Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
October 26, 2025
Sir 35:12-14.16-18, Ps 34, 2 Tim 4:6-8.16-18, Lk 18:9-14
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.26.25_Homily_1.mp3
The following text guided the homily:
* In the next few weeks, I’ll have a chance to help lead three different retreats, one for deacons, another for priests and the third for diocesan directors of the Pontifical Mission Societies. One of the classic practices when one goes on a retreat is to meditate about one’s death. Since we never know the day or the hour when Christ will come for us, pondering the end of our life helps us better to learn how to live, to focus on what really matters in life, to prioritize what’s truly important, and to order our choices wisely. It’s a practice that the Church encourages all the faithful every November — which begins Saturday — when we ponder the four last things of death, judgment, heaven and hell. As helpful as meditating upon our death is, there’s an even more useful practice: entering into the holy thoughts and prudent preparations of the saints as they prepare for death. Today, in the second reading, we are given the privilege to read what is essentially St. Paul’s last will and testament. He was in a Roman prison, preparing for execution and writing what he thought might be his final words to his spiritual son St. Timothy. He said he was already being poured out as a sacred sacrificial offering to God — like the Romans used to finish their sacrifices by pouring wine on the ground to the pagan gods — and that the time of his departure from this life was near. In one phrase, one of the most powerful and memorable lines in Sacred Scripture and human history, he summarized all he had sought to do in his life since his conversion outside the gates of Damascus. He wrote. “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” As we think of our life and the time of our eventual departure from it, St. Paul would be urging us, like he urged the young St. Timothy, to make these three things our priorities, so that we might echo them throughout our life and at the hour of our death.
* The first thing he writes is, “I have fought the good fight.” He points to the truth that the Christian life isn’t easy. It isn’t supposed to be. It’s a battle. The word he uses for fight is the Greek word for agony. He says he’s agonized through the “good and beautiful agony.” St. Paul heroically and agonizingly battled through multiple imprisonments, beatings, stonings, shipwrecks, labors, sleepless nights, hunger and thirst, anxiety for the Churches, betrayals, abandonments and more (2 Cor 11:23-28). But he never gave up the fight. He competed like a champion. And he wanted to help strengthen St. Timothy. He was indicating that in the Christian life, we must struggle against our weaknesses and failings, we need to war against the devil, principalities and powers and unending infernal attempts to turn us from God, we must contend against the temptations, obstacles and difficulties others and human life in general can place in our way to make it harder to live and share our faith. Despite all the blows that he took in life, St. Paul told St. Timothy in today’s passage, “The Lord stood by me and gave me strength.” The same Lord will stand by us. That’s why St. Paul could write to St. Timothy at the end of his first letter, “Fight the good fight of faith” (1 Tim 6:12). The Christian life is meant to train us to be fighters, to be strong and resilient, to be heroic like Jesus, like Paul, like the martyrs young and old throughout the centuries,
