Fr. Roger J. Landry
National Assembly of the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious
Basilica of the Old Cathedral of St. Louis, Saint Louis, Missouri
Friday of the 24th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
September 19, 2025
1 Tim 6:2-12, Ps 49, Lk 8:1-3
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.19.25_CMSWR_Homily_1.mp3
The following text guided the homily:
* As we enter together more deeply in this National Assembly into the reality of our being pilgrims of hope and witnesses even now of the life of the world to come, and celebrate this special votive Mass for the Holy Year of Hope, we are providentially given today’s readings, which teach us three crucial lessons of this journey of hope together with Christ Jesus our hope (1 Tim 1:1).
* The first lesson is about the initial proclamation of hope that Christ came into the world to give. In today’s short Gospel, we see Jesus’ peripatetic preaching, journeying from one town to another preaching and proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom. This was a snapshot of his ordinary life, what occupied most of his days. He was announcing the kingdom and inviting people to enter. In the midst of all of their sufferings, hardships and up-until-then centuries of unfilled hopes awaiting the Messiah, awaiting God’s saving interaction in history, he was proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God. He was helping them to see that Sacred Scripture was being fulfilled in their hearing, inviting them to strive to enter through the narrow gate, encouraging them to buy the treasure buried in a field and selling everything they have for the precious pearl of the kingdom. The Kingdom of God, as Pope Benedict loved to say, is God. It means that God is present and the ultimate criterion of life. And that God had taken our humanity and was journeying in their streets inviting them to come, follow him.
* The second lesson is that he wasn’t preaching and proclaiming the Gospel alone. He was accompanied first by those whom he had chosen to be with him so that he might then send them out (Mk 3:14). These twelve disciples whom he named and formed as apostles, he had already bestowed his power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases and had sent them to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick and they went out on their first missionary journey, journeying from village to village, proclaiming the good news and curing diseases everywhere. Today we see Jesus taking out these apostolic year novices on his own missionary journey.
* But they were not the only ones with Jesus. St. Luke adds a very important detail. He said that some women were accompanying Jesus and the apostles, women who had received Jesus’ healing power — they had “been cured of evil spirits and infirmities” — and wanted to spend their life, with faith and constancy, assisting him to heal others and raise them up. Three get named — Mary Magdalene, Joanna, the wife of Herod Antipas’ epitropos or money man Chuza, and Susanna — but Luke also says “and many others,” who “provided for them out of their resources.” They couldn’t preach; that was unheard of in Judaism and Jewish culture, but rather that lament what they couldn’t do, they were doing all they can to make possible, and share in, the preaching and proclamation of the Kingdom of God. These women were the ones who, to some degree, were making possible Jesus’ and the apostles’ preaching, so that Jesus everyday wouldn’t have to multiply loaves and fish, so that they wouldn’t have to appall the hypersensitive Scribes and the Pharisees by plucking heads of grain while walking through the fields. Like the widow with her two lepta placed in the Temple treasury,
