Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. John’s Parish, McLean, Virginia

Parish Day of Recollection: “The Eucharistic Revival and a Holy Lent”

March 18, 2023

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Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. John’s Parish, McLean, Virginia

Parish Day of Recollection: “The Eucharistic Revival and a Holy Lent”

March 18, 2023

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Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. John’s Parish, McLean, Virginia

Parish Day of Recollection: “The Eucharistic Revival and a Holy Lent”

March 18, 2023

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Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. John’s Parish, McLean, Virginia

Saturday of the Third Week of Lent

March 18, 2023

Hos 6:1-6, Ps 51, Lk 18:9-14

 

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, as we enter more deeply into the Eucharistic dimension of Lent, the readings help us focus on the connection between God’s mercy and the right worship of God. Pope Benedict once commented on the fact that at the beginning of the Last Supper Christ washed the feet of his apostles. In his dialogue with St. Peter, when St. Peter first objected to having Christ do the work of a slave and wash his feet, Jesus told him that unless Peter allowed him to wash his feet, he would have no part in him. Then Peter asked to have not just his feet washed but his hands and head as well, but Jesus said that one who has been bathed has no need to but to have his feet washed. Pope Benedict said that the bathing to which Jesus referred was baptism and the washing of the feet, that part of us that is in contact with the world, refers to the Sacrament of Confession. It is a prelude to how, in order to celebrate Mass well, come washed in God’s mercy.

* “I desire mercy!,” God says to us today through the Prophet Hosea and that we repeat in the Responsorial Psalm. God desires mercy! He desires it in two ways. First, he desires to share with us his mercy. God’s greatest joy is forgiving, Pope Francis continually repeats, following what Jesus teaches us in the three parables of the Lost Sheep, Coin and Son. He wants us to receive that gift of his compassionate love. But he also desires us, having received it, to be transformed so that we, too, may pass on that mercy to others. He says he desires mercy instead of sacrifice, with sacrifice understood as the slaughtering of animals as an external act of repentance. The type of sacrifice he wants, we pray in today’s Psalm, is a “contrite spirit,” for “a heart contrite and humbled” God will never spurn. We seek to come before the Lord at Mass with that type of spirit and heart, made so by his mercy that wipes out our offenses, thoroughly washes us from our guilt and cleanses us of our sins.

* God wants us to grow in our receiving his mercy and our sharing in it. That’s what’s pointed to in the image of Hosea in today’s first reading. God says that the piety of those in Ephraim (Samaria) and Judah is “like a morning cloud, like the dew that early passes away.” It’s a powerful image. In context, their faithfulness to receiving and sharing his merciful love is like dew on the grass that just doesn’t last. It evaporates as the day draws near. It passes away in the middle of the day and as life goes on. God’s people started out faithfully early in life but that piety dissipated. God was saying through the prophet that he wanted to show mercy, but that they weren’t open to receiving it. They weren’t persevering in receiving it. Hosea instructed them that the Lord had been trying to bring them to conversion, but they were superficial like the dew. “Come, let us return to the Lord, it is he who has rent, but he will heal us; he has struck us, but he will bind our wounds. He will revive us after two days; on the third day he will raise us up, to live in his presence [a clear reference to how he will do it through Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection!] … He will come to us like the rain, like spring rain that waters the earth.” Sometimes our life, sometimes our day, can begin like the beautiful refreshing dew, with all types of sentiments and actions of piety and faith, with great recognition of our need for God and his merciful love, but then we allow that inner reverence and love to...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. John’s Parish, McLean, Virginia

Parish Day of Recollection: “The Eucharistic Revival and a Holy Lent”

March 17, 2023

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Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent, A, Vigil

March 18, 2023

 

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

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The following text guided the short homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us as we mark the Fourth Sunday of Lent. In the Gospel, Jesus will cure a man blind from birth, but he works this miracle far differently from the many other times he cured those who had no sight. In the other cases, the blind men asked, in fact, cried out, begging for help. This Sunday, the blind man doesn’t say a thing. He’s just there, along the road, and becomes the object of a theological question from the disciples about the cause of his blindness. Jesus stated that the reason he was was blind from birth was to allow God’s works to show through him; his whole life in darkness until that point was so that he could encounter the saving power of Jesus and from that moment onward be a tremendously conspicuous example of God’s own light shining brightly through him. That truth influences the way Jesus performs this miracle, because Jesus had two healings in mind — first a physical one for him and then a spiritual one for him and for us all.

* The Lord Jesus first spits on the ground, makes mud with his saliva, and then goes up unbidden to the blind man and smears his eyes with mud. The blind man could have easily thought that someone was making fun of and abusing him, as probably happened often. But the Lord is not done. Jesus then tells him to go to wash in the pool of Siloam. The blind man could have reckoned, “What a stupid and pointless hassle! Wipe mud on my eyes and then send me, who can’t see, to wash in a pool, where I can easily fall in and drown.” Jesus, however, must have given that command in a way that inspired trust. By the man’s willingness to carry out this simple imperative Jesus gives him, the man embarks, without knowing it, on the great adventure of faith, on the exciting journey from darkness into light. Jesus allows this man, unlike the other blind men he cured — and this is the second difference from the other cures Jesus worked — to participate actively in his own healing, so that through the process, he might receive not just the ability to see the physical light of the world but also a much deeper light, the light of faith in Jesus, the true light of the world.

* Three-and-a-half weeks ago, Jesus did to us something similar to what he did to the man born blind in this Sunday’s Gospel. Someone acting in His Name smudged our foreheads not with muddy saliva but moistened ashes, and gave us a two-part command, the very same directive with which Jesus began His whole public ministry, “Repent and believe in the Gospel!” This was Jesus’ way for us to participate in our own healing during this blessed time of Lent, in our own coming from the darkness into his light, in our own exodus from sin to love, in our own Passover from death to life. We might have been tempted to consider this more or less an empty rite, something merely symbolic, but Jesus wanted to work in us during this time a true miracle of healing, through our participation and trust in this two-part therapeutic process.

* The first part of the cure of our blindness begins with repenting, which means turning away from the life of sin that blinds us. Sin darkens the intellect and distorts the will so that often we can no longer even see the good clearly or easily choose it when we do.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Campus Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Feast of St. Patrick

Readings from the Friday of the Third Week of Lent

March 17, 2023

Hos 14:2-10, Ps 81, Mk 12:28-34

 

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: 

* On Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, God made a special appeal to each of us through the Prophet Joel: “Return to me with your whole heart.” He asked us to “rend our hearts,” to rip them open to receive his merciful love and to share his compassion with others, a summons that not only should influence the way we read today’s Gospel, but is also at the heart of this second phase of Lent — from the 3rd Sunday through the end of the 4th week — when we ponder the meaning of baptism for the Elect preparing for Baptism as well as for all of us who need to grow in living the consequences of our baptism. We can interpret today’s reading in a baptismal key, for this is one of the most commonly chosen readings for the celebration of baptism, since it shows us what the purpose of a Christian life is and how we can keep our end of the baptismal Covenant with the Lord. When asked what the greatest commandment is, Jesus responds, “The first is this: ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.’” Today Jesus reminds us that the whole point of the Lenten season, the whole point of the Christian life to which Lent is meant to restore us, is to return with our whole heart in love to God, and not just our heart, but to return to him with our whole soul, mind and strength as well, to receive his merciful love without any obstacles and then to learn how to let that mercy we’ve received become the way which we respond to others.

* It’s important that we truly confront what Jesus is asking of us. There are many Christians who believe they love the Lord simply because they have good thoughts about him, they admire him, they think that he’s kind, merciful and generous. But Jesus is calling for much more than this. Love is more than having good feelings or impressions about another; love is the unconquerable benevolence that leads to willing, to choosing consistently, the good of the other for the other’s sake. Love is opting as a habit to sacrifice oneself for another, putting someone else ahead of us, like Jesus would say during the Last Supper and put into action the following afternoon: laying down one’s life for one’s friends, in little ways or supremely. There are many Christians who love God to the point of sacrificing for him, but as today’s Gospel shows us, it’s not enough to sacrifice some of the time and gifts that he’s given us for him and his glory. It’s not enough to give God some of our mind, heart, soul and strength. Jesus is calling us to love God with all we’ve got. Today he says that that’s worth more than all sacrifices. To get to that type of love requires a deep conversion on our part. It means that our hope is not just to be good people but to be really holy people.

* We should make this practical. We need to examine how we use our mind to love the Lord, to seek to think as he thinks, to fill our minds with his thoughts through prayer and reading the Bible and good spiritual books. We need to look at whether we love him with all our heart, loving him more than everything and everyone else in our life, including our life. We need to question whether we’re loving him with 100 percent of our strength,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Leonine Forum, IESE Business School, Manhattan

Thursday of the Third Week of Lent

March 16, 2023

Jer 7:23-28, Ps 95, Lk 11:14-23

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.16.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in today’s homily: 

* Lent is about our conversion, repenting and turning away from sin, believing in the Gospel and turning toward Christ, and then, with faith, turning with Christ full-time. In today’s first reading, we see how the Israelites of Jeremiah’s age responded to the call to conversion. The Lord himself summarizes it through the Prophet Jeremiah at the beginning of today’s first reading: “This is what I commanded my people: Listen to my voice; then I will be your God and you shall be my people. Walk in all the ways that I command you, so that you may prosper. But they obeyed not, nor did they pay heed.” Then he uses four body parts to describe graphically their response. “They turned their backs, not their faces, to me.” This was a sign of betrayal and abandonment. “They have stiffened their necks and done worse than their fathers.” They wouldn’t heed the Lord when he sent the prophets toward them; they would resolutely keep doing what they wanted to do like horses running with blinders. “They walked in the hardness of their evil hearts.” Their hearts, which were meant to be sponges for God’s words, had become sclerotic, impenetrable even to God. We’re called to love the Lord with all our mind, soul, and strength, which means with our backs, faces, necks, hearts and all we are and have. We’re called to turn with him fully.

* We see an illustration of the type of resistance we’ve saw in Jeremiah’s contemporaries in Jesus’ contemporaries in the Gospel. Jesus had just exorcised a boy, one in a long line of deliverances from the devil, but those Scribes and Pharisees who had already hardened their hearts, stiffened their necks and turned their backs rather than their faces toward Jesus refused to accept that any of the incontestable exorcisms happened by the finger of God. They accused Jesus of working exorcisms by the power of the prince of devils. Their hardened hearts had led to a hardening of the brain. Jesus exposes their foolishness in two ways. First, since they admitted that some of their own number were exorcising, if he cast out by the devil, then they were suggesting that their own number might be exorcising by Beelzebul, too, something of course they would never believe or admit. Second, since the devil is trying to win, not forfeit, the possession our hearts, backs, necks and faces, it would make no sense for him to be defeating himself through exorcism. Their response to Jesus’ liberation of the boy from the devil, however, shows what God was describing about the Israelites and their treatment of the prophets sent in God’s name. They didn’t want to turn back to God. No matter how often they had prayed today’s Responsorial Psalm, “If today you hear the voice of the Lord, harden not your hearts,” that’s precisely what they did when they heard the voice of God through Jeremiah, and it’s precisely what the Scribes and Pharisees did when they heard Jesus’ voice.

* If we want to prevent what happened to believers in both generations from happening to us, we need to hearken to the voice of the Lord. Rather than turning our backs toward Him, we need to turn our faces in prayer and in adoration. Rather than hardening our hearts, we need to soften them, by responding to his merciful help to love more and more all that he teaches us, listening to his words as words to be done, and then helping others to receive and live by this same gift of mercy.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

2023 Diocese of Fall River Women’s and Men’s Conference

“Receive Jesus. Worship Jesus.”

Stonehill College Ames Sports Complex

March 11, 2023

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

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To download a copy of the slides for the presentation, please click below: 

Receiving, Worship, Imitating and Sharing Jesus

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Third Sunday of Lent, A, Vigil

March 11, 2023

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.11.23_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the short 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 Third Sunday of Lent.

* The Church has us focus on the life-changing conversation Jesus has with a Samaritan woman at a well. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, promised that he would leave all of his other sheep behind and go in search of whichever sheep of his was lost. This Sunday we see him putting that truth into action, in his encounter with the Liz Taylor of her day, who had married five times already and was then living with a sixth man who was not her husband. She was a symbol of what had happened to her Samaritan people, which had intermarried with five succeeding invading nations and began to worship their gods, but now were pretending to worship the one true God, but doing so not according to the Covenant but on their own mountain. The woman’s behavior had led to her being ostracized, as was evidenced by her going alone to draw water at the well at high noon, at the height of the piercing sun, when no one else for obvious reasons would have been there. Had she gone at cooler times in the early morning or late afternoon, she would have been the butt of criticism from other women for her past and present. Jesus went to await her at the most brutal moment of the day. In his conversation with her, not only did he break two social conventions — that Jews never spoke to Samaritans and that men never spoke to unrelated women alone — but most importantly he taught her and through her us about the two essential realities about our spiritual life: God’s grace, symbolized by the “living water” he describes, and our desire or “thirst” for that water.

* Upon the Cross, Jesus said, “I thirst,” and his whole life was an insatiable quest to give us that spring of living water gushing up within us to eternal life. Just like our body cannot exist without water — the human body is in fact 72 percent water — neither can our soul survive without this living water. Jesus, through whom both our body and soul were created, knows both realities, and came as the divine physician to give the needed soul-sustaining remedy to the woman at the well and to each of us.

* What exactly is this “living water”? It is nothing short of God’s divine life — what we call in theology the Indwelling of the Blessed Trinity. The reference to water is an obviously link to Baptism with the gift of spiritual filiation that it brings, but the connection does not stop there. In one part of the Gospel, Jesus identifies the living water as the presence of the Holy Spirit; in another, he identifies it as his own presence through the holy Eucharist. The living water refers to all of these realities, the presence of God in the soul as a result of the Sacraments. Jesus wants to give us this living water of divine filiation, of the Holy Spirit, of his life-giving flesh and blood, of the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity. But his will is not enough. He placed a condition on his own omnipotence; he can lead us to the living water but won’t force us to drink. He wants us freely to ask for it, to desire We see this very clearly in his invitation to the woman at the well: “If you knew the gift of God, and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would ask him, and he would give you living water.” And the woman used her freedom to say, “Sir,