Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

September 2, 2023

 

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

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The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday, in which we see a dramatic turnaround from what we considered a week ago. In last Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus called Simon Peter “the Rock on whom I will build by Church” and promised that “the gates of Hell will not prevail against it.” This Sunday, Jesus calls Peter, “Satan,” and tells him, essentially, that the gates of Hell are prevailing against him. Why does this happen? Because Peter was rejecting Jesus’ prophetic words that Jesus would suffer, be killed and be raised: “God forbid it, Lord!,” Peter shouted. “This must never happen to you!” We might think that this was just the concern of a friend trying to prevent Jesus from suffering harm, but Jesus, the Lord, saw something much deeper. The reason why he called him “Satan,” was because Peter at that moment was, without realizing it, playing the part of Satan the tempter, effectively trying to steer him away from doing his Father’s will. The reason why Jesus said, “Get behind me!,” is because Peter was trying to leadJesus rather than to follow him, and no creature can ever do that to the Creator, and no disciple can ever do that to the Master. Jesus very directly summed up what was the cause of Peter’s fall: “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

* As challenging as that was, Jesus then upped the ante. It was tough enough to accept “the way God thinks” when that meant that the “Christ, the Son of the Living God” (as Peter confessed him last week) was going to undergo great suffering and be crucified. But Jesus said that if we wanted to be his disciples, we would need to undergo the same. This is God’s standard for us, too. “If anyone wishes to become my disciple,” Jesus tells us at the end of this Sunday’s Gospel, “he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” Each of us is, and want to be ever better, a follower of Jesus. We want our friends and family members to be disciples of Jesus. But we cannot be his disciples unless we do what Jesus indicates — deny ourselves rather than affirm ourselves, pick up our Cross daily, and follow Jesus rather than doing our own thing. To be Jesus’ disciple means thinking as Jesus thinks, willing as he wills, choosing as he chooses, serving as he serves, and loving as he loves. That’s the high and heroic challenge he puts before us.

* 2000 years after Jesus’ crucifixion, we are not shocked as St. Peter was when Jesus gave the first of three prophecies of what would happen to him on Good Friday, because we know that it turns out dramatically well on the third day. But most of us are still shocked when Jesus says to us that in order to be his disciple we must deny ourselves, die to ourselves through the Cross and follow him along the path to death in order to live. And we’re even more shocked when Jesus asks those we care about to follow him along the path of suffering. We still are tempted to say, “God forbid, Lord, that any such thing as pain and suffering, of the Cross, happen to me or my loved ones!” Because we struggle to think as God thinks, we’re tempted to water down what Jesus says are preconditions to being his follower. We think all Jesus is asking us to do is to “offer up” daily contradictions and hardships,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Friday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation

September 1, 2023

1 Thes 4:1-8, Ps 97, Mt 25:1-13

 

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

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* St. Paul reminds us in his first Letter to the Thessalonians today of our call to holiness, which is a call to the perfection of Christ-like love. This is what St. Paul earnestly asked and exhorted the new Christians there, the way they should conduct themselves to please God and follow the instructions he gave them through the Lord Jesus. The opposite of that call to sanctity, the opposite of God’s will for us to become holy as he is holy, St. Paul says immediately thereafter, is “porneia,” which the New American Bible weakly translates as “immorality,” but it’s the Greek work for all sexual sins from which we can easily see the derivation of the word pornography. Lust and the sexual immorality to which it leads turns us from unselfish self-givers in the image of Christ to takers or consumers of others, from those who sacrifice for the good of others, to those who sacrifice others for their own pleasure. Saint John Paul II taught in his theology of the body that unchastity totally changes the intentionality of a human being from a lover to a luster, something that we call to mind today on the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, since the selfish exploitation of our common home often flows from the utilitarian, non-reverential and indeed selfish way we often take advantage of the summit of creation, which is other human human beings. St. Paul reminds us of something we and our culture needs to remember: we cannot be saints and sexually immoral at the same time. The devil unsurprisingly tries to corrupt our having been made in the image and likeness of God by corroding our understanding of and approach to human love, because lust will impact at its root our receiving God’s love, our loving him back and our loving others. That’s why St. Paul later in the passage tells us that we need to behave differently from the Gentiles who don’t know God, that we should never take advantage of or exploit a brother or a sister, that we should take spouses not in lust but in “holiness and honor.” God calls us, he stresses,  “not to impurity but to holiness,” and “whoever disregards this disregards God himself.”

* For this to happen, we need, to hate porneia, to despise unchastity, out of love for God, ourselves and others. In Psalm 97 today, it says, “The Lord loves those who hate evil.” If we love evil, we can’t receive God’s unconditional love to the extent he wants to give it to us, because we block ourselves to it through the sinful worship of some idol. There are many false prophets today in the Church who basically want to baptize porneia, to pretend as if it’s not that important, and who treat sexual immorality as at most a venial sin if not treating it almost as quasi-sacramental “loving” activity. We see it in the way that many treat divorce and remarriage, as if a second union while the first spouse remains living is somehow not adulterous as Jesus himself clearly calls it. We see it in the way that many relate to sex outside of marriage, saying “everyone does it,” and pretend as if those who think it’s a serious sin are the ones with a problem. We see it in the way people think that the use of pornography or masturbation are totally mainstream, morally unproblematic and irrelevant to God’s plans for us. And we see it today in a particularly aggressive way in the treatment of same-sex sexual activit...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Thursday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Votive Mass for the Grace of a Happy Death

August 31, 2023

1 Thes 3:7-13, Ps 90, Mt 24:42-51

 

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

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today Jesus uses a shocking image to describe himself in relation to us. We’re used to so many other titles he gives himself that are rich and inviting: Good Shepherd, Son of Man, Son of God, Savior, Lord, Resurrection and Life, Light of the World, the Way, The Truth, Gate, and more. Today he labels himself as a Thief, putting that title in parallel with “your Lord” and “Son of Man.” We normally don’t hold thieves in esteem. The whole reason why the Good Thief is remembered by that title is because “good” and “thief” together are paradoxical terms. But Jesus’ being like a thief is clearly what he means to communicate. In the Book of Revelation, he addresses St. John twice by saying, “If you are not watchful, I will come like a thief and you will never know at what hour I will come” (Rev 3:3) and “Behold I am coming like a thief” (Rev 16:15). St. Paul, later in his first letter to the Thessalonians than the passage we have this morning says, “For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief at night. … But you, brothers, are not in darkness, for that day to overtake you like a thief” (1 Thess 5:2-4). St. Peter in his Second Letter likewise reminder the early Christians, “The day of the Lord will come like a thief” (2 Pet 3:10).

* Why does Jesus choose this image? I think for two reasons. The first is to help us acknowledge and overcome our sense of ownership of our life, our time, our things. We’re afraid of thieves because we are afraid of losing what we have. But none of what we have — even our life — is our own. We’re stewards of a gift. We can’t and won’t be afraid of the “thievery” of God if we’re already seeking to give him all we have and are. The second reason is to focus on the aspect of surprise. We’re afraid of thieves because we want to feel safe and secure, we want to think that while we’re asleep or away that we and our possessions are protected, that they’ll all be there when we return or wake up, that somebody won’t liquidate our bank account, or empty our house of all its valuables, or even swipe and use our identity. Unlike armed robbers who act in daylight overpowering us with threat of force or death, thieves are more like pickpockets, working when we don’t expect or perceive. Jesus does not want us to be surprised, but rather always expecting him, always awake, sober, looking forward to an encounter with him, so that we’re never surprised when he comes, in day to day life, or, more apropos to today’s Gospel, at the end of our life on earth.

* The types of virtues Jesus wishes for us in awaiting his thievery are given in the second part of today’s Gospel, when Jesus describes the “faithful and prudent servant.” Faithful, pistis in Greek, means first “believing” or “trusting,” indicating that it’s someone who trusts in the Master and in turn earns the Master’s trust. He believes in the Master. He loves the Master. He believes he’s good and worthy of his trust and so behaves, intentionally, consistent with that confidence. The other virtue is phronimos, which is generally translated “wise” or “prudent” but basically means practical, acting considerately on the truth, incarnating goodness in needs. It’s someone who is passionately committed to fulfilling one’s duties out of that trust and love in the ruler. Jesus contrasts this faithful and prudent steward with a “wicked serv...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Wednesday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

August 30, 2023

1 Thess 2:9-13, Ps 139, Mt 23:27-32

 

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

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today St. Paul retraces how he sought to treat the new Christians in Thessalonika with parental love. Yesterday he told them “We were gentle among you, as a nursing mother cares for her children” and went on to show how that mother-like affection led him to share with them “not only the Gospel of God, but our very selves as well, so dearly beloved had you become to us.” Like a mother who breastfeeds her child, giving her own self together with the nourishment, so St. Paul was describing how he was giving himself to the Thessolonian Christians together with the Gospel. Today he mentions a type of paternal inspiration moving children past their fears and excuses: “We treated each one of you as a father treats his children, exhorting and encouraging you and insisting that you walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into his Kingdom and glory.” We can learn so much from each of these images about how to be spiritual mothers and fathers of others. God, as we know, loves us with both paternal and maternal love. His paternal love is expressed by the masculine word in Hebrew hesed, which points to how loyal and unwavering his merciful love is. His maternal love is conveyed by the word rahamim, which is tender and can never forget a child (Is 49). It’s from God’s love that the Church — and each of us in the Church — learns how to love as both mother and father, giving ourselves in love together with God’s word, much like mothers put their whole lives into their care for their children, and challenging kids to live up to their potential, much like fathers help children leave comfort zones and confront and overcome obstacles.

* With parental pride, St. Paul gives thanks to God for the way that the Thessalonians had received both the Gospel and Paul’s own self-gift as means to walk — behave— in a way consistent with the kingdom to which God calls. “For this reason we too give thanks to God unceasingly, that, in receiving the word of God from hearing us, you received it not as the word of men, but as it truly is, the word of God, which is now at work in you who believe.” They received the Word as a gift from God himself and allowed that word to change their life, to work within, to bear fruit from good soil, to separate their bone from their marrow. The Word of God is meant to impact our life and change it and they were allowing that metanoia, that revolution of the way they live, to happen as a result of the word of God.

* This was in huge contrast to the Scribes and Pharisees whom Jesus calls to conversion in today’s Gospel. After the exile in Babylon, as a result of the Jews’ failure to hear and heed the Word of God, the Scribes were formed to study meticulously every letter of the Mosaic law and Sacred Scripture to prevent a recurrence of the exile due to ignorance and infidelity. The Pharisees were ones whose whole life revolved around putting into practice what the scribes themselves taught. Many scribes were Pharisees and vice versa. But lots of them, instead of being set free by the truth of God’s word, allowed it to become a means to enslave them. They started to draw huge human interpretations around God’s word — like hand washing, or the way to live the Sabbath — that began to strain out gnats and swallow camels, that had them ignore the weightier parts of the law for the sake of the less important material. In the 23rd Chapter of St. Matthew,

Fr Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Memorial of the Passion of St. John the Baptist

August 29, 2023

1 Thess 2:1-8, Ps 139, Mk 6:17-29

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.29.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today we celebrate the final way by which St. John the Baptist made straight the paths of the Lord. He had been his precursor in birth, making a joy-filled in utero proclamation of Christ’s presence. He was his forerunner in preaching the message of conversion, with the Word made flesh eventually echoing what the “voice of One crying out in the wilderness” was crying out: repent, change your ways, have a revolution in your conduct. He was his predecessor in the work of baptizing, showing in a non-sacramental anticipation what Christ himself would sacramentally institute, do and send his Church to continue to do to the ends of the earth and the end of time. And today we mark how he was his precursor in imprisonment, death and in a vague sense his resurrection, with Herod saying of Jesus the very words that the angels at the tomb would say, “He has been raised from the dead,” applying them to Jesus whom he, through the paranoia of a guilty conscience, viewed as John the Baptist redivivus. Tertullian said that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of future Christians, and the blood of this protomartyr was what prepared the way for Christ’s own martyrdom and the martyrdom of St. Stephen, the apostles, and so many others after Christ. Christ himself made that link after the Transfiguration, when Peter, James and John asked him about whether Elijah whom they had just seen speaking to Jesus would precede Jesus as the Messiah. Jesus replied, “I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him but did to him whatever they pleased. So also will the Son of Man suffer at their hands” (Mt 17:12). This feast used to be called the “Beheading of St. John the Baptist,” but in the updated Roman Missal of 2011, it was changed to “Passion,” specifically to link it to Christ’s Passion. So today we need to look at John the Baptist’s martyrdom in a Christological key and in a Christian key, because all of his actions point to Christ and insofar as our actions are meant to flow from our following and our union with Christ, John’s actions also implicate us just as much as they implicated Herod, Herodias, Salome and all Herod’s courtiers, military officials and the leading figures of Galilee.

* In today’s first reading, taken from Tuesday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time, Year I, St. Paul writes about his own preaching with words that are likewise apt for St. John the Baptist and for all of us called by baptism and strengthened by confirmation to give witness to the truth. St. Paul tells the Thessalonians, “After we had suffered and been insolently treated, as you know, in Philippi,” where he was beaten and imprisoned before God freed him in an earthquake to bring to faith his jailor and the jailor’s whole family, “we drew courage through our God to speak to you the Gospel of God with much struggle. Our exhortation was not from delusion or impure motives, nor did it work through deception. But as we were judged worthy by God to be entrusted with the Gospel, that is how we speak, not as trying to please men, but rather God, who judges our hearts. Nor, indeed, did we ever appear with flattering speech, as you know, or with a pretext for greed–God is witness– nor did we seek praise from men, either from you or from others, although we were able to impose our weight as Apostles of Christ. … With such affection for you, we were determined to share with you not only t...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Monday of the 21st Week of Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Augustine, Bishop and Doctor

August 28, 2023

1 Thess 1:1-5.8-10, Ps 149, Mt 23:13-22

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.28.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today, on the feast of one of the second most famous convert in the history of the Church, the readings focus on conversion.

* St. Paul, the most famous convert in Church annals, in today’s first reading, praises the Christians in Thessalonika for having “turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.” His words unmask a key truth: we’re always worshipping someone or something. They were turning, first, from pagan idols, but they were also turning from the three-fold concupiscence of materialism, hedonism and individualism (the lust of the eyes, of the flesh and the pride of life). But when they heard the kerygma through St. Paul, they turned away from sin, turned toward God and began to turn with God, serving him.

* St. Paul used to be a Pharisee and himself once needed to turn from the idol he had made of his and the Pharisaical interpretation of the Mosaic Law in order to come to know the true God made man, Jesus Christ. As soon as he met him, he began to serve him, and he served him throughout the rest of his life. In the Gospel, Jesus was trying to bring other Pharisees to conversion, by exposing their hypocrisy, their pretending to serve God by serving their own idea of God. He accused them of being “blind guides”; of not entering the Kingdom of Heaven Jesus was proclaiming and seeking to lock the door for others trying to enter; of zealously trying to make converts only to set them under the sway of the same evil one they themselves were serving, as we would see when they would conspire to have Jesus fraudulently tried and executed; of creating a series of silly man-made rules about swearing oaths by invoking the temple, or the gold of the temple, or the altar, or the gift on the altar, in order to find loopholes in the duty to tell the truth and become, as Jesus complimented St. Bartholomew last Thursday, for being “without guile.” They were living a lie, but had convinced themselves they were living the truth, and Truth incarnate was trying to set them free, to turn from their idols, and learn how to serve rather than be served in the kingdom he had come to establish.

* Turning from idols to serve the living and true God encapsulates the life of St. Augustine. He wrote at the beginning of his famous Confessions that God has made us for himself and our hearts are restless, without peace, until they rest in Him, and his youthful escapes from the death of his father at 17 through his baptism at 32 were attempts to serve the idol of his ego, of his libido, and ultimately of the gods of his own making. But having discovered the true God after resisting him for long, he sought to make up for lost time. He described his idol worship in Book X of his Confessions, in a passage that I think is one of the most eloquent in the history of writing. He penned, “Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

August 27, 2023

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

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.27.23_CCM_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* In today’s Gospel we have one of the most important dialogue in all of salvation history, crucial in the life and work of Jesus, pivotal in the history of the Church. Jesus turns to his closest followers and asks two connected questions: First, who do others say that he is? Second, who do you — meaning each of them — say that he is.

* When Jesus asked the first question, there were many responses. Everybody was comfortable to participate. They replied by saying the people were numbering Jesus among the greatest figures, past and present, in Jewish history. Some, like the murderous Herod Antipas who had decapitated the Lord’s precursor, were saying Jesus was John the Baptist risen from the dead. Others were claiming he was Elijah, the greatest of all the prophets, the one whose return they believed would set the stage for the Messianic age. Others said he was Jeremiah, who they believed had hidden the ark and the altar of sacrifice before the destruction of the Temple and who they anticipated would return to reinstitute true worship. At the time Jesus asked the question, many of the Jews were accustomed to say that there had not been prophets for 400 years, and therefore, whoever Jesus was, the crowds believed that he was likely the greatest figure in at least four centuries. But as high as those estimations of Jesus’ reputation were, who he truly was was still much greater. That led to the second question.

* When Jesus asked, however, whom they themselves said he was, that’s when most of them caught laryngitis. Most refused to go out on a limb, even among themselves. St. Bartholomew, a.k.a. Nathaniel, whose feast day was Thursday had already basically answered the question the day he met Jesus for the first time, when he called him the “Son of God and the King of Israel,” pointing to Jesus’ divine and human origins as the Son of the Eternal Father and the descendent of David. But even he remained quiet. Peter, however, took the risk. He stood up and boldly replied that Jesus was far more than a great prophet, far more than the greatest figure in centuries, far more even than Moses. He wasn’t just the Messiah, the long-awaited Savior for whom the Jews had been waiting for a millennium. He was the Son of the Living God.

* Today as new students arrive at Columbia and already returned students join them at this Mass, Jesus could ask both of us anew these questions. First, who do others say that he is? What do they see about him in the Core Curriculum? What do the history profs say? What about students getting doctorates in theology or religious studies at one of the graduate student faculties? What do the film makers in Hollywood say and the music producers and artists? What do the most recent polls say? It’s impossible for them objectively to ignore Jesus, whom impartial historians would be able to say is the single most impactful figure of all time. But many would try to reduce Jesus just to an important ethical teacher, a religious leader, an innocent victim of capital punishment, a self-described Jewish artisan from a small town in Galilee. CS Lewis made clear he couldn’t be merely a good teacher, because he said he was the Son of God, and that would mean he’s either who he claims to be or was either a lunatic who mistakenly thought he was God’s Son or a conscious liar and therefore a scoundrel. But even should some people respond with the words we will pray later toda...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx

Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

August 27, 2023

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

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.27.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

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

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

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

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

August 26, 2023

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.26.23_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. In it, he’s going to ask us the same two momentous questions he asked the apostles 2,000 years ago in Caesarea Philippi: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” and “Who do you say that I am.” These get to Jesus’ real identity: Who is Jesus? And who is he in my life?

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

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Feast of St. Bartholomew, Apostle and Martyr

August 24, 2023

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

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.24.23_Homily.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

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

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

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