Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, July 20, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, B, Vigil
July 20, 2024

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 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 he’s going to say to us, as he said to his first apostles, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.”
• I’m recording this from Indianapolis, where I am participating in the National Eucharistic Congress, the first in 83 years. With a population of 924,000, buttressed by the fifty thousand Catholics from across the United States who have come for the Congress, Indianapolis is far from a deserted place, but the same Jesus who summoned the apostles away from their work, their ordinary lives, their hangouts and at least many of their friends, has summoned us here, to be with him present for us in the Blessed Sacrament. In fact, Jesus regularly summons us to come to be with him, to find our rest in and with him, to refresh and remake us as he yokes ourselves to himself. He seeks to do this each Sunday, indeed each day at Mass. He seeks to do this in the heart-to-heart conversation apart from the daily hustle-and-bustle that we call prayer and especially in the summit of personal prayer that is Eucharistic adoration. And so I’d urge you to enter the Gospel scene this Sunday with these Eucharistic lenses. Jesus continues to actualize what he did in this Sunday’s Gospel, drawing us from the Eucharist to be with him, to be restored by him, so that he can send us out to help others to find in him what we do.
• So let’s return to the scene. After the hard work of the apostles’ missionary journeys, Jesus could see they were tired. Moreover, as Saint Mark tells us, “People were coming and going in great numbers that they did not have an opportunity even to eat.” So Jesus brought them off with him in a boat to a deserted place.
• We know that the rhythm of human life involves not just work, but rest, just as God in the Genesis account rested on the seventh day. Such rest is essential not just to recharge but to focus with God on the meaning of what we’ve done and are doing, on the gift of our life and how we are going to invest it. Jesus took the apostles away not just to give the apostles a break but to review with them all that they had experienced on their apostolic journeys.

• In a similar way, Jesus regularly seeks, in different ways, to draw us away from the daily grind, from the sometimes frenetic pace of life, from television and gadget screens, so that he might similarly refresh us, helping us to review with the grace of his light what we have been experiencing in the various aspects of our life. It’s an opportunity for him to help us press the reset button on our existence, to strengthen us in whatever struggles we face, to move us to thank God the Father for his blessings, to help us to see things more clearly, and to reprioritize according to what’s more important.
• Over the course two months as I’ve served as the chaplain to the eastern or Seton Route of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, in which my young pilgrims and I had the privilege to carry Jesus from New Haven Connecticut here to Indianapolis, we often had many different, powerful events each day: huge Masses, long Eucharistic processions, preaching several times a day or giving witness talks to crowds and schools, holy hours and long periods of adoration in Churches, and even, when we had to drive long distances, in our specially outfit Pilgrimage van, which was a mobile adoration chapel, it was rather exhausting and some days we, too, found it difficult to have time to eat. Over the course of the journey, we needed to slow down a few times for days of recollection, to process things with the Lord Jesus, to appreciate what he had been doing in and through us, and to experience the revival he was seeking to give us and through us to spark in others.
• Jesus seeks to give us that renewal, first, each day in daily prayer. He wants us to come away with him to the state of the desert, without distractions, to converse with him. This Sunday is an opportunity for us to speak to Jesus honestly about how faithful we are in responding to that daily invitation. Do we prioritize or resist it?
• Jesus also seeks to give us this new start on the Christian Sabbath, on Sundays, in which, out of love, the Church even makes the invitation a command. When the Lord gave the Third Commandment, he told us the reason why, something that at first might seem a non-sequitur: “Remember that you were once slaves in the land of Egypt. … This is why the Lord, your God, has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day” (Deut 5:15). If we’re not keeping the Sabbath, in other words, we are becoming slaves again: slaves to work or what work can help us obtain, slaves to the errands we try to get done on the weekends, slaves to entertainment, to sports, or other activities. Jesus wants us to come away with him on Sundays so that he can renew us and help us properly put God at the center of our week, our time, our life. He wants us, filled with his love, to use the Sabbath to love God back and love those he has made our neighbors, most especially family members and friends. If we desire to remain spiritually fit and serene on the pilgrimage of life, how important it is for us to truly live Sunday as a Day of the Lord!
• But the Church has often used these words of Jesus — “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while” — to highlight the importance of taking extended time away with the Lord for him to refresh us, particularly with monthly Days of Recollection and annual Retreats made in the presence of our Eucharistic Lord.
• A Day of Recollection is at least a period of a few hours — but depending upon our circumstances and availability can extend to a half or full day — of consecutive prayer. It can be done at any time of the week. Some are able to dedicate one night a month. Others will carve out time on a given Saturday or Sunday. Many priests, whose nights and weekends are the fullest parts of their pastoral schedules, make time on a weekday afternoon. There are organized Days of Recollection at retreat centers or by various ecclesiastical movements in parishes and shrines but someone with self-discipline can also fruitfully do one on one’s own. A Day of Recollection a regularly scheduled time, normally once a month, to go more deeply with the Lord Jesus into our relationship with him, to review the larger trends of our life, to get his light for various decisions we need to make, to ask his help for the situations in our life that are weighing on us and to make resolutions to depend on him more. That’s what my fellow pilgrims and I were doing every few weeks along our Eucharistic journey.
• An annual Retreat is a more extended time of prayer in which we are able, in God’s presence and ordinarily with the help of a retreat director offering various meditations or one-on-one guidance, to give God our full attention for a lengthier period of time, so that, in addition to all the fruits of a Day of Recollection, we can review with Him the previous year and receive his light and encouragement to make resolutions for the upcoming one. Traditionally most retreats last about a week, which, depending upon the format, can be five to eight days. For those for whom that would be too difficult, it’s possible to do one from Friday night through Sunday. For those with more time, and especially for those making or weighing big transitions, they can make a retreat of 30 days or even, like Jesus, 40. Retreats are normally done in retreat centers away from daily distractions, but they can also be done in parish Churches, as some new movements in the Church are doing effectively.
• The key is to respond to the Lord’s summons and make the time each month for a Day of Recollection and each year for a Retreat. Many people are phobic of that much silent time alone with the Lord. We say our lives are too complicated and busy; we nevertheless, however, find time each month for dinner engagements, our favorite television shows, and going to a child’s or a grandchild’s baseball games or plays. Somehow most of us also find time each year to spend various weekends, whole weeks or even longer for various forms of vacation. There’s nothing wrong with any of those activities, of course, but they show that we do have more time that we could respond to Jesus’ invitation than many of us admit. Retreats and days of recollection can therefore be a practical test of how much we are genuinely prioritizing God, the things of God, and the good of our soul. Even the busiest of us have some time, but we often spend it on less important things than God. We may have to arrange a babysitter for our kids, a caregiver for elderly parents, a dogsitter or catsitter for our pets, but if we’re able to do it for other activities, we can do it for God. It’s so worth it!
• Several years ago, Pope Francis spoke about the fruits that come from recollections and retreats in the hope that more of the faithful would take advantage. The person who goes away with the Lord in this way, he said, “experiences the attraction, the fascination of God, and returns renewed, transfigured to ordinary life, to service, to daily relations, bearing within him the perfume of Christ.” He added, “The men and women of today need to encounter God.” Retreats offer “space and time for intense listening of His Word in silence and in prayer” and contribute to “renewing one who participates in them in unconditional adherence to Christ, and helps him to understand that prayer is the irreplaceable means of union with Him crucified.” Summer, when most of us have some vacation, is often a very good time to make an annual retreat.
• As we prepare for Mass this Sunday, let’s get ready to hear Jesus say to us from Peter’s boat, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while,” and be prepared to respond generously and faithfully, each day in prayer and daily Mass if possible, each week in holy hour of Eucharistic adoration, each Sunday by keeping holy the Sabbath, and, with his help, each month with a Recollection and each year with a retreat. Those who take him up on this invitation, like the apostles, will never regret it. And he renews that invitation this Sunday from the altar.

The Gospel reading on which the passage was based was: 

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