Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Leonine Forum Monthly Mass
IESE Business School Chapel, New York
Thursday of the 31st Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Votive Mass for the Faithful Departed
November 6, 2025
Rom 14:7-12, Ps 27, Lk 15:1-10
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.6.25_Homily_1.mp3
The following points were attempted in the homily:
* Today St. Paul summarizes one of the essential aspects of Christian identity and life: We are God’s, not as property he owns, but as beloved sons and daughters he loves. Jesus, through his life, death and resurrection did everything so that we might become children of God. Our behavior is meant to flow from this identity. Therefore, St. Paul says, “None of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself. For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.” In this month of November, the Church helps us to ponder how to live according to our identity. We begin the month on All Saints Day, those who truly lived for the Lord and the martyrs who similarly died for him. On All Souls Day, we not only pray for the Faithful Departed — as we do tonight for the deceased members of the Leonine Forum, John Aroutiounian and Begho Ukueberuwa — but also consider death, so that we can learn how to die for the Lord. Throughout the month, we seek to grow in the capacity to live intentionally and to die intentionally, consecrating ourselves to God in life (which is how, from our perspective, we belong to God) and commending ourselves to him in death, echoing Jesus’ last words on the Cross.
* This sense of belonging to God as beloved sons and daughters is very strong in today’s Gospel, which is perhaps the most moving chapter in all of Sacred Scripture, when Jesus gives us the Parables of the Lost Sheep, Lost Coin and Lost Sons, all of which stress how God’s love for us is greater than our sins, how he rejoices when he is able to restore us to our identity. When we wander away from him like the lost sheep, he never ceases to come after us to try to restore us. When are spousal significance of our life seemed ruptured — that’s what the lost coin is, because a Jewish woman would have ten silver drachmas on a head piece; losing one of them would be like a woman’s losing a wedding ring today, a symbol of one’s sense of loving belonging to a spouse — God rejoices abundantly when we rediscover it. And in the parable of the Lost Sons (which the Church doesn’t have us ponder this week, because it comes up powerfully every Lent and twice in the Sunday lectionary), we see how even when the Prodigal Son treats the father as dead and the older son treats him almost as as a slave owner, the father never stops loving them both as sons, waiting for the first son’s return and encouraging the older son’s coming into the familial celebration. The main point of this chapter is how dear we are to God, how much we belong to him from his perspective, and how he wants us to grow in our identity, in our subjectively belonging to him who has objectively and lovingly made us members of his family.
* That brings us back to today’s first reading and how our understanding of this double-belonging is supposed to influence the way we look at others. After St. Paul stresses that whether we live or die we are the Lord’s because he is the Lord of the dead and the living, he asks, somewhat surprisingly, “Why then do you judge your brother or sister? Or you, why do you look down on your brother or sister?” The “then” is like a “therefore.” If we belong to the Lord of life and death, then, he implies, that we should not be looking negatively or judgmentally at our brothers and sisters,
