Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
World Day of the Poor
November 16, 2025
Mal 3:19-20, Ps 98, 2 Thes 3:7-12, Lk 21:5-19
 
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The following text guided the homily: 

* During the month of November, the Church leads us in a meditation on the Last Things. This is helpful for Catholics in every stage and state of life, because we can often be tempted to defer pondering death, judgment, heaven and hell out of a lack of urgency, assuming that we have many years and even decades before the humanly inevitable. Today, however, the prophet Malachi describes that the day of the Lord will come suddenly, blazing like an oven scorching proud evil doers but rising like a sun of justice with healing rays on those who fear God’s name. In the Gospel, that long awaited Sun of Justice, Jesus himself, gives far more details about the end times. In apocalyptic language that we shouldn’t downplay, he describes how the temple of God will be attacked, how there will be imposters claiming to be speaking for God and asking us to follow them, how there will be wars, insurrections, earthquakes, famines, plagues, persecutions, hatred, betrayals by family members and friends, and how even some of us will be put to death. It’s a harrowing account demonstrating, essentially, that the foundations on which we’re often tempted to place our stability and security — from physical health, to food and drink, property, family, governments, religious edifices and practices — will be shaken and collapse. The only thing left will be the only true and secure foundation, the one on which we should be constructing our life now, God himself.
* The immediate reaction of Jesus’ listeners was to ask, “Master, when will this happen?,” presumably so that they could be prepared. Jesus didn’t answer their question directly, because he wanted them to act on the information right away. If he had given a date weeks, decades, centuries or millennia later, the temptation would have been just to go on with life as normal. But Jesus had come to establish a totally new normal: a norm of faith, of vigilant waiting, of full-time Christian behavior. He wanted the day of the Lord to be a perpetual state, so that each day would be the Lord’s day, a day in which we could exclaim, like we do every Easter, “This is the day the Lord has made!” And the signs of the day of the Lord Jesus gave us help us to maintain this awareness, because they are in fact events we see in the newspaper almost every day: destruction, natural disasters, wars, famines, illness, betrayals, attacks on the Church, and the persecution and killing of Christians.
* Instead, Jesus gave them and us three ways to respond to what he was saying.
* The first was, “See that you not be deceived!” and described that many would come, supposedly in his name, trying to exploit the situation. “Do not follow them!,” Jesus tells us emphatically. In every age there are legions of false prophets and Jesus tells us to be on guard against them. They deceive us about God, ourselves, and what God expects of us. They proclaim a false Gospel, indeed a false religion and ideology, and want us to believe their lies and fall in line. So many of the “isms” of modern life broadcast through the media, taught in the classroom, propagated by governments in political campaigns and internationally are part of this false prophecy. Are we alert not to be deceived? Do we know the Gospel well enough to spot even the most subtle of them?
* The second thing Jesus told us was that our sufferings “will lead to [our] giving testimony,