Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Transfiguration of the Lord, A, Vigil

August 5, 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, as we, like the apostles Peter, James and John, will accompany Jesus up an exceedingly high mountain and witness him transfigured in glory. As you know, every 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. We focus then on how Jesus spoke there with the great Old Testament figures of the law and the prophets, respectively, Moses and Elijah, about the upcoming “exodus” Jesus was to accomplish in Jerusalem, when Jesus, just as Moses led the Israelites from slavery through the Red Sea and the desert to the promised land, would lead us, through the waters of baptism into his death and the desert of the Christian life into the eternal promised land of heaven. 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 those lessons?

* The first is the exertion Jesus calls us to make as disciples. He never tells us to stay right where we are, but summons us to a journey, to follow him up an exceedingly high mountain, indeed to the heavenly Jerusalem. The Christian life is a dynamic and demanding adventure with Jesus as our alpine guide.

* The second lesson is about the importance of prayer. Jesus took the apostles on that journey precisely so that they might pray. To pray is to contemplate God. It’s far more than an exchange of words or ideas, but an exchange of persons, as God comes to abide in us and have us abide in him. This mutual indwelling is summarized by the experience of contemplation. Just this past Friday, August 4, we celebrated the Memorial of the patron saint of parish priests, St. John Mary Vianney, the Curé of Ars, who loved to talk about the art of prayer with the words one of his parishioners, the farmer Louis Chaffangeon, who, when his pastor asked him what he was doing as he knelt before the tabernacle in Church, replied, “Je l’avise et il m’avise.” “I’m looking at him and he’s looking at me.” Prayer is an exchange of loving glances as we look at God and he looks at us and the whole process transforms us to look at ourselves, the world and others with the loving eyes of God. The presence of Moses and Elijah teaches us about how Sacred Scripture speaks of Jesus, about his life, passion, death and ultimately resurrection. The cloud that descends at the top of the mountain reminds us that prayer is, as the great Latin aphorism attests, both lumen etnumen, both light and cloud, but we’ll be given certain insights but much, because of our finite capacities, will remain shrouded in mystery. And God the Father’s instruction from the cloud, “This is my beloved Son: listen to Him,” reminds us that prayer is ultimately about our allowing Jesus to speak and seeking out of love to align our life to what he asks.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

July 29, 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, when Jesus will give us two inspiring, I like to call them twin, parables that sum up the approach we should have to him and to our faith. The parables are simple enough to understand. The first is of a poor peasant finding a buried treasure in the midst of his work in someone else’s field. There were no real banks to speak of in ancient Palestine. People would often bury things of value in secret locations in fields. There was no sense of “finders keepers, losers weepers”; whatever was discovered in a field belonged not to the discoverer but the owner. That’s why the man needed to buy the field. It’s quite obvious that the one selling had no idea that an ancient treasure was buried on his property. He didn’t place the same value in the field as much as his peasant did and so he sold it. For the peasant, selling all he said in order to get the money to buy the field was nothing compared to what he knew he would be gaining.

* The second parable is of a wealthy merchant searching for precious pearls, going from place to place in pursuit of something truly valuable and beautiful. Finally, he found the pearl of his dreams, whose worth was unsurpassable, and whose owner valued it less than the money he would get in exchange. And so the wealthy merchant sold all that he had before — doubtless houses, gems and other valuables — to obtain that pearl of great price.

* I’d like to focus on three spiritual lessons Jesus wants us to learn from these parables.

* The first quality is an insatiable desire for the treasure of the kingdom of God, which is basically an unquenchable thirst for God. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told us, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Mt 6:21). He declared in that same Sermon that many of us seek to “store up for [ourselves] treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal,” but he wanted us to “store up for [ourselves] treasures in heaven,” a treasure not measured in clothing that moths can wreck, metals that rust can corrode, or money that thieves or taxes can take. Jesus is communicating that our heart must be set on God, and not just in general, but more than star athletes want to win another championship, ambitious politicians seek to win higher office, and a man in love does everything he can to win over and marry the woman he can’t stop thinking about.

* The second is a recognition of where the treasure of the kingdom can be found. The merchant in the parable knew the places he needed to go, and so he crisscrossed the ancient world visiting the shops and markets where pearls would be sold. The farmer wasn’t so much searching for a buried treasure, but when he discovered it in the middle of his workday tilling new parts of the landowner’s property that had not yet been farmed, he knew what to do. Where do we go to find the treasure? We find God in personal prayer, we find him in the Sacraments, especially Mass and confession. We can find him speaking to us in Sacred Scripture. We find him radiantly shining in the lives and writings of the saints. We find him living within us in the truly Christian moral life with virtue.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Our Lady of Grapes Chapel, Meritage Resort, Napa, California

Napa Institute Board and Guild Retreat

Memorial of SS. Joachim and Anne

July 26, 2023

Sir 44:1.10-15, Ps 132, Mt 13:16-17

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/7.26.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today, three days after the  celebration of the World Day of Prayer for Grandparents and the Elderly, we have the chance to celebrate the feast of the Grandparents of God, SS. Joachim and Anne. We know very little about them. We receive their names from the gnostic Pseudogospel of St. James, which is highly unreliable but perhaps can be counted upon to get a few facts right, like their names and the fact that they conceived Mary very late in life after both thought that they would die childless and in the Jewish mentality of the time, publicly under a supposed curse of sterility of God. But after Joachim fasted and prayed in the desert and Anne wept a double lamentation, God’s angel came to them and announced they would conceive. If this is true, we can ask, why would God have waited so long? The answer is, I think, to increase their longing, to increase their awareness that every child comes from God. When children are conceived when parents are young, they can frequently think that it was just a result of a biological act and that God was really little involved. But God is always involved in the conception of every child, but sometimes it’s only when children come under rarer circumstances — after much prayer, after multiple miscarriages. much later in life, even miraculously post-menopausally — that we become more aware of it. And we know that the conception in St. Anne’s womb was unlike any other in human history, as her long-awaited daughter was conceived without any stain of original sin, would go on to become the most famous woman of all time, and would give birth not only to the long longed for Messiah but the Son of God himself. The Lord often has us persevere in prayer, sometimes for decades, in order to purify us and strengthen us, and often to give us something far greater in response to a holy desire than we would have ever dared to dream.

* In the first reading today, Sirach, in a lyric of praise for our “godly ancestors,” reminds us that their “wealth remains in their families, their heritage with their descendants,” that “their family endures through God’s Covenant with them” and “their glory will never be blotted out.” How true these words are about SS. Joachim and Anne! It’s easy for us to focus today on their biological relationship to Jesus, that they were the grandparents according to the flesh of the long-awaited Messiah, of the Savior of the world. But once, when an anonymous woman cried out from the crowd in praise of Mary, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!,” Jesus replied that there was something far greater than Mary’s physical relationship with her Son. “Blessed rather,” Jesus said, “are those who hear the Word of God and act on it,” as Mary had. I have great confidence that the source of Joachim’s and Anne’s happiness is not just or principally the genes they bequeathed to Jesus through their immaculately conceived daughter, but the faith they passed on to their daughter, the faith that had been tried over decades and strengthened, the faith that allowed her to conceive Jesus in her heart before she had ever conceived him in her womb. This points to a central truth that all grandparents, parents and everyone called to spiritual paternity and maternity — like we are, Sisters — need to grasp, that the most important heritage we pass on is our faith. For those in the world,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Our Lady of Grapes Chapel, Meritage Resort, Napa, California

Napa Institute Board and Guild Retreat

Feast of St. James the Apostle

July 25, 2023

2 Cor 4:7-15, Ps 126, Mt 20:20-28

 

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

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Last week I had the privilege to be in Spain and was several times along the path of the Camino de Santiago, the Way of Saint James, where last year 439,000 people from around the world, from devout Catholics to agnostics trying to find themselves, make up to a 478-mile pilgrimage to the tomb of St. James the Apostle, whose feast we celebrate today. While we’re not in Santiago de Compostela in the northwest Spanish region of Galicia where tradition says his martyred remains were brought in the first century, the feast of St. James the Greater inspires us to desire to make what I would call the true Camino, the most important Way of St. James, following his spiritual footsteps as he sought to follow the Lord’s, knowing that this sainted apostle is praying for us that we may indeed take that route.

* The Way of St. James begins at the seashore of Galilee when the apostle left his boats, his fish, his parents and his home to respond to Jesus’ call, “Follow me!,” and he kept following Jesus not only on the occasions he shared with all of the apostles, but when Jesus summoned him, his brother John and Peter, apart from the rest to cure Peter’s mother in law, to raise the daughter of Jairus from the dead, to be transfigured among them, and to pray in the Garden that, if it be the Father’s will, the chalice of suffering God the Father was giving Jesus might be taken away. For us to follow the way of St. James, we, too, must follow Jesus, leaving other things behind: to follow him to the sick; to follow him to the dead and mourning; to follow him in times to prayer; to follow him into the moments of great suffering.

* To do that, we need to have our desires, our ambitions, our longings transformed just like St. James did. Why did Jesus choose Peter, James and John from among the twelve to be the ones closest to him and his work? I think in all three cases it was their capacity for leadership, their zeal and their ambition properly understood. Peter showed that he was a real leader among the others in prayer: he was the one who heard God the Father intimate to him that Jesus was the Messiah and Son of the Living God and had the courage to say it. James and John were nicknamed by Jesus “Boanerges,” or “Sons of Thunder,” because they were the ones who out of righteousness indignation, just like Sodom and Gomorrah had been destroyed in times past, wanted to have fire rain down from heaven to destroy Samaria for its inhospitality to Jesus. They were also plainly ambitious, as we see in today’s Gospel, something that perhaps came from the fact that the two of them, like Peter and Andrew, were fishermen, helping to run their own business. We see that ambition on display in today’s Gospel, after their mother asks whether James and John could have the choicest positions in Jesus’ messianic administration. In St. Mark’s Gospel, it’s James and John themselves who ask, because it was clearly what they sought. Jesus, wanting to transform their ambition from worldly to supernatural, asks, “Can you drink the chalice I am to drink?” That’s the chalice that Jesus in Gethsemane prayed that if it be possible God the Father take from him (Mk 14:36), the chalice of suffering foretold in Isaiah’s suffering servant songs (Is 51:17; 51:22). James and John both responded with ardor, “We can” — they gave Jesus a blank check, not knowing how exactly it would be cashed — a...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Our Lady of Grapes Chapel, Meritage Resort, Napa, California

Napa Institute

Monday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Charbel Maklouf

July 24, 2023

Ex 14:5-18, Ex 15, Mt 12:38-42

 

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

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today the Scribes and the Pharisees — those those who had said in the immediately preceding scene in St. Matthew’s Gospel that Jesus did exorcisms by the power of the devil and who had begun to conspire to plot his death — come up, hypocritically call him “Teacher” and ask him for a sign. A sign was a miracle that pointed to something else, namely Jesus’ authority to preach and do what he was saying and doing. We know, however, that Jesus by this point had been working miracles non-stop: he had just cured a man with a withered hand and had expelled demons, he had healed everyone who had been brought to him, he had multiplied bread and fish to feed a multitude, he had cured lepers, made lame people walk and so much more as signs pointing to the fact that he was speaking and working with the authority of God. But the Scribes and Pharisees didn’t want to accept what those miracles signified. So they kept asking for other ones. Perhaps they were waiting until a supposed miracle attempt failed so that they would be able to feel justified in their rejection of Jesus. What they failed to grasp was that Jesus himself was the sign of God, that he was the one pointing to God’s presence because he was simultaneously the sign and signified. Jesus cut to the core of why they were asking for such a miracle, saying, an “evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign.” If they were of a good and faithful generation, they would have already taken seriously all of the miracles and words that Jesus had already done and grasped that he himself was the sign for which the Jews should have been looking. The reason why they failed to grasp the meaning of the sign of Jesus and all the other signs he was doing that pointed toward him was because they were obstinate in what we could call their “religious idolatry,” in their worship not of God but of the religion they had made around the God of Israel, all their man-made precepts and interpretations that were leading them to seek to break the fifth and eighth commandments to murder Jesus. No matter how many signs Jesus worked, no matter how many times he spoke with authority, no matter how many times called them to conversion, they just refused to budge.

* Obstinacy is perverse adherence to an idea despite all arguments and signs to the contrary and we see the classic sign of obstinacy in today’s first reading. Pharaoh and the Egyptians were obstinate in their treating the Jews as their slaves. And despite Pharaoh’s finally giving the Israelites permission to leave to go to worship God in the desert, when the Egyptians saw them leaving, they gave up mourning their first born sons, and came in hot pursuit. None of the plagues God had worked convinced them to change course. And when God opened the Red Sea to allow the Israelites to pass through on dry ground, not even that miracle could convince the Egyptians that God was giving a clear sign that he was on the Israelites’ side and was helping them to flee. Exodus tells us, “So obstinate had the Lord made Pharaoh that he pursued the children of Israel even while they were marching away in triumph” and they were so obstinate that they foolishly continued to pursue the Israelites into the Red Sea, where, as we will see tomorrow, they all perished. Nothing could persuade them to stop, review their behavior, and possibly change course.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

July 22, 2023

 

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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.

* Last week, Jesus gave us the parable of the Sower, Seed and Soil, to indicate to us how he wants us to receive his Word and his work within us. We know from our basic knowledge of farming what normally occurs once a seed has been implanted in good soil. It starts to grow and eventually produces fruit and those fruit likewise contain within many seeds that can then be planted elsewhere. Spiritually the same thing is supposed to happen. With a hat-trick of different images in this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus describes that transition from a fertile disciple to a fruitful apostle in which we begin to share what we ourselves have received. His words contain three important lessons about how the kingdom of God grows. Insofar as each of us has been called and chosen by God through the Church to enter into and expand his kingdom, these three parables are deeply relevant to who we are and what God calls us to do. In one parable, Jesus tells us first that the Church, like a mustard seed, starts small but will grow to be huge. In a second, he adds that the members of the Church are meant to function in the world like yeast does in bread; we’re supposed to make everything rise. In the third, he states that the Church’s growth doesn’t happen in a vacuum: there is also “an enemy” in the field, sowing weeds, trying to wreck God’s harvest — in other words to destroy you, me and those we know and love. The three go together and are meant to guide us at every moment of the Church’s life.

* The first parable is that the Church begins like a tiny mustard seed. From the small seed of Christ implanted by God in Mary’s womb, to the calling of just a few disciples and apostles filled with the Holy Spirit, the Church was born and grew into the largest of shrubs, in which countless people throughout the ages, including whole nations, have been able to come and find shelter in her branches. That tree continues to live and we’re branches on Jesus the vine (Jn 15:5). The branches of the Church extend in areas of great sunshine and of great darkness, of nourishing rain and dessicating heat, with all of us taking our roots in that one event, that one piece of soil on Calvary, that one seed of Jesus who fell to the ground three times and died, but rose again, like a plant in springtime, giving life to all of us. This lesson of the mustard seed recurs throughout Church history. So many religious orders and apostolates that the Lord has raised up to help the Church began small, often with just one saint without little or no human resources, but over the course of sufferings and patience, they grew to be enormous. So many parishes began with just a handful of poor, committed families, but over the course of years and decades, with commitment, generosity, time and the help the Lord, grew to be quite large. Even if some of us are living in an area in which the Church is shrinking, the Lord wants to bring good out of it, so that we can all experience anew the full and exhilarating meaning of this parable, through beginning again, beginning smaller, like the new mustard seed planted from the tall tree. I’m recording this from Spain, a land of extraordinary saints, but in many parts of the country,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

July 15, 2023

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/7.15.23_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday, when the Jesus will give us one of his most important parables describing how we’re supposed to respond to his words and work.

* I’d like to begin with a question: Why among the first apostles did eleven become great saints and one become the most notorious traitor of all time? As I’m recording this in Rome, we can ask similarly why have some popes become great heroes of faith like Leo, Gregory, Nicholas and John Paul and others have become scandalous and notorious? Wasn’t God trying to help them all equally to guide his Church? Why among the students of a poor, inner city school will some kids from down-and-out circumstances go on to become famous surgeons and others end up in jail? Why do some children go on to become great athletes while others with the same coaches and even greater physical coordination and endowments never make it? One of the most basic reasons is because some people are more receptive and responsive to grace, to education, and to coaching, respectively.

* This is an important lesson for us all to grasp and it will help us to understand better what Jesus will be teaching us on Sunday as he gives us the important Parable of the Sower and the Seed and teaches us crucial lessons about how to be a more fruitful disciple and a more effective evangelist, how to receive God’s grace and how to live in accordance with it. At the end of the Parable, Jesus says, “Whoever has ears to hear ought to hear!,” which is the ancient way of saying, “Pay attention!.” By means of the Parable, Jesus is going to help us to take a soil sample of our hearts, to determine how well we pay attention and how receptive and responsive we are to him, to what he teaches, and to all that he seeks to do in our life.

* To understand what he communicates in the Parable, we first need to grasp a little about ancient farming techniques. Sowers would scatter seed along long thin plots before any soil had been turned over. The seed would land on four different types of earth. The first was the hardened land between plots that would serve as paths on which people would walk. They were the ancient sidewalks and no seed could penetrate. The second was very thin “rocky” soil that would have thick layers of limestone a few inches underneath the surface. Here the seeds would take and quickly germinate because the water would be retained within the few inches of soil. Because the roots couldn’t penetrate the limestone, however, the sprouts would not be able to last for long, quickly dehydrating and withering as the rising sun grew in intensity. The third terrain Jesus describes as “thorny” soil, which was basically good earth that could have borne a lot of fruit if it weren’t covered with thornbushes and weeds that exhausted the nutrients of the soil so that good seed couldn’t grow. And the last type was good soil that Jesus describes bears much fruit.

* Just as a sower would scatter seed over all four types of earth, so Jesus scatters his word, his grace, his saving deeds over all four kinds of people represented by the respective soil samples. We see all four soil types among his first listeners.

* We saw in many of the scribes and Pharisees the hardened soil tha...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

EWTN Summer Academy for Journalists

International Center for Missionary Promotion (CIAM)

Pontifical Urban University, Vatican City State

July 12, 2023

 

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Learning from Jesus the Communicator

 

Fr. Roger J. Landry

EWTN Summer Academy for Journalists

International Center for Missionary Promotion (CIAM)

Pontifical Urban University, Vatican City State

July 11, 2023

 

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Covering Hot Button Issues as a Catholic

 

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Chapel of the Vincentian Missionary Seminary, Krakow, Poland

Tertio Millennio Seminar

Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

July 9, 2023

Zech 9:9-10, Ps 145, Rom 8:9.11-13, Mt 11:25-30

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/7.9.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today at Mass Jesus will give us one of the most incredible invitations we’ve ever received and, if we say yes to it, one of the most unbelievable guarantees.

* The invitation comes straight from Jesus, the God-man, our Savior: “Come to me,” he says, “all you who labor and find life burdensome.” That’s the invitation. “Come to me all you who are working hard but can’t see to fully get your head above water to feel secure; come to me all you who are burdened with anxieties of studies, work, family life, relationships, age or health; come to me all you who are weighed down by sorrows, who are going through life with heavy hearts because you’ve lost a loved one or are worried about the health of someone close to you; come to me all you who are pressed down even by your sins and the harm sins always bring to our lives and to the lives of those around us; all of you, come!”

* After this invitation, Jesus gives us the extraordinary promise: “And I will refresh you.” Think about what Jesus is saying: “All of you who have problems with human life — every single one of you — come to me, and I will refresh you, bring you back to life, make you see the blessing in what you see as a burden.”

* That’s what he said to his listeners two thousand years ago — who must have been shocked by so categorical a promise — and that’s what he says to each one of us today. Any there any takers? Does any of us need Jesus’ help to bear heavy burdens?

* To understand better Jesus’ amazing offer, we first have to look at whom Jesus is summoning and whom he isn’t. Jesus addresses his invitation to those who are “labor” and are carrying heavy burdens. He is not calling to himself in this way those who are lazy, who pass the buck, who don’t roll up their sleeves and work up a sweat. He’s not inviting those who are seeking a comfortable, easy life. When Jesus says “follow me!,” he’s not intending to lead us to South Beach or Punta Cana; he’s going to lead us along the same path he trod, which was a hard-working path all the way Calvary.

* Jesus is speaking, rather, to those who are working hard, who are striving to take responsibility for their own life, for the life of their loved ones, for their neighbors, our society, our country and the Church, who are pushing themselves in love to the limit.

* Jesus had told us (as we pondered a few weeks ago) to pray to the Harvest Master, his Father, “to send laborers into his vineyard” (Mt 9:38 ), not bodies. The way to salvation and the salvation of others in that vineyard is through responding to all his gifts with faith, love, fatigue and perspiration. It’s those who labor whom he promises to refresh.

* The second group of people whom Jesus is not calling is the proud, the arrogant, those who already think they know everything they need or know it all. Jesus says in the Gospel, “I give praise to you, Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned, you have revealed them to little ones.”

* Those who are “wise and learned” in the their own eyes don’t capture what Jesus is revealing or value his invitation because they don’t think they need it. It’s only the “little ones,” those who are humble, those who know how much they need the Lord, who know the worth of what Jesus wants to give them.