Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Saint Mary’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Portland, Oregon

Friday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Ephrem, Deacon and Doctor

June 9, 2023

Tob 11:5-17, Ps 146, Mk 12:35-37

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.9.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* The Book of Tobit on which we’ve been meditating all week is about God’s healing. The quiet hero of the book is the Archangel Raphael, whose name means “The Healing [of Medicine] of God.” We see in the book how God heals both Sarah, as we saw yesterday, and Tobit as we see today. God heals them after some suffering, to perfect them who were already good and virtuous. That’s an important point. They were both “just,” and were permitted by God to suffer in order to help them both advance in faith. God already had set up his medicine for them in the facts of the case: he had had Tobit earn and bury money in Media so that, after Tobit couldn’t go himself, Tobiah could, he could get bitten by the fish with the healing properties, he could meet Sarah and become an instrument of the healing of her and later of her father. We see the particularly “galling” way Tobit was healed in today’s Gospel, by his son’s smearing his cataracted eyes with gall from a fish who had bit him, the same fish that had supplied the heart and liver that was burned to heal Sarah and Tobias from the wiles of the pagan god of lust in this allegory. There’s a clear sacramental allusion in this healing by something a little gross, much like Jesus would later heal someone of blindness by wiping saliva on his eyes. As soon as Tobit was cured, he rejoiced that he could see his son. He could in fact see much more clearly than he did before he was blinded by bird droppings four years earlier. His vision had been enriched by faith. The Lord, indeed, as we prayed in the Psalm, gives sight to the blind!

* We see Jesus seeking to do a similar healing in the Gospel. He was trying to help the scribes and those around him in the Temple see what God the Father had revealed to St. Peter at Caesarea Philippi, that the Messiah would also be God. That’s what was happening in Jesus’ question: David who traditionally is understood to be the one who composed Psalm 110 that Jesus quotes, called the Messiah — who would be his descendent according to the flesh — “Lord.” That’s precisely who Jesus was, not merely David’s descendent according to the flesh, but also his Lord and Creator. Jesus was opening the eyes of the minds of his contemporaries to a much deeper understanding of who the Messiah is, to help them to be able to embrace better what was coming within a few days in his Passion.

* Someone who had received the gift of vision from the Lord and who helped his contemporaries to see not just the truth of God but the beauty of God and of the faith is the great fourth century Deacon and Doctor of the Church, St. Ephrem, from Syria. He was a prolific teacher in an age of rampant heresies against the divinity of Christ and the Holy Spirit. At the request of his bishop, he opened up a school in Nisibis to teach the faith aright and inoculate people against false teachings. But he also was an incredible poet and songwriter, putting the truths of the faith into more than 3,000 songs so that Christians could learn and pass on the faith through music. He was called the “Harp of the Holy Spirit” because not only did he teach clearly about the Holy Spirit but taught through the Holy Spirit who led him to some of the deepest insights about the truths of our faith in the history of the Church. He expressed them not just in dry theological treatises but in poetry and in liturgical and ...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Thursday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Votive Mass of the Holy Eucharist

Retreat for the Priests of the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon

Mount Angel Archabbey, Mount Angel, OR

Imitate What You Celebrate: Priests as Catalysts for the Eucharistic Revival

June 8, 2023

Tob 6:10-11,7:1.9-17, 8:4-9, Ps 128, Mk 12:28-34

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.8.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* Over the last three days all of the major groups of Jewish society had come to Jesus to test him, and even trap him, with tough questions. On Tuesday, the strict Pharisees and lax Herodians conspired to try to trip Jesus up on the question of whether it was lawful to pay the census tax. Yesterday, the Sadducees came to try to get him on the question of the Resurrection of the dead. Today the last of the major groups, the Scribes, came up to him to ask him which was the greatest of all the commandments. After Jesus’ answer today, St. Mark tells us, “No one dared to ask him any more questions.”

* We’ve heard the answer to today’s question so many times that its difficulty is not always obvious. There were 613 commandments in the Old Covenant. To ask which of them was the greatest was required not only great familiarity with all of Sacred Scripture — something that the scribes and very few others had — but also great synthesis to discover what in the Old Covenant had the greatest weight of all. It was also a very risky question, because an answer might be taken to imply that 612 things that God himself had commanded were not as important as something else. We see throughout the Gospels that the Scribes, Pharisees and many others didn’t have a great sense of the hierarchy of truths, about prioritizing what was most important of all. They often focused far more on how they’d wash their hands, pots and jugs than how to love their neighbor, straining out gnats, to use Jesus’ image, while swallowing camels. Jesus, however, answered the question about the most important thing we need to do and then offered a second, which is allied to it, in such a way that the scribe who had asked the question was truly impressed. For us, today, we need to ponder Jesus’ response and what that means in our life in general, and about our approach to him in the Holy Eucharist in particular.

* The first and the greatest commandment, Jesus said, is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.” It was to love the Lord not only with part of ourselves, but all of ourselves. So often we can think everything is fine if, basically, we love the Lord with “most” of our heart, with “some of our mind,” with a “little of our strength,” and with the “majority of our soul.” But Jesus wants everything. And deserves everything. When God first gave this commandment to the Israelites through Moses in Deuteronomy 6, he added, “Take to heart these words which I enjoin on you today. Drill them into your children. Speak of them at home and abroad, whether you are busy or at rest. Bind them at your wrist as a sign and let them be as a pendant on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates.” Many Jews still today take these commands seriously. They pray them with their children several times a day. They wear tefillin and phylacteries containing this passage on their head and on their wrists. They have Mezuzahs with the passage at their doors, and even Jewish hotels have them at the entrance to each room. While Jesus himself never requires such external signs, he wanted us interiorly to have love for God in our heart, in our mind, in our arms,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Retreat for the Priests of the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon

Mount Angel Archabbey, Mount Angel, OR

Imitate What You Celebrate: Priests as Catalysts for the Eucharistic Revival

June 8, 2023

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.8.23_Eucharistic_Pastoral_Plan_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Retreat for the Priests of the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon

Mount Angel Archabbey, Mount Angel, OR

Imitate What You Celebrate: Priests as Catalysts for the Eucharistic Revival

June 8, 2023

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.8.23_Priestly_Eucharistic_Apostolate_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Retreat for the Priests of the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon

Mount Angel Archabbey, Mount Angel, OR

Imitate What You Celebrate: Priests as Catalysts for the Eucharistic Revival

June 7, 2023

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.7.23_Priestly_Eucharist_Preaching_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Retreat for the Priests of the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon

Mount Angel Archabbey, Mount Angel, OR

Imitate What You Celebrate: Priests as Catalysts for the Eucharistic Revival

June 7, 2023

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.7.23_Priestly_Eucharistic_Charity_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Retreat for the Priests of the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon

Mount Angel Archabbey, Mount Angel, OR

Imitate What You Celebrate: Priests as Catalysts for the Eucharistic Revival

June 6, 2023

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.6.23_Mystagogical_Ars_Celebrandi_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Retreat for the Priests of the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon

Mount Angel Archabbey, Mount Angel, OR

Imitate What You Celebrate: Priests as Catalysts for the Eucharistic Revival

June 6, 2023

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.6.23_Eucharistic_Adoration_and_Reparation_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Retreat for the Priests of the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon

Mount Angel Archabbey, Mount Angel, OR

Imitate What You Celebrate: Priests as Catalysts for the Eucharistic Revival

June 5, 2023

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.5.23_Daring_to_Do_All_We_Can_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Chapel of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY

Trinity Sunday, Year A

June 4, 2023

Ex 34:4-6.8-9, Dt 3, 2 Cor 13:11-13, Jn 3:16-18

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.4.23_homily.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* Often when I ask people — students at Columbia and other Catholics in various adult education sitautions — what is the most important teaching in Christianity, I get various answers. Some will reply with Christological dogmas like the Incarnation or the Resurrection. More often people will respond with moral teachings, like “You shall love the Lord your God with all your mind, heart, soul and strength,” “Love one another as I have loved you,” “Whatever you did to the least of my brothers, you did to me” or “do unto others what you would have them do to you.” But the top of the hierarchy of Christian teachings is, by far, the revelation of God as the Blessed Trinity.

* The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in an extraordinarily important paragraph (CCC 234), emphasizes, “The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life.” It is what most distinguishes Christianity from every other religion. Ancient Greek and Roman pagans were polytheists, believing in many opposed gods. Buddhists are agnostic. Hindus are pantheistic. Jews and Muslims are monopersonal monotheists. We Christians, on the other hand, are Trinitarian monotheists, which is why the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity isthe central mystery of the Christian religion.

* Because lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi, because the way we pray impacts how we believe and how we live, it is very important that we pray our faith in the Trinity. This became clearer to the Church over time. While every Sunday is, in a very real sense, dedicated to God and therefore every Sunday really is Trinity Sunday, since the 1300s, the Church has celebrated on the Sunday immediately following Pentecost a feast dedicated to the Holy Trinity, to help all of us focus more explicitly on God is in his profound mysterious depths, and therefore on who we’re called to be made in His image and likeness.

* The Trinity is first, the central mystery, note, with regard to what we believe. The Catechism tells us why: “It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the ‘hierarchy of the truths of faith.’” The mystery of the Trinity, therefore, enlightens the mystery of Creation, the mystery of Redemption, the Mystery of Sanctification. It illumines every page of Sacred Scripture. It sheds light on the four last things. It reveals what is at the root of all of the sacraments and prayer. The Catechism states, “The whole history of salvation is identical with the history of the way and the means by which the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, reveals himself to men ‘and reconciles and unites with himself those who turn away from sin.” Underneath the history of the world, underneath our own personal history from the moment of our conception in our mother’s womb, until now and beyond, has developed within this mystery of the Blessed Trinity. Therefore, it’s crucial for us as human beings, not to mention believers, to pour ourselves into the mystery of the Trinity.

* This leads to the second point the Catechism underlines: the Trinity is likewise the central mystery with regard to Christian life. The Christian life is meant to be a Trinitarian life. Your life, my life, is meant to be a Trinitarian life. And so the most important moral question we need to ask, answer, and live is how do we live a Trinitarian life?