Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Nineteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, C, Vigil

August 6, 2022

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.6.22_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 when he will tell us the incredible gift God the Father wants to give us and what we need to do to obtain that gift. But then he will make plain to us the practical choices we need to make to seize that blessing and the whole Gospel hinges on whether we will be faithful and prudent stewards who do so or unfaithful and imprudent ones who don’t. Let’s enter into this dramatic conversation.

* Everything begins with Jesus’ extraordinary words, “Your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom!” He wants to give us his Kingdom, in this world and forever. Doing so, Jesus says, would give the Father great joy. He tells us, therefore, “Don’t be afraid any longer.” Sometimes we are afraid of God, we are afraid of displeasing him, we are afraid of our weaknesses and our capacity to choose against God, others and ourselves, we are afraid of the eternal consequences of our sinful choices. But Jesus encourages us not to be afraid, because his Father is delighted to give it all to us, shown in his sending his Son into the world to announce to us that the Kingdom is at hand, to teach us how to enter it, and, at great personal cost, to lead us there.

* Jesus wants us to be as happy about receiving that kingdom as God the Father is to give it. That’s why he tells us that we need to let go of a desire to build our own material kingdom here on earth and use everything we have to obtain God’s kingdom. “Sell your belongings and give alms,” he says. “Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy.” The way to seize the kingdom is through Christ-like charity, to use the money we have, the time we have, the goods we have, to lift others up. To love in this way is like transferring all we have to a celestial bank account that can never be taxed, where it will form an “inexhaustible treasure” that will never cease giving dividends. But Jesus wants us to make a choice as to whether we are going to build up this heavenly treasure or, like the fool in last Sunday’s Gospel, whether we will seek to build up towers for our grain and wealth here on earth. “For where your treasure is,” Jesus tells us, “there also will your heart be.” Is our heart really in God, in his kingdom and in his eternally secure treasure? Or is it this fleeting world?

* If our heart is really in God, Jesus next tells us how to prove it. He tells us, “Gird your loins and light your lamps and be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival.” He wants us to be vigilant, alert, hungry for him, to light our lamps like the wise virgins Jesus described in a parable in St. Matthew’s Gospel, ready always for his return, to gird our loins like the Jews in the desert, ready to run out to meet and embrace him. A little later in the parable, he drives home the point with two other images. One is of a security guard. “Be sure of this,” he says. “If the master of the house had known the hour when the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into.” Jesus wants us to be as alert to his joyful arriva...