediately act. That’s the urgency with which he acts for us and our salvation, because he cares for us more than a parent cares for a child or a farmer cares for his animals. His heart is filled with anguish and sorrow when we suffer and he acts with urgency out of the love that is most fit for the Sabbath. There’s a great lesson we learn from this. Many times we can procrastinate on charity toward our neighbor because they really don’t concern us, because we really don’t love them. Today’s reading calls us to allow Jesus to love us and to love others with the same urgency, making every day, to some extent, a day of the Lord.
        • This type of anguish is essential to the life of the Church. The Church’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, entitled Gaudium et Spes, begins: “Gaudium et spes, luctus et angor hominum huius temporis, pauperum praesertim et quorumvis afflictorum, gaudium sunt et spes, luctus et angor etiam Christi discipulorum, nihilque vere humanum invenitur, quod in corde eorum non resonate,” which can be translated, “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ; indeed, nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts.” I’d just like to pull out those words “luctus et angor,” because those are precisely taken from St. Paul today, the sorrow and anguish, because that — with the joy and hope that comes from the Gospel — are how we as Christians are supposed to respond pastorally to the world. That’s what leads us to urgent action.
        • Someone who got and lived these lessons is the holy one we celebrate today. St. Martin de Porres (1579-1639) was a Dominican lay brother in Peru, who because he was the mulatto son of a Spanish knight and a black freed-woman, experienced various sufferings out of racism growing up. But filled with love for Christ and his neighbor, he eventually entered the Order of Preachers and served as their barber, surgeon, wardrobe-keeper and infirmarian. He wanted to bring God’s love outside the monastery, too, and extend the care he was giving to his Dominican brothers to everyone else, as if all of Lima were his monastery. He cared for the sick. He helped establish an orphanage and foundling-hospital. He distributed the convent’s alms each day of food to the poor and sometimes, with God’s help, multiplied it. He cared for all the slaves brought to Peru from Africa. He went out after the lost sheep and trained people in the same care of the poor so that together with them they could dramatically help the poor in their circumstances. He’s the patron saint of social justice because he was giving not just out of charity, but out of a sense that the poor are owed better than what they normally receive. Because Christ valued them so much, he wanted to value them at that same level and help them recognize their own dignity. He saw Christ in each of them and sought to give Christ what he deserved. He was filled with sorrow and anguish at their suffering and, with the Lord’s help, sought to do what he can.
        • Today at this Mass, Jesus wants to inspire us with urgency, with holy sorrow and anguish, so that we might go out to fulfill his plan of salvation for everyone so that they might come to experience the fullness of his love and be healed of whatever keeps them from rejoicing forever in the eternal Lord’s day. Let us pray that we may cooperate as fully as the saint we celebrate today!

          •  

          The readings for today’s Mass were: 

          Reading 1 ROM 9:1-5
          Brothers and sisters:
          I speak the truth in Christ, I do not lie;
          my conscience joins with the Holy Spirit in bearing me witness
          that I have great sorrow and constant anguish in my heart.
          For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ
          for the sake of my own people,
          my kindred according to the flesh.
          They are children of Israel;
          theirs the adoption, the glory, the covenants,
          the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises;
          theirs the patriarchs, and from them,
          according to the flesh, is the Christ,
          who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.
          Responsorial Psalm PS 147:12-13, 14-15, 19-20
          R. Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.
          Glorify the LORD, O Jerusalem;
          praise your God, O Zion.
          For he has strengthened the bars of your gates;
          he has blessed your children within you.
          R. Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.
          He has granted peace in your borders;
          with the best of wheat he fills you.
          He sends forth his command to the earth;
          swiftly runs his word!
          R. Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.
          He has proclaimed his word to Jacob,
          his statutes and his ordinances to Israel.
          He has not done thus for any other nation;
          his ordinances he has not made known to them. Alleluia.
          R. Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.

          Alleluia JN 10:27

          R. Alleluia, alleluia.

          My sheep hear my voice, says the Lord;
          I know them, and they follow me.
          R. Alleluia, alleluia.

          Gospel LK 14:1-6
          On a sabbath Jesus went to dine
          at the home of one of the leading Pharisees,
          and the people there were observing him carefully.
          In front of him there was a man suffering from dropsy.
          Jesus spoke to the scholars of the law and Pharisees in reply, asking,
          “Is it lawful to cure on the sabbath or not?”
          But they kept silent; so he took the man and,
          after he had healed him, dismissed him.
          Then he said to them
          “Who among you, if your son or ox falls into a cistern,
          would not immediately pull him out on the sabbath day?”
          But they were unable to answer his question.

          The post Christian Sorrow, Anguish and Urgent Charity, 30th Friday (I), November 3, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

          21 min
        • The Sweetest of the Spiritual Works of Mercy, Commemoration of the Faithful Departed, November 2, 2023

          Fr. Roger J. Landry

          Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
          The Commemoration of All The Faithful Departed, All Souls’ Day
          November 2, 2023
          2 Macc 12:38-46, Ps 25, 1 Thess 4:13-18, Lk 23:33.39-43

           

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

          https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.2.23_Homily_1.mp3

           

          The following text guided the homily: 

          • Today we come together to fulfill the sweetest of all the spiritual works of mercy, which is to pray for the dead. With Catholics throughout the world, we commemorate all the faithful departed — those who died within the last day, the beloved deceased members of our families, those who have perished of natural causes as well the victims of war, violence and genocide, those who have died of hunger, disease and neglect, the infants who have died in miscarriages or who have been killed through exposure or abortion, the seniors who have been tragically killed through euthanasia, the Christians who have died for the faith in persecution, the anonymous who rest in common graves, and those forgotten by the world and whose names are known only by God. The Church remembers the faithful departed not just on this day but throughout the entire month of November in a special way. We begin the month, as we did yesterday, by celebrating the saints — those who are definitively in heaven, the canonized and un-canonized saints — and by invoking their intercession as we continue on our pilgrimage of faith in this world. But then we immediately turn in suffrage for all those who have died, those who long to share in the communion of the saints but who are not yet experiencing their joy. To pray for the dead is the main purpose of All Souls Day. We pray for the dead because we know in faith three truths: first, contrary to the popular heresy that presumes that everyone who dies automatically goes to a “better place,” the Catholic faith does not believe everyone who dies goes to heaven, especially immediately; second, the dead may need our help; and third our prayers and sacrifices can in fact help them. All Souls Day is an occasion to examine more deeply these three truths of faith.
          • First, the Church teaches that to enter heaven, one must be completely attached to God and radically detached from all sin and everything that is not of God. “Nothing unclean shall enter heaven,” the Book of Revelation tells us (Rev. 21:27). There are many who do not live and die with that type of purity of life and hence they need to be purified to enter into the kingdom in which God is all in all. This state in which the dead are decontaminated from all sin and worldliness has been traditionally called by the Church “Purgatory” from the Latin term purgare, which means “to cleanse.” In 2007, Pope Benedict wrote an encyclical letter on Christian hope in which he talked about what happens after we die and about who goes to Hell, Heaven and Purgatory. He described Hell as that state where those people go “who have totally destroyed their desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within themselves.” He commented, “This is a terrifying thought, but alarming profiles of this type can be seen in certain figures of our own history.” He doesn’t mention anyone by name, but we can think that some genocidal leaders, sadistic serial killers, abortionists, if their deeds correspond to what was really in their hearts and they failed to repent, would end up there. “In such people,” Pope Benedict added, “all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable. This is what we mean by the word Hell.” Hell, the Catechism tells us, is the place of “definitive self-alienation” from God. All who go to Hell choose it, because they would consider Heaven — where everyone adores God — a hell for them who want a life without God. I’ve seen glimpses of those who would be in Hell by those who seemed to choose it on earth. I remember with horror a few deathbeds at which I’ve been present when family members have called me at the last second in the hope that their family member, like the Good Thief, would open up to receive God’s mercy. Some have, and their last-minute conversions are among the most beautiful moments in priestly life. But others have not. Some dying people have started to yell at me as soon as I entered the room, with clenched fists and expletives telling me to leave, screaming that they’ve lived their life without God until then and don’t want to die with God either. To the extent they of sound mind were speaking, and we were not hearing the howls of the devil in someone he had possessed, it would give evidence of self-exclusion. Hell is a real possibility for human freedom. Heaven, Pope Benedict said in contrast, is the place to which go those “who are utterly pure, completely permeated by God, and thus fully open to their neighbors—people for whom communion with God even now gives direction to their entire being and whose journey towards God only brings to fulfillment what they already are.” Not even all the canonized saints go immediately to heaven because, even though they live the Christian faith with heroic virtue, there may be parts of their life that upon death are not yet totally redeemed, they may still have some defects, whether anger, impatience, vanity, lack of total forgiveness for those who have hurt them, or other reasons. Pope Benedict tells us that “we know from experience that neither case” — those who have totally destroyed their desire for God or those who live exclusively out of that desire — “is normal in human life.” He goes on to describe Purgatory. “For the great majority of people—we may suppose—there remains in the depths of their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God. In the concrete choices of life, however, it is covered over by ever new compromises with evil—much filth covers purity, but the thirst for purity remains and it still constantly re-emerges from all that is base and remains present in the soul. What happens to such individuals when they appear before the Judge?” He says that they need to be purified, to “pass through fire so as to become fully open to receiving God and able to take our place at the table of the eternal marriage-feast.” That encounter happens in the fire of Christ’s saving love. “Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves.” This, he says with hope, is the place where the great majority of people go, the people who are in need of this purifying fire of Christ’s love. Today is not for the few, in other words, but for the many. We’ll return to the spiritual consequences of this with regard to what we’re doing today shortly.
          • The second truth is that, therefore, those who have died may need our help. The Church has believed in the need for purification after death since before she was even founded. In the second book of Maccabees, written about 140 years before Christ’s birth, we see that that the Jewish people offered sacrifices in the temple for all those Jews who had lived a double life and betrayed the Lord by carrying in their clothing various idols of the Greek pagans who sought to destroy the temple and extirpate the Jewish faith. Very much to the point, the sacred author wrote: if they “were not expecting that those who had fallen would rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead” (2 Macc 12:43-45). In St. Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says, “Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come” (Mt 12:32), implying quite clearly that there are some sins that can be forgiven in the age to come, the type of sin which St. John’s first letter says is not “mortal” or “deadly” (1 John 5:16). Continuing the tradition of the faithful Jews, the Church has therefore prayed for people to be purified of their venial sins, because such behavior is not “superfluous” or “foolish.”  With our beloved dead, we never know if they might have been hiding some sins out of fear or weakness. And so we come here to do something far more important than sending two-thousand silver drachmas (about $1,300 today) to Jerusalem for a sacrifice of atonement. We come to offer to the eternal Father the body, blood, soul and divinity of his dearly beloved Son, in expiation for our sins, the sins of our loved ones, and the sins of the whole world.
          • That brings us to the third truth of faith. The Church teaches that our prayers actually can and do help the dead if they are in purgatory, where any and all vestiges of distorted self-love are transformed into love of God. Second Maccabees tells us, very succinctly, “It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they might be loosed from their sins” (2 Macc 12:45). The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “From the beginning the Church has honored the memory of the dead and offered prayers in suffrage for them, above all the Eucharistic sacrifice, so that, thus purified, they may attain the beatific vision of God. The Church also commends almsgiving, indulgences, and works of penance undertaken on behalf of the dead” (CCC 1032). God has set up the economy of salvation so that our deeds of love offered in union with Christ’s own sacrifice may help others. Christ calls us to be co-redeemers with him. Just as his passion, death and resurrection brought salvation to the whole human race, so our deeds of love united to his, by God’s own design, can help those who have gone before us. This is one of the reasons why St. Paul could exclaim, “I make up what is lacking in my own flesh of the sufferings of Christ for the sake of His Body, the Church” (Col 1:24). The Church teaches that praying for the dead is a spiritual work of mercy, a spiritual work of loving co-redemption. And the greatest prayer of all we could offer for the dead is the prayer of the Mass, when we unite our own personal prayers — those emanating from our lips, our hearts, even our bodies in all types of actions of loving sacrifice for others — to Christ’s own prayer, his continuous, saving sacrifice once-and-for-all begun during the Last Supper and finished on the Cross. Pope Francis said in an Angelus meditation a few years ago on this feast, “Church tradition has always urged prayer for the dead, in particular by offering the celebration of the Eucharist for them: it is the best spiritual help that we can give to their souls, particularly to the most abandoned ones. The foundation of prayers in suffrage of souls is in the communion of the Mystical Body,” and that communion is expressed most powerfully at Mass. That is why the Church has venerated for centuries the practice of praying for the dead at Mass, explicitly having Masses offered for a particular loved one as well as praying, in every Eucharistic prayer, for all those “who have gone before us with the sign of faith” (Eucharistic Prayer I), as well as “all the dead, whose faith you {God] alone have known” (Eucharistic Prayer IV).
          • St. Paul tells us in his First Letter to the Thessalonians that, with regard to the death of our loved ones, we Christians grieve, but we grieve differently than the rest “who have no hope” (1 Thess 4:13). We grieve because we love and we know that after the death of a loved one, life for us will never be the same. Grief is a sign of our love, of our missing the blessing the person was in our life and of our longing to enjoy that union again. So we Christians mourn differently than those pagans and atheists who think, as the fools did in the Book of Wisdom that the souls are simply “dead,” their “passing away … an affliction,” “their going forth from us utter destruction.” For them, there is no hope ever to see their loved ones again. When they lose someone tragically, how much worse is the pain, believing that no redemption is possible. Thanks be to God we Christians grieve differently! But we also grieve differently from those who have no hope because they don’t think they have to have hope, believing falsely that life in this world is inconsequential and that no matter what we do we end up in the eternal honor roll and in a “better place.” We know life matters, we know our decisions matter, and we know that most of us have good days and bad days, we know we sometimes make the right choices and sometimes make the wrong choices. We know that neither we nor our loved ones live and die as the sinless Blessed Virgin Mary; for that reason we pray, but we pray with hope and confidence in the Lord’s eternal love. The consequence of Pope Benedict’s words earlier about purgatory is that the vast majority of people will need prayers after they die. The vast majority of us will not go immediately to heaven after judgment because we’re not living with heroic virtue as true saints in this world but are regularly making compromises with our faith. And the vast majority of the dead will need a lot of prayers. Jesus gives a snap snot of where the vast majority of people are trending in St. Matthew’s Gospel when he says, “The door is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction and those who enter by it are many. And the door is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Mt 7:13-14). This is not necessarily, thanks be to God, a picture of the way everything ends up — because the whole mission of Christ and the Church he founded is to try to rescue people from the broad, easy, congested “highway to hell” and lead them to the narrow, uphill, way of the cross that leads to life — but it is a striking image, given to us by Jesus Himself, the Truth incarnate who cannot and will not deceive us, about the way the vast majority of people are heading.  The vast majority of people need not just some prayers but a lot of prayers and Catholics are those who ought to be on the front lines of praying without ceasing out of love for them.
          • But while praying for the dead is the main point of All Souls Day, today’s commemoration of the faithful departed and the entire month of November is likewise supposed to help us focus on the last things: death, judgment, heaven and hell. Yesterday we pondered heaven. Today is a day on which we ponder death, not just the death of those who have gone before us, but our own, and learn truly how to live so that death will be for us a happy fulfillment rather than a dreaded eventuality. In today’s Gospel, in Jesus’ dialogue with the Good Thief, we learn something really important. When Dismas asked with faith to the Crucified victim in the middle to remember him when he entered his kingdom, to a man who would die before even Dismas would die, it was a sign that he recognized that Jesus would be capable of remembering even after he breathed his last. And Jesus responded not just promising that he would remember Dismas, but that he would take Dismas with him. “Amen I say to you today, you will be with me in paradise!” Eternal life is connected not just to Jesus’ “work,” but to Jesus. We have life not just because of him but with and in him. This point is made clear in St. John’s Gospel. One is right before Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. He meets Martha who tells him that if he had been present Lazarus wouldn’t have died, but that even then, she believed that what Jesus asked of God the Father God would grant him. When Jesus assured her that Lazarus would rise, she replied — doubtless because Lazarus, Martha and Mary had asked Jesus about what happens after death when he visited them in Bethany — that she knew he would rise on the resurrection on the last day. Jesus, then, however, helped her to see that the resurrection is not so much an event as a relationship: “I am,” Jesus said, “the Resurrection and the Life. Whoever believes in me, even though he dies shall live, and no one who lives and believes in me will ever die.” Jesus asked Martha if she believed that and he asks us. If we maintain a holy communion with Jesus, if we have his life within us, then death is just a new phase of that relationship with Life not just itself  but himself! And that happens through the Holy Eucharist. Jesus promises in St. John’s Gospel, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. … Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.” Each day as we receive Jesus in Holy Communion, we are able to receive the down payment of eternal life, we are able loving to abide in him, and have him abide in us, a mutual loving indwelling that is meant to last forever. From the inside, Jesus wants to help us to die to sin and what it leads to death and learn how to live with him, through him, for him and in him, by the power of the Holy Spirit.
          • Today as we offer this Mass so that the faithful departed might have life and have it to the full, we also pray for ourselves, that we might enter more fully into the passion, death and resurrection of him who is the Resurrection, Way, Truth and Life, and be so transformed and raised up, that we might be his instruments to bring to so many others all that he died and rose to give us!

            •  

            The readings for the Mass were: 

            A Reading from the Second Book of Maccabees (2 Macc 12:38-46)

            Judas rallied his army and went to the city of Adullam. As the week was ending, they purified themselves according to custom and kept the sabbath there.  On the following day, since the task had now become urgent, Judas and his men went to gather up the bodies of the slain and bury them with their kinsmen in their ancestral tombs.  But under the tunic of each of the dead they found amulets sacred to the idols of Jamnia, which the law forbids the Jews to wear. So it was clear to all that this was why these men had been slain.  They all therefore praised the ways of the Lord, the just judge who brings to light the things that are hidden.  Turning to supplication, they prayed that the sinful deed might be fully blotted out. The noble Judas warned the soldiers to keep themselves free from sin, for they had seen with their own eyes what had happened because of the sin of those who had fallen.  He then took up a collection among all his soldiers, amounting to two thousand silver drachmas, which he sent to Jerusalem to provide for an expiatory sacrifice. In doing this he acted in a very excellent and noble way, inasmuch as he had the resurrection of the dead in view;  for if he were not expecting the fallen to rise again, it would have been useless and foolish to pray for them in death.  But if he did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought.  Thus he made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from this sin.
            The Word of the Lord.

            Responsorial Psalm (Ps 25)

            R. To you, O Lord, I lift my soul.

            Remember that your compassion, O Lord,
            And your kindness are from of old.
            In your kindness remember me,
            Because of your goodness, O Lord.

            R. To you, O Lord, I lift my soul.

            Relieve the troubles of my heart,
            And bring me out of my distress.
            Put an end to my affliction and my suffering;
            And take away all my sins.

            R. To you, O Lord, I lift my soul.

            Preserve my life and rescue me;
            Let me not be put to shame, for I take refuge in you.
            Let integrity and uprightness preserve me,
            Because I wait for you, O Lord.

             A reading from the first Letter of St. Paul to the Thessalonians (1 Thess 4:13-18)

            We do not want you to be unaware, brothers, 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.
            The Word of the Lord.

            Alleluia Verse and Verse Before the Gospel

            “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

            A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke (Lk 23:33.39-43)

            When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him and the criminals there, one on his right, the other on his left. Now one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus, saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us.”  The other, however, rebuking him, said in reply, “Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation?  And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes, but this man has done nothing criminal.”  Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  He replied to him, “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
            The Gospel of the Lord

            The post The Sweetest of the Spiritual Works of Mercy, Commemoration of the Faithful Departed, November 2, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

            22 min
          • Following the Saints All The Way, All Saints Day, November 1, 2023

            Fr. Roger J. Landry

            Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
            All Saints Day 2023
            November 1, 2023
            Rev 7:2-4.9-14, Ps 24, 1 Jn 3:1-3, Mt 5:1-12

             

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

            https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.1.23_Homily_1.mp3

             

            The following text guided today’s homily: 

            • In the Office of Readings that priests, religious and many lay people pray at dawn, the Church ponders the words of the great 12th century Doctor of the Church Saint Bernard of Clairvaux who says that on All Saints Day we do more than celebrate the saints, the great and famous saints like him we know about, and the countless quiet saints, those whom Pope Francis calls the “saints next door,” among whom we pray are many of those who passed on to us the gift of the faith, who died in the love of the Lord and now live in His love. The saints are the multitude who have “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb,” as we heard in today’s first reading, and brought those white baptismal garments “unstained into the everlasting life of heaven,” like they were instructed to do on the day of their baptism. These are the “great multitude that no one could count, from every nation,” who have not just been called “children of God” through baptism, as St. John told us in today’s second reading, but have lived as children of God throughout their lives, seeking to love God with all their mind, heart, soul and strength and to love their neighbor as Christ loved them. They are the ones who, as we prayed in the Psalm, have longed to see God’s face, whose hands were sinless, whose heart was pure, whose desires were not for vain things but for the things of God. These are the ones who have ascended “the mountain of the Lord,” the eternal Jerusalem, and who “stand in his holy place.” These are the ones who are singing today in that holy place the beautiful endless song glimpsed in the passage from Revelation, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
            • Bernard says that today’s solemnity is not just about them. He writes, “The saints have no need of honor from us; neither does our devotion add the slightest thing to what is theirs. Clearly, if we venerate their memory, it serves us, not them. … Calling the saints to mind inspires, or rather arouses in us, above all else, a longing to enjoy their company. … We long to share in the citizenship of heaven, to dwell with the spirits of the blessed, to join the assembly of patriarchs, the ranks of the prophets, the council of apostles, the great host of martyrs, the noble company of confessors and the choir of virgins. In short, we long to be united in happiness with all the saints.”
            • So the celebration of All Saints Day, in having us focus on the saints, is meant to help us orient our life to holiness, happiness and heaven. As the ancient black spiritual intones, “O Lord, I want to be in that number when the saints go marching in.” All Saints Day is meant to help us to will the means to that end, to choose the narrow road that leads to life, and to invoke the powerful intercession of the saints so that we will indeed be in their number.
            • One of my joys here in New York City is to lead tours of the most beautiful Churches in Manhattan. One of the most resplendent is the Jesuit Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola on Park Avenue and 84th Street. St. Ignatius is someone who shows us how to make the choice for God. As one of the great paintings in the sanctuary depicts, as a young man, Ignatius was a vain Basque soldier seeking worldly honor on the battlefield. In the Battle of Pamplona, however, he had his right leg shattered and left calf torn off by a cannonball. To pass the time in what would turn out to be a nine-month convalescence at his family’s castle, the only option for him — centuries before the distractions of modern media — was reading. He tried without avail to get his hands on the epic tales of chivalry and romance common to the epoch. The only volumes to be found were a life of Christ and a book on the lives of the saints. As he read, he was pierced by his shallowness compared to the saints’ substance and roused by the courage of the martyrs in fighting the good fight on the battlefield that mattered most. In contrast to his narcissistic pursuit of earthly honors, the saints’ seeking and seizing the most lasting and valuable treasure captivated him. After reading about Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Dominic of Guzman, the 13th Century founders of the Franciscans and Dominicans respectively, he asked one of the most important questions in history: “These men were of the same frame as I. Why, then, should I not do what they have done?” He resolved to strive, with God’s help, to do what they had done. He made the commitment to serve the true King and to sacrifice everything to extend the kingdom of God. All Saints Day is meant to spur us to seek to do what he and they have done, too, because there’s no reason why, with God’s help, we cannot live our faith today with the same determination and love with which the saints young and old, male and female, of every generation have done.
            • One of the things I love most about the Church of St. Ignatius is that on the front right and left of the Church there are two extraordinary bronze doors, designed by the former of the pastor of the parish in the 1920s, Fr. Patrick O’Gorman, that testify not just to how the saints are models for us but about the means for us to become like them. On the left is a door focused on the Gifts of the Holy Spirit and on the right another door focused on the Beatitudes. It’s the Holy Spirit who helps us to become saints and on the southern door, Father O’Gorman put a face on each of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: for counsel, our Lady, Queen of Saints; for fortitude, St. Agnes; for knowledge, St. Dominic; for piety, St. Francis of Assisi; for understanding, Thomas Aquinas; for fear of the Lord, St. Jerome; and for wisdom, St. Ignatius. The overwhelming message of the door is that the saints show us how to cooperate with the work of sanctification the Holy Spirit wants to carry out in us. On the northern door, Fr. O’Gorman does something similar with each of the beatitudes, depicting particular saints who show us how to live out what Jesus teaches us in the Gospel about the path to true beatitude. For poverty of spirit, he depicts St. Vincent de Paul; for meekness, St. Thomas More; for mourning, St. Camillus de Lellis; for hunger and thirst for holiness, St. Francis de Sales; for mercy, St. Anthony of Padua; for purity of heart, St. Kateri Tekakwitha; for peacemakers, Our Lady, Queen of Peace; and for those who suffer for the sake of Christ, the martyr St. Cecilia. Each of those panels shows us how to follow Jesus on the path that will make us holy as he is holy, to love as he loves, to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.
            • We know that the path of the beatitudes stands in stark contrast to the path that most of the people in the world, that most students at Columbia, believe will lead to human happiness and fulfillment. Jesus’ words present us with the choice on which our lives hinge. The world tells us that to be happy, we have to be rich. Jesus says, rather, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they will inherit the kingdom of heaven.” The world tells us we’re happy when we don’t have a concern in the world. Jesus says, on the other hand, “Blessed are those” who are so concerned with others that “they mourn” over their own and others’ miseries, “for they will be comforted” by him eternally. Worldly know-it-alls say, “You have to be strong and powerful to be happy.” Jesus, in contrast, retorts, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” The spiritually worldly shout increasingly more each day that to be happy, we have to have all our sexual fantasies fulfilled and our culture promotes promiscuous movie stars and singers as those who have it made. Jesus, however, says “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.” The world preaches, “You’re happy when you accept yourself,” and espouses an “I’m okay, you’re okay,” brand of moral relativism. Jesus says, though, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for holiness for they will be filled.” The world says, “You’re happy when you don’t start a fight, but finish it,” and lives by the philosophy of might makes right in both interpersonal and international contexts, but Jesus says “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy” and “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” And our culture increasingly declares, “You’re happy when everyone considers you nice, when you don’t have an enemy in the world,” while Jesus says, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake” and “blessed are you when people revile you, persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account,” “for their reward will be the kingdom of heaven. We’ve long forgotten who were the richest, sexiest, most powerful, popular, or celebrated people of centuries past, yet we remember the saints depicted on the two bronze doors of St. Ignatius. And we all know who are the truly blessed ones. Today is a day in which they’re all praying for us to resolve to follow them along the way of the Beatitudes and of life according to the Holy Spirit.
            • The greatest means we have to grow in holiness is the food of the saints, which is Jesus Christ in Holy Communion. As Pope Francis wrote five years ago in his exhortation on holiness, “When we receive [Jesus] in Holy Communion, we renew our covenant with him and allow him to carry out ever more fully his work of transforming our lives.” When we receive Jesus well, we enter into communion with him who is holy, holy, holy, as he seeks to sanctify us from the inside out. Worshipping Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, outside of us in adoration, and inside of us after Holy Communion, is the best means to prepare us for what the saints now eternally enjoy.

              •  

              The readings for today’s Mass were: 

              Reading 1
              Rv 7:2-4, 9-14
              I, John, saw another angel come up from the East,
              holding the seal of the living God.
              He cried out in a loud voice to the four angels
              who were given power to damage the land and the sea,
              “Do not damage the land or the sea or the trees
              until we put the seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.”
              I heard the number of those who had been marked with the seal,
              one hundred and forty-four thousand marked
              from every tribe of the children of Israel.

              After this I had a vision of a great multitude,

              which no one could count,
              from every nation, race, people, and tongue.
              They stood before the throne and before the Lamb,
              wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands.
              They cried out in a loud voice:

              “Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne,

              and from the Lamb.”

              All the angels stood around the throne

              and around the elders and the four living creatures.
              They prostrated themselves before the throne,
              worshiped God, and exclaimed:

              “Amen. Blessing and glory, wisdom and thanksgiving,

              honor, power, and might
              be to our God forever and ever. Amen.”

              Then one of the elders spoke up and said to me,

              “Who are these wearing white robes, and where did they come from?”
              I said to him, “My lord, you are the one who knows.”
              He said to me,
              “These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress;
              they have washed their robes
              and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb.”

              Responsorial Psalm
              Ps 24:1bc-2, 3-4ab, 5-6
              R. (see 6) Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face.
              The LORD’s are the earth and its fullness;
              the world and those who dwell in it.
              For he founded it upon the seas
              and established it upon the rivers.
              R. Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face.
              Who can ascend the mountain of the LORD?
              or who may stand in his holy place?
              One whose hands are sinless, whose heart is clean,
              who desires not what is vain.
              R. Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face.
              He shall receive a blessing from the LORD,
              a reward from God his savior.
              Such is the race that seeks him,
              that seeks the face of the God of Jacob.
              R. Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face.
              Reading 2
              1 Jn 3:1-3
              Beloved:
              See what love the Father has bestowed on us
              that we may be called the children of God.
              Yet so we are.
              The reason the world does not know us
              is that it did not know him.
              Beloved, we are God’s children now;
              what we shall be has not yet been revealed.
              We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him,
              for we shall see him as he is.
              Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure,
              as he is pure.
              Alleluia
              Mt 11:28
              R. Alleluia, alleluia.
              Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
              And I will give you rest, says the Lord.
              R. Alleluia, alleluia.
              Gospel
              Mt 5:1-12a
              When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain,
              and after he had sat down, his disciples came to him.
              He began to teach them, saying:

              “Blessed are the poor in spirit,

              for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
              Blessed are they who mourn,
              for they will be comforted.
              Blessed are the meek,
              for they will inherit the land.
              Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
              for they will be satisfied.
              Blessed are the merciful,
              for they will be shown mercy.
              Blessed are the clean of heart,
              for they will see God.
              Blessed are the peacemakers,
              for they will be called children of God.
              Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
              for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
              Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you
              and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me.
              Rejoice and be glad,
              for your reward will be great in heaven.”

              The post Following the Saints All The Way, All Saints Day, November 1, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

              19 min
            • Divine Filiation and Life According to the Spirit, 30th Monday (I), October 30, 2023

              Fr. Roger J. Landry

              Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
              Monday of the 30th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
              Votive Mass for those Suffering
              October 30, 2023
              Rom 8:12-17, Ps 16, Lk 13:10-17

               

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

              https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.30.23_Homily_1.mp3

               

              The following points were attempted in the homily: 

              • To understand the contrast between Jesus and the leader of the synagogue with regard to the crippled woman in the Gospel, it is worthwhile to grasp the categories given to us by St. Paul in the first reading. And to do that, it’s important to understand it in context with what has come before in the first two weeks of this biennial month-long gift of the Letter to the Romans at daily Mass.
              • We have already seen the distinction between those who view justification by grace received in faith working through love from those who depend fundamentally on their own works. If we had had the first reading on Saturday, when it was supplanted by the proper readings for the feast of the apostles Simon and Jude, we would have had the beginning of Chapter 8 of the Letter to the Romans, which is the fulcrum not only of this letter but in my opinion of the Christian life, the distinction between life according to the flesh and life according to the Holy Spirit. St. Paul advanced the same distinction we have had in previous chapters, between living according to ourselves in our fallenness or living by God and the power of his life. In today’s passage, St. Paul advanced the argument even more, saying there is a difference between a spirit of slavery and one of adoption, between fear of God and filiation. The chief of the synagogue in the Gospel, like many of the scribes the Pharisees, basically approached the covenant as a bunch of laws rather than a relationship with a Legislator. The scribes and Pharisees scrupulously wanted to keep to the letter of every prescription, but in doing so they missed the weightier aspects and put the focus on themselves. Even though they knew that they couldn’t take the Sabbath off from caring for their animals, they failed to exercise similar charity toward a sick woman, criticizing Jesus for caring for her on the Sabbath. They so lacked a spirit of filiation that they failed to see in her a sister rather than a stranger, as someone far more valuable than all the oxen and donkeys in the world. They also failed to grasp the mind and heart of the Legislator, who happens to be God the Father, blind to how he would never want us to give up acts of charity in order to honor him. We heard yesterday at Sunday Mass that we’re called to love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength and, sharing God’s love, love our neighbor with all our mind, heart, soul and strength. Such acts of love are not only permitted on the Sabbath, but they are particularly made for the Sabbath!
              • This woman was crippled for 18 years and could not look up. Not only did she have a serious physical malady, but she also had a spiritual problem, as the Fathers of the Church commented: she just couldn’t look up toward God. Her eyes were constantly toward the ground, to earthly difficulties. She came into the synagogue because she still wanted God. She still knew she needed Him. It was on that Sabbath that Jesus, seeing her completely incapable of standing erect, said to her, “Woman, you are liberated from your infirmity.” Jesus didn’t use her name. He used a vocative that recalled the beginning of creation, one that foretold how we would call his mother on Calvary. He was going to treat this woman with the care and compassion with which he wanted to treat every woman: “be free of your infirmity.” He laid his hands on her head, at once she stood up straight, and began to glorify God, not just because she was cured, but because she was now able to raise up her heart, with her back and with her chin and eyes and hopes above. That’s what life according to the Holy Spirit is meant to make possible.
              • The sabbath was made for the human person precisely to free us from the spirit of slavery, from the servitude of life according to the flesh. Four times God told the Jews through Moses that he had given the commandment to keep holy the Lord’s day because they “were once slaves in Egypt” (Deut 5:15, 15:15, 24:18, 24:22). It’s meant to help us to live in right relationship with God and others, to be freed from being owned by our work or what work can lead to. This is why Jesus declared that curing the woman on the sabbath was not only possible but “fitting,” since the Sabbath is a day of liberation! The synagogue chief and many others totally failed to grasp this. And out of fear of the Lord who gave them the Sabbath, they neglected love of neighbor. Jesus came to liberate us from this slavery and help us live as sons in Him, the Son. He came to do for us something even greater than what was done for the woman in the Gospel, curing us of our infirmities and helping us to stand erect before God and to glorify him, lifting up our hearts and seeking with the power of the Holy Spirit the things that are above.
              • The mind-blowing beauty of this path of divine filiation is given to us at the end of today’s first reading when we realize — consistent with the adoption policies in the Roman empire in which the adopted child would assume all of the rights and responsibilities of natural children, and, if the adoptee was the oldest, all of the rights of primogeniture — that having been adopted by God the Father, we become “heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.” But there’s one condition on this inheritance: “…if only we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.” For us to enter into the full inheritance, we must suffer, because without suffering we won’t grow to full stature as spiritual children, we won’t “put to death the deeds of the body.” St. John, in his first letter, testified to this reality when he said, “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. … Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” Through living by the power of the Holy Spirit as adopted sons and daughters of God, we become gradually like him. And to be glorified with Christ, we must be exalted as the Son of God was on the Cross, which is a sign of a love that endures anything for God and for others. We need to suffer precisely so that the glory of God the Father’s love flowing through us as his adopted children might be revealed, the glory we got a glimpse of not simply by Christ’s curing the woman in the Gospel but by his willingness to suffer — and in fact, eventually be killed — in order to cure her on the Sabbath.
              • Today Jesus wants to renew us in our spiritual of filiation so that together with him we might cry out, by the power of the Holy Spirit, “Abba Father!” He wants to heal of us our infirmities that keep us bent down toward earth so that we can stand erect in his presence, lift our our heads, hearts, and lives, and glorify God the Father together with him. And it’s here that we receive, as a down payment on eternity, our greatest inheritance of all, God the Father’s greatest treasure, Who becomes our spiritual food!

                •  

                The readings for today’s Mass were:

                Reading 1 Rom 8:12-17
                Brothers and sisters,
                we are not debtors to the flesh,
                to live according to the flesh.
                For if you live according to the flesh, you will die,
                but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body,
                you will live.
                For those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.
                For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear,
                but you received a spirit of adoption,
                through which we cry, “Abba, Father!”
                The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit
                that we are children of God,
                and if children, then heirs,
                heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ,
                if only we suffer with him
                so that we may also be glorified with him.
                Responsorial Psalm PS 68:2 and 4, 6-7ab, 20-21
                R. (21a) Our God is the God of salvation.
                God arises; his enemies are scattered,
                and those who hate him flee before him.
                But the just rejoice and exult before God;
                they are glad and rejoice.
                R. Our God is the God of salvation.
                The father of orphans and the defender of widows
                is God in his holy dwelling.
                God gives a home to the forsaken;
                he leads forth prisoners to prosperity.
                R. Our God is the God of salvation.
                Blessed day by day be the Lord,
                who bears our burdens; God, who is our salvation.
                God is a saving God for us;
                the LORD, my Lord, controls the passageways of death.
                R. Our God is the God of salvation.

                Alleluia Jn 17:17b, 17a

                R. Alleluia, alleluia.

                Your word, O Lord, is truth;
                consecrate us in the truth.
                R. Alleluia, alleluia.

                Gospel Lk 13:10-17
                Jesus was teaching in a synagogue on the sabbath.
                And a woman was there who for eighteen years
                had been crippled by a spirit;
                she was bent over, completely incapable of standing erect.
                When Jesus saw her, he called to her and said,
                “Woman, you are set free of your infirmity.”
                He laid his hands on her,
                and she at once stood up straight and glorified God.
                But the leader of the synagogue,
                indignant that Jesus had cured on the sabbath,
                said to the crowd in reply,
                “There are six days when work should be done.
                Come on those days to be cured, not on the sabbath day.”
                The Lord said to him in reply, “Hypocrites!
                Does not each one of you on the sabbath
                untie his ox or his ass from the manger
                and lead it out for watering?
                This daughter of Abraham,
                whom Satan has bound for eighteen years now,
                ought she not to have been set free on the sabbath day
                from this bondage?”
                When he said this, all his adversaries were humiliated;
                and the whole crowd rejoiced at all the splendid deeds done by him.

                The post Divine Filiation and Life According to the Spirit, 30th Monday (I), October 30, 2023 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                16 min

              About Catholic Preaching

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              Father Roger J. Landry is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, who works for the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations in New York.

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