Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Third Sunday of Lent, C, Vigil

March 19, 2022

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.19.22_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation Jesus wants to have with us in this Sunday’s Gospel, when he will speak to us what are in my opinion his most forceful words of conversion that we hear in the 156-week cycle of the Church’s Sunday liturgical readings. Two and a half weeks ago, you recall, as Lent began, we were marked with ashes, reminded that we are dust and unto dust we shall return upon our death and instructed to repent and believe in the Gospel. We listened with fresh ears to St. Paul’s appeal as an ambassador of Christ calling us to be “reconciled to God,” appealing to us not to take this time in vain, and begging us not to procrastinate, saying, “Now is the acceptable time. Now is the day of salvation.”

* This Sunday’s readings shock us out of complacency — almost as defibrillator paddles for our souls — and get us to examine honestly before the Lord whether we have been responding to this acceptable time of mercy with the urgency and priority that God desires or whether we have been taking these 40 days and perhaps our whole Christian life and calling, for granted.

* In Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus begins with current events, referring to two tragedies that had captured the attention of the crowds in previous days. If Jesus were preaching today, he could easily make the same point referring to the appalling atrocities being committed in the Ukraine or about any fatal car accident we see on the news.

* Someone asked his opinion about massacre of Galileans by Pontius Pilate in the Temple whose blood had been mixed with animal sacrifices. Those pilgrims from Galilee had made the long journey to the Temple in Jerusalem to pray, but they had gotten caught up in a crowd where protestors were demonstrating against Pilate’s decision to raid the Temple coffers for funds to build a new water system. When Pilate sent his troops to quell the protest, the soldiers met resistance, unsheathed their swords and massacred not only the protestors but these Galilean bystanders. There was a superstition at the time that if people died in such a way, it had to be a sign that God was punishing them for some serious sins they had committed, as if they somehow “deserved it.” Jesus asks, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way, they were greater sinners than all other Galileans?” “No way!,” he replied. Then he raised another example of people who were bathing underneath the water tower at the pool of Siloam in Jerusalem, which they believed had miraculous powers to cure them of bodily illnesses. The shoddily constructed tower collapsed and crushed to death some of those bathing. Jesus asked again, whether the 18 people who died were “more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem!” “By no means!,” he said again. And he made a crucial moral point in response to both tragedies: “I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!” Jesus didn’t mean that we would all die by being in the wrong place at the wrong time as a victim of some terrible accident. He meant that unless we repent, we will die as unready as the pilgrims from Galilee in the Temple or those underneath the Siloam water tower. The only way we’ll be ready to die well, to die ready to pass to life, will be if we repent and believe in the Gospel,