Fr. Roger J. Landry

Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY

Pentecost Sunday 2023

May 28, 2023

Acts 2:1-11, Ps 104, 1 Cor 12:3-7.12-13, Jn 20:19-23

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/catholicpreaching/5.28.23_MC_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* Ten days ago, on the Solemnity of the Ascension, I was privileged to be present with pilgrims from Columbia and Focus in the Upper Room in Jerusalem, the twelfth-century edifice built over a fourth-century shrine built over the first century building on Mount Zion that Christians during the first centuries preserved as the first Church in Christianity, where God instituted four Sacraments. The room was crowded with several groups of pilgrims from all over the world and quite noisy. But with the help of our Whispers listening devices, we were able to ponder how Jesus gave us there the Sacraments of the Eucharist and Holy Orders on Holy Thursday, the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation on Easter night, and how God the Father and God the Son sent God the Holy Spirit for the first Sacrament of Confirmation on Pentecost. Being the Solemnity of the Ascension, however, we pondered above all the prayer of the early Church, how Jesus at his Ascension a short distance away on the Mount of Olives had enjoined the apostles not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the “promise of the Father” about which they had heard him speak, for “in a few days,” he continued, “you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” The apostles and the other followers of Jesus returned to the Upper Room and very wisely huddled around Mary to learn from the one who was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit at Jesus’ virginal conception and who continually lived as a Spouse of the Holy Spirit how to get ready to receive the “promise of the Father” and respond to his action. We entered into that ecclesial prayer, beseeching the Holy Spirit, to fill us with the gifts of knowledge, understanding, wisdom, prudence, reverence, awe and courage, as well as with the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-mastery. We chanted the Veni Creator Spiritus and today’s sequence the Veni Sancte Spiritus. We asked the Holy Spirit, the Father of the Poor, the Great Consoler, the sweet guest and refreshment of the soul, the giver of every good gift, the living font, fire, and spiritual unction, the great Consoler and most blessed Light, to come to fill us with heavenly grace and his sevenfold gifts, to illumine our senses and hearts, fill us with love, strengthen our bodies, repel our adversaries, give us his peace, grant us rest and refreshment in work and solace in suffering, wash us of our sins, heal our wounds, correct our errors, irrigate what is lifeless, bend what is resistant, warm what is cold, help us grow to know, love and believe better in Him, God the Father and God the Son, and lead us to merit a virtuous life, salvation and eternal joy. I urged each of my fellow pilgrims to keep up this prayer — begun there in the Upper Room, just as where it had begun 1993 years ago with the Mother, apostles and first disciples of Jesus — alive over the next ten days as we returned home and awaited Pentecost.

* Today every Catholic Church and chapel across the world is an Upper Room where we implore the same outpouring of the Holy Spirit that descended upon the Church at her beginning. We turn to the Pater Pauperum, the “Father of the Poor” with poverty of spirit, recognizing how much we need him, the Dator Munerum, or “Giver of Gifts,” to provide us what we need to live as Christians and to carry out the mission of love Jesus has entrusted to us. And with the insistence of the decenarium of prayer with Mary behind us,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for Pentecost Sunday

May 27, 2023

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.27.23_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us on Pentecost Sunday.

* I’ve just returned from leading a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. On Ascension Thursday, with Catholic students from Columbia University and Focus Missionaries, I was in a very crowded Upper Room where we pondered how Jesus there gave us four Sacraments: the Eucharist and Holy Orders on Holy Thursday, Confession on Easter Sunday and Confirmation on Pentecost. We spoke about what Jesus said in his valedictory right before ascending to the Father’s right side. He enjoined the apostles not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the “promise of the Father” about which they had heard him speak, for “in a few days,” he said, “you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” The apostles and the other followers of Jesus returned to the Upper Room where they huddled around Mary and “devoted themselves with one accord to prayer.” She taught them how to get ready to receive the Holy Spirit, for it was she who was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit at Jesus’ virginal conception and who continually lived as a Spouse of the Holy Spirit, receiving and responding to his inspirations in an exemplary way. United with her they prayed and they waited, day after day, until on the tenth day, the Holy Spirit burst through the windows of the upper room like the noise of a strong driving wind and came down upon each of them as tongues of fire. As we were in the Upper Room, we sang together the Veni Creator Spiritus, the Church’s most famous and traditional prayer beseeching the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, as others stopped to listen. And we pondered the scene from this Sunday’s Gospel, a prelude to Pentecost, when Jesus on the night he rose from the dead, entered the closed doors of the Upper Room, breathed on the apostles and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

* This Pentecost, we will all be in the Upper Room of our parish Churches and Jesus will say to us, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” What does it mean to receive the Holy Spirit?

* We can ponder several things from Sacred Scripture. For example, on Holy Thursday, during the Last Supper, Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would teach us everything and remind us of all that Jesus had told us, that he would testify to Jesus and help us testify, and that he would convict the world with regard to sin, and righteousness and condemnation. To receive the Holy Spirit, therefore, means that we cooperate with the Holy Spirit’s assistance to get to know Jesus and his teaching much better, to remember it, to share it, to live it, to thank God incessantly for it. To receive the Holy Spirit means to cooperate with him in testifying to Jesus, that he is with us always until the end of time, calling us to joy, to life, to love. To receive the Holy Spirit means to fight against sin, to seek righteousness and holiness, and to rejoice in the condemnation of the ruler of this world.

* Many have not received the Holy Spirit. There’s a famous scene in the Acts of the Apostles when St. Paul came to Ephesus and met some disciples. He asked, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?” They responded, “We have never even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” Our recently deceased Pope Benedict XVI, at World Youth Day in Australia in 2008, said,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter

Memorial of St. Philip Neri

May 26, 2023

Acts 25:13-21, Ps 103, Jn 21:15-19

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.26.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today we have one of the most powerful and poignant scenes in the Gospel, which the Church gives us to help us to summarize the graces of the Easter Season and to send us forward into Pentecost and beyond. It’s a continuation, in a sense, of the Easter Octave, since it’s the second half of the Gospel we had on Easter Friday, April 14. Jesus meets Peter and six other disciples on the seashore of Galilee where he cooks them breakfast. At the end of the meal, he takes Simon Peter aside in order to restore his confidence after having totally denied Jesus three times on Holy Thursday just a couple of hours after saying that even if he should have to die for Jesus, he would never betray him. Peter was not yet able to experience the joy of Jesus’ resurrection fully because of the trauma of his sins. But Jesus needed him. Jesus wanted to solidify the rock on whom he was building his Church. So in response to Peter’s three-fold denial, Jesus gave him a chance to make a three-fold affirmation of love.

* Buried within their dialogue is a real drama, but to see it, we have to know a little Greek. The first time Jesus asks Peter if he loves him, the word he uses for love is agape, which means a total self-sacrificial type of love, the type of love Jesus himself showed when he said, “No one has any greater love than to lay down his life for his friends.” “Simon, son of John,” he was asking, “do you love me with agape?” Peter’s response, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you,” doesn’t use the word “agape,” but rather “philia.” He replies, in other words, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you as a friend.” Peter, after having broken his promise to die for Jesus before he ever would deny him, wasn’t going to make the same promise again. He was still carrying around the weight of his betrayal. Jesus had called him a friend during the Last Supper because he had revealed to him and the other apostles all that the Father had told him, but Peter had been stripped of the confidence that had made him commit to love Jesus by Jesus’ life-giving standard, that the greatest love is to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. So Jesus asked him a second time, “Peter, do you love me with agape, with total self-sacrificial love?” Peter replied again, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you with philia, as a friend.” So Jesus in the third question lowered himself to where Peter was comfortable and asked, “Simon, Son of John, do you love me with philia?” That’s when Peter was distressed. He knew the Lord was calling him to more but the Lord was acknowledging that Peter didn’t think he was capable of heroic love. He replied, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you as a friend.” Jesus, however, wasn’t going to leave Peter there. He said to him that when he was younger, he used to dress himself and go about as he pleased. But when Peter would grow old, another would “stretch out his hands” — a Greek euphemism for crucifixion — and lead him to a place he didn’t want to go, something, St. John said, was indicating the type of death by which Peter would glorify God. Jesus was telling him, “Even if you don’t want to say again publicly that you love me enough to die for me, you will love me that way, even being crucified for me.” And Jesus, to emphasize the point said to him, “Follow me,” because Peter would follow him all the way.

* What’s the lesson for us? Each of us, too, has had times when we haven’t been faithful to...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter

Memorial of St. Mary Magdalene dei Pazzi, St. Gregory VII, and St. Bede, Doctor of the Church

May 25, 2023

Acts 22:30.23:6-11, Ps 16, Jn 17:20-26

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/catholicpreaching/5.25.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today as we continue our preparations for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, we are provoked by today’s readings to examine the Holy Spirit’s work of unity. He is the personified loving union between the Father and the Son and he has been sent by the Father and the Son so that we might enter into that communion with God and with others, so that we might become one Body, one Spirit, in Christ. The ultimate, eschatological battle in which all of creation is engaged is one of communion versus disunity. Jesus came to reconcile all things in himself, to draw all things to himself on the Cross, to make us one flock with one Shepherd. This will culminate in heaven, when we hope to enter into the communion of saints within the communion of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But it is opposed by the work of the devil, who is always seeking to isolate us, divide us, and permanently alienate us from God and from others. The most accurate image of Hell is not one full of flames; it’s one in which everyone is as far as possible away from others… The choices we make here on earth are ultimately able to be understood as choices for or against communion with God and others.

* Jesus prays in the Gospel that we might be as united with each other as Father and Son are united, something that’s impossible for us but not impossible for God. This communion of saints among the communion who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit is the Spirit’s principal work. Everything else is an explicitation of that mission. Jesus prays for the success of that Mission in today’s Gospel with insistence, begging him that we might be one so that the world might know that he was sent by the Father and that the Father loves us just as he loves him. That’s an extraordinary prayer that points to the Holy Spirit’s mission. The world will be convinced of Jesus’ presence and mission by the way we’re united with each other. The world will be convinced of God’s personal love for each of us by the way love each other. Our union, our Christian communion brought about by the Holy Spirit, is the most important element of the new evangelization. That’s why we pray for that unity at every Mass as well, uniting ourselves as Bride to Bridegroom, as Body to Head, praying for that gift.

We might be tempted to dismiss Jesus’ prayer as something that sounds beautiful, but which is obviously utopian and beyond our grasp. But Jesus would never have prayed for something impossible. He, through whom we and the whole world were created, never engaged in “wishful thinking.” He not only knew the Truth about us and God, but enfleshed that Truth, fully aware of what was possible and what was not. It is also true that the Father would never refuse the prayer of his Son. As Jesus prayed before the raising of Lazarus, “I thank you, Father, for having heard me. I know that you always hear me” (Jn 11:42). The Father always hears his prayer. Therefore, if Jesus were praying that we be one, that we be as united among ourselves as are the Persons in the Blessed Trinity and that we abide in them as they abide in each other, then that must mean it is possible and is what should be the reality among us. This dual communion is, in fact, what will happen in heaven. If by God’s mercy we follow Christ all the way to heaven, we will be in full communion with the Communion-of-Persons-in-Love who is the Holy Trinity and in that co...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Notre Dame Parish, Manhattan

Wednesday of the Seventh Week of Easter

May 24, 2023

Acts 20:28-38, Ps 68, Jn 17:11-19

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.24.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were considered in today’s homily: 

* Today the Church continues to ponder the valedictory words of Jesus in the Upper Room and of St. Paul in Melitus that we began to consider yesterday. Jesus’ words were to the Father, but he said them aloud so that the apostles could hear them — and through them, we could hear them — and that we might “share [Jesus’] joy completely.” They were also given to us so that we might become Jesus’ glory through coming fully alive in him and so that the Father might be glorified in the Son by means of our having life and joy to the full . St. Paul’s words were to the presbyters of Ephesus, so that they could continue the work that St. Paul had laborered for “three years, night and day … with tears.” As we’ll see, St. Paul’s words were an echo of what Jesus prayed to the Father.

* Today Jesus stresses his relationship to the Father and to the world as well as the relationship he wants us to have to the Father and the world.

* He says that he’s one with the Father and he wants us to be as united to each other as the Father and the Son are united. We will focus on this more tomorrow. What joy we have from being in loving communion with God and each other!

* He stresses twice that he doesn’t belong to the world and we shouldn’t belong to the world, emphasizing that we do not belong to the world “any more” than he does. Those are extraordinary words. He says that we’re supposed to have the same relationship to the world that he does and that we shouldn’t belong to the world any more than he. What joy we have when we are not enslaved to the world!

* He asks the Father to consecrate us so that we might belong not to the world but to the Father just like he belongs to the Father, just as Jesus does. To be consecrated means to be cut off from the profane (sacer) to be with (con) God to such a degree that we share the mission the Father gave the Son. Jesus wants to cut us off from the world to be united to him so that united to him we might come out of love for the world to continue his work, so that the world might be saved. What joy we have to belong to the Father like Jesus does!

* The way we will be consecrated to the Father is “in the truth” of his word. He is the Truth. He is the Word made flesh. To be consecrated in the truth means that we remain in him. It also means that we earnestly seek to remain in him through his Word, that we listen to his words as words to be done, words that help us to enter more deeply into the communion of God. That means we are “living the truth” and not attached to the world and the prince of this world, who is the father of lies. What joy we have because of the gift of God’s word, to know it, to live by it, to trust in it!

* To be consecrated means to belong to him, the Word made Flesh, to such a degree that we share his mission. His sending us into the world just as the Father sent him can only happen when we’re consecrated as a part of his Mystical Body, when we bring into the world the truth of his word. Pope Francis says famously in his exhortation The Joy of the Gospel that we evangelize precisely because of the joy we have in our relationship with God, something we cannot keep to ourselves. We know the different Jesus makes and we want others to experience that same joy.

* He asks the Father to protect us, just as Jesus himself sought to protect us in the Father’s name. He says that the world will hate us because, like him,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Peter’s, Joffa, Israel

Pilgrimage of Passages for Catholics with Columbia Students

May 22, 2023

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.22.23_Jaffa_Homily_1.mp3

 

The outline for today’s homily was:

* Two scenes of Peter in Jaffa. First is Peter doing what Jesus did in healing. Second is dream. Purpose of the dream was to help Peter bring the Gospel to the Gentiles, to all the nations. The HS was acting with Peter and Cornelius. Peter’s calling to be a fisher of men, his proclaiming Christ as Messiah and Son of God, his accepting the loving responsibility of feeding and protecting Christ’s sheep and lambs, were all about this Mission. Peter was faithful to it in Jerusalem, here in Joppa, in Caesarea Maritima, Antioch and Rome. 

* We’re called to a similar fidelity. With the Holy Spirit Peter gave witness to Jesus whom he knew. After having gotten to know Jesus much better here, we’re called to share that gift. Fisher of men. Proclaimer of him as Messiah and Lord. Loving him and others. Baptizing. Teaching. Reminding that God is with us. 

* Parable of soil and seed. Bearing fruit with its own seeds. Not rocky or thorny. Sharing photos, joys and graces. 

* Choice to do so. Jonah. Peter after his falls said yes. 

* Peter was present in the Upper Room. Eucharist is the synthesis of all that we’ve done here. With gratitude let’s go to Jesus to strengthen us to share our faith with joy.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Seventh Sunday of Easter and the Solemnity of the Ascension

May 20, 2023

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.20.23_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy 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.

* Depending upon where you live, that conversation may be different, because those in New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Nebraska will hear the Gospel of the Seventh Sunday of Easter, while those everywhere else will hear what those in the states I just mentioned heard on Thursday, the Gospel of the Ascension of the Lord Jesus. The reason for the confusion is in 1998 and 1999, bishops in most regions of the United States decided to transfer the Ascension from the 40th day after Easter to the Seventh Sunday, believing that if they didn’t, Catholics who seldom attend on Holy Days of Obligation would always miss celebrating liturgically this very important event in the Lord’s earthly life. Ironically, however, in making that decision to move the Ascension to the 43rd day after Easter, the bishops in those provinces were preventing Catholics from hearing Jesus’ words on the importance of Christian unity from the 17th Chapter of St. John’s Gospel, a third of which is proclaimed on the Seventh Sunday each year. For us as we prepare for Sunday, we can focus a little on both Gospels since Jesus is our interlocutor in every prayerful conversation with the Gospel and, therefore, everything is intrinsically coherent.

* We’ll take the Gospel for the Seventh Sunday of Easter first, since it happened 43 days earlier in time on Holy Thursday. In it we have the awesome privilege not only to eavesdrop on, but enter into, the prayer Jesus made to God the Father the night he was betrayed. Jesus begins by asking the Father to glorify him so that he could glorify the Father. That mutual glory would happen, he says, through his giving his life for us so that we might have life everlasting. He defines eternal life as ultimately knowing God, knowing not in the sense of acquaintances or even great friends but biblically, knowing someone in a totally committed spousal form. That mutual glory would happen, Jesus continued, by Jesus’ accomplishing the work the Father had given him to do, which was to save the human race through his passion, death and resurrection. That glory would also happen, Jesus says, by his being glorified in us, the Church, through our continuation of his mission. Jesus tells God the Father that while he is coming to him, we will remain in the world, and so he prays for us for four things, as we see later in John 17.

* First, that we may be one, just as Jesus and the Father are one. That way, he says, everyone will know that the Father sent the Son and loves us just like he loves the Son. That’s an incredible prayer, that our communion with each other would resemble the communion in the Blessed Trinity. That’s why prayer and work for Church unity are so important for any true disciple of Jesus.

* Second, that God the Father protect us from the evil one. This is what Jesus taught us to pray at the end of the Our Father, that we may not be led into temptation but delivered from evil. God the Father does protect us, while still leaving us free, meaning we must choose to entrust ourselves to him rather than presumptuously thinking we can cavort with evil with no consequences.

* Third, that God the Father make us saints.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Basilica of the Agony of the Garden of Gethsemane, Church of All Nations, Jerusalem

Pilgrimage of Passages for Catholics with Columbia Students

May 19, 2023

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.19.23_Gethsemane_1.mp3

 

The outline for this homily was: 

* The invitation to enter Jesus’ prayer as he asked Peter, James, John and the other apostles.

* Three parts of Jesus prayer: relationship to the Father, trust in his omnipotence, and the desire to do the Father’s will in everything.

* Our response to the invitation in prayer and in life. In prayer, we’re called to see to do the Father’s will on earth just as it is done in heaven, for doing the Father’s will is the beginning of heaven on earth. That’s the way we’re strengthened to be faithful in the supreme moment, when we go out with Jesus to meet our betrayers. 

* The Mass is the great school of what Jesus teaches in Gethsemane, linking what he did in the Upper Room to what he did on Golgotha, turning his whole being to the Father, trusting in him, and aligning his will, as we do this in his memory.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Shepherds’ Field, Bethlehem

Pilgrimage of Passages for Catholics with Columbia Students

May 18, 2023

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.19.23_Nazareth_1.mp3

 

The outline of the homily was: 

* Celebrating this Mass of Christmas on the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord allows us to unite the beginning and end of the manifestation of the physical appearances of Jesus on earth — the day he was born and could be seen by human eyes, and the day he was ascended and taken from human eyes.

* Joseph, Mary and Jesus came here on pilgrimage for the census to the town of David. Angels, Shepherds, Magi all did afterward, as did great saints like St. Jerome and St. Francis.

* Cave teaches us about the shepherds. Vigilance. Haste. Awe. Transformation.

* On the day we visit Yad Vashem, it always is an opportunity to think about the peace on those who rest in his favor the infant Savior brought into the world. At Yad Vashem we see in all its horror what happens when people don’t live in the peace of the Lord and how they can seek to destroy others.  

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Franciscan Wedding Church of Cana

Cana, Galilee

May 16, 2023

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.16.23_Homily_Cana_1.mp3