Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, July 1, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, A, Vigil
July 1, 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 privilege 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. It’s a fitting conversation to have as we mark this long weekend in preparation for the celebration of the Fourth of July, in which we not only just celebrate the gift of our hard-won freedom, but have a chance to ponder its purpose.
• Freedom is a gift that comes with a task. Like water, which can be used to drink or to drown, the gift of freedom can be used for good or ill. If we use it well, it will become stronger; if we abuse it, it can undermine its own foundations. In the sad case of addictions, someone uses his freedom to have a beer, but then abuses it to have a case, and slowly but surely becomes enslaved to alcohol, no longer free to say no. Culturally we are seeing freedoms abused with greater frequency: free speech is exploited to defend pornography, freedom of religion to defend Satanic practices, the so-called freedom-to-choose to end the lives of human beings in the womb. The more freedom is abused, the more enslaved and less free, we become. To stay free, we must use freedom properly. Freedom is not the license to do whatever we want, wherever we want, whenever we want, without the interference of anyone else. It’s not the power to pretend that we’re God, determining good and evil, even deciding over life and death. Freedom, rather, is the capacity to act in accordance with the truth about who we are in God’s image and likeness. It’s a self-mastery that makes it possible for us to give of ourselves to others in love.
• When Pope Benedict came to the White House 15 years ago this April, he gave a challenge to Americans to use our freedom to stay free. “Freedom,” he said, “is not only a gift, but also a summons to personal responsibility. … The preservation of freedom calls for the cultivation of virtue, self-discipline, sacrifice for the common good and a sense of responsibility towards the less fortunate. It also demands the courage to engage in civic life and to bring one’s deepest beliefs and values to reasoned public debate. In a word, freedom is ever new. It is a challenge held out to each generation, and it must constantly be won over for the cause of good.”
• So how are we going to respond to that challenge? How are we going to use our freedom to grow as God intends?
• Jesus in this Sunday’s Gospel speaks about the two essential aspects of our Christian life, discipleship and apostolate, our following Jesus and our proclaiming him, our work to become holy as God is holy and our fidelity to the mission he gives us to become instruments in the sanctification of others.
• He speaks to us, first, about the conditions of discipleship. He tells us, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” He reminds us that to be his disciple, to enter into his kingdom, requires a decisive choice. We must freely choose to love him more than father and mother, more than son or daughter. We must freely choose to embrace our cross and follow him along this way of sacrificial love, freely willing to lose our life for him and for his kingdom. In terms of family relations, Jesus indicates that we can only have one absolute in our life, only one love can have primacy, only one thing can have our ultimate obedience and affection, either God or our parents, or our spouse, or our children. The same God who calls us to honor our mother and father, who calls us to reverence our spouse out of love for Christ, who calls us to love our children as God loves us, at the same time calls us to love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength. When we freely choose to love God above all, we do not love our family membersless, but better. Most often we won’t have to choose between the love of God and the love of family members, thanks be to God; but when faced with the choice, Jesus is showing us how to choose well by choosing God.
• Jesus is pointing out the potential cost of discipleship. To have the pearl of great price, as Jesus would say elsewhere, sometimes we have to sell all our other pearls. Even though the choice can be hard, it is rewarding. Once St. Peter asked Jesus what they would receive for leaving mother and father, children and lands for his sake and the sake of the Gospel. Jesus replied, “100 fold in this life and eternal life.” And those who have made these sacrifices know that the reward is far greater than the price, even though the price is high. Jesus is worth it. To follow him does sometimes require crucifixion to worldly ways but it also involves a resurrection.
• After speaking about the use of freedom to follow him wholeheartedly, Jesus, as part of his instructions to the apostles before he sent them out for the first time to preach, speaks about the choice and means to share the gift of faith. Jesus gets the twelve ready to identify those who are open to the Gospel by those who use their freedom to welcome them. He instructs them to stay in the houses where they are given hospitality, not just as a courtesy, or so that they wouldn’t perpetually be looking for a better deal, but precisely to learn from those who receive them one of the crucial aspects of the Gospel: the free welcome necessary to embrace God and his word. Jesus points to the deeper dynamic at please in their being accepted into homes: in the people’s welcoming them, they’re welcoming God himself. Jesus says, “Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward.…  And whoever gives only a cup of cold water to one of these little ones to drink because he is a disciple – amen, I say to you, he will surely not lose his reward.”
• Jesus sends us out in his name so that others have a chance, in freely welcoming us, to welcome him, in caring for us, to care for him. Sometimes we can think that our apostolate involves having the knowledge of Sacred Scripture like St. Paul, the preaching ability of Archbishop Fulton Sheen, the loving charisma of St. Teresa of Calcutta, the missionary zeal of St. John Paul II. Sometimes, rather, it involves simply using our freedom to go out in the same of Christ and giving others the chance to welcome us in his name. That very act of hospitality is more than one of basic human goodness: it’s often one of faith, hope and love. It’s also why one of the most important habits we need to cultivate in ourselves, and help form in others, is this habit of welcoming, because in welcoming others, including strangers, not to mention in welcoming those sent out by the Church in Jesus’ name, we’re welcoming the Lord who has sent them as his emissaries and tells us through them, “When I was a stranger, you welcomed me.”
• There’s a lot of talk about welcoming in the Church today, as there should be. Catholic churches must be welcoming places if they’re to be truly Catholic. It’s scandalous, in fact, when strangers come to Catholic Churches and are treated as the world normally treats strangers, with little or no warmth and hospitality, and sometimes even with thinly veiled frustration or resentment, rather than the way we are supposed to treat Christ. The Church is ultimately meant to be a family and we should respond to people coming the way family members treat each other on Thanksgiving, especially if we haven’t seen them in a while or we’re meeting a new cousin. We should use our freedom to make the effort to greet them, to ask if they’d like to sit with us, and perhaps help them learn when to stand, sit, kneel, use the hymnal, missalette, etc. But part of our welcome must be gradually to try to help them use their freedom to welcome Christ at the depth at which he desires to be welcomed. This means to help them embrace Jesus and the Gospel he proclaims and to work to live it, especially when it requires the type of choices that Jesus describes in the Gospel, to choose him, who is the Way, Truth and Life, above sins to which they may be addicted not to mention over other goods to whom or which they are attached. In some places of the Church, people talk about “welcoming everybody” without similarly helping them to welcome Christ and his call to conversion and holiness. This is especially the case among some who try to minister to those who identity as gays, lesbians or trans. The welcome they receive is often superficial, the love truncated, because it’s not helping them to come to know, understand, love and live the Gospel in its fulness. It’s not helping them to know the truth and be set free. They deserve more. Christ is calling us to give them more.
• This Sunday, as we approach the Fourth of July, Jesus wants to strengthen us to choose him who has first chosen us in love. He loved us more than himself, picked up his Cross and lost his life so that we might have life to the full. He wants to help us welcome him who came to welcome us into his kingdom, in this world and in the next. He wants to embolden us, as he sends us out like he sent the original apostles, promising that others who welcome us because we’re his disciples will receive an unbelievable reward, the reward of the great apostles, prophets, saints, because in truly welcoming us, they’re welcoming Him and his Kingdom. This is the way that we will respond well to the gift and task of our freedom, and become salt, light and leaven that can win over our generation and the future to the cause of good, to keep us truly the land of the free and the home of those brave enough to follow Christ fully along the path of love.

The readings on which the homily was based were: 

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