Catholic Preaching

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: 

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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,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Annunciation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Suffern, NY

Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

June 18, 2023

Ex 19:2-6, Ps 100, Rom 5:6-11, Mt 9:36-10:8

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

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The following text guided the homily: 

* Today’s readings focus on two essential and related elements: electionby God of a group of people and the mission associated with that election with respect to everyone else. They point to something fundamental for us to understand not only in terms of sound ecclesiology but also to grasp better our vocation and mission as Christians, priests and religious.

* We see these two elements in the first reading from the Book of Exodus, when God chose the Israelites to be his special people, his “treasured possession,” and a “priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” He did so not because the sons and daughters of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were intrinsically better than any other race of people or nation — as we know from the chronicle of their infidelities — but so that he could prepare a people, through a Covenant, to be ready to receive the gift of God’s own Son as the Messiah and Savior of the whole World.

* Likewise, in the Gospel today of St. Matthew, we see that that Messiah and Savior chooses, from among all of those following him, twelve disciples, giving them a special task — both by their words as well as by the miraculous deeds he gave them authority and power to accomplish — to announce that the kingdom of God was at hand. They were not chosen because they were superior to the rest of disciples, but because Jesus wanted to give them a task to do for all the rest.

* Finally, in the second reading taken from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, we can ponder the reality of ourelection as Christians and what that means. We were chosen by God in baptism and made his special people. The Eucharistic Preface we’ll use today (Sunday of Ordinary Time I) will paraphrase the words of St. Peter who, in an early baptismal catechesis, updated the words of today’s first reading and wrote to us Christians: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a dedicated nation, and a people claimed by God for his own, to proclaim the triumphs of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet. 2:9). Like the others, we have been chosen not because we’re better than any other people; St. Paul tells us this in today’s second reading when he says that “while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” We were chosen, rather, for the sake of the mission, to continue Jesus’ saving work until the ends of the world.

* Vocation and mission are intrinsically related. Every time God chooses particular persons or particular peoples, he selects them for a mission. God calls so that one day he may send. The two great verbs in his vocabulary are “come!” — “Come, follow me!” (Mt 19:21), “Come away with me and rest for a while” (Mk 6:31), “Come to me all you who labor and find life burdensome and I will refresh you” (Mt 11:28) — and “go” — “Go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Mt 10:6), “Go to the ends of the earth and proclaim the Good News” (Mt 28:18).

* We Catholics have been chosen by God for all eternity and given a special mission to announce his Gospel and proclaim his kingdom to the ends of the earth. Only one in three people on the planet are Christians, 2.6 out of 7.9 billion. Only 1.3 billion, 16 percent, have the privilege we do of the fullness of revelation, the fullness of the participation in God’s own life in this world, and the fullness of communion. But God didn’t give us his revelation or the sacraments or the Petrine ministry and apostolic succession so that...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

June 17, 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 focus with him on the crucial question of vocations in general, and our vocation in particular, to be a worker in the Lord’s vineyard.

* Matthew tells us that when Jesus looked at the crowds, his heart was moved with pity because they were like sheep without a shepherd. Noting how great the harvest of souls was, he asked his disciples to pray to the Harvest Master — his Father — to send out laborers for his harvest. And while they were praying, Jesus helped Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Barthlomew, Thomas, Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, Thaddeus, Simon from Cana and Judas Iscariot recognize that they were the answer to their prayers. He gave him his own authority and told them to drive out unclean spirits, cure every disease and illness, raise the dead, and proclaim that “the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” That’s what these simple men then actually went out to do.

* We learn several very important lessons from the scene.

* The first is Jesus’ mercy. Just as Jesus looked with pity on the helpless and abandoned crowds then, so he doubtless looks at so many in today’s world with the same compassion, because so many are like shepherdless sheep, searching for direction, lost in the cosmos, or like the recent Centers for Disease Control survey our American teenagers, persistently sad and hopeless. They don’t recognize or hear the Good Shepherd’s voice, and so they tune into the voice of strangers and follow them into danger.

* Second is the harvest. Jesus tells us that the harvest is huge and there are few doing it. In St. John’s Gospel he said, “Look around you and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting!” (Jn 4:35). We don’t have to be a farmer to understand what will happen if we don’t act when the fields are ripe: the produce will corrupt. It’s a call to urgent action. The fields are ever white and ripe. We can’t waste time. For some people, perhaps for us, today may be the last day for action.

* The third thing is about the need for prayer. In response to the huge harvest, Jesus first has us pray for harvesters. This is a command with no expiration date, insofar as there will always been an urgent need until the end of time. In response to the need for vocations to the priesthood, religious life, marriage, the diaconate, Christian psychiatrists and psychologists, doctors, nurses, Catholic school teachers, catechists, you name it, the first thing we need to do is not a viral video, catchy poster, billboard, or program. It’s prayer. It’s always prayer. Vocations are always gifts from God to which human beings must respond, not things we earn from our own efforts, like salesmen showing quarterly earnings. The vocations crisis that the Church is suffering across the board in many locations is ultimately a prayer crisis. Not enough are praying for vocations, not to mention praying as if their eternal life depended on it. In response to the ripe harvest, we have to pray with urgency and insistence.

* The fourth thing is to notice what Jesus has us pray for. He has us ask God the Father, the Harvest Master, not for ‘bodies,” but “laborers,” hard workers. Harvesting for Jesus is not a cushy air-conditioned job in a plush corner of...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Manhattan

Wednesday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Monthly Mass for Young Adult Catholics

June 14, 2023

2 Cor 3:4-11, Ps 99, Mt 5:17-19

 

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

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

Today Jesus serves us the third course in what is a seventeen-course daily Mass feast of his words from the Sermon on the Mount. We began on Monday with the Beatitudes. Yesterday, he summoned us to our vocation to be Salt of the Earth and Light of the World. Today he speaks to us of what his relationship is to the law and the prophets and what he therefore wants our relationship to be, telling us that the greatest in his kingdom will be the one who observes what he commands us and teaches others to do the same. Insofar as the Lord has summoned us to that greatness, let’s listen attentively to how he enfleshes it.

At the beginning of today’s Gospel, Jesus announces, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” He was coming to respond to all of the Old Covenant hopes, to be the “Yes” to all God’s promises, even the littlest: “Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away,” he continued, “not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place.” He was going to fulfill all of the prophecies of the Old Testament and bring the entire law to find its completion in his two-fold command to love God with all of our mind, heart, soul and strength and to love our neighbor as Christ has loved us. As he will show us throughout the Sermon on the Mount, he would fulfill everything not by scrupulous observance of every letter and part of the letter, but by bringing everything he had given in the Old to fulfillment as a seed metamorphoses into a tree or an embryo into an infant and then into an adult. The fifth commandment not to kill he would fulfill by telling us not to be angry, not to insult, not to hate. The sixth commandment not to commit adultery he would complete by telling us not to look on others with lust, lest we be adulterers in the heart. The seventh commandment not to steal he would perfect by telling us not to withhold our tunic from someone who takes our cloak and to give to the one who asks of us. The eighth commandment not to bear false witness he would perfect by telling us not to swear oaths at all but to let our yes be yes and no be no. He was fulfilling the law through helping us to interiorize everything, transforming the fruit by renewing the tree. Rather than not hating, insulting, killing, using, plundering and deceiving our neighbor, he was leading us, like him, to love our neighbor and even our enemy.

The moral revolution Jesus was igniting during the Sermon on the Mount would be slow to take effect. The scribes and the Pharisees fiercely and homicidally resisted, because they wanted to maintain the letter as written and not to see it fulfilled as Jesus indicated. The laxist Sadducees and and Herodians withstood it, because they preferred to see the law and prophets conveniently ignored rather than taken even more seriously. Even many of the first Christians opposed it, because they thought in order to be a good Christian, one first needed to be a good Jew, and keep all 613 commandments in the law and the prophets. St. Paul was battling against this tendency in tonight’s first reading.

As one biblical scholar says, the Old Testament was like an unfinished symphony waiting for Christ to come and bring everything together. We’re hearing the first notes of that finished masterpiece,

Fr. Roger J. LandrySacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, ManhattanWednesday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year IVotive Mass of St. JosephJune 14, 20232 Cor 3:4-11, Ps 99, Mt 5:17-19

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.14.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* In today’s first reading, St. Paul focuses on the great gift of the new and eternal covenant made for us by Christ by contrasting it to the former covenant. He calls the first Covenant one “carved in letters on stone,” meaning the Covenant of Sinai, and described it as a “ministry of death” or “ministry of condemnation” because it was meant to help us to learn to die to ourselves, die to our own powers, die to our dream to save ourselves by our own efforts, and open ourselves up to God’s power and his life. St. Paul in his Letter to the Galatians would call the Old Covenant or Testament a pedagogue, a disciplinarian, a tutor (Gal 3:24), who, according to ancient custom, would drill us and even “kill us” in lessons so that we might be brought by him to the Master who would build on those foundations. The purpose of the pedagogy of the Old Covenant was to open us up to receive and respond to God’s new and eternal covenant of salvation by grace received in faith. He says that if the first Covenant was “so glorious,” “how much more” will the new Covenant by the Spirit and the “ministry of righteousness … abound much more in glory.”

* Sometimes when we read such contrasts in St. Paul, who was battling against a tendency among the Pharisees and the “Judaizing Christians” to find salvation in the works of the law rather than by faith in Christ through grace, we can think that the Old Covenant was somehow annulled. No. As St. Paul would say to the Romans, “The gifts and the call of the Lord are irrevocable” (Rom 11:29). The Old Testament was a great thing and a preparation for the New! As one biblical scholar says, the Old Testament was like an unfinished symphony waiting for Christ to come and bring everything together. That’s what Jesus himself describes in the Gospel today, taken from the Sermon on the Mount. He says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” He was coming to respond to all of the Old Covenant hopes, to be the “Yes” to all God’s promises, even the littlest: “Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away,” he continued, “not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place.” He was going to fulfill all of the typological signs of the Old Testament and bring the entire law to find its fulfillment in his two-fold command of love, on which all the law and the prophets “hang” (Mt 22:40). He would do this not just by his words but also by his example. Some of the old forms of the “disciplinarian” would fall away in this fulfillment — like dietary laws, even circumcision! — as we received new wineskins for the new wine of the Covenant, but they would not be “abolished.” They would rather be brought to completion, they would be fulfilled, in a similar way to how a seed metamorphoses into a tree or an embryo into an infant into an adult.

* And Jesus wants us to follow him, to be united to him, in this fulfillment of every letter, every smallest part of the letter, of the Law. He wants us, like him, not to live by the “letter [that] brings death” but to live the smallest part of the letter by the “Spirit [who] gives life,” allowing God to unite ourselves to him in love. That’s why Jesus pivots and begins to speak about how he wants us to be great by living by the Spirit in fulfilling the law of love,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Catholic Medical Association Bootcamp for Medical Students

Ave Maria University, Ave Maria, Florida

June 12, 2023

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.12.23_What_Prayer_is_and_How_Jesus_Teaches_Us_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Catholic Medical Association Bootcamp for Medical Students

Ave Maria University, Ave Maria, Florida

June 12, 2023

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.12.23_The_Indispensable_Necessity_of_Prayer_and_Silence_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Our Lady of Guadalupe Chapel

Ave Maria University, Ave Maria, Florida

Catholic Medical Association Boot Camp for Medical Students

Monday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

June 12, 2023

2 Cor 1:1-7, Ps 34, Mt 5:1-12

 

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: 

* Yesterday, June 11, was the feast of St. Barnabas, nicknamed by the early Christians the “Son of Encouragement,” because of the way he emboldened so many in the first decades of the Church, including St. Paul. St. Barnabas was the one who encouraged the generosity of the first Christians by himself selling his property and laying the proceeds at the feet of the apostles to distribute as was most needed. He was the one who encouraged St. Paul, introducing this former terrorist against Christians to the apostles in Jerusalem and personally vouching for him. He was the one who eventually tracked St. Paul down in Tarsus where he was making tents to take him to Antioch and have him become the greatest Christian missionary of all time. We’re all called ultimately to be like St. Barnabas, a true person of encouragement who can strengthen others to be bold, to go on, to confront and overcome their fears. But we call him “Son of Encouragement,” not just “Man of Encouragement,” because he received the encouragement he paid forward from above, from Christ himself, who told him and others time and again “Take Courage. It is I. Do not be afraid.”

* St. Paul’s experience of encouragement, from Barnabas and like Barnabas from Christ, led him to write the extraordinary consoling words he penned in his Second Letter to the Christians in Corinth. In the first seven lines of this letter, the Apostle to the Gentiles uses the word “encourage” ten different times. He describes how God encourages us in our afflictions precisely so that, having received his strength in those difficult moments, we might credibly be able to encourage others with the same encouragement — namely God’s — we have received. St. Paul received this encouragement various times, as we see in the Acts of the Apostles and his letters. Right after this passage, he describes how his afflictions were crushing him. But God came to his aid and helped him to see that “if we are afflicted,

it is for your encouragement and salvation; if we are encouraged, it is for your encouragement, which enables you to endure the same sufferings that we suffer.” What we prayed in the Psalm happens often: “When the poor one called out, the Lord heard, and from all his distress he saved him.” God permits us to suffer so that we might receive his encouragement and then be better equipped to share that blessing with others. That’s part of the good that God wants to bring out of the hardships he permits us to endure. I think by this point we are all able to relate to this point, that if we’ve suffered, for example, a physical illness and recovered, we’re able to encourage those suffering the same illness; if we’re gone through a particularly grueling academic program, like medical school or residency, we can help those who are beginning; if we’ve had to endure the dark night of the senses or the soul in prayer, we can help those who are now just entering into it. God encourages us in our circumstances and helps us to encourage others. His encouragement is both a gift and a task.

* We see how Jesus similarly seeks to encourage others in today’s Gospel in sharing the Beatitudes. I normally prefer to preach on the Beatitudes in a straightforward way, contrasting Jesus’ notion of the path happiness from the world’s and ...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Chapel of the Catholic Information Center, Washington, DC

Mass for the Attendees of the Leonine Forum Summit

Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, Year A

June 11, 2023

Deut 8:2-3.14-16, Ps 147, 1 Cor 10:16-17, Jn 6:51-58

 

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

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The following text guided the homily: 

* Today as we conclude the inaugural Leonine Forum Summit, we are blessed to do so with the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus. The Eucharistic Jesus, and the Mass that brings the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity to our altars, is meant to be the source and summit, root and center of the Christian life, and therefore the celebration of the Mass is meant to be the summit of this Summit and the starting point for all that the Leonine Forum is and does. Jesus’ self-giving Eucharistic love is the source and driving force of the Christian love of neighbor, of the social Gospel, that has developed in Catholic Social Teaching that Leonine Fellows learn and the charitable service they’re inspired to pay forward. Friendship with and communion in the Eucharistic Lord are the wellsprings of friendship and community that the Forum nourishes. The worship we give to the Lord Jesus at our monthly Masses and Days of Recollection is the origin of the worship we give him in Eucharistic adoration and all forms of prayer and the font of the reverence that we give to the least of our brethren in whom we see the dignity of Jesus’ image and likeness. And so it’s fitting that we finish this Summit as we began, here at Mass, faithfully listening to the Word of God, stoking our hunger for the Word made flesh, celebrating with praise, thanksgiving, adoration, and petitions the wondrous gift of our Risen Lord, and being strengthened by him on the inside to take Him as salt, light and leaven to the world he redeemed.

* The Eucharistic Jesus is the fulfillment of the heavenly manna with which, as Moses reminded the Israelites in today’s first reading, God fed them in the desert for 40 years, as a reminder that the human person does not live on bread alone. It’s the fulfillment of the finest wheat about which David sung in today’s Psalm. It is the participation in the very Body and Blood of Christ about which St. Paul marveled in today’s epistle. It is Jesus’ very flesh given for the life of the world, the true food and true drink that makes it possible to live because of Jesus not just here in this world but eternally. That’s why the Church, with the inspired words of St. Thomas Aquinas written for the first Corpus Christi celebration 759 years ago, tells us, “Praise, O Zion, your salvation, praise with hymns of exaltation, Christ, your king and shepherd true.” That’s why he urges us, “Full and clear ring out your chanting, joy nor sweetest grace be wanting, from your heart let praises burst.” And that’s why he tells us, in Latin, quantum potes, tantum aude, “Dare to do all you can” in bringing him all the love and praise we know, because, he indicates, everything we muster will come up short of the praise Christ in this Sacrament of Love deserves.

* If every year on the celebration of Corpus Christi, the Angelic Doctor and the Church as a whole dares us to pull out all the stops, this year that summons is given to us in bolded letters, because it is taking place at the beginning of the second year of the three-year-plus Eucharistic Revival taking place in the Church in the United States. The first year was dedicated to priming Church leaders — clergy, catechists, Catholic school teachers, diocesan staffs, and parish leaders through men’s, women’s and youth conferences — for this second year,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of the Lord, Vigil

June 10, 2023

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.10.23_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 on the Solemnity of his Body and Blood, popularly known as Corpus Christi.

* In the Gospel for the feast, Jesus’ disciples as well as critics grumble after he tells them that he is the living bread that came down from heaven and whoever eats that bread, his flesh for the life of the world, will live forever. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?,” they mumble aloud. And Jesus doubles down, saying, “Unless you gnaw on the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you do not have life within you. … Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.”

* In response, the critics would ultimately say, “This teaching is hard, who can endure it,” and many of Jesus’ disciples — who had listened to so many of his life-changing words, who had witnessed so many of his stupendous miracles, including the multiplication of five loaves and two fish to feed more than 5,000 people — left. They were right in saying that Jesus’ teaching about the Eucharist was very hard. To them it sounded like cannibalism. Jews couldn’t even touch blood without becoming ritually impure and Jesus was telling them they needed to drink his blood. Sometimes I think the reason why some Catholics, like some of our fellow Christians, don’t find this teaching hard is because they think Jesus is only talking symbolically. He’s not. He stresses his flesh is real food and his blood real drink.

* We need to approach this difficult reality with faith. After many of the disciples had left, Jesus turned to the 12 and asked if they wanted to leave. That’s when same Peter who had stepped forward in Caesarea Philippi to say that Jesus was the Messiah and Son of the Living God, courageously stuck his neck out and said, “Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the holy one of God.” What he was essentially saying was, “Jesus, we don’t have the foggiest idea as to how you will give us your flesh to eat and blood to drink but what we do know is that we believe in you, and because of that faith, we believe in what you say. So if you say that we must eat your flesh and drink your blood to have life, just show us how!” And Jesus would during the next Passover, when during the Last Supper in the Upper Room in Jerusalem, he would totally change the bread and wine of the Passover celebration into his Body and Blood and say, “Take and eat. … Take and drink.” St. Thomas Aquinas described the Eucharistic faith of St. Peter and of the Church when he wrote in his famous Corpus Christi hymn, Adoro Te Devote, “I believe whatever the Son of God has said, because nothing is truer than the word of truth.”

* The difficulty of Jesus’ teaching about the Eucharist is what led to the first Corpus Christi. A priest named Fr. Peter of Prague had lost his faith in the Real Presence of Jesus, but he hadn’t yet lost his faith in God and, hence, decided to give God the opportunity to give him that faith by doing something quite drastic. In 1263, he decided to make a pilgrimage to Rome, to pray at the tomb of his patron, St. Peter, for the gift of renewed faith in the Eucharist.