Catholic Preaching

By Father Roger LandryReligion & Spirituality Christianity

Catholic Preaching episodes

March 22Believing in Jesus, The Resurrection and the Life, Fifth Sunday of Lent (A), March 22, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
Fifth Sunday of Lent, Year A
March 22, 2026
Ezek 37:12-14, Ps 130, Rom 8:8-11, Jn 11:1-45

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.22.26_Homily_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
The episode of Jesus’ raising Lazarus from the dead is so rich that whole retreats can be preached upon it. The Church gives it to us on the Sunday before Palm Sunday not only because it is meant to frame our preparation for Holy Week, but even more simply, because it is what Jesus did right before he entered Jerusalem on a donkey. By it, Jesus was teaching his disciples 2000 years ago — and continues to teach us today — invaluable lessons of our faith. Jesus said to his followers before heading to Bethany, “Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe.” Jesus worked the miracle the way he did — from his initial delay, to the words he chose, to his prayer to the Father, to his calling forth of Lazarus after four days in the tomb — so that we may believe certain crucial truths that will help us not only better appreciate this miracle but also grasp the great things Jesus will accomplish during Holy Week in Jerusalem. Let’s focus on three of those truths.
The first lesson Jesus communicates by the way he worked this miracle is that he is willing to diefor each of his disciples. As soon as Jesus announced that he would go to Lazarus, the disciples exclaimed, “The Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” Later, when Jesus reiterated that he was going, St. Thomas, who was one of the most realistic and perhaps pessimistic of the disciples, said simply, “Let us also go, so that we may die with him.” They all recognized that Jesus was risking his life to go bring Lazarus back to life. We now know in hindsight what Jesus recognized in foresight: that their worst fears were about to come true — Jesus would be captured, tortured and killed. Jesus would indeed give his life to return Lazarus to life. But Jesus loved Lazarus enough to do it. Lazarus was his friend, and as Jesus would say a week later during the Last Supper, “No one has any greater love than this, to lay down his life for his friends” (Jn 15:13).
The central truth Jesus wants us to capture is that we are his friends, too, and that out of love for us he went up the mountain not just to bring Lazarus back to life, but to give his life to bring each of us back to life. St. John tells us that Jesus “loved Martha and her sister [Mary] and Lazarus,” and the crowd, seeing him weeping at the tomb, said, “Look at how much he loved him!,” so Jesus loves us just as personally and just as much. Right after he described that no one has greater love than to lay down his life for his friends, he said: “You are my friends. … I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father” (Jn 15:14-15). It’s obvious that Jesus, from a distance, could have cured Lazarus and even brought him back to life. After all, he had already worked several such miracles from a distance, like the healing of the Centurion’s servant, the Royal Official’s son and the daughter of the Syro-Phoenician woman (Mt 8:13; Mt 15:28; Jn 4:50). By going up to work the miracle in person, however, Jesus was showing everyone that helping Lazarus was worth his life. In a similar way, God could have come up with another way to save us without the Son of God’s leaving heaven, without his taking on our flesh, without his going up to Calvary and being massacred on a Cross, but he likewise wanted to show us we were worth saving. The greatest source of our human dignity is that Jesus accounted our lives more valuable than his own, and was willing to take our place on death row, to give his life for ours. If we could listen to the angels, seeing this love that Jesus has for each of us, we would hear them saying, “Look at how much he loved them.” This great love is the first thing he wanted us to believe in by this miracle.
The second thing Jesus wanted to manifest through this miracle was his power over death, so that we might have faith in what he said would happen to him after his death and what would happen to us after our death. Even though Jesus had already raised from the dead both the daughter of Jairus (Mk 5:22 ff) and the only son of the widow of Nain (Lk 7:11 ff), he knew that his disciples, despite his having told them three times what would happen to him, would have a terribly difficult time maintaining hope after they would see him tortured, crucified, and buried in the tomb the following week. So, like he did with the Transfiguration for Peter, James and John when he gave them a glimpse of his divine glory, He wanted to give all twelve a clear example that with God all things are possible, that with God there is never a truly hopeless situation. He wanted them to witness again that He is the Lord of Life, the one sent to fulfill the prophecy we heard in today’s first reading from Ezekiel, that God would “open your graves and bring you up from your graves,” breathing life back into our dry bones. The Jews believed that a person’s soul hovered around the body for three days after death. For Jesus to bring Lazarus back to life on the fourth day, when everyone knew Lazarus was “really, really dead,” was the greatest manifestation of Jesus’ divine power. While we could say that Lazarus’ resurrection was a resurrection “backward” (a resuscitation to an earthly life from which he would have to die again), Jesus’ resurrection and the resurrection in which he hoped we should share — which he prophesied in action by working this miracle — would be a resurrection “forward,” to a completely new state of life, from which we would never die again. In raising Lazarus, he manifested both his power and his desire to do this. And in raising him on the fourth day, he was also showing something else. He was indicating that he could also bring back to life all of those who had been dead for far more than four days — all those holy patriarchs, Jews and righteous gentiles, who had died even centuries before, all the way back to Adam and Eve — whose souls were then in Sheol. Like Jesus was patient before going to raise Lazarus, so the Blessed Trinity was patient in waiting millennia before Jesus came into the world on a rescue mission, but the same glorious result would take place. This is the second thing Jesus wanted us to believe in by his miracle in Bethany.
The third thing Jesus shows us is what resurrection and life really are. Very often we think of “resurrection” and “life” as concepts, or states, or events or Jesus wants us to recognize that resurrection and life are, rather, a person, or more specifically a relationship with a person. That person is Christ himself: “I am the resurrection and the life!” To be risen from the dead, to be fully alive, means to be in a living, loving friendship with Jesus, who teaches us that resurrection and life are not meant to be deferred. Martha, in her dialogue with Jesus, showed that she believed in the “resurrection on the last day.” What happens after we die was doubtless something Martha, Lazarus, and Mary would have asked Jesus when they had him over their house as a guest and so she believed in the general resurrection at the end of time. But Jesus wanted her to realize that the resurrection and life he had come from heaven to bring were supposed to be experienced in the present through the right relationship with Christ and the Spirit he gives to our mortal bodies. St. Paul described this reality in the second reading: “If Christ is in you, … if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.” Jesus not only wants us to experience his resurrection and life eternally, but wants us to experience it now, under a different modality than Lazarus did, but just as truly. He wants us to give the Holy Spirit total permission for him to raise our mortal bodies to the life of holiness. But for us to experience it, we need not only to change our understanding of resurrection and life from concepts to a personal relationship, but many of us will have to change our understanding of Jesus — and the Holy Spirit he sends — from a concept, from an historical figure, to a living, acting, breathing, loving Savior present right now seeking to raise us to life. When Jesus asked Martha, “Do you believe this?,” she didn’t reply merely, “Yes, Lord!” She gave us the grounds of her faith. She said, “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.” Because of her living faith in Jesus, because of her trust in him, she commited herself to believing anything he would say, even if it seemed hard or even impossible to believe. Because of her faith, Martha recognized that the Resurrection and the Life was standing before her! Because of her faith, she would be raised from the dead through her friendship with Jesus even before her brother Lazarus would be liberated from the tomb! Jesus wants us to have that same resurrection now.
But the question is: How? How do we, in this life, encounter and befriend Jesus, as Martha, Mary and Lazarus did? How do we experience the resurrection and the life in the present that he wants to give us? The deepest answer is that Jesus created the sacraments as the way, par excellence, for us to enter into his risen life and into a much deeper personal, faith-filled relationship with him. The sacraments help us to pass from death to life.
Baptism — In baptism, we die with Christ and rise with him. This is the journey for which elect catechumens around the world are now preparing. St. Paul stressed this truth in his letter to the Romans, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:3-4 ). Baptism gives us this newness of life. But it requires our being buried with Jesus in death, so that we might share in his resurrection. We’re called, like Thomas, to say, “Let us go up with him, so that we might die with him,” because it is only in dying with Jesus that we will share that resurrection. That Passover from death to life will happen in the life of the Elect in under two weeks. But it’s also supposed to be lived when each of us, at the Easter Vigil, renews our baptismal promises. Lent is an annual catechumenate for us all preparing us to receive or renew the graces of baptism at Easter so that all of us may experience a profound spiritual rebirth and walk ever more deeply in the baptismal “newness of life” that never ages.
Confession — The Fathers of the Church called confession our “second baptism.” When we’re spiritually dead through mortal sins committed after our baptism, when we’ve evicted the supernatural life of God from our souls by choosing in disguise Barabbas over Christ Jesus, the Lord doesn’t give up on us. On the day he rose from the dead, Easter Sunday Evening, Christ established the Sacrament of Confession, so that we might experience the full fruits of his resurrection in this life. He said to the apostles that blessed evening, “Just as the Father sent me [to forgive the sins of the world], so I send you.” He breathed on them so that they would receive the power of the Holy Spirit, and sent them out to forgive and retain sins in his name (Jn 20:19-23). His doing this on Easter Sunday points to the fact that every reconciliation is meant to be a resurrection. Jesus stressed this truth in the parable of the Prodigal Son, which describes what happens when God forgives us. The father in the parable, who represents God the Father, runs out to meet his repentant son, restores him to full dignity, throws a huge celebration for the son’s return and then gives the reason for his joy: “For my son who was dead has come to life again” (Lk 15:24). In the Sacrament of Penance, God brings us who are dead in sin to life again. He calls us out of our graves and puts his spirit once again within us. Jesus rolls away the stones from our tombs and beckons: “Come out! Come out of the tomb of tepidity, the sepulcher of sloth, the burial chamber of bitterness! Come out of your indifference! Leave behind your sins, your selfishness, your old life full of cobwebs in a dark crypt.” He sends his priests forth to unbind us from the sins that holds us down. Pope John Paul II said in 1993, “The tears of Jesus reveals, so to speak, God’s tears, his paternal tenderness, his merciful judgment before that most profound and tragic death of man which is sin, of which his physical death is a consequence. As St. Paul said, ‘the wages of sin’ is death. Christ weeps and prays for each sinner, so that he may be freed from the burial cloths that imprison him and might leave the tomb to return to life, so that he might have life.” Christ is weeping for us when we’re in sin, whenever we entomb ourselves in the death to which sin leads, and he wants to liberate us. But we have to recognize we are sinners in need of that resurrection to new life, that our sins have put us in the tomb. Many Catholics today behave like our predecessors in Sardis in the Book of Revelation, who didn’t even realize that they were dead in sin. Jesus had St. John write to them, “I know your works: you have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead.” Jesus described how they had soiled their white baptismal garments with the stain of sins and called them to remember the word they had heard, obey it and repent (Rev 3:1-6). Each of us needs to realize that Jesus knows our works, too, and even though we might have the reputation for being alive, some of us, too, might have soiled those baptismal garments and in fact be dead in sin. Out of love, he created the Sacrament of Reconciliation so that we might receive something far greater than Lazarus experienced. St. John Vianney, the patron saint of priests, used to say, “A great miracle is needed to raise a poor soul in the state of sin. Yes, a greater miracle that what the Lord did to raise Lazarus!”
The Eucharist — The third encounter with Christ, the resurrection and the life, occurs in the Eucharist. One year before the Last Supper, Jesus gave us a glimpse of the power of the Eucharist, when he said it was the way sine qua non for us to enter into his life: “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” Then he stressed the Eucharist’s connection to his resurrection and ourresurrection: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day” (Jn 6:53-54). For those of us who want to experience his resurrection in this life and the next, the path Jesus gives us is worthy reception of the Eucharist. There is no greater way. No wonder why Elect acros the world are experiencing such hunger pains for Christ in the Eucharist, whom they will receive for the first time in less than two weeks! May their hunger be contagious, so that all of us might recognize not just whom we receive but what he wishes to give us through worthy reception — his very risen life, a foretaste of eternal life with him.
The Eucharistic preface of this Mass summarizes for us the connection between the sacraments and the resurrection Christ wants to effect in us through them: “For as true man, [Jesus] wept for Lazarus his friend and as eternal God raised him from the tomb, just as, taking pity on the human race, he leads us by sacred mysteries to new life.” Those “sacred mysteries”referred to are the sacraments. Each of the Sacraments is supposed to do in us what Christ did to Lazarus — and even more!
Right after he told Martha that he is the resurrection and the life and that whoever lives and believes in him, even though he die, will live, Jesus asked her directly, “Do you believe this?” The same Jesus now turns to us and tells us the same truth. He reminds us of his great love for us that led him to trade his own life for ours. He recalls for us the great truths about the sacraments of resurrection — Baptism, Confession, and the Eucharist —and he puts us on the spot to determine whether it will be a source of life for us or whether we will try to put those gifts, and their Giver, to death. He asks each of us individually, as he asked Martha: “Do youbelieve this? Do you believe in my love? Do you believe my promises about the resurrection and the life? Do you believe in what I did to found the Sacrament of Confession to give you the joy of resurrection from the death of sin? Do you believe me when I tell you, ‘This is my body… given for you?’ Do you trust in me when I say, ‘This is the chalice of my blood… poured out for you?’ Then, Jesus tells us, “put your faith in me now: Come out of your tomb and live in friendship with me in this world so that that friendship, that resurrection and that life will continue forever!”

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 EZ 37:12-14
Thus says the Lord GOD:
O my people, I will open your graves
and have you rise from them,
and bring you back to the land of Israel.
Then you shall know that I am the LORD,
when I open your graves and have you rise from them,
O my people!
I will put my spirit in you that you may live,
and I will settle you upon your land;
thus you shall know that I am the LORD.
I have promised, and I will do it, says the LORD.
Responsorial Psalm PS 130:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8
R. (7) With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.
Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD;
LORD, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to my voice in supplication.
R. With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.
If you, O LORD, mark iniquities,
LORD, who can stand?
But with you is forgiveness,
that you may be revered.
R. With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.
I trust in the LORD;
my soul trusts in his word.
More than sentinels wait for the dawn,
let Israel wait for the LORD.
R. With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.
For with the LORD is kindness
and with him is plenteous redemption;
And he will redeem Israel
from all their iniquities.
R. With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.
Reading 2 ROM 8:8-11
Brothers and sisters:
Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
But you are not in the flesh;
on the contrary, you are in the spirit,
if only the Spirit of God dwells in you.
Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
But if Christ is in you,
although the body is dead because of sin,
the spirit is alive because of righteousness.
If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you,
the one who raised Christ from the dead
will give life to your mortal bodies also,
through his Spirit dwelling in you.
Verse Before The Gospel JN 11:25A, 26
I am the resurrection and the life, says the Lord;
whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will never die.
Gospel JN 11:1-45
Now a man was ill, Lazarus from Bethany,
the village of Mary and her sister Martha.
Mary was the one who had anointed the Lord with perfumed oil
and dried his feet with her hair;
it was her brother Lazarus who was ill.
So the sisters sent word to him saying,
“Master, the one you love is ill.”
when Jesus heard this he said,
“This illness is not to end in death,
but is for the glory of God,
that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.
So when he heard that he was ill,
he remained for two days in the place where he was.
Then after this he said to his disciples,
“Let us go back to Judea.”
The disciples said to him,
“Rabbi, the Jews were just trying to stone you,
and you want to go back there?”
Jesus answered,
“Are there not twelve hours in a day?
If one walks during the day, he does not stumble,
because he sees the light of this world.
But if one walks at night, he stumbles,
because the light is not in him.”
He said this, and then told them,
“Our friend Lazarus is asleep,
but I am going to awaken him.”
So the disciples said to him,
“Master, if he is asleep, he will be saved.”
But Jesus was talking about his death,
while they thought that he meant ordinary sleep.
So then Jesus said to them clearly,
“Lazarus has died.
And I am glad for you that I was not there,
that you may believe.
Let us go to him.”
So Thomas, called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples,
“Let us also go to die with him.”
When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus
had already been in the tomb for four days.
Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, only about two miles away.
And many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary
to comfort them about their brother.
When Martha heard that Jesus was coming,
she went to meet him;
but Mary sat at home.
Martha said to Jesus,
“Lord, if you had been here,
my brother would not have died.
But even now I know that whatever you ask of God,
God will give you.”
Jesus said to her,
“Your brother will rise.”
Martha said to him,
“I know he will rise,
in the resurrection on the last day.”
Jesus told her,
“I am the resurrection and the life;
whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live,
and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.
Do you believe this?”
She said to him, “Yes, Lord.
I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God,
the one who is coming into the world.”
When she had said this,
she went and called her sister Mary secretly, saying,
“The teacher is here and is asking for you.”
As soon as she heard this,
she rose quickly and went to him.
For Jesus had not yet come into the village,
but was still where Martha had met him.
So when the Jews who were with her in the house comforting her
saw Mary get up quickly and go out,
they followed her,
presuming that she was going to the tomb to weep there.
When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him,
she fell at his feet and said to him,
“Lord, if you had been here,
my brother would not have died.”
When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping,
he became perturbed and deeply troubled, and said,
“Where have you laid him?”
They said to him, “Sir, come and see.”
And Jesus wept.
So the Jews said, “See how he loved him.”
But some of them said,
“Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man
have done something so that this man would not have died?”
So Jesus, perturbed again, came to the tomb.
It was a cave, and a stone lay across it.
Jesus said, “Take away the stone.”
Martha, the dead man’s sister, said to him,
“Lord, by now there will be a stench;
he has been dead for four days.”
Jesus said to her,
“Did I not tell you that if you believe
you will see the glory of God?”
So they took away the stone.
And Jesus raised his eyes and said,
“Father, I thank you for hearing me.
I know that you always hear me;
but because of the crowd here I have said this,
that they may believe that you sent me.”
And when he had said this,
He cried out in a loud voice,
“Lazarus, come out!”
The dead man came out,
tied hand and foot with burial bands,
and his face was wrapped in a cloth.
So Jesus said to them,
“Untie him and let him go.”
Now many of the Jews who had come to Mary
and seen what he had done began to believe in him.
The post Believing in Jesus, The Resurrection and the Life, Fifth Sunday of Lent (A), March 22, 2026 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
27 min
March 22 3.22.26 Consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Retreat for Women of the NYC Chapter of the Leonine Forum, March 22, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Retreat for Women of the NYC Chapter of the Leonine Forum
Murray Hill Conference Center, Manhattan
March 22, 2026
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.22.26_Conference_on_Consecration_to_the_Sacred_Heart_of_Jesus_1.mp3
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38 min
March 21 “Behold the Heart”: The Sacred Heart and the Holy Eucharist, Retreat for Women of the NYC Chapter of the Leonine Forum, March 21, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Retreat for Women of the NYC Chapter of the Leonine Forum
Murray Hill Conference Center, Manhattan
March 21, 2026
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.21.26_Behold_the_Heart_Eucharistic_Adoration_1.mp3
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30 min
March 21 “I Will Give You A New Heart”: The Sacred Heart, Divine Mercy and Reparation, Retreat for Women of the NYC Chapter of the Leonine Forum, March 21, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Retreat for Women of the NYC Chapter of the Leonine Forum
Murray Hill Conference Center, Manhattan
March 21, 2026
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.21.26_Second_Conference_I_Will_Give_You_a_Heart_Mercy_and_Reparation_Heart_1.mp3

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48 min
March 21Undividedly Loving and Following the Lamb Led to the Slaughter, Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent (A), March 21, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Murray Hill Conference Center, New York
Retreat for Women of the Leonine Forum
“Make Our Hearts Like Unto Thine”
Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent
March 21, 2026
Jer 11:18-20, Ps 7, Jn 7:40-53
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.21.26_Homily_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
As we enter more deeply into this retreat by living out the Eucharistic Dimension of the Devotion to the Sacred Heart we just pondered, we are able to see the love of God incarnate in Jesus on full display and the two basic reactions to love. The Holy Spirit helps us to see it through having us focus on the dramatic circumstances in the life of Jeremiah in which he placed his trust in God, and how his dependence was a prophecy of the type of self-entrustment Jesus the Sacred Heart himself would make in today’s Gospel and above all on Calvary.
“Like a trusting lamb led to the slaughter,” Jeremiah writes in words that were applied by the evangelists to Jesus, “they were hatching plots against me,” trying to “destroy the tree in its vigor, cut[ting] him off from the land of the living so that his name may be spoken of no more.” We see those plots against Jesus getting fulfilled in today’s Gospel. The temple guards were sent out by the Jewish leaders to arrest Jesus because, as we’ve been seeing in recent days, the leaders considered Jesus at best an untrained blasphemer and more likely an agent of the devil, working miracles not by the power of God but by the power of Beelzebul. They were seeking to kill him because they thought he was trying to destroy the Jewish religion by violating the Sabbath with works of charity, driving money changers out of the temple, speaking about the Temple’s destruction and rebuilding, befriending notorious sinners, daring to try to forgive sins, and various other practices. They believed through all of these practices Jesus was attempting to show not only that he was acting with divine authority but that he believed himself to be the actual Son of God. Rather than being filled with joy when Jesus reconciled sinners, or made the lame walk, the blind see, and the deaf hear, or freed the possessed of their demons, they responded with envy, anger and unholy homicidal thoughts. This is the fundamental reason for reparation: because we reject God and the most painful rejection of all comes from those who supposedly are, or who at least are supposed to be, the most devout.
But not everyone obviously saw Jesus this way. St. John tells us today there was “division because of him.” Some thought he was “the Prophet,” the fulfillment of Moses’ words that after him someone would come to whom they should listen and obey just like the listened to and obeyed him (Dt 18:15). Others said, “This is the Messiah (Christ).” Others retorted that the Messiah could never come from Galilee, because he was prophesied to come from Bethlehem. None of those critics, however, ever bothered to ask Jesus where he was born. They heard he was a Nazarene and that’s all they needed in order to dismiss him as a false Messiah because they didn’t want to accept the type of Messianic reign he was heralding, one far different than the Messianic kingdom for which they longed.
It’s important for us never to forget, as Christians in 2026, that Jesus always provokes division. He himself said elsewhere in the Gospel, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s enemies will be those of his household” (Mt 10:34-36). While he is the Prince of Peace who came to give and leave us his peace and establish the definitive peace treaty between us and God through the forgiveness of sins (Jn 14:27), he at the same time knew that he would be a “sign of contradiction” (Lk 2:34), as Simeon prophesied at his presentation, because no one would be able to remain neutral in response to him. We would either be “with him” or “against him,” we’d either “gather with him” or “scatter” (Mt 12:30). It’s not that he would personally cause division because he had come to bring peace and reconcile all things in himself; but division would ensue because of him, because there would be some who would accept him, come to the light and follow him, and there would be others who would refuse and reject him, remain in the darkness and oppose him. So we seek to adore and love him because he deserves it, but we also seek to do reparation for those who do not believe, do not hope, do not adore and do not love him. We do so uniting ourselves to Jesus in his prayer to the Father that the Father might forgive them for they know not what they do, they know not in truth Whom they are rejecting.
As disciples of Jesus, we need to grasp that often, we, too, especially if we seek to follow him up close and for real, will be signs of contradiction, too. People will claim we’re divisive because we will align ourselves to Jesus’ wisdom and way of life and not to theirs. They may hurl epithets that we’re anti-women because we’re pro-life, or anti-gay because we uphold Jesus’ call to chaste love and the truth of marriage, or unpatriotic because we love and try to welcome immigrants the way we would welcome Christ. But we can’t forget that it’s not Jesus who divides, but sin. None of us — Jesus foremost — wants division. He came so that we all might be one. But he leaves us free and through sin we and others choose division. It’s the devil, not Christ, who is the diabolos, the one who throws us off course. And therefore we need to be ready for how he will provoke others to oppose faithful Christians the same way he riled up mobs to oppose Jesus. We should never forget that when he was seeking to give others the greatest gift in the history of the world — his own body and blood in the Eucharist — the evil was able to get most of his disciplesseparate from him (Jn 6).
Today in the Gospel we see three different ways of responding to Jesus that we ought to consider because they shine a mirror for us to examine our own response to Jesus and the self-revelation of his heart during our prayer on retreat.
The first happens with the Temple guards. They had been sent to arrest Jesus, but they couldn’t bring themselves to do it. When they were asked, “Why didn’t you bring him?,” they replied, “Never before has anyone spoken like this man!” They were astonished and amazed at Jesus’ incredible words. Their souls were touched. They knew that a man who spoke like that couldn’t possibly be a malefactor. It would be like police officers today being sent to arrest a beautiful four-year-old girl or sweet 106-year-old great-great-great-grandmother, bound her in cuffs and parade her before the media because some superior officer commanded them to do it as a show. Beyond their simple common sense that they were being sent to arrest someone not a criminal but good, however, they were fascinated by Jesus and his words. These were not a bunch of naturally pious people. They were cops, basically soldiers, knowledgeable and cynical of the ways of the world, who probably spent much of their time engaged in the types of things men of force engage in whenever they’re together on duty but not engaged in work. They were, in other words, not a group accustomed to singing praise and worship songs together! And yet these coarse men were profoundly touched by Jesus — which teaches us something about Jesus and the power of his words. It should leave us wondering that if those men could be so moved by Jesus’ words, recognizing that no man had ever spoken like him before, are we even more amazed and astonished by his words? During this retreat he is speaking to us not only through Sacred Scripture but whispering to us in private prayer. He’s also speaking to us of his love, symbolized by his burning and crucified heart, wanting to touch our hearts, and our minds, and our wills.
The second reaction is by the chief priests and Pharisees. Hearing the guards testify to the power of Jesus’ exhortations, they said, “Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd, which does not know the law,” by which they meant the guards and others, “is accursed.” They called the guard and everyone who didn’t see things their way “damned.” They had no openness whatsoever to Jesus. They already concluded that he was evil and nothing was going to change their opinion. They condescendingly spoke to the guards as if they who were accustomed to giving interrogations were gullible of being lied to; after all, they stated, none of their leaders had accepted Jesus and therefore no one else should have either. We can look back with a cultural distance and say, “Foolish Pharisees,” but the type of division they caused from their ivory perches still happens today. The chief priests and Pharisees represent the elites who in every age foster division against Jesus, because they don’t want to accept him, his teaching, or his deeds. There are many, inside and outside the Church, who think Jesus’ teaching that that we’re supposed to love enemies and pray for persecutors is foolish, that his teaching that divorce-and-remarriage is sinful adultery is foolish, that his teaching that the way we treat illegal immigrants is the way we treat him is foolish. The list goes on today with regard to the Church’s teaching with regard to various teachings that contradict fallen worldly ways, that the Church’s teachings, based on Christ’s, with regard to forgiveness, peace, sex as a noun and a verb, abortion, IVF, euthanasia, and others are all foolish. The end of today’s Gospel summarizes effectively the division that comes when everyone is not united in the courageously following and worshipping the one true God: “They each went to his own house,” because they were each worshipping his own safe, domesticated deity. Like the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable of about the two men who went up to the Temple to pray, they said their prayers to themselves, not to God, and they said them alone, not in communion.
The third response we see in the Gospel is that of Nicodemus. Nicodemus, we remember, is the member of the Sanhedrin who came to Jesus “at night,” because he was too afraid to be seen with him during the daylight. He was himself drawn to Jesus but he really didn’t want to pay the cost of discipleship. While the series The Chosen in its first season tries to depict him as a wise seeker of the truth, various scholars throughout history have called him the “tentative” or “reluctant” disciple. Cardinal Bergoglio back in a 2006 retreat to Spanish bishops said he was an example of a conditional disciple, someone who would follow Jesus only if Jesus accepted his terms: “He wants a dialogue in security, coming under the cover of night to ask him questions,” the future Pope told the Spanish hierarchy. “And Jesus, because he senses that the Pharisee is not well disposed, lets him remain wrapped up in his trivial objections. For Nicodemus, such objections serve as an egoistic refuge for not being honest.” Today we see that assessment on full display. He knows that the objections of the chief priests and the Pharisees against Jesus are flowing out of envy because they’re not only afraid to change but afraid that they might lose their status. But instead of defending Jesus fully, he, because of cowardice, just raises a procedural or legal objection. “Does our law condemn a man before it first hears him and finds out what he is doing?,” he asks. And when they accuse him of being a Galilean and an idiot who fails to grasp that “no prophet arises from Galilee,” that no one consequential will ever come from those backwaters, he remains silent. Later, as a member of the Sanhedrin, he could have defended Jesus when the Lord was being condemned in a mock trial in which he was one of the judges, he didn’t. After Jesus was crucified, he did come, however, to anoint his dead body. He recognized who Jesus was and wanted to follow him, but his timidity regularly got the worst of him. His example of following Jesus “a little” rather than all the way, of wanting to be his disciple but caving into human respect, ought to provoke in us the question of how courageous we are in being publicly identified with Jesus, in defending him, and his teachings, and the Church he founded when it comes under attack, or whether we prefer to come to Jesus in the shadows, when it won’t cost us too much, when our commitment won’t be total.
On this Saturday, we should consider one more example, that of our Blessed Mother. She was one who was never in contradiction with the Lord. She was one who was never divided from him, from the first moment of her conception. She was one who from the first moment of her existence, from the beginning of the formation of her immaculate heart, had a heart stouthearted like the human heart her Son would assume from her. Like the guards, the Blessed Mother was able to recognize with astonishment the power of God’s word and, at the Annunciation and beyond, in a total act of faith, she allowed her life to develop according to that word — even though she knew it would inevitably lead to suffering and perhaps even her being stoned to death. She allowed her own heart to be pierced for her union with his Son, the Sign of Contradiction. She was still with him, standing, as he was hammered to that sign of contradiction on Calvary. And it was there, under the foot of the Cross, as she with the help of the women and Joseph of Arimathea were preparing Jesus’ body for burial, that with maternal love she welcomed Nicodemus. To the extent that we in our own lives have followed Jesus only at a distance, without a full commitment, without a willingness to pay the price, today she wants to welcome us, to help us not to be too intimidated to approach her Son to receive his mercy, not to fear the heart transplant he wants to give us, and not to be afraid to follow him all the way.
She’s with us here at the Mass where she wants to help us respond to Jesus’ word and his very person in his body, blood, soul and divinity with all we’ve got. In the first reading, Jeremiah wanted to see the vengeance God would take on those who were persecuting him. Mary witnessed the vengeance God took on those who killed her Son as he was fulfilling the prophecy of Jeremiah’s life, being led like a trusting lamb to slaughter. The vengeance God took was mercy, with Jesus praying for persecutors and loving those who had made themselves his enemy, laying down his life so that they might live forever. Jesus’ Sacred Heart is a sacrament of that retribution. Jesus’ revenge is to overcome evil with good, hatred with love, persecution with pity. As we come forward to receive in Holy Communion that incarnate “vengeance” God the Father took, the heart transplant Jesus offers us each day, we ask the Lord we’re about to receive to help us to become inflamed with a longing for that same holy, merciful retaliation and to become part of it, through being stouthearted in our willingness, like our Lady, to suffer courageously with him as signs of contradiction!

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 Jer 11:18-20
I knew their plot because the LORD informed me;
at that time you, O LORD, showed me their doings.
Yet I, like a trusting lamb led to slaughter,
had not realized that they were hatching plots against me:
“Let us destroy the tree in its vigor;
let us cut him off from the land of the living,
so that his name will be spoken no more.”
But, you, O LORD of hosts, O just Judge,
searcher of mind and heart,
Let me witness the vengeance you take on them,
for to you I have entrusted my cause!
Responsorial Psalm Ps 7:2-3, 9bc-10, 11-12
R. (2a) O Lord, my God, in you I take refuge.
O LORD, my God, in you I take refuge;
save me from all my pursuers and rescue me,
Lest I become like the lion’s prey,
to be torn to pieces, with no one to rescue me.
R. O Lord, my God, in you I take refuge.
Do me justice, O LORD, because I am just,
and because of the innocence that is mine.
Let the malice of the wicked come to an end,
but sustain the just,
O searcher of heart and soul, O just God.
R. O Lord, my God, in you I take refuge.
A shield before me is God,
who saves the upright of heart;
A just judge is God,
a God who punishes day by day.
R. O Lord, my God, in you I take refuge.
Verse Before the Gospel See Lk 8:15
Blessed are they who have kept the word with a generous heart
and yield a harvest through perseverance.
Gospel Jn 7:40-53
Some in the crowd who heard these words of Jesus said,
“This is truly the Prophet.”
Others said, “This is the Christ.”
But others said,
“The Christ will not come from Galilee, will he?
Does not Scripture say that the Christ will be of David’s family
and come from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?”
So a division occurred in the crowd because of him.
Some of them even wanted to arrest him,
but no one laid hands on him.
So the guards went to the chief priests and Pharisees,
who asked them, “Why did you not bring him?”
The guards answered,
“Never before has anyone spoken like this man.”
So the Pharisees answered them, “Have you also been deceived?
Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him?
But this crowd, which does not know the law, is accursed.”
Nicodemus, one of their members who had come to him earlier, said to them,
“Does our law condemn a man before it first hears him
and finds out what he is doing?”
They answered and said to him,
“You are not from Galilee also, are you?
Look and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.”
Then each went to his own house.
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26 min
March 21 The Divine and Human Love in Jesus’ Sacred Heart, Retreat for Women in the NYC Chapter of the Leonine Forum, March 20, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Retreat for Women of the NYC Chapter of the Leonine Forum
Murray Hill Conference Center, Manhattan
March 20, 2026

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39 min
March 15Seeing All Things in the Light of Jesus, Fourth Sunday of Lent (A), March 15, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
Fourth Sunday of Lent, Year A
March 15, 2026
1 Sam 16:1.6-7.10-13, Ps 23, Eph 5:8-14, Jn 9:1-41

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The following text guided the homily:
The third to fifth Sundays of Lent are meant — by means of the three longest Gospels in the Church’s three-year liturgical cycle outside of the Passion accounts on Good Friday — to help those preparing for baptism at Easter, and all those already baptized in the Church accompanying them, to realize essential realities about the Sacrament and the Christian life to which it leads. Last week, in the encounter of Jesus with the Samaritan woman at the well, we see Jesus’ thirst for us and the type of thirst we’re supposed to have for him who is the living water. Baptism, in other words, is not just a ceremony, but an immersion in Christ’s own life, and we’re supposed to hunger and thirst for the holiness that life in Christ imparts. Next week, we’ll accompany Jesus as he raises his friend Lazarus from the dead, and we’ll have the change to ponder how in baptism we die and rise anew in Christ, as we put to death in us the old Adam and at Christ’s voice come forth from the tomb to live with him.
Today on the Fourth Sunday of Lent, the Church has us meditate on the illumination Christ imparts in baptism. Just as at St. Paul’s baptism in Damascus, scales fell from his eyes after he was blinded meeting Christ outside the city gates, so in every baptism our eyes are meant to be opened to see all things differently. This process is depicted in the famous miracle by which Christ heals a man blind from birth in today’s Gospel. The blind man doesn’t cry out for help. He’s just there, along the road, and becomes the subject of a theological question from the disciples about the cause of his blindness. Jesus states that the reason that man was blind from birth was to allow God’s works to show through him; his whole life in darkness until that point was so that he could encounter the saving power of Jesus and from that moment onward be a conspicuous example of God’s own light illuminating him so that he could walk in the light. This truth influences the way Jesus performs this miracle, because Jesus had two healings in mind — first a physical one for him and then a spiritual one for him and for us all.
The Lord spits on the ground, makes mud with his saliva, and then goes up unbidden to the blind man — with whom until now he hadn’t spoken — and smears his eyes with mud. What must the blind man have been thinking? What would your reaction be, for example, if a sister came up from behind you right now and touched your eyes or your ears or any part of you with their spit? The blind man in the Gospel could have easily thought that some crazy person was making fun of him or abusing him, as probably happened often. But Jesus was not done. He then tells the man to go to wash in the pool of Siloam. The blind man easily could have thought, “What a stupid, pointless and dangerous hassle! Cover me with mud and spit and then send me, who can’t see, to wash in a pool, where I can easily slip, fall in and drown!” Jesus, however, must have given that command in a way that inspired trust. The blind man, by his willingness to carry out this simple imperative Jesus gives him, embarks, without knowing it, on the great adventure of faith, on the exciting journey from darkness into light. By working the miracle this way, Jesus allows this man to participate actively in his own healing, so that through the process, he might receive not just the ability to see the physical light of the world but also a much deeper light, the light of faith in Jesus, the true light of the world.
Three-and-a-half weeks ago, Jesus did to us something similar to what he did to the man born blind in today’s Gospel. We went up to someone acting in His Name, who smudged our foreheads not with muddy saliva but moistened ashes, and gave us a two-part imperative, the very same directive with which Jesus began His whole public ministry. Reminding us that we are dust and will return to dust, the minister repeated to us Jesus’ command, “Repent and believe in the Gospel!” This was Jesus’ pathway for us to participate in our own healing during this blessed time of Lent, in our own coming from the darkness into the light of Christ, our own exodus from sin to love, our own Passover from death to life. Some of us might be tempted to consider what happens on Ash Wednesday more or less an empty and merely symbolic ritual — especially if we are blind to our own sinfulness! — but Jesus wanted to work in us during this time a true miracle of healing, through our participation and trust in this two-part therapeutic process.
The pathway for the Lenten cure of our blindness begins with repenting, which means turning away from the life of sin that blinds us. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church and human experience teach so clearly, sin darkens the intellect and distorts the will so that often we can no longer even see the good clearly or easily choose it when we do see it. Because of original sin, we were born visually impaired and since then we have often chosen darkness over light. The repentance that is part of our cure means recognizing that sin has left us partially or totally sightless, that we’re blind and that we need the Lord’s help to see. This conversion means becoming aware, as St. Paul helped the Ephesians to see in today’s second reading, that we have taken part in “vain deeds done in darkness,” and are called to “condemn them” and “expose them to the light.” God allows us to be smudged with ashes and tjem sends the catechumens to the waters of Baptism and those already baptized on a spiritual journey to wash ourselves in the “second Baptism” of the Sacrament of Penance. This begins the healing process, in which we condemn ourselves for those vain, dark needs, expose them to the light of his mercy, and as the apostle tells us, “learn what is pleasing to the Lord,” which is to “live as children of the light.” At the end of both baptism and confession, God tells us, like he said through the St. Paul said in the second reading, “Awake, O Sleeper, arise from the dead and Christ will give you light.” We arise from the spiritual death and blindness of sin into the new light and life of Christ.
The second stage in our cure, Jesus told us on Ash Wednesday, is believing in the Gospel. Jesus says today to the man in the Gospel, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” The physical cure of the man — a miracle that caused a tremendous stir among the people in Jerusalem and allowed God’s works to shine in him — was merely a prelude to a spiritual cure that would involve not just his leaving darkness but living in the Light of Christ. “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” The man responds with a faithful willingness, as well as a humble recognition that he needs help: “Who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” Jesus replies, “You have seen him” — what a beautiful and touching thing to say to a man who can now see for the first time! — “and he is speaking to you now.” He then immediately replied, “I do believe, Lord!,” and worshipped him.
In the healing Jesus wants to carry out in us this Lent, he asks us the same question, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” Jesus is the Gospel incarnate, and “believing in the Gospel” means believing in Him. With similar humility to the man healed by Jesus in the Gospel, we’re called to say, “Show me, Lord, that I may believe!” With that docility, the Lord can then show us, in new and deeper ways, “You have seen him and he’s speaking to you now.” To come to see Jesus anew, to hear him speak to us “now” in every moment of our life, to look on all things with Christ’s light— that is the whole point of the Lenten adventure of faith. These forty days are a gift from God to help us to leave the darkness caused by sin, live as children of light, and see Jesus and all things as they really are. So often we can think we see Jesus and hear his voice, but we can be blind and deaf to the true meaning of his presence. The Pharisees, after all, saw Jesus physically, but they never really saw who he was. They watched him perform many miracles, they heard his beautiful teachings and powerful responses to every attempt to trip him up, but still, when they looked at him, they were blind to the reality of his true identity. They thought they had him figured out, they thought they had all the answers, but they were blind, failing to recognize him as the long-awaited one and even accusing him of being a diabolical double agent and blasphemer worthy of execution. They declared emphatically in today’s Gospel that Jesus “is not from God, because he does not keep the sabbath” as in the loveless way they demanded. They said about Jesus, “We know this man is a sinner.” They stated that they were disciples of Moses, not Jesus, and ridiculed the healed man for believing in him, denigrating him because he had been born blind, which to them meant that he had to have been born in sin. And when Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind,” they retorted, “Surely we are not also blind, are we?” They couldn’t possibly consider themselves blind because they couldn’t fathom they were sinners.
But this spiritual blindness that affected the hardhearted and hypocritical Pharisees can happen to any of us sinners. It can happen even to God’s holy ones, whenever they, whenever we, look only by human perspectives rather than by God’s light. In today’s first reading, the Prophet Samuel, one of the greatest men of God in the Old Testament, was sent to Bethlehem to anoint the son of Jesse whom God would indicate to be the King of Israel after Saul. When he arrived, he was convinced upon seeing Eliab that he was the one the Lord wanted anointed. But the Lord said to Samuel, “Don’t judge from his appearance or from his lofty stature, because … not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance, but the Lord looks into the heart.” The Lord would have him go through all of Jesse’s sons until he would meet the youngest and ruddiest son, David, who would become the great king and 28th generation grandfather of the Lord Jesus according to the flesh. Even if we’re close to the Lord, like Samuel, we can see things too much by human categories rather than God’s. We can look at others and ourselves by worldly criteria. If we’re not truly close to the Lord, there’s the greater risk that we will go through life perceiving reality according to our darkness rather than according to God’s light, viewing others, at events, and issues in the same way people without faith do. And then instead of walking and living as children of the light, as St. Paul summons the Ephesians and us today to do, we live and walk like practical atheists. Like the blind man’s parents, we can be overcome by fear and fail to acknowledge Jesus. Like St. Peter in Caesarea Philippi after Christ revealed he would be a Messiah who would be betrayed, crucified, and murdered before rising, we can see and think as human beings do rather than like God does. We can fail to see Jesus in the distressing disguise of the poorest of the poor and all of the other ways that Jesus identifies with others and comes to us in need. Each Lent Jesus helps us to recognize, again, that our sins number us among the blind, but that he wants to cure us, to have us walk together with him in the light of life, to help us to see all things in and together with Him who is the Light of the World. And just as the blind man’s cure was so that the “works of God might be made visible through him,” so our cure, our conversion, is meant to help others recognize the great gift of mercy God has given us and wants to give all those who meet us. Just like the blind man, our healing is meant to lead others to come to know, believe in and adore Jesus.
But let’s get practical. How is our vision — and our life — supposed to change this Lent? What does it mean to be cured by Christ of our spiritual blindness and to see things in his own light? To appreciate the miracle Christ wants to work in us this Lent, it’s helpful to think what it would have been like for that man born blind returning from the pool of Siloam. He had never seen anything, and now he could see everything. He could see colors. He could see the splendor of the temple. He could see where he was going. He could see himself reflected in the pool. He could see the faces of his parents and those who were talking to him. He could see Jesus face-to-face. His whole life would have changed! A similar change is meant to happen to us when Christ heals our sight and helps us to see things with his luminous perspective, to looking at everything through the lenses of faith, to see things as God sees them, and, therefore, to see all things aright. Practically speaking, it means making the time to come to Jesus to hear him say to us, “You have seen him and he is speaking to you now.” It means coming to him in prayer. It means hearing him speaking to us in the Liturgy of the Word and in the words of institution. It means coming to him to receive his forgiveness in the Sacrament of Confession. It means seeing him in each other and in all our neighbors in need. It means seeing him with us as our Good Shepherd as we “walk through the valley of darkness,” as we prayed in the Psalm, or mount the resplendent heights. It means, in all the events of the day, hearing him state to us, “I am speaking to you now.”
To live and walk in the light of God’s presence to recognize that he is with us always until the end of time speaking to us through prayer, his word, the Sacraments, the Church and the events of daily life, is to live in joy. Christ came into the world to shatter the darkness and so that he may fulfill the words said during the first Mass, so that “may joy may be in you and your joy may be complete” (Jn 15:11). The Fourth Sunday of Lent is always called “Laetare Sunday” because at the midway point of this season of conversion and penance, Christ wants to fill us with the joy with which he filled the blind man in Jerusalem, and help us to spread that joy that God is really with us in the world healing us, saving us, loving us, guiding us, and calling all of us to him. It’s significant that the pool in which the blind man washed and was healed by Jesus was called Siloam, which St. John tells us means “sent.” The waters of Baptism, the renewed graces of Baptism in confession, every healing encounter with Jesus is not meant just for ourselves, but is so that the glory of God might radiate through the change in us. There is, in other words, a missionary sense to our relationship with Jesus. We are healed in order to be sent as a quasi-sacrament of Jesus’ healing power. The Missionaries of Charity in a particular way are sent out as recipients of Christ’s life-changing charity to help everyone come to Jesus, who seeks to speak to us now as our Savior and to receive from him what he knows we most need to glorify God in the midst of the world.
Today we ask the Lord to remove the scales from our eyes, so that we can see everything in the light of faith. In a special way, we ask him to help us to see what is about to happen, as we participate live in the Last Supper, in Jesus’ own passion and death, and share right now on earth in his Resurrection as we receive His Risen Body. If Christ were to grant us his eyes, we would see all the angels and the saints about to hover around this altar. We would recognize that we are about to share in the greatest event in all of history, the greatest love the world has ever seen or imagined, the deepest source of joy we could possibly ever have, which the world cannot give or rob. Jesus says to us here, live, “Do you believe in the Son of Man whom you have seen and who is speaking to you now,” as he says “This is my body given for you … This is the chalice of my blood poured out for you for the forgiveness of your sins?” Faced with these indescribably awesome and joyful realities, may we take our cue from the illuminated man in the Gospel and say, with all our mind, heart, soul and strength, “I do believe, Lord” and bow down to worship.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
1 SM 16:1B, 6-7, 10-13A
The LORD said to Samuel:
“Fill your horn with oil, and be on your way.
I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem,
for I have chosen my king from among his sons.”
As Jesse and his sons came to the sacrifice,
Samuel looked at Eliab and thought,
“Surely the LORD’s anointed is here before him.”
But the LORD said to Samuel:
“Do not judge from his appearance or from his lofty stature,
because I have rejected him.
Not as man sees does God see,
because man sees the appearance
but the LORD looks into the heart.”
In the same way Jesse presented seven sons before Samuel,
but Samuel said to Jesse,
“The LORD has not chosen any one of these.”
Then Samuel asked Jesse,
“Are these all the sons you have?”
Jesse replied,
“There is still the youngest, who is tending the sheep.”
Samuel said to Jesse,
“Send for him;
we will not begin the sacrificial banquet until he arrives here.”
Jesse sent and had the young man brought to them.
He was ruddy, a youth handsome to behold
and making a splendid appearance.
The LORD said,
“There—anoint him, for this is the one!”
Then Samuel, with the horn of oil in hand,
anointed David in the presence of his brothers;
and from that day on, the spirit of the LORD rushed upon David.
Responsorial Psalm
PS 23:1-3A, 3B-4, 5, 6
R/ (1) The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
In verdant pastures he gives me repose;
beside restful waters he leads me;
he refreshes my soul.
R/ The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
He guides me in right paths
for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk in the dark valley
I fear no evil; for you are at my side
With your rod and your staff
that give me courage.
R/ The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
You spread the table before me
in the sight of my foes;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
R/ The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
Only goodness and kindness follow me
all the days of my life;
and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD
for years to come.
R/ The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
Reading 2
EPH 5:8-14
Brothers and sisters:
You were once darkness,
but now you are light in the Lord.
Live as children of light,
for light produces every kind of goodness
and righteousness and truth.
Try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.
Take no part in the fruitless works of darkness;
rather expose them, for it is shameful even to mention
the things done by them in secret;
but everything exposed by the light becomes visible,
for everything that becomes visible is light.
Therefore, it says:
“Awake, O sleeper,
and arise from the dead,
and Christ will give you light.”
Gospel
JN 9:1-41
As Jesus passed by he saw a man blind from birth.
His disciples asked him,
“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents,
that he was born blind?”
Jesus answered,
“Neither he nor his parents sinned;
it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.
We have to do the works of the one who sent me while it is day.
Night is coming when no one can work.
While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
When he had said this, he spat on the ground
and made clay with the saliva,
and smeared the clay on his eyes,
and said to him,
“Go wash in the Pool of Siloam” —which means Sent—.
So he went and washed, and came back able to see.
His neighbors and those who had seen him earlier as a beggar said,
“Isn’t this the one who used to sit and beg?”
Some said, “It is, “
but others said, “No, he just looks like him.”
He said, “I am.”
So they said to him, “How were your eyes opened?”
He replied,
“The man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes
and told me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’
So I went there and washed and was able to see.”
And they said to him, “Where is he?”
He said, “I don’t know.”
They brought the one who was once blind to the Pharisees.
Now Jesus had made clay and opened his eyes on a sabbath.
So then the Pharisees also asked him how he was able to see.
He said to them,
“He put clay on my eyes, and I washed, and now I can see.”
So some of the Pharisees said,
“This man is not from God,
because he does not keep the sabbath.”
But others said,
“How can a sinful man do such signs?”
And there was a division among them.
So they said to the blind man again,
“What do you have to say about him,
since he opened your eyes?”
He said, “He is a prophet.”
Now the Jews did not believe
that he had been blind and gained his sight
until they summoned the parents of the one who had gained his sight.
They asked them,
“Is this your son, who you say was born blind?
How does he now see?”
His parents answered and said,
“We know that this is our son and that he was born blind.
We do not know how he sees now,
nor do we know who opened his eyes.
Ask him, he is of age;
he can speak for himself.”
His parents said this because they were afraid
of the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed
that if anyone acknowledged him as the Christ,
he would be expelled from the synagogue.
For this reason his parents said,
“He is of age; question him.”
So a second time they called the man who had been blind
and said to him, “Give God the praise!
We know that this man is a sinner.”
He replied,
“If he is a sinner, I do not know.
One thing I do know is that I was blind and now I see.”
So they said to him,
“What did he do to you?
How did he open your eyes?”
He answered them,
“I told you already and you did not listen.
Why do you want to hear it again?
Do you want to become his disciples, too?”
They ridiculed him and said,
“You are that man’s disciple;
we are disciples of Moses!
We know that God spoke to Moses,
but we do not know where this one is from.”
The man answered and said to them,
“This is what is so amazing,
that you do not know where he is from, yet he opened my eyes.
We know that God does not listen to sinners,
but if one is devout and does his will, he listens to him.
It is unheard of that anyone ever opened the eyes of a person born blind.
If this man were not from God,
he would not be able to do anything.”
They answered and said to him,
“You were born totally in sin,
and are you trying to teach us?”
Then they threw him out.
When Jesus heard that they had thrown him out,
he found him and said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
He answered and said,
“Who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?”
Jesus said to him,
“You have seen him,
the one speaking with you is he.”
He said,
“I do believe, Lord,” and he worshiped him.
Then Jesus said,
“I came into this world for judgment,
so that those who do not see might see,
and those who do see might become blind.”
Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this
and said to him, “Surely we are not also blind, are we?”
Jesus said to them,
“If you were blind, you would have no sin;
but now you are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains.
The post Seeing All Things in the Light of Jesus, Fourth Sunday of Lent (A), March 15, 2026 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
27 min
March 14 Forming and Living a Plan of Life, Our Lady of Lourdes Parish, West Islip, NY, March 14, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Our Lady of Lourdes Parish, West Islip, New York
March 14, 2026
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3.14.26 Forming and Living a Plan of Life
The post Forming and Living a Plan of Life, Our Lady of Lourdes Parish, West Islip, NY, March 14, 2026 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
1 hr 11 min
March 14Healed to See in the Light of Jesus, Vigil of the Fourth Sunday of Lent (A), March 14, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Our Lady of Lourdes Parish, West Islip, New York
Vigil of the Fourth Sunday of Lent, Year A
March 14, 2026
1 Sam 16:1.6-7.10-13, Ps 23, Eph 5:8-14, Jn 9:1-41

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The following text guided the homily:
It’s a great joy for me to be here at Our Lady of Lourdes in West Islip for the Mass this afternoon. Prior to my coming to work for the Church in Manhattan — originally at the Holy See’s Mission to the United Nations, as Chaplain at Columbia University, and now as National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the United States — I was pastor of a parish in Fall River Massachusetts named Saint Bernadette Parish, which had formerly been called Our Lady of Lourdes. Similarly, during my years at Columbia, the place of campus ministry was the Church of Notre Dame de Lourdes, which famously had within the Church a huge replica of the grotto in Massabielle. So coming here to Our Lady of Lourdes is like the experience of coming home.
At the sanctuary in Lourdes, through our Lady’s intercession, there have been more the 7,000 claimed miracles since 1858 and 72 that have gone through the rigorous examination of the Lourdes Bureau of Medical Examinations and been officially approved. Of those 72, the 2nd, 7th, 37th 59th, and 64th were all miracles in which people were cured of blindness: Louis Bouriette and Marie Moreau in 1858, Marie Lucas in 1908, Marie Bigot in 1953 and Serge Perrin in 1970. As soon as St. Bernadette had scratched the soil of grotto leading to a stream of water, Bouriette went to bathe blind right eye repeatedly in the water, and, after a short time, he was able to see completely. Moreau, who had totally lost her vision because of retinal issues, tied a bandage soaked in Lourdes water around her eyes when she went to bed and woke up with her vision completely restored. Lucas, who had suffered various brain injuries, woke up from a coma completely blind from bilateral optic atrophy. She was brought to Lourdes and during Mass had her sight completely restored so that she could read the fine print in newspapers. Bigot, as a result of neurological issues, was deaf in one ear had 1/20 vision in her right eye and 1/10 in her left, and after bathing in Lourdes a second time, had both her hearing and vision cured. And Perrin, because of multiple neurological issues, had become a blind invalid went to Lourdes on a diocesan pilgrimage in 1970 to please his wife. He went to a ceremony of the anointing of the sick. After he received the sacrament, he left both able to walk and to see. Our Lord, through the prayerful intercession of his mother in that sacred spot, had cured all five of their physical blindness. Today we come to this parish dedicated to God through the intercession of Our Lady of Lourdes asking the same Jesus, this Lent, to cure whatever spiritual blindness we have.
Today’s Gospel is about one of Jesus’ most stunning miracles. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus, in fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecies that the Messiah would make the blind see, restores sight to several people, but they were all those who had lost their sight. In Jericho, for example, when Jesus asked Bartimaeus what he wanted Jesus to do for him, said, “I want to see again.” Today’s Gospel is about a man who had never seen from birth who had been born blind. And unlike Bartimaeus, the man in today’s Gospel, he doesn’t cry out to Jesus for help. He’s just there, in Jerusalem, along Jesus’ path, and his plight becomes the subject of a theological question from the disciples about the cause of his blindness. Jesus states that the reason that man was blind from birth was to allow God’s works to show through him; his whole life in darkness until that point was so that he could encounter the saving power of Jesus and from that moment onward be a conspicuous example of God’s own light illuminating him so that he might walk in light. This truth influences the way Jesus performs this miracle, because Jesus had two healings in mind — first a physical one for him and then a spiritual one for him and for us all.
As of yet, Jesus hadn’t yet spoken to the man. He just spits on the ground, makes mud with his saliva, and then goes up unbidden to the blind man and smears his eyes with mud. What must the blind man have been thinking? What would your reaction be, for example, if someone came up from behind you right now and touched your eyes or your ears or any part of you with their spit? The blind man in the Gospel could have easily thought that some crazy person was making fun of him or abusing him, as probably happened often. But Jesus was not done. He then tells the man to go to wash in the pool of Siloam. The blind man easily could have thought, “What a stupid, pointless and dangerous hassle! Cover me with mud and spit and then send me, who can’t see, to wash in a pool, where I can easily slip, fall in and drown!” Jesus, however, must have given that command in a way that inspired trust. The blind man, by his willingness to carry out this simple imperative Jesus gives him, embarks, without knowing it, on the great adventure of faith, on the exciting journey from darkness into light. By working the miracle this way, Jesus allows this man to participate actively in his own healing, so that through the process, he might receive not just the ability to see the physical light of the world but also a much deeper light, the light of faith in Jesus, the true light of the world.
Three-and-a-half weeks ago, Jesus did to us something similar to what he did to the man born blind in today’s Gospel. We went up to someone acting in His Name, who smudged our foreheads not with muddy saliva but moistened ashes, and gave us a two-part imperative, the very same directive with which Jesus began His whole public ministry. Reminding us that we are dust and will return to dust, the minister repeated to us Jesus’ command, “Repent and believe in the Gospel!” This was Jesus’ pathway for us to participate in our own healing during this blessed time of Lent, in our own coming from the darkness into the light of Christ, our own exodus from sin to love, our own Passover from death to life. Some of us might be tempted to consider what happens on Ash Wednesday more or less an empty and merely symbolic ritual — especially if we are blind to our own sinfulness! — but Jesus wanted to work in us during this time a true miracle of healing, through our participation and trust in this two-part therapeutic process.
The pathway for the Lenten cure of our blindness begins with repenting, which means turning away from the life of sin that blinds us. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church and human experience teach so clearly, sin darkens the intellect and distorts the will so that often we can no longer even see the good clearly or easily choose it when we do see it. Because of original sin, we were born visually impaired and since then we have often chosen darkness over light. The repentance that is part of our cure means recognizing that sin has left us partially or totally sightless, that we’re blind and that we need the Lord’s help to see. This conversion means becoming aware, as St. Paul helped the Ephesians to see in today’s second reading, that we have taken part in “vain deeds done in darkness,” and are called to “condemn them” and “expose them to the light.” God allows us to be smudged with ashes and tjem sends the catechumens to the waters of Baptism and those already baptized on a spiritual journey to wash ourselves in the “second Baptism” of the Sacrament of Penance. This begins the healing process, in which we condemn ourselves for those vain, dark needs, expose them to the light of his mercy, and as the apostle tells us, “learn what is pleasing to the Lord,” which is to “live as children of the light.” At the end of both baptism and confession, God tells us, like he said through the St. Paul said in the second reading, “Awake, O Sleeper, arise from the dead and Christ will give you light.” We arise from the spiritual death and blindness of sin into the new light and life of Christ.
The second stage in our cure, Jesus told us on Ash Wednesday, is believing in the Gospel. Jesus says today to the man in the Gospel, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” The physical cure of the man — a miracle that caused a tremendous stir among the people in Jerusalem and allowed God’s works to shine in him — was merely a prelude to a spiritual cure that would involve not just his leaving darkness but living in the Light of Christ. “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” The man responds with a faithful willingness, as well as a humble recognition that he needs help: “Who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” Jesus replies, “You have seen him” — what a beautiful and touching thing to say to a man who can now see for the first time! — “and he is speaking to you now.” He then immediately replied, “I do believe, Lord!,” and worshipped him.
In the healing Jesus wants to carry out in us this Lent, he asks us the same question, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” Jesus is the Gospel incarnate, and “believing in the Gospel” means believing in Him. With similar humility to the man healed by Jesus in the Gospel, we’re called to say, “Show me, Lord, that I may believe!” With that docility, the Lord can then show us, in new and deeper ways, “You have seen him and he’s speaking to you now.” To come to see Jesus anew, to hear him speak to us “now” in every moment of our life, to look on all things with Christ’s light— that is the whole point of the Lenten adventure of faith. These forty days are a gift from God to help us to leave the darkness caused by sin, live as children of light, and see Jesus and all things as they really are. So often we can think we see Jesus and hear his voice, but we can be blind and deaf to the true meaning of his presence. The Pharisees, after all, saw Jesus physically, but they never really saw who he was. They watched him perform many miracles, they heard his beautiful teachings and powerful responses to every attempt to trip him up, but still, when they looked at him, they were blind to the reality of his true identity. They thought they had him figured out, they thought they had all the answers, but they were blind, failing to recognize him as the long-awaited one and even accusing him of being a diabolical double agent and blasphemer worthy of execution. They declared emphatically in today’s Gospel that Jesus “is not from God, because he does not keep the sabbath” as in the loveless way they demanded. They said about Jesus, “We know this man is a sinner.” They stated that they were disciples of Moses, not Jesus, and ridiculed the healed man for believing in him, denigrating him because he had been born blind, which to them meant that he had to have been born in sin. And when Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind,” they retorted, “Surely we are not also blind, are we?” They couldn’t possibly consider themselves blind because they couldn’t fathom they were sinners.
But this spiritual blindness that affected the hardhearted and hypocritical Pharisees can happen to any of us sinners. It can happen even to God’s holy ones, whenever they, whenever we, look only by human perspectives rather than by God’s light. In today’s first reading, the Prophet Samuel, one of the greatest men of God in the Old Testament, was sent to Bethlehem to anoint the son of Jesse whom God would indicate to be the King of Israel after Saul. When he arrived, he was convinced upon seeing Eliab that he was the one the Lord wanted anointed. But the Lord said to Samuel, “Don’t judge from his appearance or from his lofty stature, because … not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance, but the Lord looks into the heart.” The Lord would have him go through all of Jesse’s sons until he would meet the youngest and ruddiest son, David, who would become the great king and 28th generation grandfather of the Lord Jesus according to the flesh. Even if we’re close to the Lord, like Samuel, we can see things too much by human categories rather than God’s. We can look at others and ourselves by worldly criteria. If we’re not truly close to the Lord, there’s the greater risk that we will go through life perceiving reality according to our darkness rather than according to God’s light, viewing others, at events, and issues in the same way people without faith do. And then instead of walking and living as children of the light, as St. Paul summons the Ephesians and us today to do, we live and walk like practical atheists. Like the blind man’s parents, we can be overcome by fear and fail to acknowledge Jesus. Like St. Peter in Caesarea Philippi after Christ revealed he would be a Messiah who would be betrayed, crucified, and murdered before rising, we can see and think as human beings do rather than like God does. We can fail to see Jesus in the distressing disguise of the poorest of the poor and all of the other ways that Jesus identifies with others and comes to us in need. Each Lent Jesus helps us to recognize, again, that our sins number us among the blind, but that he wants to cure us, to have us walk together with him in the light of life, to help us to see all things in and together with Him who is the Light of the World. And just as the blind man’s cure was so that the “works of God might be made visible through him,” so our cure, our conversion, is meant to help others recognize the great gift of mercy God has given us and wants to give all those who meet us. Just like the blind man, our healing is meant to lead others to come to know, believe in and adore Jesus.
But let’s get practical. How is our vision — and our life — supposed to change this Lent? What does it mean to be cured by Christ of our spiritual blindness and to see things in his own light? To appreciate the miracle Christ wants to work in us this Lent, it’s helpful to think what it would have been like for that man born blind returning from the pool of Siloam. He had never seen anything, and now he could see everything. He could see colors. He could see the splendor of the temple. He could see where he was going. He could see himself reflected in the pool. He could see the faces of his parents and those who were talking to him. He could see Jesus face-to-face. His whole life would have changed! A similar change is meant to happen to us when Christ heals our sight and helps us to see things with his luminous perspective, to looking at everything through the lenses of faith, to see things as God sees them, and, therefore, to see all things aright. Practically speaking, it means making the time to come to Jesus to hear him say to us, “You have seen him and he is speaking to you now.” It means coming to him in prayer. It means hearing him speaking to us in the Liturgy of the Word and in the words of institution. It means coming to him to receive his forgiveness in the Sacrament of Confession. It means seeing him in each other and in all our neighbors in need. It means seeing him with us as our Good Shepherd as we “walk through the valley of darkness,” as we prayed in the Psalm, or mount the resplendent heights. It means, in all the events of the day, hearing him state to us, “I am speaking to you now.”
To live and walk in the light of God’s presence to recognize that he is with us always until the end of time speaking to us through prayer, his word, the Sacraments, the Church and the events of daily life, is to live in joy. Christ came into the world to shatter the darkness and so that he may fulfill the words said during the first Mass, so that “may joy may be in you and your joy may be complete” (Jn 15:11). The Fourth Sunday of Lent is always called “Laetare Sunday” because at the midway point of this season of conversion and penance, Christ wants to fill us with the joy with which he filled the blind man in Jerusalem, like the joy experienced by Louis Bouriette, Marie Moreau, Marie Lucas, Marie Bigot, Serge Perrin, and so many who have received healings and blessings through Our Lady of Lourdes’ intercession, and help us to spread that joy that God is really with us in the world healing us, saving us, loving us, guiding us, and calling all of us to him. It’s significant that the pool in which the blind man washed and was healed by Jesus was called Siloam, which St. John tells us means “sent.” The waters of Baptism, the renewed graces of Baptism in confession, every healing encounter with Jesus is not meant just for ourselves, but is so that the glory of God might radiate through the change in us. There is, in other words, a missionary sense to our relationship with Jesus. We are healed in order to be sent as a quasi-sacrament of Jesus’ healing power. The Missionaries of Charity in a particular way are sent out as recipients of Christ’s life-changing charity to help everyone come to Jesus, who seeks to speak to us now as our Savior and to receive from him what he knows we most need to glorify God in the midst of the world.
Today we ask the Lord to remove the scales from our eyes, so that we can see everything in the light of faith. In a special way, we ask him to help us to see what is about to happen, as we participate live in the Last Supper, in Jesus’ own passion and death, and share right now on earth in his Resurrection as we receive His Risen Body. If Christ were to grant us his eyes, we would see all the angels and the saints about to hover around this altar. We would recognize that we are about to share in the greatest event in all of history, the greatest love the world has ever seen or imagined, the deepest source of joy we could possibly ever have, which the world cannot give or rob. Jesus says to us here, live, “Do you believe in the Son of Man whom you have seen and who is speaking to you now,” as he says “This is my body given for you … This is the chalice of my blood poured out for you for the forgiveness of your sins?” Faced with these indescribably awesome and joyful realities, may we take our cue from the illuminated man in the Gospel and say, with all our mind, heart, soul and strength, “I do believe, Lord” and bow down to worship.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
1 SM 16:1B, 6-7, 10-13A
The LORD said to Samuel:
“Fill your horn with oil, and be on your way.
I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem,
for I have chosen my king from among his sons.”
As Jesse and his sons came to the sacrifice,
Samuel looked at Eliab and thought,
“Surely the LORD’s anointed is here before him.”
But the LORD said to Samuel:
“Do not judge from his appearance or from his lofty stature,
because I have rejected him.
Not as man sees does God see,
because man sees the appearance
but the LORD looks into the heart.”
In the same way Jesse presented seven sons before Samuel,
but Samuel said to Jesse,
“The LORD has not chosen any one of these.”
Then Samuel asked Jesse,
“Are these all the sons you have?”
Jesse replied,
“There is still the youngest, who is tending the sheep.”
Samuel said to Jesse,
“Send for him;
we will not begin the sacrificial banquet until he arrives here.”
Jesse sent and had the young man brought to them.
He was ruddy, a youth handsome to behold
and making a splendid appearance.
The LORD said,
“There—anoint him, for this is the one!”
Then Samuel, with the horn of oil in hand,
anointed David in the presence of his brothers;
and from that day on, the spirit of the LORD rushed upon David.
Responsorial Psalm
PS 23:1-3A, 3B-4, 5, 6
R/ (1) The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
In verdant pastures he gives me repose;
beside restful waters he leads me;
he refreshes my soul.
R/ The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
He guides me in right paths
for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk in the dark valley
I fear no evil; for you are at my side
With your rod and your staff
that give me courage.
R/ The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
You spread the table before me
in the sight of my foes;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
R/ The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
Only goodness and kindness follow me
all the days of my life;
and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD
for years to come.
R/ The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
Reading 2
EPH 5:8-14
Brothers and sisters:
You were once darkness,
but now you are light in the Lord.
Live as children of light,
for light produces every kind of goodness
and righteousness and truth.
Try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.
Take no part in the fruitless works of darkness;
rather expose them, for it is shameful even to mention
the things done by them in secret;
but everything exposed by the light becomes visible,
for everything that becomes visible is light.
Therefore, it says:
“Awake, O sleeper,
and arise from the dead,
and Christ will give you light.”
Gospel
JN 9:1-41
As Jesus passed by he saw a man blind from birth.
His disciples asked him,
“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents,
that he was born blind?”
Jesus answered,
“Neither he nor his parents sinned;
it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.
We have to do the works of the one who sent me while it is day.
Night is coming when no one can work.
While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
When he had said this, he spat on the ground
and made clay with the saliva,
and smeared the clay on his eyes,
and said to him,
“Go wash in the Pool of Siloam” —which means Sent—.
So he went and washed, and came back able to see.
His neighbors and those who had seen him earlier as a beggar said,
“Isn’t this the one who used to sit and beg?”
Some said, “It is, “
but others said, “No, he just looks like him.”
He said, “I am.”
So they said to him, “How were your eyes opened?”
He replied,
“The man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes
and told me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’
So I went there and washed and was able to see.”
And they said to him, “Where is he?”
He said, “I don’t know.”
They brought the one who was once blind to the Pharisees.
Now Jesus had made clay and opened his eyes on a sabbath.
So then the Pharisees also asked him how he was able to see.
He said to them,
“He put clay on my eyes, and I washed, and now I can see.”
So some of the Pharisees said,
“This man is not from God,
because he does not keep the sabbath.”
But others said,
“How can a sinful man do such signs?”
And there was a division among them.
So they said to the blind man again,
“What do you have to say about him,
since he opened your eyes?”
He said, “He is a prophet.”
Now the Jews did not believe
that he had been blind and gained his sight
until they summoned the parents of the one who had gained his sight.
They asked them,
“Is this your son, who you say was born blind?
How does he now see?”
His parents answered and said,
“We know that this is our son and that he was born blind.
We do not know how he sees now,
nor do we know who opened his eyes.
Ask him, he is of age;
he can speak for himself.”
His parents said this because they were afraid
of the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed
that if anyone acknowledged him as the Christ,
he would be expelled from the synagogue.
For this reason his parents said,
“He is of age; question him.”
So a second time they called the man who had been blind
and said to him, “Give God the praise!
We know that this man is a sinner.”
He replied,
“If he is a sinner, I do not know.
One thing I do know is that I was blind and now I see.”
So they said to him,
“What did he do to you?
How did he open your eyes?”
He answered them,
“I told you already and you did not listen.
Why do you want to hear it again?
Do you want to become his disciples, too?”
They ridiculed him and said,
“You are that man’s disciple;
we are disciples of Moses!
We know that God spoke to Moses,
but we do not know where this one is from.”
The man answered and said to them,
“This is what is so amazing,
that you do not know where he is from, yet he opened my eyes.
We know that God does not listen to sinners,
but if one is devout and does his will, he listens to him.
It is unheard of that anyone ever opened the eyes of a person born blind.
If this man were not from God,
he would not be able to do anything.”
They answered and said to him,
“You were born totally in sin,
and are you trying to teach us?”
Then they threw him out.
When Jesus heard that they had thrown him out,
he found him and said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
He answered and said,
“Who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?”
Jesus said to him,
“You have seen him,
the one speaking with you is he.”
He said,
“I do believe, Lord,” and he worshiped him.
Then Jesus said,
“I came into this world for judgment,
so that those who do not see might see,
and those who do see might become blind.”
Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this
and said to him, “Surely we are not also blind, are we?”
Jesus said to them,
“If you were blind, you would have no sin;
but now you are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains.

The post Healed to See in the Light of Jesus, Vigil of the Fourth Sunday of Lent (A), March 14, 2026 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
26 min
March 12Turning to the Stronger Man With Hearts, Faces and Necks, Thursday of the Third Week of Lent, March 12, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
IESE Business School, Manhattan
Leonine Forum NYC Chapter
Thursday of the Third Week of Lent
March 12, 2026
Jer 7:23-28, Ps 95, Lk 11:14-23

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The following points were attempted in today’s homily:
Tonight, as we at the Leonine Forum focus on the immigration crisis from the light of Catholic Social Teaching, Jesus reminds us in the Gospel that a house divided against itself cannot stand. Just as Abraham Lincoln used these words in his famous 1858 House Divided Speech in his contest against Stephen Douglas to illustrate how the United States needed could not long endure divided on the issue of whether some of those in the United States were only 3/5 persons undeserving of the right others were legally accorded, so we can and must similarly apply Jesus’ words to the divisions in our country over immigration. Catholics, 24 percent of the US population and summoned by God to swing way above our weight as salt of the earth, light of the world and leaven lifting everyone up, have got to be these Christian agents of unity. Tonight’s session is an opportunity to do that. We can focus on a few ways God through his word wants to strengthen us for that mission.
The first is God’s holy word and what it instructs us to do. Yesterday we pondered how great a gift of God’s mercy it is that God has spoken to us in his word and his commandments. Moses exclaimed, “For what great nation is there that has gods so close to it as the Lord, our God, is to us whenever we call upon him? Or what great nation has statutes and decrees that are as just as this whole law that I am setting before you today?” He added that the Israelites should rejoice in that gift of mercy and pass it on to their children and grandchildren as a means by which to grow closer to the God who through his word and commandments has drawn near to us. Jesus himself in the Gospel said he came to fulfill that law and that the greatest in his Kingdom would be those who put that word into practice and taught others to do the same. The fulfillment of the law leads to the fulfillment of human persons.
What did the vast majority of the Israelites do in response to that gift of mercy God had given them? The Lord himself summarizes it through the Prophet Jeremiah at the beginning of today’s first reading: “This is what I commanded my people: Listen to my voice; then I will be your God and you shall be my people. Walk in all the ways that I command you, so that you may prosper. But they obeyed not, nor did they pay heed.” Then he uses four body parts to describe graphically their response. “They turned their backs, not their faces, to me.” This was a sign of betrayal and abandonment. “They have stiffened their necks and done worse than their fathers.” They wouldn’t heed the Lord when he sent the prophets toward them; they would resolutely keep doing what they wanted to do like horses running with blinders. “They walked in the hardness of their evil hearts.” Their hearts, which were meant to be sponges for God’s words, had become sclerotic, impenetrable even to God.
We see an illustration of this type of resistance in the Gospel reading. Jesus had just exorcised someone, one in a long line of deliverances from the devil, but those Scribes and Pharisees who had already hardened their hearts, stiffened their necks and turned their backs toward Jesus refused to accept that any of the incontestable exorcisms happened by the finger of God. They accused Jesus of working exorcisms by the power of the prince of devils. Their hardened hearts had led to a hardening of the brain. Jesus exposed their foolishness in two ways. First, since they admitted that some of their own number were exorcising, if he cast out by the devil, then they were suggesting that their own number might be exorcising by Beelzebul, too, something of course they would never believe or admit. Second, since the devil is trying to win, not forfeit, the possession our hearts, backs, necks and faces, it would make no sense for him to be defeating himself through exorcism. Their response to Jesus’ liberation of the boy from the devil, however, shows what God was describing about the Israelites and their treatment of the prophets sent in God’s name. They didn’t want to turn back to God. No matter how often they had prayed today’s Responsorial Psalm, “If today you hear the voice of the Lord, harden not your hearts,” that’s precisely what they did when they heard the voice of God through Jeremiah, and it’s precisely what the Scribes and Pharisees did when they heard Jesus’ voice.
We can apply all of this to the immigration debate. God is quite clear in Sacred Scripture that he wants to care for the orphan, the widow and the stranger. He reminds the Israelites in the Old Testament that they were once strangers in Egypt, and he wanted his people treating people as they had hoped to be treated, not enslaved, by the Egyptians. In the New Testament, Jesus went much further, telling us that whatever we do to the stranger, we do to him. At our judgment, he will say to us, either, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me” and send us to his eternal right or “I was a stranger and you gave me no welcome” and send us to his eternal left. God wants us to hear this word and live this word. That doesn’t mean we can’t have borders, or safe, orderly and regular processes for migration. That doesn’t mean we can’t deport criminals or not give citizenship to those born her of non-US citizens. But what it does mean for us Christians and others is we need to act as if we were making decisions about Jesus, about Mary and Joseph, about people we love. We need to hearken to the Lord’s voice. Rather than turning our backs toward Him, we need to turn our faces to him in prayer and in adoration. Rather than hardening our hearts, we need to soften them, by responding to his merciful help to love more and more all that he teaches us, listening to his words as words to be done, and then helping others to receive and live by this same gift of mercy. Rather than stiffening our necks, he wants us to turn our necks with him when he turns to the Father, when he turns to the poor that he wants us to help, when he turns to the others here, when he turns toward our family members that we need to forgive, when he turns toward Sacred Scripture in order to instruct us in his ways. The word “convert” comes from the Latin con-vertere, which means to turn with the Lord, and that’s precisely what God wants to help us to do.
Second, we need to recognize the devil’s involvement. He is the great divider and will use anything he can to try to get a foothold in us so that he can begin to divide us from the Lord and others. If he can get us to have a hardened heart to the voice of the Lord in Sacred Scripture at daily Mass, giving us that hardened soil that convinces us we’ve heard it before and that it really doesn’t have the power to change our life forever, that’s where he’ll start, because he knows that partially hardened hearts leads to hardening of the spiritual arteries, to stiff necks, and to backs turned toward the Lord. If he can harden our hearts by tempting us not to forgive someone else, that’s where he’ll start. If he can harden our hearts through frustration over open borders and decades of failure of our legislators to act, he will. Any way that he can seek to divide us, within ourselves, among ourselves, or in our relationship with God through sin or tepidity, he will, seeking to metastasize that spiritual cancer later.
Third, there is good news here. Jesus stresses that he is the stronger man who has come to bind the devil and divide his spoils. Jesus’ power to unite is infinitely greater than the devil’s ability to divide. We need to take advantage, however, of all of the means he gives to turn our faces, our hearts, our necks, our bodies and souls to him. He exorcised us on the day of baptism and wants to continue to strengthen us to choose him over and against the wiles of the devil. And he seeks to give us his strength. He finishes today’s Gospel by saying, “He who is not with me is against me and he who does not gather with me scatters.” This points to the truth that we cannot be neutral in our life with respect to Jesus and what he’s asking. We’re either actively turning toward him, or we’re turning our back on him and helping others to turn their back on him. It’s not enough not formally to turn our back on God or give him a gesture of defiance. If we’re not actively turning toward him, if we’re not receiving his word with good soil, then objectively we’re turning against him and scattering. Jesus in another passage in the Gospel said something that on the surface seems contradictory, but isn’t. He said to his apostles, “Those who are not against us are with us.” The two passages have been harmonized by various saints to mean that part of us is with the Lord and part of us is not; part of us is gathering, part of us is scattering. And the whole purpose of Lent is to bring us into total conformity so that we may not be a house divided, but a house totally in communion with God. God wants to help us turn the entirety of our hearts, minds, souls, strength, faces and necks to him and then go out with him gathering others to do the same.
Today, Jesus wants to help cast out from us whatever is in the grip of the evil one. He wants to cure our hearts, faces, and necks so that they, and our entire body and soul may turn toward the Lord, rejoice in his word and his gifts, and through, with and in Him, gather all people to share the Communion Jesus came into the world to give us. He is the Stronger Man who wants to fill us with his strength in our weakness. As we prepare now to receive him, let us ask him for the grace to love him — and our neighbor, including the immigrants — with all our hearts, faces, necks, minds, soul and strength! Amen!

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
JER 7:23-28
Thus says the LORD:
This is what I commanded my people:
Listen to my voice;
then I will be your God and you shall be my people.
Walk in all the ways that I command you,
so that you may prosper.
But they obeyed not, nor did they pay heed.
They walked in the hardness of their evil hearts
and turned their backs, not their faces, to me.
From the day that your fathers left the land of Egypt even to this day,
I have sent you untiringly all my servants the prophets.
Yet they have not obeyed me nor paid heed;
they have stiffened their necks and done worse than their fathers.
When you speak all these words to them,
they will not listen to you either;
when you call to them, they will not answer you.
Say to them:
This is the nation that does not listen
to the voice of the LORD, its God,
or take correction.
Faithfulness has disappeared;
the word itself is banished from their speech.
Responsorial Psalm
PS 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9
R. (8) If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
Come, let us sing joyfully to the LORD;
let us acclaim the Rock of our salvation.
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us joyfully sing psalms to him.
R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
Come, let us bow down in worship;
let us kneel before the LORD who made us.
For he is our God,
and we are the people he shepherds, the flock he guides.
R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
Oh, that today you would hear his voice:
“Harden not your hearts as at Meribah,
as in the day of Massah in the desert,
Where your fathers tempted me;
they tested me though they had seen my works.”
R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
Gospel
LK 11:14-23
Jesus was driving out a demon that was mute,
and when the demon had gone out,
the mute man spoke and the crowds were amazed.
Some of them said,
“By the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons,
he drives out demons.”
Others, to test him, asked him for a sign from heaven.
But he knew their thoughts and said to them,
“Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste
and house will fall against house.
And if Satan is divided against himself,
how will his kingdom stand?
For you say that it is by Beelzebul that I drive out demons.
If I, then, drive out demons by Beelzebul,
by whom do your own people drive them out?
Therefore they will be your judges.
But if it is by the finger of God that I drive out demons,
then the Kingdom of God has come upon you.
When a strong man fully armed guards his palace,
his possessions are safe.
But when one stronger than he attacks and overcomes him,
he takes away the armor on which he relied
and distributes the spoils.
Whoever is not with me is against me,
and whoever does not gather with me scatters.”

The post Turning to the Stronger Man With Hearts, Faces and Necks, Thursday of the Third Week of Lent, March 12, 2026 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
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Father Roger J. Landry is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, who works for the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations in New York.