Father Roger Landry: Start Acting More Like Christ — Even (and Especially) When Others Do Not

COMMENTARY: It’s hard in such a rancorous culture not to descend into the gutters. But this is not Our Lord’s way.

By Father Roger Landry, EWTN News, March 3, 2021

Father Roger Landry Father Roger J. Landry, a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, is national chaplain for Catholic Voices USA.

At the beginning of the Lenten season, at daily Mass, the Church has a heavy focus on Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount. That’s not particularly surprising, insofar as Lent is intended to foster a thorough spiritual reset, and Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount gives us the Magna Carta of Christian behavior.

On Ash Wednesday, for example, we focus on Jesus’ words about prayer, fasting and almsgiving, and over the next week and a half, he teaches us the Our Father, urges us to have confidence in prayer, and calls us to live by the Golden Rule.

The major emphasis, however, is on what Jesus describes as the particular Christian way of life. He tells us that he wants our “righteousness” to surpass that of the Scribes and Pharisees (who fasted twice a week, prayed three times a day, and tithed everything they owned) and expects our holiness to exceed that of the virtuous pagans (who treated their family members well and loved those who love them).  …

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