Fr. Roger J. Landry

Monastery of Saint Anne, Swieta Anna, Poland

Saturday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Votive Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary

July 8, 2023

Gen 27:1-5.15-29, Ps 135, Mt 9:14-17

 

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

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The following points were attempted in this homily: 

* Today as we make this Marian pilgrimage to the great shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa and here to the Monastery of St. Anne her mother, it’s a day on which we’re called to strengthen our relationship with Our Lady, as a fellow disciple of the Lord Jesus, as the mother God the Father chose for his Son and that Son from the Cross chose for us, as a great intercessor who prays for us like she did the young couple in Cana of Galilee. In the readings the Church gives us today, there are two different spiritual lessons, both of which are illustrated beautifully in the life of our Lady. Let’s take them in turn.

* In the first reading from the Book of Genesis, there is a story that at first glance easily scandalizes many Jews and Christians, because it appears as if God is endorsing the intentional deception of an old blind father by his wife and by his second-born son. It seems as if Jacob receives the blessing of God because he had been blessed by his father Isaac as a result of his lying to his father and even taking the Lord’s name in vain. But Jacob was blessed not because of his deception, not even because of his father Isaac’s benediction, but because God wanted to communicate a much greater lesson than that of primogeniture (Esau’s being first-born). Throughout Sacred Scripture God regularly chooses the least and makes them great. We know that later God will choose David even though he was the least of his brothers and chose Gideon even though he was the least of his family and his family the least of all the tribes in Midian. As St. Paul tells the first Christians in Corinth (1 Cor 1:27-29), God routinely chooses the weak and makes them strong, he regularly selects the lowly and exalts them, while at the same time humbling those whose expectations were not based on God’s expectations. That is what we see here, in the case of Jacob and Esau. God was choosing the second-born son and making him the one through whom the promise he had made to his grandfather Abraham would be fulfilled. God’s ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts.

* We see this lesson played out in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary as well. She was an unknown girl in a place, Nazareth, from which some would ask whether any good could come. Yet, as she herself would sing at the Visitation, the Lord “looked upon his handmaid’s lowliness” and “from now on [would] all ages call me blessed,” because “the Mighty One has done great things for me. … His mercy is from age to age to those who fear him. … He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones but lifted up the lowly. The hungry he has filled with good things; the rich he has sent away empty … according to his promise to our fathers, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” Because of the homage Christians out of love have given to Mary over the last 2,000 years, we can sometimes forget that she was exalted precisely because of her humility. She wasn’t anyone whom the world would have chosen for the greatest human vocation of all time, but God chose her and blessed her from the first instant of our life in the womb of the St. Anne. 

* The second lesson about the Christian life as exemplified by Mary, found in today’s Gospel, is just as important. Yesterday we pondered the scene of Jesus’ eating in the house of St.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Chapel of the Vincentian Missionary Seminary, Krakow, Poland

Friday of the 13th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Votive Mass of the Sacred Heart

July 7, 2023

Gen 23:1-4.19;24:1-8.62-67, Ps 106, Mt 9:9-13

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/7.7.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Many of those on the Tertio Millennio Seminar are actively discerning their vocations within their Christian vocation to holiness. Today’s readings and votive Mass help us to focus on several elements necessary for us to discern our vocation well.

* We begin with the Gospel, which helps us to ponder both the mercy and the specificity of God’s call. None of us is a random creation by God, just another in a big group. With great merciful love, he calls us by name. We see this very powerfully in the calling of St. Matthew in today’s Gospel. Matthew was a despised tax collector who used to extort money from his own people to give it to the occupying Romans. The way the Roman tax system worked was that the Romans needed to get a set fee from a given territory; everything the tax collectors got beyond that was theirs to keep. Because of this system, many tax collectors, filled with greed, would begin rapaciously to rip off their own people with the help of complicit members of the Roman army. They were like modern mafia dons who extort neighborhood small businesses and even families to pay “protection fees” lest an “accident” happen to their businesses or loved ones. For Jesus to go after Matthew at his customs post then would have been as dramatic as Jesus’ entering into Al Capone’s speakeasy and calling him from his booze and hundred dollar bills or into the Playboy Mansion and calling Hugh Hefner from his exploited babes. But Jesus desires mercy and he came to call sinners to repentance and he was going to show that by going after one of the most notorious sinners of his day. Matthew, who lived and worked in Capernaum, must have heard about Jesus and perhaps even stood at a distance to hear him speak, but likely thought that he would never be accepted among Jesus’ associates not to mention friends. Yet in today’s Gospel Jesus enters the place where Matthew was working and says to him, “Follow me!” Many, as we know, objected. The Pharisees, in particular, whose name means “separated ones,” refused to interact with sinners at all, not to mention notorious public ones. When Matthew threw a party to celebrate his conversion and calling and to introduce his associates, friends, and others to Jesus, the Pharisees objected, saying, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus would later be dubbed, pejoratively in their eyes, a “friend of tax collectors and sinners.” Jesus, however, replied by saying, “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. Go and learn the meaning of the words, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

* We see there a key lesson in every Christian vocation except the sinful Blessed Virgin Mary’s. Jesus has come to call sinners. Like with St. Matthew, he wants us to leave our sins behind and then to become walking advertisements to others that forgiveness of sins is not only possible but life-changing. Jesus did the same with Peter, whose first words to the Lord were “Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man.” He did the same with Paul, who used to terrorize and kill Christians as a young man. He did the same with Augustine and so many other famous saints throughout the centuries. He’s also done so with every Christian. I don’t think we ponder enough St. Paul’s words to the Corinthians, “Consider your own calling,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Corpus Christi Basilica, Kazimierz, Kraków, Poland

Thursday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Maria Goretti

July 6, 2023

Gen 22:1-19, Ps 115, Mt 9:1-8

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/7.6.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* The Tertio Millennio Seminar is not just a time for us to get to know our Catholic faith much more in depth, but to help us to see and live its practical consequences with greater fervor and fidelity. Today’s readings from Sacred Scripture, this renowned Basilica in which we’re celebrating Mass and the great young saint we remember liturgically today all help us to ponder and make more practical four different aspects of our life of faith.

* In the first reading, we see the culmination of Abraham’s great life of faith. By faith, we remember, at 75 years old, he packed up everything he owned and with his family set out to a place God would later show him; he didn’t know the destination but trusted in the Lord and was willing to go wherever the Lord would lead him. By faith, even though he and his wife Sarah were geriatric and childless trusted not only that they would conceive a child, but that through that child he would become the father of many nations, with children as numerous as the stars in the sky and the grains of sand on the seashore. God had him look up into the heavens to count the stars and, as Genesis says a few verse later, dusk came, meaning that Abraham was counting the stars while the sky was still blue. Just as he knew the stars were there even though he couldn’t see them with his physical eyes, so he trusted that his descendants would likewise be there. By faith, he trusted in the Lord’s promise even when the Lord would make him wait not just nine months for a child, not just nine years, but 24 years until Isaac, the son of promise, would be conceived. And in today’s Gospel, we see supreme test of Abraham’s faith, which is shown in his willingness to sacrifice Isaac, that son of the promise, at God’s direction. He was willing to do something so contrary to paternal love because he believed, as the letter to the Hebrews would later tell us, that even should Isaac be slain, God would necessarily raise him from the dead, since God had promised that Isaac would be the one through whom Abraham would become the father of many nations. This was 18 centuries before Jesus’ resurrection. We learn in the life of Abraham that faith means trusting in the Lord even when he asks us to journey, to believe beyond what we know of by biology, to be patient, and to be willing to sacrifice even what we hold dearest because we love God above all things.

* In the Gospel, we see another aspect of the gift of faith in the four friends of the paralyzed man, who, believing in Jesus, struggled to carry him on a stretcher to Jesus. We don’t know how far they needed to carry him in Capernaum, but no matter the distance, it wasn’t easy work; when they got to the house and saw how packed it was, out of love for their friend and faith in Jesus, rather than waiting, they did the very complicated maneuver of lifting their paralyzed pal up onto the roof, as we see in St. Mark’s and St. Luke’s accounts. They needed to keep their paraplegic or quadriplegic friend balanced as they lifted him up and then down, lest he fall on his head to greater injury or worse. What a scene the whole thing must have been, but they were not to be hindered or delayed.  And Jesus went far beyond what they were asking: “When Jesus saw their faith,” St. Matthew tells us, he healed the man’s sins and then healed the man’s paralysis.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Chapel of the Vincentian Seminary, Krakow, POland

Tertio Millennio Seminar

Wednesday of the 13th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

July 5, 2023

Gen 21:5.8-10, Ps 34, Mt 8:28-34

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/7.5.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* One of the most important things we need to learn as Christians is how to handle rejection. Today’s readings teach us how God seeks to bring good even out of being spurned by those who should accept us.

* We find it first in the banishment of Hagar and Ishmael. Sarah, despite having been blessed miraculously by God with her first son in her nineties, rather than being filled with gratitude was consumed by envy. Seeing her servant Hagar, whom she had given to Abraham as a concubine when she had lost hope that God would fulfill his promise to make Abraham a dad and the father of many nations, and who had become with Abraham the parents of Ishmael, she demanded of Abraham: “Drive out that slave and her son!” Abraham was deeply distressed and we hope would have refused. But God said to him, “Do not be distressed about the boy or about your slave woman. Heed the demands of Sarah, no matter what she is asking of you; for it is through Isaac that descendants shall bear your name. As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a great nation of him also, since he too is your offspring.” God reiterated that promise to the exiled Hagar a little later, when she was afraid for their survival in the desert. God told her, “Don’t be afraid; God has heard the boy’s cry in this plight of his. Arise, lift up the boy and hold him by the hand; for I will make of him a great nation.” Much like God provided a well in the middle of the desert for their survival, so God, Genesis tells us, “was with the boy as he grew up.” Envy exiled the two of them, but God is the Lord of all the earth, and he brought good out of the evil they suffered.

* We see something similar in the Gospel. Jesus entered into the pagan region of the Decapolis on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee and he is met in the territory of the Gadarenes by two savage demoniacs. They had been banished by their fellows to live among the tombs. The demons within them called Jesus “the Son of God” and asked, “What have you to do with us?” His very presence was tormenting them. Jesus was going to cure them to restore them not only to their self-possession but to the community. The demons, about to be exorcised, begged Jesus at least to allow them to inhabit the swine that was present, which Jesus then commanded. As soon as they invaded the swine, however, all of them were rushed into the Sea of Galilee and drowned, a sign of two things: first how many and how powerful the demons were that were dwelling within the men; and second how they were seeking, as they always do, to destroy the men. After the men were liberated, the whole town came out to meet Jesus, not rejoicing but upset at the loss of their pigs. Rather that ask the Holy One of God to free them from other manifestations of infernal power, rather than thank him for restoring two of their own, rather than inviting him in to get to know him and how he was able to do such a deed, they “begged him to leave their district.” They didn’t want the holiness of God around. They actually preferred their pigs. They preferred their life as it was. They were indeed under the sway of the evil one, though in less savage form than the two demoniacs. In response to the rejection of Jesus by the Gadarenes, Jesus wants us to unite ourselves to him, especially in our rejection. He is the stone rejected by the builders who has become the cornerstone.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Chapel of the Vincentian Seminary, Krakow, Poland

Tertio Millennio Seminar

Tuesday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati

July 4, 2023

Gen 19:15-29, Ps 26, Mt 8:23-27

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/7.4.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today as the Americans among us celebrate our Independence Day, as we just viewed the film Liberating a Continent and how eastern and central Europe was liberated from communism thanks to the moral revolution ignited by St. John Paul II, it’s an opportunity for us to recall that our freedom is not just a freedom “from” but principally a freedom “for.” As St. Paul wrote to the first Christians in Galatia, “For freedom, Christ has set us free,” and therefore, he told us, “stand firm and do not submit again from the yoke of slavery” (Gal 5:1). In today’s readings we focus on the Lord’s desire to liberate us from sin, death and fear, and today’s feast of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati helps us, especially young people, to ponder how we ought to use our freedom in faith for love of God and others.

* In the first reading, in the encounter between the Angels of God and Lot, we see God’s will to save us from destruction. It’s a scene that is one example of the entire salvific plan of God. The Angels tell Lot to get up and get on his way, together with his wife and daughters, prior to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah because of the sins of those in those cities. When Lot hesitates, the angels “by the Lord’s mercy,” took him, his wives and daughters by the hands and led them out of the city, telling them to flee for their lives and not to look back with affection toward what they were leaving. We know well the infamous sins that were happening in Sodom and Gomorrah; God’s saving Lot and his family from the destruction is an indication of how he tells us to flee from sin, to get out of near occasions, to get out of the conflagration of lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh and pride that lead to self-destruction, and not to look back. When Lots’ wife disregarded the angels’ instructions and looked back, with curiosity or affection, to what she was leaving behind, she was turned, Genesis tells us, into a “pillar of salt,” a Hebrew idiom that basically means she died, being reduced to the salts carried in the human body. Yesterday, if we didn’t have the proper readings for the Feast of St. Thomas the Apostle, we would have heard Abraham’s pleading with God not to destroy the cities if he could find 50, or 40, or 30, or 20, or 10 just people there. The fact that he evidently couldn’t find even ten righteous people communicates how bad things were there. We’re not even sure that Lot and his family would be numbered among the good, because they were being saved on account of Abraham. Ultimately, however, God acts in the world because he was able to find one just man, his Son, who had taken on our humanity, and for that reason saves the whole world from a destruction symbolized by the fiery furnace that became Sodom and Gomorrah.

* In today’s Gospel, this very saving will of God seems to be in question. While the apostles — the early Church — was being attacked by waves such that experienced fishermen thought they were about to die, Jesus was asleep in the boat. It’s a sign of just how tired physically he must have been that he was able to sleep while the boat was rocking and water was coming over the sides of the boat to soak him and the apostles. The twelve cry out, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” In St. Mark’s parallel account,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Chapel of Saint Leonard, Wawel Cathedral, Krakow, Poland

Tertio Millennio Seminar

Feast of St. Thomas, Apostle

July 3, 2023

Eph 2:19-22, Ps 117, Jn 20:24-29

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/7.3.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today, as we begin this Tertio Millennio Seminar here at Wawel Cathedral, in the Chapel of Saint Leonard where Father Karol Wojtyla, the day after his priestly ordination, celebrated his first three Masses on All Souls’ Day 1946, respectively for the repose of the souls of his dad, mom and brother Edmund, we do so on the Feast of Saint Thomas the Apostle. And it’s hard for me not to think of what the future St. John Paul II said about the Gospel we just heard at World Youth Day in Rome during the Great Jubilee Year of 2000. There, St. John Paul II told the over two million young people assembled for the Vigil of Prayer that the Upper Room was, for St. Thomas and the apostles, and for all of us, a true “school of faith,” and highlighted for us what are the great lessons of that school of faith. As we begin this Tertio Millennio Seminar, which is meant to be for us, too, an opportunity for us to grow in total personal trust of God as well as in the knowledge of the content especially of the social teaching of our faith, it’s fitting for us to follow in the footsteps of Saint John Paul II as he leads us into Jesus’ school of faith and learn valuable lessons from the apostle we celebrate today.

* It’s a pity that St. Thomas, who left everything to follow the Lord Jesus, who gave his entire life for the Lord and died in witness to faith, is called “Doubting Thomas” almost as much as he is called “Saint.” He is the most famous doubter in history! But his doubts were not unique among the first disciples and apostles. With the exception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, none of the early disciples believed after the resurrection. The women went to anoint a corpse. The disciples in Emmaus were talking to an anonymous Wayfarer about a Jesus whom they thoroughly believed was dead. When Mary Magdalene and these Emmaus disciples went to inform the other apostles that they had seen Jesus, the apostles didn’t believe them. That’s why Jesus, when he appeared to them as St. Mark reminds us through St. Peter, “rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart because they had not believed those who saw him after he had been raised” (Mk 16:14). Faith, as we know, is the belief in something on the basis of a belief in someone giving witness. They had a double-distrust that led to their lack of faith in Jesus’ resurrection. First they distrusted the witness of Mary and the disciples on the Road to Emmaus, thinking that they were just too gullible. But more importantly they distrusted in Jesus’ words that he would rise on the third day. Thomas’ distrust was not qualitatively different at all, just quantitatively: he didn’t believe his fellow apostles’ testimony either. And so, with St. John Paul, as we enter into Jesus’ school of faith, we need to acknowledge that occasionally, we, too, have had our doubts, that we, too, have been weak in faith.

* From Saint Thomas there are three main lessons we learn about faith. The first is how faith is meant to be lived. St. Thomas showed this in the scene outside of Bethany. Martha and Mary had sent word to Jesus that Lazarus was deathly ill and Jesus committed to going there. Some of the apostles noted that people were threatening to kill Jesus and they tried to persuade him from walking into an ambush. But Thomas said, “Let us also go to die with him” (Jn 11:16). He recognized that faith in Jesus meant following Jes...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

July 1, 2023

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/7.1.23_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. It’s a fitting conversation to have as we mark this long weekend in preparation for the celebration of the Fourth of July, in which we not only just celebrate the gift of our hard-won freedom, but have a chance to ponder its purpose.

* Freedom is a gift that comes with a task. Like water, which can be used to drink or to drown, the gift of freedom can be used for good or ill. If we use it well, it will become stronger; if we abuse it, it can undermine its own foundations. In the sad case of addictions, someone uses his freedom to have a beer, but then abuses it to have a case, and slowly but surely becomes enslaved to alcohol, no longer free to say no. Culturally we are seeing freedoms abused with greater frequency: free speech is exploited to defend pornography, freedom of religion to defend Satanic practices, the so-called freedom-to-choose to end the lives of human beings in the womb. The more freedom is abused, the more enslaved and less free, we become. To stay free, we must use freedom properly. Freedom is not the license to do whatever we want, wherever we want, whenever we want, without the interference of anyone else. It’s not the power to pretend that we’re God, determining good and evil, even deciding over life and death. Freedom, rather, is the capacity to act in accordance with the truth about who we are in God’s image and likeness. It’s a self-mastery that makes it possible for us to give of ourselves to others in love.

* When Pope Benedict came to the White House 15 years ago this April, he gave a challenge to Americans to use our freedom to stay free. “Freedom,” he said, “is not only a gift, but also a summons to personal responsibility. … The preservation of freedom calls for the cultivation of virtue, self-discipline, sacrifice for the common good and a sense of responsibility towards the less fortunate. It also demands the courage to engage in civic life and to bring one’s deepest beliefs and values to reasoned public debate. In a word, freedom is ever new. It is a challenge held out to each generation, and it must constantly be won over for the cause of good.”

* So how are we going to respond to that challenge? How are we going to use our freedom to grow as God intends?

* Jesus in this Sunday’s Gospel speaks about the two essential aspects of our Christian life, discipleship and apostolate, our following Jesus and our proclaiming him, our work to become holy as God is holy and our fidelity to the mission he gives us to become instruments in the sanctification of others.

* He speaks to us, first, about the conditions of discipleship. He tells us, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” He reminds us that to be his disciple, to enter into his kingdom, requires a decisive choice. We must freely choose to love him more than father and mother, more than son or daughter. We must freely choose to embrace our cross and follow him along this way of sacrificial love,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Espirito Santo Parish, Fall River, MA

Nuptial Mass for Nicholas Edward Pacheco and Jade Claudette Arruda

June 25, 2023

Gen 2:18-24, Ps 103, 1 Cor 12:31-13:8, Mt 5:13-16

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.25.23_Nick_Pacheco_and_Jade_Arruda_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* Today’s beautiful day has a long prehistory. It goes back well before Nick proposed to Jade, May 15, 2022, surprising her right after she finished exams while they walking together along the Cape Cod shoreline. It goes back beyond when they started dating nearly ten years ago during sophomore year at Bishop Stang as well as before they met during biology class a year and a half earlier. It goes back far beyond their baptisms and births. It goes back to the beginning, as we heard in today’s first reading. In the Book of Genesis, when God created Adam, Adam had God all to himself in the garden. All of creation had been made for him to govern. He was perfectly in right relationship with God. Even though he seemed to have everything one could ask for, something — more specifically, someone — was missing. And after God had said in the first six phases of creation, “It was good,” “It was good,” “It was good,” “It was good,” “It was good,” “It was good,” and with the creation of the human person, “It was very good,” God finally thundered, “It is not good…for man to be alone.” So he created Eve, whom today’s first reading called a “suitable partner,” symbolically out of his side, to show that they stand side-by-side, equal, before God. When Adam saw her, he rejoiced and exclaimed, “Finally this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!,” a Hebrew idiom saying that they shared the same strengths and weaknesses. As Jesus would later say, this is the reason why a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh in love. The upshot of the Creation account is that God, who is love, has created the human person in his image and likeness … in love and for love. Since no one can love in a vacuum, God could not be solitary, there needed to be a Lover and a Beloved, and in God the eternal love between them was so strong as to take on personality. In creating the human person, therefore, God created not just a “him, male and female” but a “them,” a communion between man and woman, whose love for each other could be so strong as literally to “make love,” to generate new life, as a fruit of their loving communion of persons. From the first marriage of Adam and Eve, to your marriage today, Nick and Jade, marriage was created by God to be a sacrament of love, to help you to grow to be more and more like God and at the same time more fully human. Today you will not only receive a Sacrament but become a Sacrament, a visible sign, as St. John Paul II used to say, pointing to the invisible reality of the Trinitarian loving communion of persons, a living reminder of the fruitful, faithful, indissoluble love of God and an icon of Christ’s love for his bride the Church, for as long as you both shall live.

* Jesus spoke about that matrimonial vocation to be a sacrament of God’s love in the Gospel you chose for today. Christian marriage is never just about the husband and the wife alone. It’s never even just merely the family that, with God’s help and encouragement, they will together raise up, putting into practice God’s sweet command to “increase and multiply.” Every marriage has a mission, as does yours. That’s why I’m so pleased that the Gospel passage you wanted to hear and ponder on your wedding day — and have all of us reflect upon as well — was about Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount in which he told us,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

June 24, 2023

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.24.23_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 Jesus will say to us something very consoling on the one hand and very disconcerting at the same time on the other, before teaching us how the two go together.

* Jesus first tells us “Fear no one,” and goes on to give us the reason not to be afraid: because our Father in heaven loves us more than all the sparrows in the world and knows us intimately down to our last strand of hair. Fifteen times in the Gospel, in fact, Jesus tells us not to be afraid, and regularly gives us as the reason because our Father in heaven will provide for us and protect us. In the Sermon on the Mount, for example, he tells us not to worry about what we will eat or drink or wear — things we really need — because that same Father who clothes the lilies of the field knows what we need and will take care of us (Mt 6:28-32). In this Sunday’s Gospel, he tells us that he doesn’t even want us to fear suffering and physical death, because not even death can separate us from our Father’s love (Rom 8:38-39). These words are even more important at a time in which so many are eaten alive by anxiety, insecurity and fear due to problems in their personal or family life, their studies, their career, or because of the state of the world, various worrisome trends in culture, law and politics and a litany of other concerns.

* At the same time that Jesus tells us, “Fear no one,” he adds that there is one fear we should have. “Do not fear,” he says, “those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Who is this who can destroy us in Gehenna? Saints and Biblical scholars have answered this question in two ways. The majority said it refers to God, who created us, who will judge us, and who has the ability to send us to eternal self-alienation in Hell for having chosen against him in this life. By this interpretation, Jesus is saying, “Fear God rather than men,” and then goes on in the Gospel to help us learn how to relate to God not fundamentally out of fear but out of love, since this God who we should fear is one who, Jesus says, protects sparrows, has numbered every follicle, and will embrace with love and gratitude everyone who acknowledges Jesus. The second, minority, interpretation is that the one who can destroy both body and soul in hell is the devil. Of course the devil is not divine and certainly cannot destroy in the same way God would be able to destroy, but he can torment both body and soul forever.

* Even though I’m inclined toward the first interpretation, that Jesus is telling us not to be afraid even of those who threaten to murder us but rather to focus on the God who loves us and in correspondence to the gift of fear of the Lord seek not to displease or deny him in the world but acknowledge him before others, including when threatened, I want to spend our time on the minority interpretation because the devil is getting a lot of attention today, many Catholics are asking questions and some are indeed becoming anxious. Two movies have recently been released focusing on the devil, The Pope’s Exorcist, which is really a shallow and disappointing horror movie starring actor Russell Crowe supposedly based on the life of the fo...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish, Grand Rapids, Michigan

Friday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Joseph Cafasso

June 23, 2023

2 Cor 11:18.21-30, Ps 34, Mt 6:19-23

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.23.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today in the Gospel, Jesus, as he has been doing throughout the Sermon on the Mount, continues to teach us the wisdom of how to live as he lives, how to live to the full, so that with him we may live forever. He exhorts us to set our hearts on the true treasure of his kingdom, a treasure not measured in clothing moths can wreck, or metals rust can corrode, or money thieves or taxes can take. He reminds us that our heart will be where our treasure is. If we’re setting our hearts on this-worldly treasures — pleasure, getting our way, health, fame, material possessions big or small — our hearts will be weighed down and enslaved, and it will be difficult to lift them to the Lord. If we set our hearts on the kingdom, on storing up for ourselves treasure in heaven, then we can turn everything into an investment in eternity. Jesus says something similar in his image of the eye. He reminds us that the eye is the lamp of the body. If it is fixed on God, if it sees clearly and purely in his holy light, then the body and soul will be filled with light; but if is blinded by the shadows of the concupiscence of the flesh (lust), of the eyes (materialism) or of the pride of life (for power or control), the whole body will be and walk in darkness.

* So today is an opportunity for us to examine our eyes and hearts to see whether they’re truly set on God and the things of God. The Light has come into the world, as St. John tells us in his Prologue, but we need to choose the light instead of darkness, to purify our hearts of desires unworthy of the kingdom, to cleanse our eyes of any debris that keeps us from seeing Christ in the persons and events of the day.

* St. Paul was one who purified his heart and eyes in the manner in which Jesus is calling us all to do. He fixed his eyes and heart on Christ and began to order everything in such a way that not only did he amass an enormous, indestructible spiritual treasure but enriched us all by that same wealth given to him by God. Today’s first reading features a passage in which he summarized all of his sufferings. For me it’s one of the most moving passages in Sacred Scripture because it shows how much Paul loved the Lord, how much he was willing to undergo to obtain the treasure and to help us to grasp the inheritance Christ has won for us and is offering for us. He was in the middle of a conversation with the Corinthians with regard to the impostors who had come among them sowing darnel and bragging about their credentials. So he bragged about his own. He checked off the box that he was a Hebrew (not just a Jew but a Hebrew-speaking Jew, a real pride of honor among the Jews of Palestine versus those of the diaspora), a descendent of Abraham and a minister of Christ. He said he was all of that and more. Adding to his credentials, he presented the ways he had been crucified with Christ through labors, imprisonments, beatings and numerous brushes with death. “Five times at the hands of the Jews I received forty lashes minus one [which often killed the recipient]; three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned [and basically killed before the prayers of the Church raised him from the dead], three times I was shipwrecked, I passed a night and a day on the deep; on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my own race, dangers from Gentiles, dangers in the city,