Catholic Preaching Father Roger Landry

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx

Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year B

May 5, 2024

Acts 10:25-26.34-35.44-48, Ps 98, 1 Jn 4:7-10, Jn 15:9-17

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

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The following text guided the homily: 



* Today in the Gospel Jesus says what I believe are the most important words in the history of the world. 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.” We know that God the Father cannot possibly love God the Son more perfectly, or deeply, or better than he does. He eternally loves Jesus with all he is, giving him everything except what it means to be Father. And Jesus is saying that he loves us just as much, just as profoundly, just as completely as God the Father loves him. This is the true foundation of the Christian life, to live in the love of God. God the Father so loved us that he gave his only Son so that we might not perish but have eternal life. God the Son loved us by freely and lovingly giving that life in order to save ours. God the Holy Spirit is that love between the Father and the Son and hence, since Jesus loves us like the Father loves him, the Holy Spirit is, by application, mysteriously the love between Jesus and us, and is sent down upon us like he came down upon Cornelius and his household in today’s first reading. Since as St. John tells us in the epistle, “God is love,” God wishes to bring us into his interpersonal, Trinitarian communion of love, and that’s what Jesus’ and the Holy Spirit’s missions seek to achieve.

* We all know how being loved can turn someone’s life right side up. I remember when I was a high school chaplain. Boys who used to come to high school with their shirts sloppy, their ties crooked, their hair a Mess, would all of a sudden come in with shirts and pants pressed, the double windsor knot perfect, with every strand of hair shampooed and combed or gelled in place. When I would note the positive change that had taken place within them and ask, “What’s her name?,” they would think I was a soul-reading genius. But what was going on was crystal clear: they had fallen in love and that love gave meaning to everything they did, including how they prepared for school. If this is what can happen with a teenage crush, imagine what is supposed to happen when we realize that God loves us with an infinite, unchanging love? If the words “I love you” can make a dramatic difference in a young person’s existence, what about Jesus’ saying, “I love you just as the Father loves me?”

* In one of the most famous passages of his pontificate, Saint John Paul II stated, “Man cannot live without love. 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” (Redemptor Hominis, 10) If this is true about the human love we find in the family, in friendships, and in marriage, how much more is it true about the love of God? There’s a reason for this: since we’re made in the image and likeness of God who is love, if we don’t live in love, if we don’t dwell in a loving communion of persons, then we’re lost before God, before others, and within ourselves. That’s why Jesus says to us, emphatically, that he loves us,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Joseph’s Men’s Retreat

Malvern Retreat House, Malvern, Pennsylvania

Fifth Saturday of Easter

Votive Mass of Our Lady of the Cenacle

May 4, 2024

Acts 16:1-10, Ps 100, Jn 15:18-21



 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.4.24_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 



* Today in the first reading we come to one of the truly pivotal events in the history of the spread of the Gospel, but it’s something that may initially surprise us. St. Luke tells us in Acts that Paul, Silas and Timothy traveled through Phrygia and Galatia wanting to go spread the Gospel in the “province of Asia” around Ephesus, but they were “prevented by the Holy Spirit.”  A little later they tried to go into Bithynia, a north central province of present-day Turkey around Ankara, “but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.”

* They were trying to spread the Gospel, to plant the seeds of faith, something that they and we both should anticipate that the Holy Spirit would have facilitated and blessed. But he did the exact opposite. He closed the doors. Why he did this appears a little later. After they have arrived in Troas, Paul had a dream of a Macedonian standing before him imploring, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” The following morning the three sought passage there at once, concluding that God had called them to proclaim the Gospel to them as well. Macedonia was in Europe, at the very north of Greece. The Holy Spirit shut the doors to Ephesus and to Bithynia precisely so that they could take the Gospel sooner to Europe, where the seeds of the Gospel would flourish. (Other Christians would continue the expansion into the province of Asia and into Bithynia, and Paul himself would eventually get to Ephesus).

* There’s a very important spiritual lesson here for all of us. Often when we’re doing good things for the Lord, we can presume that God wants what we want, and when he seems to slam a door in our face, we wonder why he treats us that way. But often he forcefully closes one door so that we will notice that he wants us to walk through another. Docility to the Holy Spirit means that we’re docile even when he prevents us from doing something good for God so that he can have us do something else that will advance his kingdom in the way he knows is more needed. We lose a job in which we were doing a lot of good and can’t figure out why, until much later we see with God’s help that he wanted us to transfer to something else to build his kingdom. One young woman says no to an smitten young man’s advances, and he can’t see why, until God later introduces him later to the woman he wanted to be the man’s wife and only then does it make sense. In my own life, I had tried to apply to become a seminarian for my home Archdiocese of Boston, but the vocation director wouldn’t even give me an application. It seemed like such a contradiction to a clear sense of priestly calling, but if I had been accepted to the Archdiocese, then I would have never come to the Diocese of Fall River, likely never have received the type of excellent seminary formation with which I was blessed in Rome, never had a chance to be able to help the Archdiocese as an outsider during the priestly sexual abuse scandals and so many other things. Likewise over the course of my priesthood, there have been many times that the Holy Spirit said no to various assignments that I had been asked for from seminaries, universities, and other apostolates, but if any one of those had happened, I would almost certainly not have been asked to go to New York to serve at the United Nations with the privilege to participate in many life-giving apostolates,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, Vigil

May 4, 2024

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.4.24_Landry_ConCon.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 what I think may be perhaps the most consequential conversation of all time, in the Risen Lord Jesus’ words to the apostles that constitute our Gospel passage this Sunday.

* Jesus tells us, “Just as the Father loves me, so I love you.” We know that God the Father cannot possibly love God the Son more perfectly, or deeply, or better than he does. And Jesus is saying that he loves us just as much, just as profoundly, just as completely as God the Father loves him. This is the true foundation of the Christian life, to live in the love of God. God the Father so loved us that he gave his only Son so that we might not perish but have eternal life. God the Son loved us by freely and lovingly giving that life in order to save ours. God the Holy Spirit is that love between the Father and the Son and hence, since Jesus loves us like the Father loves him, the Holy Spirit is, by application, mysteriously the love between Jesus and us. Since God is love, he wishes to bring us into that communion of love, and that’s what Jesus’ and the Holy Spirit’s missions seek to achieve.

* We all know how being loved can turn someone’s life right side up. I remember when I was a Catholic high school chaplain. Boys who used to come to high school with their shirts sloppy, their ties crooked, their hair a mess, would all of a sudden come in with shirts and pants pressed, the double-windsor knot perfect, with every hair shampooed and combed or gelled in place. When I would note the positive change that had taken place within them and ask, “What’s her name?,” they would think I was a soul-reading genius. But what was going on was crystal clear. They had fallen in love and that love gave meaning to everything they did, including how they prepared for school. If this is what can happen with a teenage crush, imagine what is supposed to happen when we realize that God loves us permanently and begin to live in that love? If the words “I love you” can make a dramatic difference in someone’s existence, what about Jesus’ saying, “I love you just as the Father loves me?”

* In one of the most famous passages of his pontificate, Saint John Paul II stated, “Man cannot live without love. 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.” If this is true about the human love we find in the family, in friendships, and in romantic relationships especially marriage, how much more is it true about the love of God? There’s a reason for this: we’re made in the image and likeness of God who is love, who exists in a loving communion of persons. If we don’t live in love, if we don’t dwell in a loving communion of persons, then we’re lost before God, before others, and within ourselves. That’s why Jesus says to us, emphatically, that he loves us, and that he loves us as purely and perfectly as the Father loves him.

* But the consequential conversation with Jesus doesn’t stop there. He tells us, “Remain in my love.” He knows that many of us run away from love in general and from his love in particular. Burning love from someone else can make us feel uncomfortable because we don’t think we’re worthy of it,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Joseph’s Men’s Retreat

Malvern Retreat House, Malvern, Pennsylvania

May 4, 2024

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.4.24_Manly_Eucharistic_Apostolate_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Joseph’s Men’s Retreat

Malvern Retreat House, Malvern, Pennsylvania

May 4, 2024

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.4.24_Manly_Eucharistic_Charity_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Joseph’s Men’s Retreat

Malvern Retreat House, Malvern, Pennsylvania

May 4, 2024

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.4.24_Preparation_for_Confession_1.mp3