Msgr. Roger J. Landry

Mount Alvernia Retreat Center, Wappinger Falls, New York

“Living by Faith in the Love God has for us”

Retreat Conference for Manhattan College Alumni

September 26, 2025

To listen to the conference, please click below: 

The following was the outline of the talk: 

• Introduction
  
  
  
  • Theme of the Retreat: “So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them” (1 Jn 4:16 ).
  
  
  • John’s whole approach to evangelization was to focus on the love of God.
  
  
  • Story of St. Jerome. “Little children love one another”
  
  
  • Not enough to know “of” the love God has for us. Have to know it personally. To experience it.
  
  
  • But we realize that it can seem too good to be true. That’s why we have to believe in it. We have to stake our life on it. Even if we don’t “feel” it, we have to live it.
  
  
  • We have a communion with God from the day of our Baptism, but we are able to experience communion with God ultimately through love, because God is love.
  
  
  • What Jesus said during the Last Supper:
    
    
    
    • Just as the Father loves me, so I love you. We have to recognize we’re loved and in fact lovable. If we don’t love ourselves it’s going to be hard for us to believe in the love God has for us.
    
    
    • Live on in my love. We can’t run away from it. We have to know and believe it.
    
    
    • You will live in my love if you keep my commandments, just like I have kept the Father’s commandments and live in his love. The commandments train us to love. This is the path for us to experience it.
    
    
    • Love one another as I have loved you.
      
      
      
      • Jesus doesn’t ask us to love him as he has loved us, but love one another as he has loved us.
      
      
      • Peter after the Resurrection. His love for Jesus would be shown in the way he fed and tended Jesus’ sheep and lambs.
      
      
      • John: if we say we love God but don’t love our neighbor, we are a liar and the love of God is not in us.
      
      
      
      
    
    
    • Therese’s vocation, to be love in the heart of the Church. We all have a similar vocation. In order for us to love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength and our neighbor as ourselves, we have to begin with the love of God. “In this is love,” St. John will say elsewhere, “not that we have loved God but that he has loved us and given himself as an expiation for our sins.”
    
    
    
    
  
  
  • Various ways God reveals his love for us. Know and believe in him loving us in these ways.
    
    
    
    • Baptism
      
      
      
      • See what love the Father has bestowed on us in letting us be called children of God.
      
      
      • Divine Filiation.
      
      
      • God the Father: “This is my son/daughter, in whom I am well pleased.”
      
      
      • Most important day of our life
      
      
      • Sin wiped away. Temple of God. Incorporated into the Church
      
      
      • The joy of a Chinese convert at Columbia. Weiling Kong. Art. Baptism. She knew what it meant. She knew it could mean suffering. But she came and you couldn’t wipe the smile off her face for years.
      
      
      • Another convert, a law school student. Claire Addinquy. Secular France. Faith of her grandmother. Finally she could act on it. Extraordinary joy worth selling everything to obtain.
      
      
      • A third, Marin Minamaya. Several Guinness world records. Knew the consequences and how to change and made immediate changes. Asked if she might sing at her baptism. O Lord, I am not worthy.
      
      
      • Each felt the love of the call of God to be his daughter. They believed in it. They chose.
      
      
      • In the early Church, the first Christians needed to wait until that value became so strong that they would be willing to suffer. Willing to be faithful under trial. Until they were committed to abide in God always even should they have to trust in his love enough to be a martyr.
      
      
      • Do we know and believe in this love? Do we abide in it?
      
      
      • To believe in this love is to live our baptism. To reject Satan. To believe in God, the communion of saints and becoming a saint, to believe in the forgiveness of sins, resurrection of the body and life everlasting.
      
      
      
      
    
    
    • Eucharist
      
      
      
      • We call the Eucharist the “Sacrament of Love.” Jesus did in the apparition of the Sacred Heart.
      
      
      • If God the Father didn’t spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, would he not give us everything else besides? He gives us his Son every day.
      
      
      • Teresa of Calcutta. On the Cross, Jesus showed us how much he loved us. In the Eucharist, he shows us how much he loves us now.
      
      
      • Hence Jesus spoke about love during the first Mass.
      
      
      • This is the means by which we’re able to remain in him (John 6) and thereby remain in his love. Just as he lives because of the Father, so he wants us to live because of him.
      
      
      • Same Jesus. Looks different. Risen from the dead. Double-miracle.
      
      
      • Summit of salvation history.
      
      
      • Do we know and believe in this love? Do we live a Eucharistic life?
      
      
      • Story of Cam from the NEP.
      
      
      • My own story when the truth of the Real Presence hit.
        
        
        
        • 37 years ago, earlier this week. on Sept 23, 1988. Freshman
        
        
        • 13,516 days ago.
        
        
        
        
      
      
      
      
    
    
    • Sacrament of Confession
      
      
      
      • Forgiveness is an extraordinary gift of love. Requires a lot to forgive and reconcile.
      
      
      • Yet God forgives 70 x 7 times. While we were still sinners he sent his Son to die for our sins.
      
      
      • Even though our sins are like scarlet, he wants to make them as white as snow.
      
      
      • Divine Mercy devotion reveals the extraordinary depths of God’s mercy.
      
      
      • Lost sheep, lost coin, lost sons.
      
      
      • Heaven rejoices more for one repentant sinner.
      
      
      • One of the most extraordinary aspects of the priest is to participate as a minister of the Sacrament of God’s mercy. So many who believe in the love of God come to receive this gift.
      
      
      • Common experience of people who haven’t been to confession in decades. First question: “Welcome back.” How God wants to bring good even out of sins. How his mercy is greater than our misery. How there can be a fresh start, a reset button.
      
      
      • Likewise experiences in prisons, experiences on retreats for post abortive women, experience with people who struggle to forgive themselves because of some of the horrible betrayals of God and their loved ones. To be able to experience in that moment of intense self-hatred the love of God can be life changing for them.
      
      
      • Missionary of Mercy. Preach mercy. Corporal and spiritual works of mercy. Hearing confessions and making God’s mercy available. Experiencing the joy of the Lord.
      
      
      • Do we know and believe in the love of God that he shows us in this way?
      
      
      • Do we take advantage of this gift and make heaven rejoice?
      
      
      • Do we pay it forward? Do we forgive those who owe us 10,000 talents. Erika Kirk and Donald Trump. Forgive or refuse to forgive. Love or hate our enemies? Which is the path of Christ? Which is the path the evil one wants us to take?
      
      
      • My own experiences. General confessions. Retreat confessions. Gratitude for the priests who hear, like those at St. Anthony’s in Boston. Peter’s Basilica. Jetez ces pêchés dans la poubelle! Father Joseph Henchey. This will make you a better confessor.
      
      
      • Do we know and believe in the love of God shown in this way?
      
      
      
      
    
    
    • Word of God
      
      
      
      • Deuteronomy 4 — God’s love shown in his ordinances.
        
        
        
        • Therefore, I teach you the statutes and decrees as the LORD, my God, has commanded me, that you may observe them in the land you are entering to occupy. Observe them carefully, for thus will you give evidence of your wisdom and intelligence to the nations, who will hear of all these statutes and say, ‘This great nation is truly a wise and intelligent people.’ For what great nation is there that … has statutes and decrees that are as just as this whole law which I am setting before you today?”
        
        
        
        
      
      
      • He is loving us on every page. Entering into dialogue with us.
      
      
      • How do we respond to it? Do we hunger for every Word? Or do we take it for granted?
      
      
      • Jerome. Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. It’s a certain ignorance of the depth of God’s love for us over time.
      
      
      • If we were to receive letters from a loved one, wouldn’t we look forward to reading them? Do we do the same with God’s love letters?
      
      
      • Story of Fr. Bob from Cleveland.
      
      
      • Story from Bishop Anton Justs from Latvia about Father Viktors.
      
      
      • Bible in a Year Podcast. So helpful for us to get to know him.
      
      
      • Do we know of the love of God in God’s word? Do we believe in it?
      
      
      • What about those parts of the Sacred Scripture that challenge us to change? Do we believe that all parts of Scripture are part of the Gospel?
      
      
      
      
    
    
    • Sacrament of Marriage and Family
      
      
      
      • We’re all born in a family.
      
      
      • Most here have the vocation to be married.
      
      
      • In the first, most of us have had the love of God revealed to us by the love of our parents, siblings and many others. We’ve learned that we were lovable. It became possible to identify and believe in a little of the love of God by the ways our dads represented God’s hesed and our moms enfleshed God’s rahamim.