Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs, Auriesville, NY

Day of Recollection for the Novices of the Sisters of LIfe

August 17, 2023

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Fr. Roger J. Landry

Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs, Auriesville, NY

Day of Recollection for the Novices of the Sisters of LIfe

August 17, 2023

 

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Fr. Roger J. Landry

Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs, Auriesville, NY

Thursday of the 19th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

August 17, 2023

Josh 3:7-11.13-17, Ps 114, Mt 18:21-19:1

 

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

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Yesterday the Church focused in the Gospel on fraternal correction in seeking to bring people back into communion from a wayward life. But it’s not enough merely to correct. There needs to be forgiveness offered as well for genuine reconciliation to be effected, so that people can truly pray and live “in the name” of Jesus. So, continuing with Jesus the conversation we entered yesterday, Peter asks how often must he forgive his brother when his brother sins against him. The Rabbis had taught, based on a misinterpretation of passages of the Prophet Amos, that we needed to forgive three times, to give someone a forth chance. Peter multiplied that by two and added one and said, “As many as 7 times?” This would be a very high standard, giving someone an eighth chance, before writing someone off as incorrigible. Jesus replies, “No, Seventy Sevens.” Whether that means 70×7 (490) or 70+7 (77) times really doesn’t matter, because seven in the Biblical mentality is a number already with a sense of infinity. It means to forgive without limit.

* To drive home his point, Jesus then gives us a parable that I think is one of his most powerful for us to understand, if not nearly as well known as it ought to be. He describes two debtors. The first debtor is brought into the King for owing what our translation says is a “huge amount.” The actual term used by St. Matthew is “10,000 talents.” A talent was equivalent to 6,000 denarii and a denarius was a full day’s wage. That means that the man owed 60,000,000 days worth of work, something that would take him 164,271 years to pay off. His request, after he had fallen prostrate on the ground and begged for time to pay it back, was totally absurd. He would need to live to be 165,000 years old. To monetize his debt in today’s terms in order to better understand it, if he were making $100 a day (or $12.50 an hour), he would have owed $6 billion. But the text tells us that when the King saw the man on the ground begging absurdly for time, his “heart was moved with pity” (literally, he was sick to his stomach, his viscera exploded with compassion) and he forgave the entire debt. He didn’t even make him pay what he could. He forgave it all. We’re supposed to see in this what God does for us. He forgives our entire debt. He forgives us 7, 77, 490 times and more.

* But then we see that the servant who had been forgiven billions, who was a billionaire in merciful love, went off and met a servant who owed him 100 denarii, something that could be paid off in about 3 months. This second debtor, using the very same words and actions as the first, fell down begging for time to pay it off. The first debtor must have recognized that the phrase and actions being employed reminded him of his own recent condition. But instead of sharing mercy with the second debtor, he went up and started to choke him in anger and threw him into prison until his family was able to raise the 100 denarii (in today’s money $10,000 at $100 a day for 100 days) to pay him back. At that point the other servants of the King, seeing the behavior of their colleague, were “saddened” and “disturbed” and they went to the Master, not so much to tattle-tale as to let him know of what was happening in his kingdom, that his standard of mercy was not being shown. He called in the first debtor, called him “wicked” and asked the poignant question: “I forgave you your entire debt because you begge...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Wednesday of the 19th Week of Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Stephen of Hungary

August 16, 2023

Dt 34:1-12, Ps 66, Mt 18:15-20

 

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

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today we come to the end of the dramatic life of Moses. He was God’s instrument not only to liberate God’s people from slavery in Egypt and lead them through the desert to the promised land but to keep them united in the Covenant with God and in love for each other through the desert. That was, as we’ve seen over the last month at daily Mass, very challenging work. Moses often had to correct the people on God’s behalf, to remind them of how they were sinning, how sin destroys communion, and to inspire them to care for those in need, especially those vulnerable to be overlooked, like widow, the orphan and the stranger.

* What Moses did was a prophecy of the work of Jesus, who came down to unite us in a family, to bring us through the communion of saints somehow, mysteriously, according to our condition as creatures, into the communion of the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. And to do that, he similarly needed to correct us, to help us repent and believe, and to show us how to follow him toward communion with the Father and with others. He prayed during the Last Supper that we might be one as the Father and He are one, so that the world might believe that the Father sent the Son and loves us like he loves the Son (Jn 17). When he ascended, he left that Mission of constructively correcting and unifying the human race to the Church.

* That’s what we see in today’s Gospel. Jesus shows us the power of unity, telling us that whenever just two or three gather in his name, he’ll be present in the midst; when we pray united in his name to the Father, the Father will hear it; when we in his name bind something on earth it will be bound even in heaven and when we loose something on earth in his name, it will be loosed in heaven. To pray in Jesus’ name means to pray conscious of the fact that God is-with-us (the name Emmanuel) to save us (the name Jesus), to unite us, to rescue us from rupture and division, to help us to follow him and to become his icon in the middle of the world carrying out God’s plan to restore and unite all things. The devil’s plan, on the other hand, is always to divide. The word diabolos in Greek signifies one who attempts to throw off course. The consequences of sin are always a triple division, a division with God, with others, and within ourselves. The devil’s work is to get us to try to make a name for ourselves individually, rather than hallow and pray in God’s name and reveal by our communion that we know we have but one Father.

* Jesus also tells us what we wants us to do when we’ve succumbed to the temptations of the great Divider and experienced the division the devil seeks to provoke. It’s what the Church traditionally has called “fraternal correction.” It’s key for us to grasp Jesus isn’t giving this as “good advice” but as a series of imperatives. He commands us to do fraternal correction, because it’s crucial within his saving plans. This form of love and spiritual work of mercy essential to the restoration of unity. Today we can ponder the steps he gives us and why each is important.

* The first step involves a one-on-one encounter. Jesus says, “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother.” Notice that Jesus says, “If your brother sins against you.” He’s telling us if we’ve been hurt by a brother,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Corpus Christi Parish, Manhattan

Solemnity of the Assumption 2023

August 15, 2023

Rev 11:19.12:1-6.10, Ps 45, 1 Cor 15:20-27, Lk 1:39-56

 

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

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The following text guided the homily: 

* With the whole Church, today we celebrate the great solemnity of the Assumption of Our Lady, body and soul, into heaven. “The Lord has done great things for me,” Mary exclaims in today’s Gospel, and our first reaction is to praise God for all of the blessings he gave her over the course of her life. We see these “great things” of the Lord in her being preserved from all stain of original sin from the first moment of her conception, in her singular privilege of becoming the Mother of God, and, today, in the fact that at the end of her life the Lord did not allow her body to see corruption, but took her up into heaven body and soul. Thus our first response is to join with Mary in having our whole being “magnify the Lord” and “rejoice in God our Savior” for all of these blessings he has given to her, and through her, to the human race.

* Our second reaction is to venerate Mary herself for her continual holy response to these divine graces. Mary stated that because of God’s grace, “All generations will call me blessed,” and today we unite with generations before us and after us in so extolling her. With St. Elizabeth we say, “Blessed are you who believed that the Lord’s words would be fulfilled!” Mary trusted in God always and constantly said “let it be done to me according to Your word,” from the time of the visit of the Angel Gabriel throughout her earthly and now heavenly life.

* But the main purpose of this feast — the reason faithful Catholics mark it each year no matter what day of the week on which it falls — is to help us apply the lessons of Mary’s life and bodily assumption to our own. Her presence in heaven, body and soul, is a sign and foretaste of the destiny which Christ died to share with us as well. Christ’s will has been fully accomplished in her in a way that exceeds that of the rest of the saints, whose souls are with God but whose bodies remain in the grave. Christ’s will is that we spend eternity, body and soul, with him in heaven. We profess this each Sunday when we proclaim, “We believe in the resurrection of the body!,” which refers not to Christ’s resurrection — about which we state our belief when we say, “on the third day he rose again” — but to our resurrection. We are professing that at the end of time our bodies, too, will be raised and purified so that we might each and every one of us say to God eternally, “This is my body, given for you.” Mary’s body has been assumed into heaven at the end of her earthly life because she already has given it purely and wholly to God at the Son of God’s incarnation. And since her Assumption, Mary has become like a hiker who has climbed Mount Everest and returns to show others the way. With God’s help, she has reached the celestial apex and now returns to help guide us on our pilgrimage to that eternal home. The readings the Church gives us on this feast day are like a map for us to follow, so that we might imitate her and come with her to that summit.

* In the Gospel for the Vigil Mass, we encounter the passage when an anonymous woman from the crowd shouts to Jesus, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you.” Jesus, however, wants to praise his mother not for her inimitable privilege — her physical, blood, relationship with him — but for her imitable example: “Blessed, rather, are those who hear the word of God and keep it.” In so doing, Jesus was far exceeding the anonymous woman’s praise and pointi...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

1 Kings 19:9.11-13, Ps 85, Rom 9:1-5, Mt 14:22-33

August 13, 2023

 

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The following text guided the homily: 

* God’s love for us is often expressed in surprising and very challenging ways. In the first reading, we see how the Lord came to the Prophet Elijah on Mount Horeb. For the previous 40 days and 40 nights, Elijah had been fleeing for his life across the desert, escaping from the murderous intentions of Queen Jezebel, who had sworn an oath to see him executed. At the end of the journey, taking refuge in a cave from the brutal heat, Elijah complained to God. “I have been most zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts, but the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to the sword. I alone am left, and they seek to take my life.” He thought working for the Lord should have brought him blessings but instead it seemed like he had only encountered hardship and persecution. God told him, “Go outside and stand on the mountain before the Lord; the Lord will be passing by.” God was going to give him a manifestation of his presence to strengthen him. God began with the three theophanies he had used with Moses on the top of the same mountain, which was also called Mount Sinai. A ferocious storm came, something that would have been an obvious exhibition of the Creator’s power over nature, but God wasn’t present in the tempest. Then there was an earthquake, perhaps an even more impressive display from the One who had created the foundations of the earth, but God wasn’t there either. Third, there was a big fire, which would have been a fitting sign of God’s presence a month and a half after God had shown his power by coming in a fire to consume Elijah’s drenched sacrifice in his showdown with the priests of Ba’al near Mount Carmel. But God didn’t reveal himself that way either. He came in a tiny whispering sound, like a gentle breeze flowing through the leaves of a tree.

* God revealed himself to Elijah, therefore, not in a huge spectacle or massive display of force as Elijah might have expected, but rather in a very quiet way, to show that he’s with us, passing by us, speaking to us, through ordinary, daily, humble occurrences rather than exclusively through extraordinary demonstrations of power and might. The lesson is that God doesn’t come always how we expect him to, when we expect him to. He comes as he wants and as he knows we need. We see this obviously in how he entered the world, being born not in a royal palace but in a poor stable. We see it in how he triumphed, not amid jubilant fanfare but among jeers dying ignominiously on the Cross. We see it, too, in how he helps the apostles grow in faith and trust in today’s Gospel. He gave them a startling crash course in Christian trust that is far more surprising, even jolting, than anything he did with the Prophet Elijah. What the Lord did with the apostles, and especially St. Peter, to help them confront and overcome their primal fears and transition from fear to faith helps us to see how he often deals with us in order lovingly to help us grow in faith and trust as we confront our fears of failure, abandonment, struggle, sickness, pain, the past, the future, death, the possibility of hell and anything and everything else, too. So as you prepare later this week to start your Triduum on the spirit of the Missionaries of Charity, let’s enter into the drama of the scene, the main elements of which highlight key aspects of loving trust and total surrender that are summoned to be repeated in one way or a...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Nineteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, A, Vigil

August 12, 2023

 

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

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The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday, in which Jesus will help the apostles, especially St. Peter, to overcome their primal fears and through which he seeks to help us, too, to go from fear to faith, and to overcome our terror of failure, abandonment, struggle, sickness, pain, the past, the future, death, the possibility of hell and anything and everything else, too.

* Let’s put ourselves first in this dramatic scene whose main elements are recapitulated in some way or another in the life of every disciple. In the scene right before this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus had had everyone sit down on the green grass for the multiplication of the loaves and fish, so we know that it must have been mid-March to mid-April in the Holy Land, because after that the grass begins to get scorched by the sun and loses its verdant color. That would mean sunset would have happened about 6 pm, which is the time the apostles got into the boat to begin the journey across the top of the Sea of Galilee. It would have been about a 5-6 mile journey that should have taken a few hours. The storm began to rage, St. Matthew tells us, when they were in the middle of the Sea, so about an hour or two along their trek. Jesus came to them in the “fourth watch of the night” — the period stretching from 3-6 am — which meant that by that point, they had been in the boat 9-12 hours, battling a ferocious storm, fatigued, soaking wet and fearing for their life. Jesus was placidly praying on the mountain as they were struggling for hours not to drown to death. Why did Jesus wait so long as his friends were in peril? It brings us back to the other time that they were afraid for their life on the Sea, when Jesus was asleep in the bow of the boat as they thought they were about to perish. In both cases, Jesus’ supposed inaction was to increase their faith. He was introducing them to a central truth of the spiritual life: that in order to be able to abandon ourselves to God, we must first feel what appears to be total abandonment by  It’s only then that we’re able to make the leap that faith entails. When all human means are exhausted, when even God seems to be absent, it’s then that we can make a deep act of faith to believe in him even when we can’t see or hear him.

* After hours of struggling for their lives, Jesus comes walking along the white caps of the churning sea. Their first reaction was to think they were seeing a ghost — after all, no one had ever seen a man walk on water before, not to mention surf waves without a surfboard. There was also a superstition that there were monsters at the bottom of the Sea of Galilee and likely that played into their alarm as well. Jesus, however, said to them across the howling winds, “Take courage! I am (here)! Do not be afraid!!” They were words of confidence that could help assuage their fears and give them courage. We see the first fruit of that in Peter. “Lord, if it is you,” he said, “Bid me to come to you across the water.” He first refers to the walking “ghost” as “Lord,” but then he qualifies it by saying, “if it is you.” He was hovering between belief and unbelief. At the word of Jesus, however, “Come!,” he did what he had precisely been trying to avoid over the previous 7-10 hours or more: he ...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Saint Joan of Arc Church, Orleans, Massachusetts

Monday of the 18th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Sixtus and Companions, Martyrs

August 7, 2023

Num 11:4-15, Ps 81, Mt 14:13-21

 

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

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* As we continue to be nourished by the exhibition of the Eucharistic Miracles of the World enveloping St. Joan of Arc Church, we have in the first reading and the Gospel two of the great prefigurations of the feast of the Eucharist in Sacred Scripture. In the first, we see how the Lord for 40 years miraculously fed the Israelites with manna he would rain down upon them each morning. In the Gospel, we have one of the two miraculous multiplications of the loaves and fish to feed the famished crowd.  We could easily focus on the Lord’s generosity, or, in the Gospel, on the way that he wishes for us to participate in his miraculous self-giving by our giving him first the raw materials. But I’d like rather to talk about two fundamental attitudes that are in stark contrast in the way we approach how the God to whom we pray, “Give us today our daily bread,” wishes to feed us.

* In the Gospel, St. Matthew tells us that Jesus, “taking the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, said the blessing.” That blessing was a prayer of Thanksgiving to God. In St. John’s recollection, he wrote, “Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed them to those who were reclining, and also as much of the fish as they wanted.” An essential element of our living a truly Eucharistic life is that we are constantly thanking God for all that he gives and does for us. The very word Eucharist flows from the Greek word for Thanksgiving.

* The need for this Thanksgiving stands out when contrasted with the attitude of the Israelites in the desert. They weren’t truly grateful for the all that the Lord had done to liberate them, showing them how dear they were to him. They weren’t grateful that, in the middle of the desert, he was raining down from heaven for them each day the manna that they could make into loaves so that they wouldn’t starve to death. No. They weren’t grateful for all of these signs of God’s providential love. Instead, they complained, they grumbled, they murmured, they moaned saying, “Would that we had meat for food! We remember the fish we used to eat without cost in Egypt, and the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now we are famished; we see nothing before us but this manna.” In their grumbling they were succumbing to the same temptation we find at the archetypal root of sin. Adam and Eve had access to all the food in the garden except the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but rather than rejoicing in what they did have, they began to focus on what they didn’t have. They gave into the temptation of the serpent to dwell on how the fruit of the forbidden tree was “good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom” (Gen 3:6). And that’s where their downfall began. It’s also where ours begins.

* To live a Eucharistic life, as we were talking about yesterday afternoon, means to live one of blessing and thanksgiving, rather than complaint and envy. It’s one in which we count our blessings, not what we exaggerate to be our deprivations. And it’s through Thanksgiving, we know, that we are opened up by God to receive greater blessings. That’s what we see in the story of the ten lepers: God wanted to give them all a gift far greater than their physical cure, but it was only the one grateful leper who received salvation by faith through coming back...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Joan of Arc Parish, Orleans, Massachusetts

Presentation on Blessed Carlo Acutis and the Eucharistic Miracles of the World Exhibition

August 6, 2023

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Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Joan of Arc Parish, Orleans, MA

Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord

August 6, 2023

Dan 7:9-10.13-14, Ps 97, 2 Pet 1:16-19, Mt 17:1-9

 

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

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The following text guided the homily: 

* Today we, like the apostles Peter, James and John, accompany Jesus up an exceedingly high mountain to witness him transfigured in glory. Each year on the Second Sunday of Lent we make this journey as we focus on how Jesus, through giving his three closest apostles a foretaste of his divine glory, was preparing them for when they would see him transfigured in blood, pain and suffering on Good Friday. Every year, however, since 1456, the Roman Catholic Church has also celebrated the Transfiguration on August 6, as a means by which we can focused on Jesus’ glory in its own right and on the other lessons of this important scene in the life of Jesus, which, since 2002, has constituted the fourth Luminous mystery of the Rosary we ponder each Thursday.

* What are the lessons Jesus wants to teach us?

* The first is about exertion that the life of faith entails. Jesus could have prayed with Peter, James and John anywhere, but he wanted to take them on a strenuous hike, a journey of several hours uphill to the summit of what St. Matthew calls an exceedingly high mountain. At the top of the mountain, Jesus miraculously conversed with Moses, who several times climbed up Mount Sinai, and Elijah, who ascended Mount Horeb and Mount Carmel, in order to meet with God. By having his three apostles climb a mountain with him to pray, Jesus was teaching them that faith, that prayer, often requires a great effort. Many times we would prefer to go downhill rather than climb uphill. Many times we would prefer just to stay where we are and build a booth for God so that we can converse with him at our convenience. Today Jesus beckons all of us to join him in the holy exertion of Christian faith and life, so that we may be strengthened to make the climb of faith all the way to the heavenly Jerusalem.

* The second lesson is recognizing who the Lord Jesus really is. At the top of the mountain, the three apostles see Jesus’ face become radiant like the sun and his clothes become dazzlingly white. This is the fulfillment of what we see in today’s first reading when the Prophet Daniel in a vision saw God with clothing as bright as snow and hair as white as wool, whose throne had flames and wheels of burning fire as one like a Son of Man received everlasting dominion. The apostles beheld that divinity appearing through Jesus’ clothes and flesh. The Lord wanted them to see who he really was so that they wouldn’t lose faith when they would look on him transfigured in blood. Similarly, it’s crucial for us to recognize and revere the divinity of Jesus that he is unlike anyone who has ever lived, that he is indeed the God of glory, the Lord, King and Most High over all the earth, and that we should never take our relationship with the him for granted or place anyone or anything above him.

* The third lesson is about paying attention to Jesus. After he had been enveloped by a bright cloud, a sign of God’s holiness like we see happened on Mt. Sinai or on the tent of meeting for the Ark of the Covenant in the desert, God the Father spoke from the cloud saying, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.” This command of God is rather strange. What had Peter, James and John been doing for the previous two years but listening to Jesus? They had been hearing him preach in the synagogues and in the Temple area, on mountain sides and grassy plains, from boats, in houses,