Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Monday of the Fifth Week of Easter

May 8, 2023

Acts 14:5-18, Ps 115, Jn 14:21-26

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.8.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* The fifth week of Easter is a time in which, through the readings, we enter much more deeply into Jesus’ words about the love of God. Pondering his words from Holy Thursday in the light of his resurrection, we will hear him speak to us about the motivation he has in laying down his life for us, about why he entered the world, about how we’re supposed to live with him in the world Risen from the dead. He will teach us about how to receive, remain in and pass on his love. It’s one of the most beautiful weeks of the liturgical year. But today Jesus says something to us very surprising. He almost seems to make God’s love for us conditioned on our loving him first. “Whoever loves me” by keeping my commandments, Jesus says, “will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.” Later, he reiterates, “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.” Is God’s love for us conditional in this way? The answer to the question is an emphatic no. St. John tells us in his first letter, “In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.” St. Paul tells us in his Letter to the Romans that God showed how much he loved us when we were absolutely not keeping his commandments. “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). The Father never stops loving the loving his prodigal children. If Jesus called us to love our enemies, he was modeling this precisely on God’s love, who “makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust” (Mt 5:45).

* If God loves us unconditionally, if God loves us even before we keep his commandments and his word, then how do we understand today’s Gospel? Jesus is saying that we will experience the love of God far more when we open ourselves up to it precisely through receiving and reciprocating it, through overcoming our own self-centeredness and freely, willingly, and wholeheartedly sacrificing ourselves out of love for God, through trusting in him to keep his commandments and acting on his word that together train us how to love like God loves and become more and more like him. Pope Francis likes to use the analogy of the human heart with its systolic and diastolic functions: if it’s not pumping out blood, it’s dead and incapable of receiving blood within. So if our heart is hardened toward the love of God and neighbor, which is the two-fold principle on the basis of which everything in the law and prophets depends (Mt 22:40), then we cannot receive the constant and unconditional love of God. Pope Benedict used to say, love is idem volle, idem nolle, wanting the same things and rejecting the same things. The more we want what God wants and reject what God rejects, the more we will open ourselves up to receive the full outpouring of his love.

* What do we need to grow in this capacity to love God and receive the love he has for us from before the foundation of the world? Today we can focus on three things.

* The first is the humility that makes us love God more than we love ourselves and seek God’s glory rather than our own. After the healing of the crippled man in Lystra, the people began to treat Paul and Barnabas as Hermes and Zeus respectively and wanted to sacrifice animals to them as if they were incarnate gods rather than ...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, New York

Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year A

May 7, 2023

Acts 6:1-7, Ps 33, 1 Pet 2:4-9, Jn 14:1-12

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.7.23_CCM_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* Today as we celebrate our last student Mass of the academic year and think not only about the exams and papers we still have this week but what we will be doing this summer and beyond, God speaks to us through our readings today about a building plan. In the Gospel, Jesus tells us that he is going to prepare a place for us at his Father’s house, which doesn’t mean merely heaven, because to Jews of Jesus’ age, the Father’s House was always considered the temple and Jesus’ work was prepare a permanent dwelling place for us in the new Temple God was building in Jesus himself. In the epistle, St. Peter buttresses that image, by telling us that we’re called to be built into a spiritual house of living stones on Christ the living cornerstone. In the Acts of the Apostles, we see the building up of the structure of the early Church with the calling of the first deacons for the service of charity so that the apostles could dedicate themselves with urgency to the word of God and prayer, since charity, preaching and prayer are all essential in the building up of the life of the Church. Both as individuals and as the community of the Church, we are called to construct our existence on Christ and allow him to build us up into his Mystical Body and beloved Bride. We’re supposed to make Jesus our true foundation and give him permission to make us living stones, solid members, in a holy temple offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to the Father through him. That is God’s architectural plan for our life, for Columbia Catholic Ministry, for the Church and for the whole human race.

* Because Jesus made us free, however, we have a choice in whether we make him the foundation of our existence on campus and off, now and into the future. St. Peter in the second reading tells us that Jesus is a stone that “the builders rejected” because they wanted another foundation. Jesus will either become a “cornerstone” or, as St. Peter said, basing himself on a prophecy of Isaiah, a “stone that will make people stumble and a rock that will make them fall.” In his conclusion to the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that there are ultimately two ways we can build our life, on rock or on sand. The person who builds on rock is the one who hears Jesus’ words and acts on them and when the storms come and blow and buffet against the house it remains standing. That’s the type of foundation he wants us to construct. That’s how we become a living stone. The one who builds his life on sand, however, hears Jesus’ words but let’s them pass through the other ear, not acting on them, and when the rains and storms come, the house is swept away. And so today, as we hear Jesus’ words about how we’re to ground our life, it’s important for us to hear them as words to be lived, as words that are meant to be the solid granite foundation of the gift of our whole life. Otherwise, we’ll be just as foolish as someone who builds a house out of cheap unreinforced concrete on an earthquake fault line.

* In the Gospel, Jesus shows us how to build ourselves on him. In one of his most memorable phrases, he says, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” In other words, no one can come to the Father’s house, no one can become a living stone in the Father’s holy temple, no one can come to the place Christ ascended to prepare in heaven except by building their life — not just a portion of their life,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, New York

Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year A

May 7, 2023

Acts 6:1-7, Ps 33, 1 Pet 2:4-9, Jn 14:1-12

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.7.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* Today in the readings of Sacred Scripture, we hear about a building plan. In the Gospel, Jesus tells us that he is going to prepare a place for us at his Father’s house. In the epistle, St. Peter tells us that we’re called to be built into a spiritual house of living stones on Christ the living cornerstone. In the reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we see the building up of the structure of the early Church with the calling of the first deacons for the service of charity so that the apostles could dedicate themselves with urgency to the word of God and prayer, since charity, preaching and prayer are all too essential to be neglected in the building up of the life of the Church. Both as individuals and as the community of the Church, we are called to construct our existence on Christ and allow him to build us up into his Mystical Body. We’re supposed to make Jesus our true foundation and give him permission to make us living stones, solid members, in a holy temple offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to the Father through him. That is God’s architectural plan for our life, for the Missionaries of Charity, for the Church and for the whole human race.

* Because Jesus made us free, however, we have a choice in whether we make him the foundation of our existence. St. Peter in the second reading tells us that Jesus is a stone that “the builders rejected” because they wanted another foundation. He will either become a “cornerstone” or a “stone that will make people stumble and a rock that will make them fall.” In his conclusion to the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus talked about two ways we could build our life, on rock or on sand. The person who builds on rock is the one who hears his words and acts on them and when the storms come and blow and buffet against the house it remains standing. That’s the type of foundation he wants us to construct. That’s how we become a living stone. The one who builds his life on sand, however, hears Jesus’ words but doesn’t act on them, and when the rains and storms come, the house is swept away. And so today, as we hear Jesus’ words about how we’re to ground our life, it’s important for us to hear them as words to be lived. Otherwise, we’ll be just as foolish as someone who builds a house out of cheap unreinforced concrete on an earthquake fault line.

* In the Gospel, Jesus describes for us how to build ourselves on him. In one of his most memorable phrases — one we’re hearing in the Gospel for the third time in five days — he said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” In other words, no one can come to the Father’s house, no one can become a living stone in the Father’s dwelling place except by building their life on Jesus. We’ve heard Jesus’ self-description as the Way, the Truth and the Life so many times that their revolutionary shock value is almost entirely lost on us, but to first century Jewish listeners, they would have heard Jesus saying that he was the full realization of their three deepest religious aspirations. Jews had been praying for centuries, “Teach me your way, O Lord” and Jesus was saying, “I am the way.” They had been imploring God, “Teach me your decrees” that “I may walk in your truth,” and Jesus was saying, “I am the Truth.” They had been begging, “Show me the path of life,” and Jesus was indicating, “I am the Life.” Jesus was saying that he was the personification of all their religious aspiration...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, Vigil

May 6, 2023

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.6.23_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.

* Last week, as you remember, Jesus spoke to us as the Good Shepherd. This week he picks up on the confidence that should flow from relating to him in this way. “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” he tells us, in words taken from Holy Thursday that the Church listens to in the light of the triumph of the resurrection. “You have faith in God. Have faith also in me.” He does not want us to worry, to be anxious, to be disturbed about anything. He wants us to trust in him. He tells us that he is going to prepare a place for each of us in his Father’s house so that where he is, we also will be. He’s referring not merely to his desire to come back again and take us to be with him eternally. He’s alluding to the fact that, right now, he has prepared a place in the Father’s house for us, for our prayers, for our hopes, sorrows, joys. When he tells the apostles, “Where I am going, you know the way,” — meaning what he already told them three times, that he would be handed over to death and on the third day rise — Saint Thomas protested that the apostles neither knew Jesus’ destination or path. That’s when Jesus summarizes everything, for them and us, in one of the most famous self-identifications Jesus ever gave, “I am the way, and the truth and the life,” emphasizing that he is the gate to the sheepfold and that no one can to the Father’s house except through him.

* We’ve heard Jesus’ self-description as the Way, the Truth and the Life so many times that their revolutionary shock value is almost entirely lost on us, but to first century Jewish listeners, they would have heard Jesus saying that he was the full realization of their three deepest religious aspirations. Jews had been praying for centuries, “Teach me your way, O Lord” and Jesus was saying, “I am the way.” They had been imploring God, “Teach me your decrees” that “I may walk in your truth,” and Jesus was saying, “I am the Truth.” They had been begging, “Show me the path of life,” and Jesus was indicating, “I am the Life.” Jesus was saying that he was the personification of their deepest religious aspirations and the answer to their most insistent prayers.

* But these aspirations were not exclusively Jewish. They point to the perennial needs that spring up in every human life. Many times we’re lost, we don’t know where to go, we’re wandering through a valley of darkness with no clear sense of direction. To all of us in those circumstances, Jesus says, “I am the Way.” There are many others who are stumped before life’s biggest questions, who are searching for answers and meaning, who don’t know what to believe, who don’t trust because they don’t know whom to trust. Jesus tells us, “I am the Truth.” “You have faith in God, have faith also in me.” And there are countless others who are struggling to have hope, who feel like they are having the marrow of existence sucked out of them, who often seek happiness and fulfillment in ways that can’t deliver. To them, Jesus responds, “I am the Life.”

* What does it mean to relate to Jesus as the Way, Truth and Life? Let’s take each of Jesus’ affirmations in turn.

* Jesus says, “I am the Way.”

* Probably every single one of us has had the experience of being lost wh...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Parish, Manhattan

Friday of the Fourth Week of Easter

May 5, 2023

Acts 13:26-33, Ps 2, Jn 14:1-6

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.5.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* In today’s first reading we have the second part of St. Paul’s word of exhortation in the Synagogue of Antioch in Pisidia. Yesterday we had the first 13 verses, today the next eight and the last five we have for homework. As I mentioned yesterday, throughout this “word of exhortation,” we see how St. Paul puts the Gospel into a context of what is relevant for his listeners.

* He begins by discussing his listeners’ hopes and expectations, their longing for a Messiah, so that he can show how Jesus is the fulfillment of their deep desires. He shows there’s a purpose to history.

* Second, he declares forthrightly that Jesus is the fulfillment of their hopes.

* Third, he discusses that even though Jesus is their hope, many, in blind folly, rejected him, but that rejection didn’t have the final word, because God raised him from the dead, showing that hope placed in him is never in vain.

* Finally, Paul makes that news actual, bringing us to a moment of decision. He describes how this is Good News, joy, for all of us who accept Jesus and begin to live by his ways — and bad news for those who disobey that summons.

* This is the pattern of proclamation for us in every age. We begin with the context of people’s aspirations and hopes, how Jesus fulfills them, how God has triumphed over people’s sins and rejection in the past, and how he wants us to share in that victory, but then we turn to how we must choose to respond to that incredible offer. St. Paul would elsewhere describe his own conversion and how he was among those who initially opposed, but came to grasp this life and that’s what motivated him to share Jesus with others. Similarly, even with those who have never heard of God, we can always begin with their desire for happiness and lead them from that desire to see what we’ve found in Jesus as the fulfillment of our longings for happiness, give witness over time to the choice we’ve made for him and seek to help them imitate that choice.

* Today in the Gospel Jesus meets those aspirations. We will hear this Gospel three times in five days: we heard it on Wednesday for the Feast of the Apostles Philip and James; we hear it today; and we will hear it on Sunday, as we do every third year during Cycle A of the Sunday lectionary. This repetition should providentially help us to build our life more concretely on what Jesus says to us, in fulfillment of our hopes. He gives us one of his most famous phrases: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

* We’ve heard Jesus’ self-description as the Way, the Truth and the Life so many times that their revolutionary shock value is almost entirely lost on us, but to first century Jewish listeners, they would have heard Jesus saying that he was the full realization of their three deepest religious aspirations. Jews had been praying for centuries, “Teach me your way, O Lord” and Jesus was saying, “I am the way.” They had been imploring God, “Teach me your decrees” that “I may walk in your truth,” and Jesus was saying, “I am the Truth.” They had been begging, “Show me the path of life,” and Jesus was indicating, “I am the Life.” Jesus was saying that he was the personification of all their religious aspirations and the answer to so many of their most insistent prayers. But these aspirations were not exclusively Jewish. They point to the perennial needs that spring up in every hum...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Thursday of the Fourth Week of Easter

May 4, 2023

Acts 13:13-25, Ps 89, Jn 13:16-20

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.4.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were made in the homily: 

* Yesterday was officially the half-way point of the Easter Season. Starting today, for almost the entirety of the second half of the 50 days of Easter (except the last two days when we will pick up Jesus’ conversation with Peter after breakfast on the Sea of Galilee after the Resurrection), we will ponder Jesus’ words during the Last Supper, looking at them from through the prism of the Resurrection. He said in today’s Gospel, at the beginning of a lengthy Holy Thursday discourse, “From now on I am telling you before it happens, so that when it happens you may believe that I AM.” We now know what has happened and our response is to grow in faith in the divinity of Jesus as the great “I AM,” and because of that faith, believe more intensely in everything he said on Holy Thursday and beyond and act on it. “If you understand this,” he says today, “blessed are you if you do it.” And so what are we to believe, understand and do from today’s Gospel?

* Jesus says today something quite shocking. He swears an oath and says, “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.” This is not an “intentional” point but in some deep way a sacramental-ontological one: the reason why in receiving us others receive Christ is because they’re receiving us-in-communion-with-Christ, and because of that communion they’re always receiving God the Father because Christ is in perpetual communion with the Father. When we are sent out by Christ to proclaim the Gospel, we’re not just proclaiming words but in our own flesh we are bringing Christ — or at least we’re supposed to be! — and hence in accepting us they are welcoming Christ’s Mystical Body that is in organic communion with Christ, the Head of that Body. Jesus to some degree — we don’t want to take it too far, but we do need to ponder deeply his words — is making others’ reception of the Father and the Son at least partially dependent on their receiving those whom he sends out, meaning us. And how can they receive us — and the Son and the Father as a consequence — unless we give ourselves to be received?

* We see the importance of this self-giving of ourselves together with Christ in the scene with Saints Paul and Barnabas in today’s first reading. Saints Paul and Barnabas are asked by the leader of the Synagogue in Antioch in Pisidia, “My brothers, if one of you has a word of exhortation for the people, please speak.” God wants us all to have that “word of exhortation” from him and wants us to give it. We’re called, like St. Peter wrote in his first letter, always to be willing to give the reason for the hope we contain within us (1 Pet 3:15). In the Psalm today, we prayed, “Forever I will sing the goodness of the Lord” and professed that “through all generations my mouth shall proclaim your faithfulness.” The Lord wants us to be so inspired by our consecrated communion with him that we’re always singing of his goodness — to us, to the world, to others — and to proclaim his fidelity to all his promises. Many times in life rather than singing of the Lord’s goodness, we can give in to the temptation to complain monotonously about our problems, or to criticize, or to spread bad news rather than Good. Rather than giving a word of encouragement we give discourses of discouragement. Instead of sharing a word of exhortation, we deflate others with pessimism. Rather than praising God’s faithfulness,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Clergy Days for the Diocese of Manchester

“Imitating What We Celebrate: The Priest As Catalyst for the Church’s Eucharistic Revival”

Mountain View Grand Resort, Whitefield, New Hampshire

May 3, 2023

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.3.23_Eucharistic_Apostolate_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Clergy Days for the Diocese of Manchester

“Imitating What We Celebrate: The Priest As Catalyst for the Church’s Eucharistic Revival”

Mountain View Grand Resort, Whitefield, New Hampshire

May 2, 2023

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.2.23_Priestly_Eucharistic_Charity_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Clergy Days for the Diocese of Manchester

“Imitating What We Celebrate: The Priest As Catalyst for the Church’s Eucharistic Revival”

Mountain View Grand Resort, Whitefield, New Hampshire

May 2, 2023

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.2.23_Eucharistic_Adoration_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Clergy Days for the Diocese of Manchester

“Imitating What We Celebrate: The Priest As Catalyst for the Church’s Eucharistic Revival”

Mountain View Grand Resort, Whitefield, New Hampshire

May 1, 2023

 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.1.23_Ars_Celebrandi_1.mp3