Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY

Second Sunday of Lent, Year A

March 5, 2023

Gen 12:1-4, Ps 33, 2 Tim 1:8-10, Mt 17:1-9

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.5.23_MC_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* The Second Sunday of Lent is called the Sunday of Abraham and the Transfiguration because every year in the first reading we focus on part of the story of the calling of Abraham and in the Gospel one of the evangelist’s accounts of Jesus’ transfiguration at the top of the very high mountain. The lessons we learn in these scenes are important not only for us to live Lent well but to be strengthened to live the Christian life well.

* Lent is about growth in faith and Abraham shows us very clearly what real faith is, the type of faith to which God calls each of us and wants to renew in us. When Abraham was 75 years old — well past retirement age for people today — the Lord called him in Ur of the Chaldeans and told him to leave the land of his kinfolk and go to a land He would show him. God asked him to pack his bags, get his extended family and animals and leave behind everything, his language, his land, his friends. Abraham trusted in God and departed his comfortable, familiar surroundings, not knowing where his destination would be. That was only the beginning of the ways God challenged Abraham to trust in Him. God gave him a promise, one that would have sounded crazy to Abraham and his wife, fellow septuagenarian Sara, who were childless at the time. “I will make of you a great nation.” How could Abraham become a great nation if he and his wife had been unable to have children during what was likely fifty or sixty years of marriage? Yet Abraham believed again. When they arrived in Canaan, Abraham found that the land God was intending to give him and his eventual descendants was not going to come to him with a golden key. He and his family were going to have to fight for the land, against several tribes consecutively. Abraham again consented. After they were settled, Abraham and Sara tried for 24 years to have a child, to no avail. But he continued to believe in the Lord’s promise, despite the excruciatingly long wait. Eventually when Abraham was 100, Sarah gave birth to Isaac, who was destined, Abraham thought, to be the one through whom God would make Abraham the father of many nations. Thirteen years later, however, God decided to test Abraham’s faith to the utmost. He asked Abraham to go to Mt. Moriah, a hill in Jerusalem, and there sacrifice his son, the son for whom he had waited for so long and in whom he had put so much hope. Abraham did what the Lord wanted, even though it would have seemed so contradictory to God’s previous plans. He did so hoping that God himself would provide the lamb for the Holocaust. Isaac his son carried the wood. Abraham built the altar and then was prepared to sacrifice his own son to the Lord, something that the Canaanite pagans were accustomed to do. He did so, as the Letter to the Hebrews tells us, fully believing that even if he should kill his son, God would raise his son from the dead (Heb 11:19), because Isaac was the son of the promise through whom God would make Abraham the father of many nations. But as Abraham’s hand was coming down with the knife, the angel of the Lord stopped him.

* The Church gives us the story of Abraham each year at the beginning of Lent first because we’re called to have faith similar to Abraham’s. While God might or might not ask all of us to leave behind everything and go to fight to win a faraway land — although for most of us in this chapel, he has indeed brought us far away from home!

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Immaculate Conception Parish, Washington, DC

Second Sunday of Lent, Year A

Parish Day of Recollection: “Extraordinary Help for a Holy Lent:

The Eucharistic Revival and Jesus’ Call to Pray, Fast and Give Alms”

March 4, 2023

Gen 12:1-4, Ps 33, 2 Tim 1:8-10, Mt 17:1-9

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.4.23_Transfiguration_Vigil_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* The Second Sunday of Lent is called the Sunday of Abraham and the Transfiguration because every year in the first reading we focus on part of the story of the calling of Abraham and in the Gospel one of the evangelist’s accounts of Jesus’ transfiguration at the top of the very high mountain. The lessons we learn in these scenes are important not only for us to live Lent well but, especially for those who are now finishing up today’s parish retreat, for us to make well the transition that God wants us to help us make.

* Lent, and every retreat, is about growth in faith and Abraham shows us very clearly what real faith is, the type of faith to which God calls each of us and wants to renew in us. When Abraham was 75 years old — well past retirement age for people today — the Lord called him in Ur of the Chaldeans and told him to leave the land of his kinfolk and go to a land He would show him. God asked him to pack his bags, get his extended family and animals and leave behind everything, his language, his land, his friends. Abraham trusted in God and departed his comfortable, familiar surroundings, not knowing where his destination would be. That was only the beginning of the ways God challenged Abraham to trust in Him. God gave him a promise, one that would have sounded crazy to Abraham and his wife, fellow septuagenarian Sara, who were childless at the time. “I will make of you a great nation.” How could Abraham become a great nation if he and his wife had been unable to have children during what was likely fifty or sixty years of marriage? Yet Abraham believed again. When they arrived in Canaan, Abraham found that the land God was intending to give him and his eventual descendants was not going to come to him with a golden key. He He and his family were going to have to fight for the land, against several tribes consecutively. Abraham again consented. After they were settled, Abraham and Sara tried for 24 years to have a child, to no avail. But he continued to believe in the Lord’s promise, despite the excruciatingly long wait. Eventually when Abraham was 100, Sarah gave birth to Isaac, who was destined, Abraham thought, to be the one through whom God would make Abraham the father of many nations. Thirteen years later, however, God decided to test Abraham’s faith to the utmost. He asked Abraham to go to Mt. Moriah, a hill in Jerusalem, and there sacrifice his son, the son for whom he had waited for so long and in whom he had put so much hope. Abraham did what the Lord wanted, even though it would have seemed so contradictory to God’s previous plans. He did so hoping that God himself would provide the lamb for the Holocaust. Isaac his son carried the wood. Abraham built the altar and then was prepared to sacrifice his own son to the Lord, something that the Canaanite pagans were accustomed to do. He did so, as the Letter to the Hebrews tells us, fully believing that even if he should kill his son, God would raise his son from the dead (Heb 11:19), because Isaac was the son of the promise through whom God would make Abraham the father of many nations. But as Abraham’s hand was coming down with the knife, the angel of the Lord stopped him.

* The Church gives us the story of Abraham each year at the beginning of Lent first because we’re called to have fai...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Immaculate Conception Parish, Washington, DC

Parish Day of Recollection: “Extraordinary Help for a Holy Lent: The Eucharistic Revival and Jesus’ Call to Pray, Fast and Give Alms”

March 3-4, 2023

(There was a problem with the recorder and hence there’s a little static on the recording).

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.4.23_Charity_1.mp3

 

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Immaculate Conception Parish, Washington, DC

Parish Day of Recollection: “Extraordinary Help for a Holy Lent: The Eucharistic Revival and Jesus’ Call to Pray, Fast and Give Alms”

March 3-4, 2023

(There was a problem with the recorder and hence there’s a little static on the recording).

 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.4.23_Going_to_the_Desert_to_Adore_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Immaculate Conception Parish, Washington, DC

Saturday of the First Week of Lent

Parish Day of Recollection: “Extraordinary Help for a Holy Lent:

The Eucharistic Revival and Jesus’ Call to Pray, Fast and Give Alms”

March 4, 2023

Dt 26:16-19, Ps 119, Mt 5:43-48

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.4.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* The whole point and purpose of Lenten season is to help us become who we’re supposed to be, to grow in the image and likeness of God in which we’ve been made. This holy season is a gift is for us to become fully Christian in identity and behavior — and that involves rediscovering or deepening our relationship with God in 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. We’re supposed to fast in order to hunger for what he hungers. We’re supposed to pray by meeting God the Father in our “inner room,” the locked “storeroom” in a Jewish house where all valuables were kept, indicating to us not only are we supposed to treasure God most but also 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.

* Lent is the time in which with God’s help we reorder our relationship with God through prayer, our relationship with others through almsgiving, our relationship with ourselves through fasting and self-denial. It’s a time to convert our hearts, our insides, our motivations, our aspirations, so that from the inside out, in all our actions, we might live as Christians ought, in the love of God the Father. Lent is the time when we relive the Parable of the Prodigal Son, when we come to our senses as to how we’ve treated God as if he were not a loving Father, wandered from his house, squandered the inheritance he has given us and make the journey home. It’s a time when he runs out to meet us, to cleanse us, to restore us to our full dignity and to rejoice with us at our conversion. It’s the time when God the Father invites us to enter into his own merciful, loving heart and become his children. Lent is about becoming more and more Godlike.

* That’s what today’s Gospel passage is about. Jesus puts an exclamation point on our Lenten and Christian summons. He tells us, “Therefore, be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Often when we hear this we’re thrown off by the word “perfect” and think that this is an unachievable standard, because after all, none of us is perfect, none of us will ever be perfect, and therefore if God is calling us never to make a mistake, then he’s calling us to something beyond human capacity. Therefore, we can feel somewhat justified in dismissing what Jesus says as if it’s clearly an unattainable goal. But lest we ignore what Jesus is calling us to, as if he couldn’t possibly have meant it, we should focus on a couple things:

* First, the main emphasis of what Jesus is clearly saying is “Be like your heavenly Father.” After calling us to offer no resistance to evil doers, turn the other check, love our enemies and pray for our persecutors, he tells us why: so “that you may be children of your Father in heaven, who makes his sun rise on the bad and the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” He wants us to become true children of our heavenly Father and implies that we will not really become c...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Immaculate Conception Parish, Washington, DC

Parish Day of Recollection: “Extraordinary Help for a Holy Lent: The Eucharistic Revival and Jesus’ Call to Pray, Fast and Give Alms”

March 3-4, 2023

(There was a problem with the recorder and hence there’s a little static on the recording).

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.3.23_Hungering_for_the_Feast_of_Faith_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent, A, Vigil

March 4, 2023

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.4.23_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily:

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to join you again and ponder with you the consequential conversation Jesus wants to have with us in the Gospel this Sunday, as we, with the apostles Peter, James and John, behold Jesus transfigured among us.

* Every year ten days into Lent the Church has us journey with Jesus to the top of an exceedingly high mountain. It does so for the same reason why God the Father conceded to Peter, James and John the experience of the Transfiguration in the first place: to give them a foretaste of Jesus Christ’s glory, to sustain them when they would see Jesus transfigured in blood, pain and suffering on Good Friday.

* We see the connection between Mt. Tabor and Mt. Calvary, between the glory of the Transfiguration and the glorification of Christ on the throne of the Cross, in what the subject matter of the conversation between Jesus and the two great heroes of the Old Testament, Moses and Elijah, was. Moses and Elijah are both precursors of Lent. Elijah had lived a Lent of 40 days crossing the desert to the mountain of God, Horeb, being hunted by King Ahab. Moses had spent 40 days in prayer at the top of Mt. Sinai. They came specifically to speak with Jesus not about the glory that was to come, not about Heaven, but about the culmination of the Lenten Season: Jesus’ suffering, Cross and death. St. Luke tells us they spoke about the “exodus” that Jesus was to accomplish in Jerusalem, when he would lead us, like Moses led the Israelites from slavery through water and the desert to the promised land, only this time the slavery is not Pharaoh but sin, the water is not the Red Sea but baptism, the desert is not in the Middle East but the experience of Lent, and the Promised Land is not flowing with milk and honey but the Living Water that wells up to eternal life.

* There are three lessons from the Transfiguration that are meant to influence the way we live Lent and life.

* The first is the exertion, the effort that a holy Lent entails. Jesus leads Peter, James and John on a tough climb. Christian tradition normally associates the mountain where Jesus was transfigured as Mount Tabor, which towers over Galilee and the Plains of Megiddo, and takes over ten minutes to climb in vans up narrow zig-zagging paths. It takes vigorous climbers at least a couple of hours to ascend on foot. The apostles needed to leave civilization and their comfort zones behind, and climb with Jesus, sweating, probably gasping a little for air, to pray with Jesus and see him revealed. The lesson for us is that the Lord is likewise asking of us to make an exertion this Lent. Lent is fundamentally dynamic. We’re called to be on the move. And the pilgrimage he seeks to have us make with him isn’t in some comfy vehicle. He’s asking us to climb, to sweat, to work. Prayer, fasting and almsgiving — if we’ve set proper resolutions — all require effort, sacrifice, and perseverance. Repenting and believing in the Gospel require grit.

* That leads us to the second lesson, which is the help God gives us to make this exertion. In the Transfiguration, Saints Peter, James and John saw something extraordinary at the end of their spiritual and physical climb. Jesus was transfigured. He and his clothes were radiant. He was speaking with Moses and Elijah, the greatest figures in Jewish history. The cloud — a sign of God’s presence — came down upon them.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Friday of the First Week of Lent

Memorial of St. Katharine Drexel

March 3, 2023

Ez 18:21-18, Ps 130, Mt 5:20-26

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.3.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* In today’s Gospel, Jesus says that our righteousness, our justice, must surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, in order to enter into eternal life, in order not to go to Hell. The “justice” of the Pharisees was quite rigorous in terms of prayer, weekly fasting, tithing. But there were two things it lacked. First, it was external, focusing on acts rather than the heart; second, it lacked mercy. The Pharisees were the “separated ones,” those who in order to cut themselves off from sin sought to cut themselves totally off from sinners, as if they weren’t sinners themselves. That’s why they complained when Jesus was eating with Matthew and the other tax collectors, because they had no communion at all with sinners, whom they thought would just be straw for the fires of hell. Likewise, to convert them, Jesus preached the three parables of the Lost Sheep, Lost Coin and Lost Son in Lk 15, because the scribes and Pharisees were like the older brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, preferring their brothers to remain dead in sin rather than rejoicing in their resurrection through reconciliation with God. Our righteousness must surpass theirs because theirs wasn’t truly “right” with God or with others: they served him with their lips and even externally with some of their deeds, but their hearts were far from him, because they didn’t realize their need for God’s mercy and God’s desire to transform them by that mercy to be merciful like he is merciful. The whole practice of Lent is meant to help us become like God: in fasting, we learn to hunger for what he hungers; in almsgiving, we share in his providential care, passing on to others who need it more than we do what God has first given to us; and in prayer, allowing his thoughts to become our thoughts and his ways our ways. Today in the readings we enter into these truths.

* God responds to a complaint he knows has welled up in the hearts of the people of Israel in Ezekiel’s day and one that arises in every age. It certainly arose for the Scribes and Pharisees whose righteousness ours needs to surpass. “The Lord’s way is not fair!,” we can complain. Ezekiel had described clearly what the Lord’s way is. On the one hand, “If the wicked man turns away from all the sins he committed, if he keeps all my statutes and does what is right and just, he shall surely live, he shall not die. None of the crimes he committed shall be remembered against him; he shall live because of the virtue he has practiced.” On the other hand, “If the virtuous man turns from the path of virtue to do evil, the same kind of abominable things that the wicked man does, can he do this and still live? None of his virtuous deeds shall be remembered, because he has broken faith and committed sin; because of this, he shall die.”

* The first way we and others complain that the Lord’s way is not just is that it is a way of mercy for sinners. Someone who has lived a sinful live for decades all of a sudden converts and God says he shall live. God won’t remember the crimes he has committed. True justice, we can object, is to hold people accountable forever. Like the older brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, we can get into the state that we don’t rejoice when our lost brother is found and our dead brother comes to life again. Our self-identity is caught up, somehow, in a sense of spiritual superiority,

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: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.2.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

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: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.1.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

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,