Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Thursday of the First Week in Lent

March 2, 2023

Esther 14:12.14-16.23-25, Ps 138, Mt 7:7-12

 

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

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today in the Gospel Jesus continues his lessons for us on prayer that he began on Ash Wednesday and built on two days ago at daily Mass. On Ash Wednesday he told us to pray differently from those who pray for show. He told us to go to our inner room, the place symbolized by the locked location in the house where where we hold our treasures, and pray to our Father in secret, because prayer is supposed to bring us into a loving, filial communion with the Father. Two days ago, Jesus built on that lesson when he taught us how to pray, giving us the words to turn to our Father in heaven, and forming us to seek the hallowing of the Father’s name, the coming of his kingdom, the doing of his will, as well as to ask from him the daily natural and supernatural nourishment, the mercy, the strengthening in temptation and the deliverance from evil we need.

* Today he speaks to us about the filial confidence we should have in prayer as he urges us to bring our needs and desires to God. Jesus wants us to seek God in our prayer, to knock on his door, to ask for what we need and desire. And he gives us a promise that no infomercial or used car salesman would ever be so bold as to make: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” That’s an almost incredible guarantee, that our prayers will always be heard. Notice that he doesn’t tell us, “Ask and you’ll get whatever you ask for.” He instructs us to seek but he doesn’t tell us exactly what we’ll find. He tells us to knock but he doesn’t say what will be waiting for us on the other side of the opened door. But he promises us that our prayers will be heard and that God will respond. The reason why God will respond is precisely because God is a loving Father. Jesus says, “Which one of you would hand his son a stone when he asked for a loaf of bread, or a snake when he asked for a fish? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him.” He will always give us what is good for us. In St. Luke’s version of a similar discourse, Jesus promises that the Father will always respond to our prayers by giving us the Holy Spirit. God responds to our petitions first and foremost by giving himself, because the greatest gift is the Giver. Jesus says all of this so that we will have no fear at all in praying but a great boldness, a boldness that translates into asking with filial confidence. And he wants us to ask!

We see this prayer of fearless petition exemplified for us in the first reading. Queen Esther, a Jew living in Babylon, risks her life to try to save the Jewish people from one of King Ahasuerus’ assistants, Haman, who was seeking to have all the Jews executed by decree of the deceived King. Before, however, she would risk her life going into the King’s presence unbidden, she and all the Jews prayed and fasted for three days. Today we have the bold prayer she makes in the presence of God the Father as she lay prostrate with all her attendants from morning to evening: “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, blessed are you. Help me, who am alone and have no help but you, for I am taking my life in my hand. As a child I used to hear from the books of my forefathers that you, O Lord,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Wednesday of the First Week of Lent

March 1, 2023

Jonah 3:1-10, Ps 51, Lk 11:29-32

 

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: 

We’re now one week into Lent and the Church today gives us a powerful reminder of the individual and communal conversion that Lent is supposed to bring about in us. Pope Benedict used to remind us that Lent is not about a minor course correction in our life but about a big change of heart and ways. Today is a good opportunity for us to see if we’re on the trajectory of tinkering a little with our life or profoundly altering it.

* In the first reading, we encounter the Prophet Jonah, who was sent by God to the pagan city of Nineveh (modern day Mosul in northern Iraq and former capital of the neo-Assyrian empire) to preach massive conversion. “Forty more days and Nineveh will be destroyed!,” he exclaimed. The city was huge, taking three days to traverse in one direction, and yet Jonah didn’t have to announce “39 more days and Nineveh will be destroyed.” This pagan city heard the message immediately, believed God, spread it across the city, and converted, proclaiming a fast, vesting in sackcloth and sitting in ashes. The King himself divested of his royal garments and sat in sackcloth and ashes as well, proclaiming a total fast — “neither man nor beast, neither cattle nor sheep, shall taste anything; they shall not eat nor shall they drink water — and commanding that both persons and animals shall be “covered with sackcloth and call loudly to God.” Most importantly, he decreed that “every man shall turn from his evil way and from the violence he has in hand.” All of this was in the hope that God may forgive them and that they may not perish. It was an unprecedented and total conversion — and God responded, because as we prayed in the Psalm, he never spurns a contrite and humbled heart.

If that’s what the pagan Ninevites did at the beginning of the 40-day proto-Lent that Jonah had announced, how much more seriously should we Christians take this 40-day season of penance and conversion? If they responded so thoroughly to the message of Jonah, how much more shall we respond to the “greater than Jonah,” Jesus, who announced that same basic message to us? One week ago, he put ashes on our forehead and told us to “Repent and believe in the Gospel.” He reminded us that we are dust and unto dust we shall return. He proclaimed a fast that he called us to do it differently than all the rest. He summoned us to prayer, to almsgiving, to remedying our evil actions and replacing them with good actions. Have we responded as seriously as the Ninevites to this summons? Or are we thinking that we still have 33 days left…

We may be tempted to respond to this summons by saying, “I’m not that bad!,” “I don’t have to repent from a life of crime or debauchery, or from harboring a cesspool of unchristian thoughts or desires.” But our individual conversion is only one part of Lent. There’s another aspect of it, which is communal reparation and conversion. Not everyone in Nineveh was as guilty as the others, but as a whole, Nineveh was a sinful city, and everyone, the good, the bad and the worse, even the innocent pets, repented. Likewise, not just for ourselves but for others we need to repent. Jesus said in the Gospel, “This generation is an evil generation,” and he can say that about every generation. There’s good in every generation, but there’s also evil in every generation. There are lots of great things in our culture, but much evil over which we need to repent. Over the course of this homily,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Tuesday of the First Week of Lent

February 28, 2023

Is 55:10-11, Ps 34, Mt 6:7-15

 

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: 

* The whole purpose of Lent is for us to become fully Christian in identity and behavior and that involves rediscovering or deepening our relationship with God the Father through Christ in the Holy Spirit. On Ash Wednesday, we pondered how Jesus calls us to give alms, fast and pray differently from everyone else, doing each of these things in communion with our Father who sees in secret. We’re supposed to give alms recognizing that all that we are able to give to others we have first received from God the Father, and so our giving is an extension of his own loving Providence, as we saw yesterday. We’re supposed to fast in order to hunger for God and for what he hungers, as he made very clear in our readings on Friday and Saturday last week. And we’re supposed to pray by meeting God the Father in our “inner room,” the locked “store room” in a Jewish house where all valuables were kept, indicating to us not only that we are supposed to treasure God most but also that his love in coming to meet us in the tiny “closet” of our interior life, whether we’re praying at home or in the middle of a multitude.

* Today in the Gospel Jesus continues somewhat literally his Ash Wednesday instructions on prayer. Today’s passage is an excision of the Ash Wednesday Gospel passage. After Jesus said the words about the “inner room,” he elaborated about prayer in the words of today’s Gospel. He reiterates that as Christians we’re supposed to pray differently than everyone else, not looking for show like certain Pharisees, but also not “babbling on” like the pagans who think that their prayer will be heard because of the multiplication of words. Because of pagan polytheism, in which gods were warring against each other, pagan prayer would often involve trying to lobby your gods against the gods that others were supposedly lobbying, recognizing that for these gods, people were no more than pawns in their games. Prayers were thought heard by the greater accumulation of words and sound. Jesus said that not only should we not babble, but that we have to have a totally different conception and way of prayer altogether.

* For us as Christians, prayer is to be an intimate conversation with a Father who loves us and already knows what we need. The first word Jesus teaches us is “Abba!” We’re to pray to a loving “daddy.” Then we’re supposed to seek what that loving Father who already knows what we need seeks. The first petition is that his name be hallowed rather than ours, and the way his name is hallowed is not just in our prayer but particularly through the Christian life of Christ-like love when others “seeing [our] good deeds glorify [our] Father in heaven” (Mt 5:16). We beg that his kingdom come and his will be done, rather than our own. We begin, in other words, by asking for everything related to God’s glory, kingdom and will.  A loving son or daughter wants what’s best for a parent — just like a parent wants what’s best for a child — and we begin praying not for ourselves and our needs but for God and his desires, knowing that God’s desires are for us to be holy by hallowing his name (the path to our own happiness!), for us to enter his kingdom fully as heirs, and for us to do his will on earth so that we may do it forever in heaven.

* From there we turn to our own needs. The first thing we ask the Father is each day to give us our “supersubstantial” (epiousios) bread. This refers not just to the material sustenanc...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Monday of the First Week of Lent

February 27, 2023

Lev 19:1-2.11-18, Ps 19, Mt 25:31-46

 

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

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The following text guided today’s homily: 

* The season of Lent in general, which takes us back to the fundamentals, is an opportunity for us to focus on some of life’s biggest questions, questions that in the hustle and bustle of each day we can punt. Why am I here? Where I am going in life? How am I to get from where I am to where I hope to be, to where God wants me to be? In the readings for today’s Mass, God, our Teacher, gives us great clarity.

* He first tells us that the reason why we’re here, the reason why he created us, the reason why we’re born and in existence, is to become more and more his holy image and likeness. “Be holy,” he instructs us through Moses in the first reading, “for I, the Lord, your God, am holy.” The measure of our life will be determined by the measure with which we allow God’s holiness and life to enter into ours. Jesus himself would reiterate this point in the Gospel when he tells us “Be merciful as your heavenly Father is merciful,” and “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Holiness is to become like God who is holy, holy, holy. We can’t do that, obviously, by our own power. We know all too well our weaknesses. But nothing is impossible for God.

* Holiness is ultimately, as the Second Vatican Council described us in Perfectae Caritatis,  the perfection of love, when God who is love dwells within us so that we can love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength and love our neighbor with all our mind, heart, soul and strength. That’s why in today’s readings, God shows us the path to holiness precisely in the perfection of charity.

* In Leviticus, Moses gives us the Old Testament emphasis on “negative commandments,” or “thou shalt nots.” St. Paul called the Old Testament a “pedagogue,” a “disciplinarian” or “tutor,” something that God had given us precisely to be ready for the Master and his new and eternal Covenant. Just like a parent begins to instruct a child morally through describing what they shouldn’t do — “don’t stick the key into the electric outlet,” “don’t put your hand on the fire,” “don’t hit your little sister,” “don’t cross the road without looking both ways first” — because these are much clearer for children to understand than larger positive commands that require some interpretation and application, God does the same thing with training us toward holiness. He gives us first what we shouldn’t do. Through Moses, he tells us not to steal, not to lie or speak falsely, not to defraud or rob, not to withhold wages, not to curse the deaf, not to trip up the blind, not to make dishonest judgments, not to play favorites, not to spread slander, not to stand idly by when our neighbor’s life is threatened, not to bear hatred, not to take revenge and not to cherish grudges. All of this is summarized at the end in the positively phrased version of “Golden Rule,” “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” — which practically means “treat your neighbor as you would want your neighbor to treat you” — but in practice in Old Testament morality, this was understood as the “Silver Rule,” as “Do not do to your neighbor what you would not want him to do to you.” This was the way God was training them toward the perfection of holiness, by clearly indicating to them first the behaviors contrary to charity. But when we flip the negative commands around, we see what we are supposed to be doing positively: rather than stealing, robbing or defrauding from others he wants us to give genero...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Campus Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

First Sunday of Lent, Year A

February 26, 2023

Gen 2:7-9.3:1-7, Ps 51, Rom 5:12-19, Mt 4:1-11

 

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

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The following text guided the homily: 

* Lent is an annual spiritual boot camp in which the Holy Spirit impels us to follow Jesus into the desert, to pray and fast with him for 40 days, and to prepare to give ourselves together with him as alms to others. The First Sunday of Advent is the annual opportunity for us to recognize that this boot camp does not take place in a vacuum or is directed toward self-improvement. The Church has us focus on the reality of the devil and the way that the evil one seeks to tempt us away from God, to seduce us to choose against him, so that we may separate ourselves from God in this life and self-alienate us from God forever. But in response to this subtle spiritual terrorism, the Church also has us focus on the remedies Christ the Divine Physician, the conquerer of the devil, sin and death, teaches us in the desert after his 40 days of fasting and prayer, so that we learn how to be successful in this mortal combat.

* Throughout human life, we have to face the wiles of the devil, just like Jesus had to face Satan anew in the Garden of Gethsemane. But youth is a particularly intense time of spiritual combat, because the devil wants to come after us before we have had the chance to recognize easily to discern his ordinary maneuvers, before we’ve developed the virtuous habits to strengthen us again his assaults. So he can come after us with intense temptations against faith in, hope toward and love for God. He can bombard us with temptations toward pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, anger and sloth. He can assail us with temptations to hate, harm or neglect our neighbor and to even to hate, harm or neglect ourselves. That’s why it’s super important on this First Sunday of Lent for all of us, but especially college students, to enter into Jesus’ desert academy, where we can learn from him how to diagnose, remedy and respond to the devil’s lies, empty promises and evil works. Jesus shows us today not only that the devil can be defeated but how he is to be defeated. To learn how to follow Christ in overcoming these temptations, though, we first need to understand better how the devil operates, and that brings us to focus very carefully on the first reading, where we encounter the blow-by-blow details of what we call the “original sin,” but in it we see the essential stages the devil uses to allure us to any sin.

* The first step is to try to get us to listen to God poorly, rather than attentively and lovingly. God had told Adam that he wasn’t to eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but as he passed that on to Eve, the details changed, as Eve said, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; it is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘You shall not eat itor even touch it, lest you die.’” Even though Adam’s and Eve’s life depended on it, they hadn’t listened to God accurately. God had said nothing about not touching it. Every sin begins with a sin of listening. Pope Benedict said that every sin is ”essentially disobedience and refusal to hear” God (VD 26).

* The second step is to get us to distrust God. The devil told Eve that they wouldn’t die if they did the exact opposite of what God had commanded. He declared that God gave the command simply because he was jealous of his own divine status and didn’t want anyone else to become like him, even though his will from the beginning was to create us in his image and likeness...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx

First Sunday of Lent, Year A

February 26, 2023

Gen 2:7-9.3:1-7, Ps 51, Rom 5:12-19, Mt 4:1-11

 

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

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The following text guided the homily: 

* At the end of today’s second reading, St. Paul summarizes the principal message of all three readings on this first Sunday of Lent: “For just as through the disobedience of one man the many were made sinners, so through the obedience of one man the many will be made righteous.” We see the disobedience of that one man in today’s first reading in the story of Adam’s and Eve’s fall, by which the human race became sinners. We see in the Gospel the obedience and fidelity of the New Adam, by which we were justified. The entirety of our lives is a battle in our mind, our heart and particularly our choices between the old Adam and the path of disobedience and sin, and the New Adam and the way of obedience and faithfulness. Lent is the time we’re called to repent and believe in the Gospel, to turn our back on the old Adam and embrace the New. As Pope Francis continually reminds us, the devil is real and active — just as real and active as he was in the Garden and as he was in the desert — trying to tempt us to buy into his lies. And often we do. But the Good News is that Christ shows us in the Gospel today not only that the devil can be defeated but how he is to be defeated. To learn how to follow Christ in overcoming these temptations, though, we first need to understand how the devil operates, and that brings us to focus very carefully on the first reading.

* Adam and Eve had it all in the garden. God had made all of creation for them. They were perfectly in the state of grace. They had transparent relations with God, with all of creation, and with each other, as was symbolized by the fact they were “naked and unashamed” (Gen 2:25). God gave them just one limitation. “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die” (Gen 2:16-17). It was called symbolically the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but we recognize what the word “know” means in Genesis — it means to “become one with” something or someone. Adam “knew” Eve and she conceived a child (Gen 4:1). To “know” good and evil meant that they would come to know evil, while they had been created to know and do good.

* The devil came disguised symbolically as a serpent and he got Adam and Eve to become one with evil. We can examine the steps he took, because he still has the same modus operandi. The first step was to expose that Eve didn’t really pay very close attention to what God said. When the devil asked her what God had instructed, she replied by saying that they were not to eat of the tree in the middle of the garden not touch it lest they die. God had never said anything about touching it — and we’ll see why this lack of precision is relevant later. The second step was to get Eve to distrust God. The devil initially called into question the fact of the consequences: “You will not die!” Then he undermined God’s credibility, as if God were just making rules for the sake of keeping his own prerogatives, rather than because he loved them: God didn’t want them to eat it, the devil said, because it would give them the power to become like God, not just knowing but determining good and evil. God had made them in his “image and likeness,” he wanted them to be “like him,” but the devil was trying to get them to believe that they would become like God not through loving him but disobeying him. And Eve took the bait.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Lenten Day of Recollection for the Leonine Forum and Columbia Catholic Ministry

February 25, 2023

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.25.23_Fasting_Charity_and_Eucharist_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Lenten Day of Recollection for the Leonine Forum and Columbia Catholic Ministry

February 25, 2023

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.25.23_Desert_Burning_Bush_Adoration_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Lenten Day of Recollection for the Leonine Forum and Columbia Catholic Ministry

Saturday after Ash Wednesday

February 25, 2023

Is 58:9-14, Ps 86, Lk 5:27-32

 

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The following text guided today’s homily: 

* “Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth,” we prayed several times today in the Responsorial Psalm. And the Truth incarnate responds in the Gospel, first for Matthew and then for all of us, by coming into our lives and saying, “Follow me!”

* “Follow me!” These words mean that we have to change course, we can no longer go our own way and do our own thing. Once Christ calls us, once he teaches us his way, we are summoned to walk in his truth. That’s the call to conversion. Conversion literally means turning with Jesus.  When he turns to the Father, we turn with him. When he turns to his mother, so do we. When he turns to our neighbor, we follow him across the road. When he sets his face firmly on Calvary, we walk with him along that way of the Cross. There are two types of people with different standard reactions to Jesus’ command. Some people are in Matthew’s circumstance, where it’s obvious to them and everyone else that they have been going in the opposite direction of the Lord. These words come as nothing short of a revolution. Many will stubbornly continue to go their own way. Others, like St. Matthew today, will seize the summons as a once in a life time opportunity. We’ll return to him in a moment. The second main group of people hear Jesus’ words, “follow me!” as nothing revolutionary at all. They think that, even if they might have some diversions here and there, from time to time, they “basically” follow the Lord. They can claim, for example, that they’re devout Christians and yet use their high offices to expand the slaughter of the least of Jesus’ brothers and sisters in the womb, or turn hardened hearts to Jesus’ brothers and sisters at the border, or respond with indifference to the slaughter of innocents in Ukraine or in northern Nigeria. They assert they follow Jesus but don’t really make time for him each day in prayer or come to be with him and receive him worthily in the Holy Eucharist. They say they follow him but they think he’s going the wrong way on various issue controversial to our woke age, like his teachings on sexual morality, or his choice to call only men as his apostles despite his exaltation of his mother and many other women, or his affirmation of loving our enemies, praying for our persecutors, and forgiving seventy times seven times. This latter group is somewhat like St. Peter after Jesus had revealed Peter’s vocation to be the rock on whom Jesus would build his Church. When Jesus announced for the first time that he would be betrayed, tortured and crucified, Peter said, “No such thing will ever happen to you, Lord!,” and Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God thinks but as human beings do.” After having changed his name from Simon to Peter, Jesus changed it again to Satan, because, like Satan in the desert, Peter was trying to lead Jesus, not follow him. He was thinking according to worldly logic, not divine. He was not interested in the Lord’s teaching him how to walk in the truth, but in his own instructing the Lord the way things should go. And many are in this category: they believe they’re following the Lord — and, like Peter, they’ve made various big choices to follow him — but they don’t follow him yet fully. They still want sometimes to be in charge of the relationship. Even after the Resurrection, when St.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the First Sunday of Lent, A, Vigil

February 25, 2023

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.25.23_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us tomorrow on the First Sunday of Lent. It’s a conversation in which we eavesdrop on Jesus’ dialogue with the devil in the desert, in which Jesus invites us to journey with him for his 40 days there to learn from him how to live well not just Lent but the entirety of Christian life. He seeks to strengthen us not just to fight against the temptations of the evil one but to choose and order our whole life to God.

* Permit me to say a few words about going into the desert with Jesus. Most of us have no desire at all to go to the desert, certainly for no more than a brief visit. At a spiritual level, however, we should always have a great love for the desert, because that’s where the Holy Spirit drove Jesus and where he seeks to lead us each Lent. Without Jesus, the desert is sterile and lifeless. But with Jesus, it becomes a place of great vitality. We see this in the famous prophecy of Ezekiel where the water from the temple trickles down into the Arabah desert and grows ultimately into a river, leading to all types of vegetation and aquatic life and restoring life to the Dead Sea. That’s a symbol of the living water from Christ’s pierced side that begins to well up in us through prayer and the sacraments. To go into the desert with Christ is not a sterile exercise, but one that is meant to bring life even to those places within us that seem to be most lifeless. The problem is that going into the state of the desert, even with Christ, is increasingly difficult for people today. Removing ourselves from distractions, from cell phones, televisions, computers, car radios, newspapers, podcasts, social media scrolls, and the various things that crowd our lives with so much noise is increasingly difficult today. We’re so connected that if we are out of cell phone range we can easily feel totally lost. The first temptation we face each Lent is to resist or refuse to go into the desert with Christ, to think that our Lent can be complete if, for example, all we do is give up are sweets and booze. The first big hurdle is for us to hear Christ’s voice from the desert saying, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while” (Mk 6:31).

* Once we accept that invitation and journey with Christ into the state of the desert, Christ can begin to strengthen us. The details of Jesus’ 40 days in the desert, including the temptations by the devil, could only be known if Jesus had divulged them, because no one else was there. He very much wanted the details known so that we would be able, in prayer, to live them with him. Jesus prayed and fasted for an incredible forty days, which obviously would have left him physically weak and famished. It was at this moment of physical weakness that the Devil came to him to tempt him. In the temptations Jesus suffered and later described to his disciples, the devil brought out in a pristine form the types of temptation that Christ would later undergo in his public ministry and that each of us undergoes in life. By focusing on how Christ responded, we, too, can learn how to respond as Jesus did.

* The first temptation was aimed right at Jesus’ tremendous hunger after 40 days of eating nothing: “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of Bread.