Catholic Preaching Father Roger Landry

Fr. Roger J. LandryColumbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, New York, NYThursday of the Fifth Week of Easter

Memorial of St. Athanasius, Bishop and Doctor of the ChurchMay 2, 2024Act 15: 7-21, Ps 96, Jn 15:9-11

 

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 



Today in the Gospel Jesus says what I believe are the most important words in the history of the world. We will hear them again on Sunday. These words are important whenever anyone says them, but the fact that God himself said them in the way that he said them, and then put them into his own body language, makes them the most life-changing phrase ever: “I love you,” he tells us. We need to stop and ponder the reality of those words! “I love you.” But then Jesus puts them into a context that ought to astound us: “Just as the Father loves me, I love you.” The Father loves him perfectly, profoundly and intimately — and Jesus tells us that he loves us in that same way. And he doesn’t merely love us “all” in that way, but he loves each of us in that way, as St. Paul wrote in his letter to the Galatians, “He loved me and gave his life for me” (Gal 2:20).

Grasping this reality is essential not only for the Christian life but for human life. “Man cannot live without love,” St. John Paul II wrote in his first encyclical Redemptor Hominis. “He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it” (RH 10). This is true for love in general. We need the love of family, the love of friends, the spousal love of a husband or wife (either human or mystical), the total self-giving love of someone who values us that much. Without it, we’re lost. Many people who don’t experience this love spend their lives looking for it in places they won’t find it. If they haven’t experienced the love of a mom or dad, they often get themselves into trouble seeking that love in relationships that will never truly substitute. If they’ve suffered violence in relationships that should have been loving, often they’ll get involved in lifestyles that will try to reconstruct the love that should have been present in the first place. But it is also true in terms of divine love. There are many people — including many Catholics — who have never really experienced the love of the Lord. Their notion of God is perhaps an angry God, or a distant, negligent God, or a God who is a stern taskmaster making sure they fulfill all their duties lest they be punished, or even an indulgent God who doesn’t care about them enough to concern himself with their self-destructive choices. They haven’t experienced a loving God. Many people are filled with a type of self-pity or self-hatred because they have never experienced God’s love and often don’t believe they are lovable by God or anyone else, that they can never please him, that they’re constantly letting him, themselves and everyone else down. Today Jesus says to them, and to all of us, “I love you … just as my Father loves me!” And he shows them how much he loves them by telling them that he will lay down his life for them out of agapic philia, which we would have had in tomorrow’s continuation of today’s Gospel if it were not the feast of the apostles Philip and James: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” He will love them to the extreme of his self-giving.

After Jesus says the most important words in history he then gives us the most important command of the Christian life. “Remain in my love.” As much as he loves us,

Fr. Roger J. LandryColumbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, ManhattanWednesday of the Fifth Week of Easter

Memorial of St. Joseph the WorkerMay 1, 2024Acts 15:1-6, Ps 122, Jn 15:1-8

 

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 



Today we mark the Memorial of St. Joseph the Worker, which was instituted 69 years ago in 1955 by Pope Pius XII both to give a spiritual context to “Labor Day” in many European countries as well as a spiritual response to the “May Day” celebrations in communist countries where the meaning of human work and the relationship between human worker and the State were distorted. Pope Pius XII wanted the whole Church on this day to go on pilgrimage to a carpenter’s shop in Nazareth to find in the hardworking St. Joseph and his diligent foster Son the key that unlocks the meaning of the dignity, beauty and redemptive importance of human labor as part of Christ’s mission of love, so that we might not perish but have eternal life. So many today are confused about how important work is. Some, for example, behave as if work is just a necessary evil that we have to endure until we earn enough money or get to the magic age when life can become an unending vacation on the golf course or lounging at the pool. Others fail to see in the crisis of unemployment, especially among the young, that we’re dealing with something far greater than a pressing economic problem, but rather a profoundly dehumanizing one that can gradually deprive millions of a sense of moral worth through a sense of being useless. And sometimes we can see a combination of both of these confusions when people who can work just choose not to do so, opting rather to take advantage of the generosity of family members or other workers in society so that they can seemingly remain on vacation 365 days a year. Insofar as most people will spend at least 25 percent of their week, from the time they’re five through when they’re 65 or older, doing some form of work, it’s important that we learn from St. Joseph how to turn our work into a pleasing offering to God.

* Today’s readings help us to focus on aspects of the Gospel of Work epitomized by St. Joseph. In the Gospel, we have for the second time in four days the powerful and beautiful image of the Vine and the Branches. I won’t repeat what I said on Sunday at the student Mass. I want to highlight rather how the fruit of all our labor is meant to come from the unity we have with Jesus. Apart from him, we can do nothing; but with him, our work can become a crucial part of the redemption. Through the Sacrament of Baptism, we enter into an ontological communion with him, one intensified by the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. But he wants us to remain in a moral communion with him, by working together with him always. This union is the essence of the Christian life. We enter into an interpersonal communion with the Lord that flows into deeds. And through this mutual communion with Christ, we also enter, as we see in this image, into communion and collaboration with all others who are similarly attached as branches on the same Vine. At the end of today’s Gospel, he says, somewhat shockingly, that to become his disciples, we must bear fruit. To become his disciples, we must be in communion with him the Vine and allow his fruit to mature in us: that’s the way we become true disciples. Part of that fruit is our communion with others, which is, as Jesus would say later on Holy Thursday, one of the means by which the father will be glorified and the world know that the Father sent the Son and loves us like he loves the Son.

* This focus on this communion with Christ and with others,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Easter

Memorial of St. Pius V

April 30, 2024

Acts 14:19-28, Ps 145, Jn 14:27-31

 

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 



One of the greatest paradoxes in the Christian faith, one of the most important things for us to grasp and live, involves the reality of God’s peace in the Christian life, especially in times of strife like we now have on the Columbia campus or of persecution, like the Church has endures in every century and continues to endure. Jesus tells us in the Gospel today and reiterates for us in every Mass, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you.” He was saying these words to the apostles just hours before he would be arrested and on the vigil of his being massacred by Roman soldiers. He wanted them to remain at peace during all that would transpire, just as he would be at peace. At the beginning of this discourse, which we heard on Friday, Jesus said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God. Have faith also in me.” Today he repeats those words, “Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.” He reiterates that he is going away but will come back and has given them these words of peace before everything would transpire “so that when it happens you may believe.”

Now that it has happened, and the Church reflects on these words in the light of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, it’s important to check how deeply we believe in these words about peace (and everything else) Jesus tells us. He reminds them that the “ruler of this world is coming” but clarifies that “he has no power over me.” Jesus will allow everything that will occur to happen to him so that the world will know “that I love the Father and that I do just as the Father has commanded me.” Jesus peacefully underwent even his crucifixion in order to show his love for the Father, because real love is shown in trial. Jesus was able to say these words because, as we’ve been talking about all Easter season long, by his resurrection he would show that not even a brutal crucifixion is enough to take one’s peace away, that there’s nothing truly to be afraid of, that in the end God triumphs and all of us who live and die in him will share that victory. That’s the ultimate ground for the peace he gives us and leaves with us. Our peace is grounded in our living relationship with him, the Prince of Peace. It is made possible by the peace treaty he signs in his own blood with God the Father through his mercy. It’s made possible by the gift of the Holy Spirit that he and the Father send. We see both fully on display on Easter Sunday evening when Jesus enters the closed doors of the Upper Room, twice wishes his startled followers peace, and then says “Receive the Holy Spirit” and “those whose sins you forgive are forgiven.” Pope Francis said several years ago in a homily in the Vatican that the peace Jesus leaves and gives is fundamentally the Holy Spirit, remembering that when Jesus in the Upper Room wished the apostles “peace be with you,” he then breathed on them and said “Receive the Holy Spirit.” The peace that Jesus leaves with us, the peace that the world can’t give or rob, is the peace that flows from our grounding our entire life on God. If God is our treasure, if God is our foundation, if Jesus is our way, truth and life, if we’ve constructed our existence on him the cornerstone, if we are living by the Holy Spirit, then persecution, trouble, or even crucifixion can’t take that peace away but rather can confirm it.

If this is true, why is there such lack of peace in the world, in our country,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Monday of the Fifth Week of Easter

Memorial of St. Catherine of Siena, Doctor of the Church

April 29, 2024

Acts 14:5-18, Ps 115, Jn 14:21-26

 

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 



* The fifth week of Easter is a time in which, through the readings, we enter much more deeply into Jesus’ words about the love of God. Pondering his words from Holy Thursday in the light of his resurrection, we will hear him speak to us about the motivation he has in laying down his life for us, about why he entered the world, about how we’re supposed to live with him in the world Risen from the dead. He will teach us about how to receive, remain in and pass on his love. It’s one of the most beautiful weeks of the liturgical year. But today Jesus says something to us very surprising. He almost seems to make God’s love for us conditioned on our loving him first. “Whoever loves me” by keeping my commandments, Jesus says, “will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.” Later, he reiterates, “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.” Is God’s love for us conditional in this way? The answer to the question is an emphatic no. St. John tells us in his first letter, “In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.” St. Paul tells us in his Letter to the Romans that God showed how much he loved us when we were absolutely not keeping his commandments. “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). The Father never stops loving the loving his prodigal children. If Jesus called us to love our enemies, he was modeling this precisely on God’s love, who “makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust” (Mt 5:45).

* If God, however, loves us unconditionally, if God loves us even before we keep his commandments and his word, then how do we understand today’s Gospel? Jesus is saying that we will experience the love of God far more when we open ourselves up to it precisely through receiving and reciprocating it, through overcoming our own self-centeredness and freely, willingly, and wholeheartedly sacrificing ourselves out of love for God, through trusting in him to keep his commandments and acting on his word that together train us how to love like God loves and become more and more like him. Pope Francis likes to use the analogy of the human heart with its systolic and diastolic functions: if it’s not pumping out blood, it’s dead and incapable of receiving blood within. So if our heart is hardened toward the love of God and neighbor, which is the two-fold principle on the basis of which everything in the law and prophets depends (Mt 22:40), then we cannot receive the constant and unconditional love of God. Pope Benedict used to say, love is idem volle, idem nolle, wanting the same things and rejecting the same things. The more we want what God wants and reject what God rejects, the more we will open ourselves up to receive the full outpouring of his love.

* What do we need to grow in this capacity to love God and receive the love he has for us from before the foundation of the world? Today we can focus on three things.

* The first is the humility that makes us love God more than we love ourselves and seek God’s glory rather than our own. After the healing of the crippled man in Lystra, the people began to treat Paul and Barnabas as Hermes and Zeus respectively and wanted to sacrifice ...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year B

April 28, 2024

Acts 9:26-31, Ps 22, 1 John 3:18-24, John 15:1-8

 

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The following text guided the homily: 



* When you ask most people, especially young people, what they ultimately want out of life, questions increasingly on the mind of those preparing to graduate, most give two interrelated answers: they want to be happy and they want to leave the world a better place. Both good, solid answers, based not only on human nature, as Aristotle himself observed, but also out of a natural goodness to improve their situation and that of others. And in pursuit of these goals, they study hard and work diligently throughout childhood, adolescence, university, graduate school, and decades of labor striving for that happiness and that impact. And for those who marry and have children, they lovingly sacrifice to give their children not only that same shot at happiness and success but hope that their children will be happier and more successful than they are.

* But with regard to both of these goals, their horizons can often remain flat. They look at happiness fundamentally as contentment, the possession of certain earthly markers like health, a good profession and the money it provides, a good home in a decent neighborhood, a loving family, loyal friends, a good reputation and so on. Most look at leaving the world a better place not in terms of achievements that will make them famous in future history books and Wikipedia pages but rather in terms of making a difference in the lives of others, beginning with those closest to them, but also perhaps helping those they have never met both now and in future generations.

* I call these goals flat because, looked at from a Christian perspective, they’re not ambitious enough. Sure, people want happiness, but for how long? 70 or 80 years? And they want to make a difference, but, likewise, what type of difference and for how long? Two or three generations? The question that our materialist and consumerist age often gets us to forget —not to mention an educational system focused more and more on the practical pursuit of internships and jobs rather than on the big questions of human life — is the important question, “And then what?” Like a competitor on an obstacle course, we go from obstacle to obstacle without really asking what awaits at the end of the course and whether justifies all the effort. We presume that what we’re doing — studies, labors, sacrifices and the like — will all lead to what we desire, but as we’ve seen in the lives of so many of those who seemed to have checked off all the boxes and become wildly successful in worldly terms, they are often miserable in the midst of their fame and fortune, alone despite millions of social media followers, and feel like personal failures despite all their patents and discoveries. And so we have to have the courage and wisdom to step off the wheel in the rat race and ask the question, “And then what?” What’s next after Columbia? If grad school, then what’s next after grad school? If work, then what’s after work? If that’s ascending the corporate ladder or founding one or more companies, then what’s after that? If then marriage, not before, then what’s next? If family, then what happens when the kid or kids leave home? If grandkids, then what happens when the grand kids similarly achieve adulthood? If retirement, and travel, and volunteer work, then what’s after that? If inevitably more funerals of friends and family, gradual decline, and one’s own nearing and crossing the finish line of earthly life, then what?

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY

Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year B

April 28, 2024

Acts 9:26-31, Ps 22, 1 John 3:18-24, John 15:1-8

 

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The following text guided the homily: 



* I had the joy of being trained for the priesthood at the North American College in Rome. The chapel where we’d convene to pray twice a day was rich in art and symbolism. Behind the altar was an enormous, exquisite mosaic of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, to whom the Chapel as well as the United States is dedicated. There is an evocative Stations of the Cross made by Francesco Messina, the most famous Italian bronze sculptor of the twentieth century. The sanctuary features beautiful murals of the Joyful Mysteries of the Holy Rosary as well as scenes of Christ’s own priestly ministry. It has bas reliefs of the “eight” sacraments, with the eighth one being “preaching,” by which the words of Christ are made actual and efficacious in the lives of believers. It has an organ that once was the greatest in Rome. But while the eyes of most first-time visitors to the Chapel heads look up and around with wonder, the most important symbolic imagery of all remains at their feet. When I used to give tours of the chapel to visitors, I would ask them to look on what they’re standing to see if they can figure out what message it is sending. They think, at first, it’s a trick question, because all they see is polished marble, some dark (reddish purple, I was told — I’m color blind) and some off-white. They notice that it seems to fall into an interweaving pattern throughout the main body of the chapel where the pews are, and then they see that the sanctuary, where the altar is located and all the priests concelebrate, is totally in dark marble. After several guesses, most would give up. I would give them the hint, “Think about John 15,” and that’s when the more Biblically literate would speak up and say, “It’s supposed to be the Vine and the Branches.” The floor of the North American College is meant to illustrate what the Church is and how the Church bears fruit. Everything starts from Christ in the sanctuary, from his gift of himself of his body and blood. But then it flows from Christ, the head of the Church, into his entire Mystical Body. And when we abide in him, then we are able to bear much fruit in the world together with him. That’s the source of the North American College’s vitality. That’s the source of any seminary’s vitality. That’s the sole source of the Church’s fruitfulness.

* As Jesus tells us today in the Gospel, he and the Church exist together as Vine and Branches. This image of the fruitful union of God and his people was foretold throughout the Old Testament. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, the prophets compared Israel to a vine. Psalm 80 said, “You brought a vine out of Egypt, driving away the nations and planting it. You cleared the ground; it took root and filled the land. The mountains were covered by its shadow, the cedars of God by its branches. It sent out boughs as far as the sea, shoots as far as the river” (Ps 80: 9-12). Isaiah declared, “The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel” (Is 5:7). Hosea added, “Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit” (Hos 10:1). All of this was depicted visually in a stunning golden relief of a vine, with clusters of grapes as big as adults, running around the outside walls of the Temple of Jerusalem. The Church is the fulfillment of this image. The temple stands for God and when the people attach themselves with faith to God, they become a luxuriant vine stretching out branches and bearing fruit even into the desert.