Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Twenty-Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time, C, Vigil

October 1, 2022

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.1.22_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 the apostles approach Jesus to ask him for something. They did not ask the Lord for money. They didn’t ask for fame. They didn’t ask, like Solomon, for worldly wisdom and prudence. They didn’t ask for health or a long life. They asked for something they had discovered was far more important than all of these things combined. They begged him, “Increase our faith!”

* Their petition for increased faith reveals their humble recognition that up until then — even though they were followers of Jesus, even though they were listening to his words, even though they had become in fact his friends — they were not living enough by faith and that they needed the Lord’s help to grow. This Sunday we’re urged to make the same prayer to the Lord.

* To ask for an increase in faith means to ask for three things, since faith means these three things.

* It means, first, to grow in an obedient trust in God. We see this type of trust in Abraham, our father in faith, and in Mary, our mother in faith. When God asked seventy-five year-old Abraham to leave everything he had behind and journey to a far-away land, Abraham trusted in God and did so (Gen 12:1 ff). He trusted in God when God promised that he and Sarah in their old age would finally conceive a son (Gen 15:5; Gen 18:1 ff). He trusted in God even when God had him wait almost 25 years — even after he was 75 — to fulfill that promise. He trusted in God when, 13 years later, God seemed to be asking him to sacrifice that son, Isaac, even though Isaac was the son God promised through whom he would make Abraham the father of many nations (Gen 22:1ff). Abraham trusted in the Lord so much that he would do anything God asked. Similarly, Mary trusted in God’s words through Gabriel that she would conceive a child without the help of a man and that child would be the Son of God (Gen 1:35). She trusted in God when Simeon prophesied that her Son the Messiah would be a “sign of contradiction” rather than a triumphant king and that her own soul would be pierced (Lk 2:34-35). She trusted when she saw her Son carry the wood of his sacrifice up the same mountain that Isaac ascended and no angel held back the hands of the Roman soldiers as they nailed him to the Cross. She trusted when she held her Son’s limp, bloodied body in her arms. She trusted that God would bring great good, in fact our salvation, out of all of this evil. Likewise for us to ask God to “increase our faith!” is to ask Him to increase our trust in Him, so that we might confidently obey him in everything, but especially in the most difficult times and circumstances. On Wednesday this week we will celebrate the feast of St. Faustina Kowalska, the Polish cloistered nun through whom Jesus revealed to us devotion to his Divine Mercy. Jesus had her paint an image of his blessing us with his mercy at the bottom of which he instructed her to write, “Jesus, I trust in you.” The first way we’re called to grow in faith is through trusting in God, trusting in his ways, trusting in how all things — even suffering, or death, or crucifixion — work out for the good for those who love him. When we pray, “Lord increase our faith,” God responds to infusing within us this gift,