Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, January 28, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time, A, Vigil
January 28, 2023

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

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 the Lord wants to have with us this Sunday, as we enter into the most famous homily Jesus ever preached, the Sermon on the Mount, which charts the distinctive way that Jesus, out of love for us, wants his disciples to live. This Sunday Jesus gathers us around him like his original listeners on the mountain and presents to us the way to heaven, the way to happiness, the way to holiness, precisely so that we choose to follow him on it. The path that he shows us stands in stark contrast to the path that the vast majority of people in the world believe will make us happy. Jesus’ words present us with the choice on which our lives hinge. Let’s listen to him as if we’re hearing him for the first time:
  • The world tells us that to be happy, we have to be rich. Jesus says, rather, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they will inherit the kingdom of heaven.”
  • The world tells us we’re happy when we don’t have a concern in the world. Jesus says, on the other hand, “Blessed are those” who are so concerned with others that “they mourn” over their own and others’ miseries, “for they will be comforted” by him eternally.
  • Worldly know-it-alls say, “You have to be strong and powerful to be happy.” Jesus, in contrast, retorts, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”
  • The spiritually worldly shout increasingly more each day, “To be happy, you’ve got to have all your sexual fantasies fulfilled” and our culture promotes people like Hugh Hefner and promiscuous, Hollywood vixens as those who have it made. Jesus, however, says “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.”
  • The world preaches, “You’re happy when you accept yourself,” espouses an “I’m okay, you’re okay,” brand of moral relativism, and advocates a culture of comfort. Jesus says, though, “Blessed are those who hungerand thirst for holiness, for his grace and justification, for they will be filled.”
  • The world says, “You’re happy when you don’t start a fight, but finish it” and people from professional wrestlers, to boxers, to generals, to armchair or back-seat presidents shout “No mercy,” Jesus says “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy” and “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”
  • Our American culture increasingly says, “You’re happy when everyone considers you nice, when you don’t have an enemy in the world.” Jesus says, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake” and “blessed are you when people revile you, persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account,” “for their reward will be the kingdom of heaven.
• “Blessed are you,” the Lord Jesus says, “who are poor in spirit, gentle and merciful, you who mourn, who care for what is right, who are pure in heart, who make peace, you who are persecuted! Blessed are you!” Jesus exalts those whom the world generally regards as weak. He basically says to us, as St. John Paul II once said to young people on the Mount of the Beatitudes, “Blessed are you who seem to be losers, because you are the real winners: the kingdom of heaven is yours!” But in this, Jesus is essentially beckoning us to follow him, because he is the face of the beatitudes.
  • Jesus was poor, so poor he didn’t even have a place to lay his head (Lk 9:58). And this physical poverty led to a poverty in spirit, in which he treasured God the Father and his kingdom as his greatest gift.
  • Jesus mourned. He wept over Jerusalem (Lk 19:41), which failed to recognize the path to true peace and whose residents so often killed those God sent to indicate that path to them (Mt 23:37). He likewise wept over the death of Lazarus (Jn 11:33).
  • Jesus was meek. He identified himself as “meek and humble of heart” and told us to learn him in his meekness and humility (Mt 11:29).
  • Jesus hungered and thirsted for righteousness, saying that his very hunger, his very “food [was] to do the will of him who sent me and complete his work” (Jn 4:34).
  • Jesus was merciful, as we see in the episode with the woman caught in adultery (Jn 8:3ff), with Peter after Resurrection (Jn 21), with the sinner who washed his feet with her tears (Lk 7:44), with the Samaritan woman (Jn 4), with the paralyzed man lowered through the roof by friends (Mt 9:2), with the centurion whose son was dying (Mt 8:5), with the Syrophoenician woman whose daughter was ill (Mt 15:22) and so many more.
  • Jesus was pure in heart. Jesus taught that out of our heart flows our thoughts and our deeds. Out of the good tree of a good heart flows good fruit. On the contrary, he added, “it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come (Mk 7:21-22). A pure heart, like that of Jesus, sees and loves God the Father and his will in every situation.
  • Jesus was a peacemaker. He was, in fact, the “Prince of Peace” (Is 9:6), who effectuated the definitive peace treaty between God and man and signed it in his own blood. During the Last Supper he said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you” (Jn 14:27). And he sent out his apostles to be true peacemakers, announcing this peace — his peace — to the world (Lk 10:5).
  • Jesus was persecuted for the sake of righteousness. From the scribes and Pharisees, to those in his hometown of Nazareth, to the false witnesses at his trial, to the Roman soldiers, to the passersby on Calvary, to Herod, to Pilate, to the thief on his left, so many reviled him, persecuted him and uttered all kinds of evil against him falsely. But he rejoiced, because this was the path of our salvation and it made possible a great reward for us in heaven.
• So Jesus teaches us the way of the Beatitudes, the path of happiness, holiness and heaven, not just by his words, but by his actions and very person. In this, as in everything else he taught, he never says merely, “do what I say,” but always “follow me!” As Pope John Paul II said once in a homily to young people, Jesus is the beatitudes. “Looking at Him,” the Holy Father says, “you will see what it means to be poor in spirit, gentle and merciful, to mourn, to care for what is right, to be pure in heart, to make peace, even to be blessed while persecuted. This is why he has the right to say, ‘Come, follow me!’” Yet, while Jesus beckons us to follow him, we have to ask whether we trust him enough to do so. To believe in Jesus means to believe in what he says and to trust that following him along the path of the beatitudes will truly lead us to the happiness Jesus promises and for which our hearts long. It means to put that faith into action and follow Jesus along that challenging path.
• The beatific path, we have to admit, is rather sparsely trod. There’s a reason for it. Just like the devil tempted Adam and Eve in the garden and tried to tempt Jesus in the desert, so he tries to tempt us by trying to point us to another path. The devil strives to convince us that Jesus doesn’t know what he’s talking about, that he’s not in touch with the real world, that Jesus’ principles will in fact lead us down an unfulfilling dead end. And he has gotten so many of us to bite on the fruit of the “counterfeit beatitudes” and seek to be rich, the life of the party, strong and powerful, satiated, a sexual tiger, feared, praised and not to be crossed. But this is just one more lie from the father of lies. Despite the fact that the counter-beatitudes seem to promise happiness, they inexorably lead — whether gradually or quickly — to sadness and despair.
  • Those who are rich in spirit, who think that money will bring them happiness, realize, often toward the end of their life, that that is one thing money cannot buy. And if the pursuit of money has made them greedy and materialistic, they will be among the most miserable of people.
  • Those who are impure of heart, addicted to porn or physical pleasures, experience an agonizing form of slavery and frequently look back on their deeds and see just how much pain they have caused to others by using them to satisfy their own appetites.
  • Those who are not peacemakers, but who quarrel, nag, and harp on others’ defects, recognize one day to their dismay that they have alienated those who were closest to them and that, in making their points and supposedly winning their arguments, they have lost what is far more important: other people.
  • Those who fail to show mercy, because of their unwillingness to forgive, experience an inner spiritual cancer that slowly eats them alive.
  • Finally those who are not willing to suffer for the sake of Christ, who, out of a fear of upsetting others, fail to pass on the faith, often discover a deep sense of emptiness for betraying Christ, which is a pain worse than that of betraying a friend or a spouse. That remorse is compounded by seeing the pain in others whose suffering could have been avoided had someone had the guts to preach the Gospel before they went down destructive paths of sin.
• If we’re bold enough to challenge the devil’s bogus beatitudes by our own experience, we recognize that all they deliver is a sham and shallow form of pleasure, which, when finally exposed, leads to sadness and even despair. It is Christ, and Christ alone, who has the words of eternal life. And it is Christ and Christ alone who shows us the path to the happiness for which our hearts long, for which he made them to long. Christ, this Sunday, will engage us anew in the conversation about the way we are to live and then enter into us to help us live by them from the inside. Let’s get ready to make his words not only consequential in our life, but by the joyful, bold and contagious way we imitate Jesus in living them, make them consequential, too, in the lives of those around us.

The Gospel on which the homily was based was: 

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