Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Monday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Votive Mass for the Sanctification of Human Work

Tenth Anniversary of the Death of Roger Soto (1929-2013)

September 4, 2023

1 Thes 4:13-18, Ps 96, Lk 4:16-30

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.4.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Yesterday we pondered Jesus’ correction to Peter to think as God thinks, not as human beings do, and St. Paul’s echo not to conform ourselves to this age, but to be transformed by the renewal of our minds so that we may discern what is God’s will, what is good, pleasing and perfect. Today the readings and the Mass we celebrate on Labor Day help us to deepen our appreciation of that renewal, that revolution, that metanoia in our thought and action that God wants to give us. We can ponder three ways the Lord wants us to enter more fully into the saving work he seeks to do in us and through us.

* The first is with regard to the spiritual work of mercy — and human reality — of grieving the death of our loved ones and other forms of grieving. Today St. Paul tells the truth about the last things to the Thessalonians so that they don’t grieve like all the others who grieve without hope. We are to think about death from within the context of hope in Jesus’ promises and saving work. There are two points here. The first is to grieve. Some Christians today don’t grieve, some even confess it, because they’re basically taught by osmosis in some circles, even Catholic, that death is a canonization: funerals are celebrated with white, certain clerics guarantee that no matter how one lived or died the person is in a “better place” despite the fact that Jesus told us not to judge, which means not to condemn or not to canonize but to leave the judgment to him. To grieve when someone else is automatically in a “better place” seems selfish and sinful. In short, many are not given permission to grieve. Others go to the opposite extreme, and grieve as if they’ve lost the most important thing in life: they sadly wear black for the rest of their life and define themselves from that point forward by the death of a loved one rather than by faith and hope in the Lord’s saving work and how he, rather than their deceased loved one, is meant to be their precious pearl. The way God wants us to look at things is to grieve because we love and our life on earth won’t be the same as before, but to mourn in such a way that we believe in God’s mercy and hope that by God’s mercy we will be together with our loved one again. What goes for grieving the death of our loved ones similarly goes for other types of grief, like when we lose a job, or a friend, of one of our family members moves away from us, when someone we know leaves the vocation to marriage, or the priesthood or religious life, etc. There are many forms of grief, but in all of them we’re called to grieve with hope, which is the second main point. St. Paul basically defines hope as “living with God in the world,” because hopelessness for him is living without God in the world (Eph 4:10). To grieve with hope is to grief with Christ, who blesses those who mourn (with him) because they will be consoled. All of us are called to show the Church and the world how to grieve in this way so that they grief and hope can be renewed in the renewal of their mind and so that they can think as God thinks with trust in his saving work.

* The second revolution Christ wants to give us is with regard to the way we look at him and the extent of his saving work. In the Gospel today, Jesus was trying to help his fellow Nazarenes learn how ...