Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), Vigil

January 25, 2020

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.24.20_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.

* St. Matthew tells us that Jesus left his native Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Napthali. The reason he did so was not just that his fellow Nazarenes had tried to kill him by tossing him off the cliff on which Nazareth had been built, but to fulfill a prophecy, the prophecy that Isaiah announced 700 years before in Sunday’s first reading: “Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles: the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.”

* Jesus, the Light of the World, came to bring those in darkness, those who were disparaged, those who were suffering, those who were in sin, on a pilgrimage out of darkness and into the light. It wasn’t enough for them to see the light. He was going to help them walk in the light, to live in the light. That’s why, as St. Matthew recounts for us, Jesus’ first words were “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is another way of saying, “Leave the Darkness. Come, believe in, and live in, the Light!”

* Then Jesus made that pilgrimage from darkness into light even more specific. He saw two brothers, Simon and Andrew, fishing. He said, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Even though St. Peter’s first words to the Lord, recounted in St. Luke’s version of this encounter, were “Depart from me, O Lord, because I am a sinful man,” even though he was a man who was living in darkness, Christ called him. And he left the darkness behind, he left his boats, he left his catch, he left everything immediately and followed Christ. As did his brother Andrew. As did James and John moments after. Such was the power of Christ, of his personality, of the way he radiated the luminous presence of God, that ordinary, hard-working men would leave everything on an instant to follow him.

* But that was just the beginning for the apostles. We see in the Gospel that they accompany the Lord as he went throughout Galilee, passing on the light of his teaching and curing every disease and sickness, showing others that just as he took them from the darkness of ignorance, suffering and pain into the light of knowledge and health so he wanted to take their souls from the darkness of sin and doubt, the gloom of depression, the pall of grief, into the radiance of a life changing relationship of love with him.

* The call that was so personal for Peter, Andrew, James, John and Matthew is meant to be just as personal for us. The Lord calls each of us by name, he points to you and to me with his dazzling divine digit, and he summons us to follow him into the light so that we, in turn, can become his light, the light of the world, illumining the paths of others to him, and through, with and in Him, to the dazzling house of the eternal Father.

* It is crucial for each of us to recognize this personal call that Christ makes to us to leave any and all darkness behind and follow him into the light, to live and walk always illumined by him. It’s not enough for us as Christians just to turn the lights on for an hour on Sunday mornings or for a few minutes before we go to bed — a...