Fr. Roger J. Landry

Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

January 15, 2023

Is 49:3.5-6, Ps 40, 1 Cor 1:1-3, Jn 1:29-34

 

To listen to an audio recording of the homily, please click below: 

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The following text guided the homily: 

* This past Monday, the Church concluded the Christmas season with the celebration of the Feast of the Lord’s baptism. With the help of St. Matthew, we pondered the objective details of the baptism of Jesus that began his public ministry: John the Baptist’s protest that he wasn’t worthy to baptize the Lord; Jesus’ insisting that it had to occur to fulfill all righteousness; the Holy Spirit’s coming down on Jesus visibly like a dove; and God the Father’s voice thundering from heaven, “This is my Son, my beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” Today we revisit the same scene, but look at it from the perspective, more or less, of St. John the Baptist, whom St. John the Evangelist seemed to be following up until that point. And we see something surprising if not shocking: the Baptist says that that the whole reason for his mission, the point of his life, the purpose for which he was baptizing with water at the Jordan, was so that he would be able to indicate the one who was coming after him who would baptize with the Holy Spirit: and when that long-awaited person came, the Baptist didn’t cry out, “Behold the Lord!,” “There’s the Messiah!,” “Look!, The Son of God!,” “Here is the Savior, the King of Jews and King of Kings, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Light of the World, the Resurrection and the Life,” — or any of the other fitting titles that would have filled his listeners with awe at the incredible majesty of the One whose sandal strap John declared he wasn’t worthy to untie. Instead, he used an expression that was not majestic at all: “Behold the Lamb of God!”

* We have grown so accustomed to the phrase “Lamb of God” — which we use in the Gloria, sing three times in the Agnus Dei, and hear the priest say when, echoing the very words of John the Baptist, he holds Jesus in his elevated hands and tells us to behold him — that many of us no longer sense what the Jews would have felt when the Baptist referred to Jesus in this way. Imagine, however, a young child just hitting the age of reason, or an adult from a remote village and culture totally unaware of Christian theology, were here today and I said about Jesus, “Look! There is the pigeon of heaven!,” or “Behold the squirrel of the Almighty!,” or “Welcome the poodle of the Lord!” Their immediate reaction would likely be similar to that of many Jews to Jesus when they heard Jesus referred to by the term lamb. Lambs aren’t high on our list of beloved and admired animals. They’re not noted for their strength or looks. They’re not impressive like elephants or tigers, stallions, bears or eagles. Yet John the Baptist said the whole reason he was alive was to point the Messiah out using that very expression. Why? What does it mean? Why does God call us to relate to Jesus in that way? How is it supposed to influence our faith and day-to-day life?

* For a Jew, even though a lamb was not a particularly impressive animal, it did have a very important purpose in Jewish life. More than any other animal, it was the one traditionally chosen to sacrifice to God. And Jesus absolutely identified with this means of oblation and expiation. He identified with the lamb sacrificed by Abel that was pleasing to God; with the lamb that God provided for Abraham’s sacrifice so that Isaac his son wouldn’t die; with the lambs whose blood was placed on the lintels of the Jews during the Passover so that their first-born sons would be spared; with the lambs that were offered each d...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Saturday of the First Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

January 14, 2023

Heb 4:12-16, Ps 19, Mk 2:13-17

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.14.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* During this first week in Ordinary Time, we’ve been hearing all week long about the power of the Word of God with the help of the Letter to the Hebrews and the beginning of St. Mark’s Gospel. We’ve stressed up until this point that Jesus is the definitive Word of the Father who has said all that the Father wanted to communicate. He’s taken on our human nature in order to speak to us in humanly intelligible ways, with human words and with human actions. And the message he has come to deliver is one of salvation and liberation, leading us through suffering and death to perfection and glory.

* Today we come to the climax of this first week in the two parts of today’s first reading. The Letter to the Hebrews summarizes all we’ve heard, saying, “The word of God,” by which it means both Jesus, the incarnate Word and the words he says and God inspires others to say for him, “is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.” The Word of God is first alive and capable of raising us from the dead. It’s not a word from the past but one very much from the present. The Word of God is, second, effective, its performative, it has real power. We’ve seen the power of his word in the Gospel scenes of this week, how Jesus has called us to repent, believe, follow him and fish for others and how Peter, Andrew, James, John and today Matthew have indeed left everything to follow him, how at a word Jesus has cast out demons, forgiven sins, made a paralyzed man walk, and healed countless sick people. That is the power of the word that at the beginning said, “Let there be light” and there was light. Third, the word of God is “sharper than any two edged sword,” the sharpest of all ancient tools and weapons. We would say today it is sharper than any surgeon’s scalpel or the finest razor blade. Fourth, that scalpel penetrates, it is able to cut through the finest of all articulations, separating “soul and spirit, joints and marrow,” and even excising from us our sins. Jesus the incarnate Word is so living, effective, sharp and penetrating that he can “discern reflections and thoughts of the heart” because “everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must render an account.” He is able to do this not only by his divine omniscience but also by his human experience. He has entered into our human reflections and thoughts, he has shared our transparency before God and looks at our reality not just with divine but human eyes.

* A few years ago I had the privilege to accompany the Board of Directors of the American Bible Society to Rome. When we met Pope Francis, he spoke to us about this passage “on the power of God’s word.” He said, “That word is living and active. At the very beginning of creation, God spoke and the world came to be (cf. Gen 1:6-7). In the fullness of time, Jesus gave us words that are ‘spirit and life’ (Jn 6:63). By his word, he restored broken hearts, as in the case of Zacchaeus and the tax collector Matthew, to whom ‘he said, ‘Follow me’. And he got up and followed him’ (Mt 9:9). … God’s word is sharp… for it penetrates to the depths and brings to light the dark recesses of the soul. As it penetrates, it purifies. The double edge of this ‘sword’ may at first wound, but it proves beneficial, for it cuts away everything that distances us ...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Friday of the First Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Hilary of Poitiers, Bishop and Doctor

January 13, 2023

Heb 4:1-5.11, Ps 78, Mk 2:1-12

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.13.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Throughout this first week in Ordinary Time, we’ve been setting our spiritual coordinates for the year — and the Christian life as a whole! — from the Letter to the Hebrews. We’ve been reminded up until now that Jesus is the definitive Word of the Father, the Messenger and the Message. The Gospel he came to enflesh and to preach is one, we’ve grasped, of leading us through suffering and death to perfection and glory. In response to this message, the Letter has been reminding us to respond to God’s intervention in the person of Jesus differently than the ancient Israelites responded in Meribah and Massah, telling us, “If today you hear the voice of the Lord, harden not your hearts” lest God say to us what he said to the Israelites, “They shall not enter into my rest.” Our hearts, rather, are supposed to be opened to God’s incarnate word and to allow Jesus precisely to lead us through suffering and death to salvation.

* That’s where we pick up today’s passage from the Letter to the Hebrews. Based on all we’ve heard up until now, the sacred author says, “Let us be on our guard while the promise of entering into his rest remains that none of you seem to have failed. For in fact we have received the Good News just as our ancestors did. But the word that they heard did not profit them, for they were not united in faith with those who listened. For we who believed enter into that rest.” We’re called to receive the message God is giving us with faith and be vigilant lest we only be pretending or “seeming” to receive it. The Word of God is meant to “profit us” and it will lead to our producing 30, 60 or 100-fold fruit if we receive it on good soil and are united in faith with those who have heard it and acted on it, like, for example, the Blessed Mother, St. Joseph, the apostles, so many saints and martyrs, faithful consecrated men and women, holy spouses and parents and so many throughout the centuries. The passage finishes by saying, “Therefore let us strive to enter into that rest so that no one may fall after the same example of disobedience” of the ancient Israelites. We need to strive, to agonize, to give maximal effort to enter into God’s rest, to accompany Christ on this journey, this Passover, this exodus through life, suffering and death for which he took on our nature to lead us.

* It’s key for us to grasp both what it means to enter into the “rest” of the Lord as well as what it means to strive.

* The rest of the Lord means several things, all interrelated.

* First, it means entering into the inheritance of the saving work of the Lord, the peace that the Lord wishes to give us. God spoke to the Israelites while they were still in the desert, saying, “You shall not do as we are now doing; here, everyone does what seems right to himself, since you have not yet reached your resting place, the heritage which the Lord, your God, will give you. But after you have crossed the Jordan and dwell in the land which the Lord, your God, is giving you as a heritage, when he has given you rest from all your enemies round about and you live there in security,” things will be different, and they will be able to worship the Lord (Deut 12:8-9). To enter into the rest of the Lord means to enter into that peace, to enter into the heritage of grace God wishes to give us.

* Second,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Thursday of the First Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Marguerite Bourgeoys

January 12, 2023

Heb 3:7-14, Ps 95, Mk 1:40-45

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.12.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Throughout this first week in Ordinary Time, the Church has been having us focus on who Jesus Christ is as the Definitive Word of God the Father, what he communicates to us and what our response needs to be to him. In the readings up until now from the Letter to the Hebrew, the sacred author has been stressing that Jesus came down to communicate to us and lead us through suffering and death to perfection and to glory. He came not to take away the Cross of suffering and death but to show us how both are medicine in order to heal what ails us and make it possible for us to be fully restored to communion with God.

* At the beginning of today’s passage, based on those challenging words we’ve previously heard, the Letter of the Hebrews challenges us to hear and not to reject or ignore this message that the Son speaks to us in words and body language: “The Holy Spirit says: ‘Oh, that today you would hear his voice, “Harden not your hearts as at the rebellion in the day of testing in the desert, where your ancestors tested and tried me.”’” Those words, taken from today’s Responsorial Psalm, refer to the time in the desert that the Israelites hardened their hearts against God. Their rebellion took place, we remember, after God had worked all of the mighty plagues, after he had freed the Israelites from Pharaoh, after he had parted the Red sSea to let them pass on dry ground with walls of water on both sides, after God had worked various miracles for them in the desert like raining down manna and quail, making water come from a rock, helping them miraculously defeat the Amalekites, giving them the ten commandments and more. They had sent scouts into the Holy Land as they drew near and the scouts returned to say that, just as God had promised, it was a land flowing abundantly with milk and honey and fruit. But, they said, the inhabitants there were huge and fierce and the towns were fortified. They said that they couldn’t go forward because the inhabitants “are too strong for us,” that it would be like grasshoppers fighting against giants.” The Israelites as a whole then were discouraged and began to grumble against God and Moses, longing for the fleshpots of Egypt, longing even to have died there instead of in the desert or at the hands of those in Canaan, and wishing to stone Moses (Numbers 13-14). They had forgotten that the Egyptians were much stronger than the Canaanites and God had delivered the Israelites! They had forgotten how God had been caring for them. They hardened their hearts to God’s continued guidance, providence and protection. God said as a result that they wouldn’t enter into his rest in the promised land because “they have always been of erring heart and they do not know my ways.”

* The Letter to the Hebrews uses that Psalm and the episode of the erring, ignorant, hardened hearts of the Israelites as a reminder for the Christians not to let the same thing happen to us. “Take care, brothers and sisters, that none of you may have an evil and unfaithful heart, so as to forsake the living God.” After telling them what not to do, he tells them what to do: “Encourage yourselves daily while it is still ‘today,’”— the today when they’re hearing God’s voice —  so that none of you may grow hardened by the deceit of sin.” He reminds them of their source of strength and courage and then restates the promised reward: “We have become...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Wednesday of the First Week of Ordinary Time, Year I

January 11, 2023

Heb 2:14-18, Ps 105, Mk 1:29-39

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.11.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following points were attempted in this homily: 

* Throughout these initial days of Ordinary Time, the Church, through the Letter to the Hebrews and the beginning of St. Mark’s Gospel, has us set our proper spiritual coordinates for the year so that we can focus on who Jesus is, what work he seeks to do in us in the ordinary time of daily life, and how we’re called to respond. Yesterday in the Letter to the Hebrews, we pondered how Jesus who is the Father’s definitive Word, the one exalted above the angels, the one through whom all things were made, was made “for a little while” lower than the angels, he suffered death so that he might “taste death for everyone” and in “bringing many children to glory,” would make “their salvation perfect through suffering.” Within the word Jesus came to incarnate and proclaim is the message about the role of suffering in God’s plans of salvation and what that suffering prophesies, death. Jesus suffered and died in order to lead us through suffering and death to salvation.

* Suffering and death, we remember, were not part of God’s plan for us in the beginning but are the consequences of sin, which introduced a disharmony in our relationship with God, in our relationship with others, and in our relationship within us, causing a fissure, in a sense, between our immaterial immortal soul and our body, a fissure that reaches its culmination in death. But suffering and death weren’t meant by God to be simple punishments; they were meant to be medicine for the sin that leads to both. They were meant to be for us what the serpent lifted up in the desert was for snake bitten Jews (Num 21:9): a reminder to us of what ails us and at the same time a medicine. Suffering and death were meant to be a remedy for the sins that ail us and part of our healing. Suffering, as St. John Paul II wrote in his beautiful document Salvifici Doloris, is meant to “unleash love” in the human person. Suffering forces proud men and women to allow others to care for us, to give others a chance to love us, to force us when we’re ill out of our supposed self-sufficiency. Suffering in others also forces us and others out of our egocentrism and gives us the choice to become hardened like the priest and the Levite in the Parable of the Good Samaritan or rather to become like the Samaritan who draws near to care for and love someone in need. Likewise death is meant to be medicinal. There’s no greater reminder to us that we’re not God than death. It’s a clarion wake-up call to us that we need God.

* In today’s passage from the Letter to the Hebrews, we see how Jesus, God’s definitive word, came to communicate to us God’s message about suffering and death in God’s salvific plans. It describes how Jesus shared, except sin, in all things human — “flesh and “blood,”  including our suffering and death — so that “through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the Devil” and “free those who through fear of death had been subject to slavery all their life.” The Letter goes on to say, “Because he himself was tested through what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.” Jesus knows our sufferings. Jesus knows our death. Jesus is “like his brothers and sisters in every way.” And that’s why he can be “a merciful and faithful high priest before God to expiate the sins of the people.” I want to ponder especially the Letter’s words about Jesus’ freeing those who through...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Tuesday of the First Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

January 10, 2023

Heb 2:5-12, Ps 8, Mk 1:21-28

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.10.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

*  Today we begin a new liturgical season, exceptionally not on the first Monday of Ordinary Time, but on the First Tuesday, since yesterday we completed the Christmas Season with the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord, which because of Christmas, Mary Mother of God and the Epiphany all being celebrated on Sunday, was moved to Monday. Every year Ordinary Time begins with the Gospel of St. Mark and in, alternate years, either the Letter to the Hebrews, like we do this year, or the First Book of Samuel, which we will hear next January. If we had begun yesterday as is normally foreseen, we would have pondered the beginning of Mark and Hebrews and the double message the Church gives us to set our spiritual table for the year: that Jesus is the Word who summarizes in himself all that God wants to communicate to us, that he took on our nature precisely to communicate to us by his words and witness in a way most fitting for us as human beings, and that that Word-made-flesh inaugurated his public ministry in the fullness of time with the eruption of his kingdom telling us to do four things: repent, believe, follow him and fish for men and women. Today we will build on those foundations.

* Today’s passage from the Letter to the Hebrews says that this Son who says it all, even though he was higher than the angels and the angels were created through him, was made “for a little while lower than the angels,” taking on our nature so that he could “suffer death … that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” This was so, being made “perfect through suffering,” he might lead “many children to glory” precisely through suffering. Jesus humbled himself in this way not simply to speak to us about this glory to which we’re called by the Lord, who is mindful of us and cares for us; he came to show us the path of salvific suffering and lead us through this suffering to glory. The Word speaks to us through his body language so that he might say to us both “this is my body given for you” and “do this in memory of me.” This is the nature of Jesus’ consecration in coming into the world. He did all that he did so that we might be sanctified. That’s why the Letter to the Hebrews says significantly: “He who consecrates and those who are being consecrated all have one origin,” namely God the Father and the depth of his fatherly love. Because of this origin, because of this consecration, because of this love, the Letter to the Hebrews says that Jesus “is not ashamed to call them ‘brothers’ saying: ‘I will proclaim your name to my brethren, in the midst of the assembly I will praise you.’” Jesus has come to proclaim the Father’s name and praise to us so that we can join him in the Father’s home. That’s who Jesus is and that’s what he’s about at the general level.

* We see how Jesus goes about accomplishing that mission of announcing to us God’s message, of communicating to us the name and praise of God, of leading us to perfection through suffering, in the Gospel. Right after Jesus began his public ministry and called his first disciples to follow him, he entered the Capernaum synagogue and began to announce and incarnate God’s word through teaching. St. Mark tells us, “The people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.” The Scribes would teach by citing Moses, or Scriptural texts, or rabbinical commentaries.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Christ the King Catholic Church, Dallas, Texas

Nuptial Mass of Thayer Daniel Wade and Emily Elizabeth Horton

January 7, 2023

Eccl 3:1-8.11-13, Ps 103:1-2.8.13.17-18, 1 Cor 12:31-13:8, Mt 7:21.24-29

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.7.23_Thayer_and_Emily_Wade_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* When engaged couples are asked for recommendations for the readings for their Nuptial Mass, most for obvious reasons choose those that explicitly relate to marriage or marital love, like God’s plan for man to leave father and mother and cling to his wife and become one flesh, Tobias’ and Sara’s prayer on their wedding night, the beautiful canticle in the Song of Songs to human love as an image of God’s love, or the several other fitting options that are presented to them in the ritual lectionary. But it says a lot about a couple when they ask to go beyond the suggested selections. It generally reveals a broader knowledge of Sacred Scripture. It shows the priority they give to their faith, that just as they would spend some time discussing the lyrics of the song to which they’ll dance for the first time as a married couple at their reception, so they want to give just as much or more care about what they proclaim about their relationship at their wedding Mass. And it also displays something for which they want publicly to praise and thank God, or pray, at the beginning of their married life.

* So I was very pleased, but frankly not surprised, that Thayer and Emily went beyond the ritual and asked that today we would hear from the Book of Ecclesiastes. This is not because they’re fans of the 1965 Byrds’ song Turn, Turn, Turn based on this famous passage. They wanted, rather, to convey a trust in God’s providence, that there is an appointed time, a kairos, for everything — being born, dying, planting, harvesting, building up, tearing down, speaking, staying silent, fighting, reconciling, loving — and that none of these occurrences takes place outside of God. What might seem to some as a perpetual cycle of history’s repeating itself, they see as a providential path with a point: that “God has made everything appropriate to its time” and has, through all of these experiences, “put the timeless into their hearts,” a longing for something permanent, indeed eternal.

* That’s the way they look at what happened December 11, 2021, at a black tie Christmas party in the backyard at Hawthorn House close to Harvard. What to many in the world might just seem a random lucky coincidence between a guy in a tux and a woman in what Thayer called “an absolutely exquisite crimson gown,” they saw as part of a much bigger picture. It’s what makes sense of why previous relationships had ended, why Emily was at Harvard Business School, why Thayer had decided two days before to leave his job and would therefore have the time to court her more easily and to fall in love much more quickly. It’s what allowed them to glimpse God’s hand behind why Thayer had previously met Zach, Courtney and Janet Horton, why he had read a powerful article by Emily on Harbus the central theme of which resonated with what he had long been thinking, and why God had had them wait.

* On that 2021 vigil of Gaudete Sunday, in which the Church cries out its joy to God not only for putting the timeless in human hearts, but for putting himself, the eternal God, into the human race, they began a 392-day journey together with each other and with God to this Church where Christ the King will join them for the rest of their life in one flesh. Today they proclaim hand-in-hand that there is indeed an appointed time for everything,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Solemnity of the Epiphany, Vigil

January 7, 2023

 

To listen to an audio recording of the brief homily, please click below:

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.7.23_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided 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 this Sunday as we celebrate the Epiphany of the Baby Jesus. I’m recording this homily in Rome on the day of the funeral of Pope Benedict XVI. I thought it would be fitting, therefore, as we pray for Pope Benedict and thank God for the gift he has been for the Church, to share some of the thoughts he gave the Church as successor of St. Peter during the eight times he celebrated the feast here, by focusing on why he said today’s feast is so important and then sharing his insights on the protagonists and elements in this history-changing story.

* The Solemnity of the Epiphany, Pope Benedict said, is the celebration of the “manifestation” of Christ to the peoples represented by the Magi as the universal king to all nations and all who seek the truth (2008). It marks the fact that “by becoming man in Mary’s womb, the Son of God [showed that he] did not only come for the People of Israel, represented by the Shepherds of Bethlehem, but also for the whole of humanity” (2011). It is the “beginning of a great procession that continues throughout history, … humanity’s pilgrimage to Jesus Christ, … to the God who was born in a stable, who died on the Cross and who, having risen from the dead, remains with us always, until the consummation of the world” (2012). But at the same time, the Epiphany shows to us God who in turn is on pilgrimage, a pilgrimage to man” (2007). This Sunday we will join “the men and women who in every age set out on the way that leads to the Child of Bethlehem, to offer him homage as the Son of God and to bow down before him” (2013).

* Who were the Magi and what can we learn from them? In 2012, Pope Benedict said they likely “belonged to the great astronomical tradition that had developed in Mesopotamia over the centuries. … But this information of itself is not enough. No doubt there were many astronomers in ancient Babylon, but only these few set off to follow the star that they recognized as the star of the promise, pointing them along the path towards the true King and Savior. They were, as we might say, men of science, but not simply in the sense that they were searching for a wide range of knowledge: they wanted something more. They wanted to understand what being human is all about. …They were men with restless hearts, not satisfied with the superficial and the ordinary. They were men in search of the promise, in search of God. And they were watchful men, capable of reading God’s signs.” In 2013 he added, they were “men driven by a restless quest for God and the salvation of the world. … They desired more than simply knowledge about things. They wanted above all else to know what is essential. They wanted to know how we succeed in being human. And therefore they wanted to know if God exists, and where and how he exists. Whether he is concerned about us and how we can encounter him. … They wanted to understand the truth about ourselves and about God and the world. Their outward pilgrimage was an expression of their inward journey, the inner pilgrimage of their hearts. They were men who sought God and were ultimately on the way towards him. They were seekers after God.” And in 2012 he added another characteristic: “They were also courageous, yet humble: we can imagine them having to endure a certain amount of moc...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY

Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God

January 1, 2023

Num 6:22-27, Ps 67, Gal 4:4-7, Lk 2:16-21

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.1.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* As we continue to mourn for Pope Benedict and pray as he asked in his spiritual testament that “the Lord may admit [him] to the eternal dwellings, despite all [his] sins and shortcomings,” it’s fitting for us to profit anew from the extraordinary insights the Holy Spirit gave him to understand and teach the Word of God. Yesterday, I re-read the eight homilies he gave for the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God from 2006 through 2013 and, in homage to him and great gratitude to God, I’d like to mine his deep insights on today’s readings and feast.

* He said in 2006, “In today’s liturgy our gaze continues to be turned to the great mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God, while with particular emphasis we contemplate the Motherhood of the Virgin Mary.In the Pauline passage we have heard (cf. Gal 4: 4), the Apostle very discreetly points to the One through whom the Son of God enters the world:  Mary of Nazareth, Mother of God,  At the beginning of a new year, we are invited, as it were, to attend her school, the school of the faithful disciple of the Lord, in order to learn from her to accept in faith and prayer the salvation God desires to pour out upon those who trust in his merciful love.”

* In 2008, he described the essence of that school as a school of contemplative prayer. He said, “The Evangelist Luke repeats several times that Our Lady meditated silently on these extraordinary events in which God had involved her. We also heard this in the short Gospel passage that the Liturgy presents to us today. “Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Lk 2: 19).The Greek verb used, sumbállousa, literally means ‘piecing together’ and makes us think of a great mystery to be discovered little by little. Although the Child lying in a manger looks like all children in the world, at the same time he is totally different: he is the Son of God, he is God, true God and true man. This mystery — the Incarnation of the Word and the divine Motherhood of Mary — is great and certainly far from easy to understand with the human mind alone. Yet, by learning from Mary, we can understand with our hearts what our eyes and minds do not manage to perceive or contain on their own. Indeed, this is such a great gift that only through faith are we granted to accept it, while not entirely understanding it. And it is precisely on this journey of faith that Mary comes to meet us as our support and guide. … In her heart Mary continued to treasure, to ‘piece together’ the subsequent events of which she was to be a witness and protagonist, even to the death on the Cross and the Resurrection of her Son Jesus. It is only by pondering in the heart, in other words, by piecing together and finding unity in all we experience, that, following Mary, we can penetrate the mystery of a God who was made man out of love and who calls us to follow him on the path of love. … May the new year … be a time in which to advance in that knowledge of the heart, which is the wisdom of saints.”

* That contemplation, Pope Benedict would say in 2010, happens not just with the mind and the heart but also with the eyes. He commented, “We heard in both the First Reading from the Book of Numbers and in the Responsorial Psalm, several expressions with reference to God that contain the metaphor of the face: ‘The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you’ (Nm 6: 25). ‘May God be gracious to us and bless us and mak...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Retreat for the Priests of the Capuchin Friars of the Renewal

St. Francis Retreat Center, Monticello, New York

The Word Became Flesh and Dwelled Among Us:

Priests as Catalysts for the Eucharistic Revival of the Church in the United States

December 26-31, 2022

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