Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Chiesa di San Francesco all’Immacolata, Noto, Sicily

Saturday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time

May 7, 2022

Acts 9:31-42, Ps 116, Jn 6:60-69

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today we come to the culmination of the “second octave” of Easter, eight days of daily Mass readings from John 6 focused on the Holy Eucharist. We see that there are three responses to Jesus’ words about how we are to receive him as the new manna from heaven each day, to work for this food that leads to eternal life, to gnaw on his flesh and drink his blood.

* The first response is rejection, as we see in the “disciples” who found his teaching “hard” and unable to endure. So many of Jesus’ teachings are indeed hard, but they’re possible for those with faith.

* The second response was hypocrisy, that of Judas, who even though he remained in Jesus’ company, didn’t believe, and when Jesus fulfilled these words the next Passover, he completed his betrayal.

* The third response was faith, shown in St. Peter. He didn’t know how Jesus would give his flesh and blood to consume, but he knew he trusted in Jesus enough to trust in what he said and did. St. Thomas Aquinas focused on this faith when he wrote, in his famous Adoro Te Devote, “I believe whatever the Son of God has said, because nothing is truer than the word of truth.”

* We see the consequences of a Eucharistic life in St. Peter in today’s first reading. The two miracles he worked, the healing of Aeneas of his paralysis in Lydda, and the raising of Tabitha from the dead in Joppa, were both based on Jesus’ healings in Capernaum of the paralyzed man lowered through the roof and the raising from the dead of the daughter of Jairus. Peter stressed that “Jesus Christ heals you,” because it was the Eucharistic Jesus working through Peter’s faith that he has the words of eternal life.

* On this Saturday we have a chance to ponder Mary’s faith in allowing her whole life to develop according to God’s word, to believer that what the Lord has spoken to her would be fulfilled. We place the same faith in Jesus’ words about the Eucharist as she did in the Angel Gabriel’s words that she would become the Mother of the Son of God.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Reading I

Acts 9:31-42

The Church throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria

was at peace.

She was being built up and walked in the fear of the Lord,

and with the consolation of the Holy Spirit she grew in numbers.

As Peter was passing through every region,

he went down to the holy ones living in Lydda.

There he found a man named Aeneas,

who had been confined to bed for eight years, for he was paralyzed.

Peter said to him,

“Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you. Get up and make your bed.”

He got up at once.

And all the inhabitants of Lydda and Sharon saw him,

and they turned to the Lord.

Now in Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha

(which translated is Dorcas).

She was completely occupied with good deeds and almsgiving.

Now during those days she fell sick and died,

so after washing her, they laid her out in a room upstairs.

Since Lydda was near Joppa,

the disciples, hearing that Peter was there,

sent two men to him with the request,

“Please come to us without delay.”

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Basilica of Santa Lucia al Sepolcro, Syracuse, Sicily

Friday of the Third Week of Easter

May 6, 2022

Acts 9:1-20, Ps 117, Jn 6:52-59

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.6.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Those words from the conversion of St. Paul in today’s first reading show the communion that Jesus has with the members of his Mystical Body.

* In the Gospel, Jesus, speaking about the Eucharist, says that those who eat his flesh and drink his blood will “have life because of me,” just as he draws his life from the Father. He reminds us that unless we eat his flesh and drink his blood we do not have life — zoe, supernatural life, in contrast to bios or biological life — within us. Holy Communion is meant to be that consequential. It’s the means by which we receive our life. This is why the Church says that the Church draws her life from the Eucharist. Receiving Jesus in Holy Communion is meant to be the source and summit, the root and center, of our existence.

* It was for Saint Lucy, who drew her life from Jesus in Baptism and in the Holy Eucharist such that she wanted to give her whole life back to him. She grasped that as she was being subjected to trial during the ferocious persecution of Diocletian in 304, that she was united to Jesus, and Diocletian and his thugs were persecuting Jesus in persecuting her. But just as St. Paul was chosen by the Lord to be Christ’s instrument to bring his saving name to the nations, so St. Lucy was chosen to show the consequence of a truly Eucharistic life across the centuries down to our own age. As we receive Jesus in Holy Communion, we are strengthened to give our body and blood, our life, out of love for him and others. And for those who live in holy communion with God, death is merely a change of physical address and temporary state. The life we draw from God is eternal. It cannot be extinguished. And that’s what gave St. Lucy her courage to act on her love, because she knew she would continue to draw her life from her Eucharistic spouse even after her death.

* The US Bishops are about to embark on a three-year Eucharistic revitalization effort. We’re all called to be part of it. It’s an opportunity to show our fellow Catholics who have fallen away from the practice of Eucharistic life, who, for example, have cut themselves off from communion through sin, who may not have come back to Church after the pandemic, about the singular gift we have in Holy Communion. This gift is what allowed Ananias, who was frightened by what he heard about Saul the persecutor, to embrace Paul as “brother.” This is what made St. Lucy stronger than Roman soldiers. This is part of the message we’re called to bring as Good News to all the world.

 

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Reading I

Acts 9:1-20

Saul, still breathing murderous threats against the disciples of the Lord,

went to the high priest and asked him

for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, that,

if he should find any men or women who belonged to the Way,

he might bring them back to Jerusalem in chains.

On his journey, as he was nearing Damascus,

a light from the sky suddenly flashed around him.

He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him,

“Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”

He said, “Who are you, sir?”

The reply came, “I am Jesus,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Co-Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist, Valletta, Malta

Thursday of the Third Week of Easter

May 5, 2022

Acts 8:26-40, Ps 66, Jn 6:44-51

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.5.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” Everything begins with God’s grace. We thank God for having drawn us to Jesus.

* But God wants us to cooperate in the way he draws others. We see that in the whole life of St. Paul, who said no one can be saved unless he hears this Gospel, and no one can hear unless another proclaims, and no one can proclaim unless he is sent (Rom 10). St. Paul cooperated with a holy woe to share the Gospel.

* We see the same type of cooperation in the Deacon Philip, who went God’s angel said, “Head south on the … desert route,” he got up, set out and ran up to the Ethiopian eunuch’s chariot. The eunuch was being drawn by God, and drawn not by the sweet message of God’s love, but by the image of the Suffering Servant, the innocent led to the slaughter. And it was through that image, and Philip’s help, that this eunuch came to the faith.

* The Lord has drawn us to himself so that he might form us to be like Paul, like Philip, and run up to those he, too, draws, so that we might be able to relate all of Scripture and of human life to Jesus himself.

* Jesus spoke those words of the Father’s drawing in the midst of his Eucharistic discourse. God the Father draws us here so that we might be taught by him and strengthened by him, so that we might enter into holy communion with the Suffering Servant, and then sent out to meet those who are in the desert looking for everything that the Sacrament of Baptism — and the Sacrament of the Eucharist — signifies and gives.

 

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Reading I

Acts 8:26-40

The angel of the Lord spoke to Philip,

“Get up and head south on the road

that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza, the desert route.”

So he got up and set out.

Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch,

a court official of the Candace,

that is, the queen of the Ethiopians,

in charge of her entire treasury,

who had come to Jerusalem to worship, and was returning home.

Seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah.

The Spirit said to Philip,

“Go and join up with that chariot.”

Philip ran up and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and said,

“Do you understand what you are reading?”

He replied,

“How can I, unless someone instructs me?”

So he invited Philip to get in and sit with him.

This was the Scripture passage he was reading:

Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter,

and as a lamb before its shearer is silent,

so he opened not his mouth.

In his humiliation justice was denied him.

Who will tell of his posterity?

For his life is taken from the earth.

Then the eunuch said to Philip in reply,

“I beg you, about whom is the prophet saying this?

About himself, or about someone else?”

Then Philip opened his mouth and, beginning with this Scripture passage,

he proclaimed Jesus to him.

As they traveled along the road

they came to some water,

and the eunuch said, “Look, there is water.

What is to prevent my being baptized?”

Then he ordered the chariot to stop,

and Philip and the eunuch both went down into the water,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Convent of the Dames of Malta, Valletta, Malta

Wednesday of the Third Week of Easter

May 4, 2022

Acts 8:1-8, Ps 66, Jn 6:35-40

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.4.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The outline for today’s homily was:

* The mystagogy of the Easter Season, from Christ’s appearances, to his catechesis about baptism with Nicodemus, to his catechesis about the Holy Eucharist, in the “second octave” of Easter, in which the Church, over eight weekdays, focuses on the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel.

* Today’s passage focuses on Jesus’ desire to do the will of the Father who sent him.

* In the first reading, we see how Saint Paul was acting on a defective notion of what God’s will was. He was persecuting the Church in good conscience, thinking that the Church was an heretical Jewish sect. But as we will soon see, Jesus would convert him on the road to Damascus. Paul would grasp that what Jesus wanted was not external adhesion to the Mosaic Law but tol live by faith in the Son of God, Jesus himself.

* Similarly, we often have defective versions of what the will of God is. Some of us think it’s merely to avoid mortal sins. Others can be quasi-Pharisaical, focused on our own action. St. Paul’s conversion helps us to ask whether we are truly living by faith in the Son of God.

* The great way we’re able to grow in continual conversion is through the Mass, in which we hear God’s word and receive the Word-made-flesh so that the principal of our life may be what God is doing within us rather than what we’re doing, so that our whole life may be one done in obedience to Christ’s command to “do this in memory of me.”

The readings for today’s Mass were:

Reading I

Acts 8:1b-8

There broke out a severe persecution of the Church in Jerusalem,

and all were scattered

throughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria,

except the Apostles.

Devout men buried Stephen and made a loud lament over him.

Saul, meanwhile, was trying to destroy the Church;

entering house after house and dragging out men and women,

he handed them over for imprisonment.

Now those who had been scattered went about preaching the word.

Thus Philip went down to the city of Samaria

and proclaimed the Christ to them.

With one accord, the crowds paid attention to what was said by Philip

when they heard it and saw the signs he was doing.

For unclean spirits, crying out in a loud voice,

came out of many possessed people,

and many paralyzed and crippled people were cured.

There was great joy in that city.

Responsorial Psalm

66:1-3a, 4-5, 6-7a

R.        (1)  Let all the earth cry out to God with joy.

or:

R.        Alleluia.

Shout joyfully to God, all the earth,

sing praise to the glory of his name;

proclaim his glorious praise.

Say to God, “How tremendous are your deeds!”

R.        Let all the earth cry out to God with joy.

or:

R.        Alleluia.

“Let all on earth worship and sing praise to you,

sing praise to your name!”

Come and see the works of God,

his tremendous deeds among the children of Adam.

R.        Let all the earth cry out to God with joy.

or:

R.        Alleluia.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Co-Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, Valetta, Malta

Feast of SS. Philip and James, Apostles

May 3, 2022

1 Cor 15:1-8, Ps 19, Jn 14:6-14

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.3.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Why we celebrate SS. Philip and James together.

* The significance of proclaiming the Gospel together: St. Paul and his companions; the insight of St. Gregory the Great.

* St. Paul on the kerygma: Christ’s passion, death, resurrection, ascension, appearances and living relationship with us.

* Jesus invites us into that living relationship in the Gospel as the way to follow, the truth to believe and the life to enter into.

* We enter into that living relationship most through the celebration of the Mass, in which Christ through the Word of God and as the Word made flesh shows us the way, announces to us the truth and imparts to us eternal life through sacramental communion. SS. Philip and James were present at that first Mass and are praying for us now, so that, like them, we may announce to others two-by-two, one-by-one, and in ecclesial communion, as of the greatest importance, the gift of Christ in such a way that this message will go out to all the earth!

The Readings on which today’s homily was based were: 

Reading I

1 Cor 15:1-8

I am reminding you, brothers and sisters,

of the Gospel I preached to you,

which you indeed received and in which you also stand.

Through it you are also being saved,

if you hold fast to the word I preached to you,

unless you believed in vain.

For I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received:

that Christ died for our sins

in accordance with the Scriptures;

that he was buried;

that he was raised on the third day

in accordance with the Scriptures;

that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve.

After that, he appeared to more

than five hundred brothers and sisters at once,

most of whom are still living,

though some have fallen asleep.

After that he appeared to James,

then to all the Apostles.

Last of all, as to one born abnormally,

he appeared to me.

Responsorial Psalm

19:2-3, 4-5

R.        (5)  Their message goes out through all the earth.

or:

R.        Alleluia.

The heavens declare the glory of God;

and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.

Day pours out the word to day;

and night to night imparts knowledge.

R.        Their message goes out through all the earth.

or:

R.        Alleluia.

Not a word nor a discourse

whose voice is not heard;

Through all the earth their voice resounds,

and to the ends of the world, their message.

R.        Their message goes out through all the earth.

or:

R.        Alleluia.

Alleluia

Jn 14:6b, 9c

R. Alleluia, alleluia.

I am the way, the truth, and the life, says the Lord;

Philip, whoever has seen me has seen the Father.

R. Alleluia, alleluia.

Gospel

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Collegiate Church of Saint Paul’s Shipwreck, Valetta, Malta

Third Sunday of Easter, Year C

May 1, 2022

Acts 5:27-32, Ps 30, Rev 5:11-14, Jn 21:11-19

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.1.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The outline for today’s homily was:

* History of St. Paul’s Shipwreck and time in Malta from Acts 27-28 and the principle of “everything works out for the good for those who love God, for those who are called according to his plan” (Rom 3:28).

* This principle illustrated in Peter’s betrayal, how his denial of the Lord led to a greater loving appreciation of Christ’s own merciful love for Peter and for all of us.

* Christ restored Peter in two ways: the miraculous draught of 153 fish, which brought him back to his original calling of the Lord (Lk 5:1-10); the dialogue about love. That dialogue involves: Peter’s declaration of a love for Christ greater than other loves and Christ’s teaching him how to put into practice his command to “love one another as I have loved you,” through Peter’s caring for Christ’s sheep and lambs.

* But the biggest thing happening in that dialogue is in the Greek verbs used: agapein (total self-sacrificial type of love) and philein (love of friendship). Christ asks Peter twice whether he loves him with agape and Peter replies by using philia; the third time Christ uses philia and that’s what leaves Peter saddened, almost as another betrayal from the heroism to which he aspired. But Christ wouldn’t leave Peter there. He prophesied Peter’s crucifixion and restored him to his vocation by saying “Follow me,” which Peter did to his crucifixion, upside down, in Rome in 64 AD.

* The greatest illustration of this principle happened in Jerusalem, where out of the worst evil — Christ’s crucifixion — God brought the greatest good, Jesus’ resurrection and the possibility for us to be forgiven of our sins, healed of death and live forever with God. We enter into that in the Easter season and then in every Mass.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Reading I

Acts 5:27-32, 40b-41

When the captain and the court officers had brought the apostles in

and made them stand before the Sanhedrin,

the high priest questioned them,

“We gave you strict orders, did we not,

to stop teaching in that name?

Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching

and want to bring this man’s blood upon us.”

But Peter and the apostles said in reply,

“We must obey God rather than men.

The God of our ancestors raised Jesus,

though you had him killed by hanging him on a tree.

God exalted him at his right hand as leader and savior

to grant Israel repentance and forgiveness of sins.

We are witnesses of these things,

as is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.”

The Sanhedrin ordered the apostles

to stop speaking in the name of Jesus, and dismissed them.

So they left the presence of the Sanhedrin,

rejoicing that they had been found worthy

to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name.

Responsorial Psalm

Ps 30:2, 4, 5-6, 11-12, 13

R  (2a) I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me.

or:

R  Alleluia.

I will extol you, O LORD, for you drew me clear

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Third Sunday of Easter, C, Vigil

April 30, 2022

 

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.30.22_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily:

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us on the third Sunday of Easter. Last week, as you remember, we pondered the Lord’s Divine Mercy and reflected on Jesus’ rehabilitation of the faith of Saint Thomas the Apostle. Today we ponder that same mercy and Jesus’ rehabilitation of St. Peter. Peter didn’t have the same doubts as Thomas about the resurrection. He was the first to enter the tomb. He saw the Lord enter through the closed doors of the Upper Room. Together with the other ten apostles, he rejoiced at Jesus’ triumph over death. But he still wasn’t whole. The obstacle was that he still wasn’t able to forgive himself for what he did on the night Jesus was betrayed. Peter sincerely thought that he would die for the Lord. He tried to defend him in the Garden of Gethsemane with a knife, even cutting off the ear of Malchus, the high priest’s servant, but as Jesus had told him earlier in the Garden, “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak,” (Mt 26:41) and we would just how weak Peter’s flesh was in the High Priest’s courtyard when in response to a conversation with a maid who recognized him as one of Jesus’ disciples, Peter denied three times that he even knew who Jesus was. That’s when the cock crowed. When Jesus was brought out and looked at him, Peter, remembering Jesus’ prediction, went out and wept bitterly.

* The pain of that experience was very much with Peter even after Resurrection. Mary Magdalene, when she finally recognized Jesus as he called her by name in the Garden on Easter Sunday, rejoiced so much that she clung to his feet never wanted to let him go. The disciples on the road to Emmaus, as soon as they had recognized Jesus in the breaking of the Bread, ran seven miles uphill in pitch-black darkness to share the joyful news of Jesus’ resurrection with the other disciples. And even though the evangelists tell us that the disciples rejoiced when they eventually recognized that Jesus wasn’t a ghost on Easter Sunday evening, Peter still harbored his humiliation and was struggling to forgive himself for having been a spiritual Benedict Arnold. That’s what Jesus needed to address.

* As we see in this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus did it first through a miraculous catch of fish. Peter had gone back to what he knew well, probably to divert himself from his sorrow as well as to get some food. He and the other disciples, however, worked all night and caught nothing. In the morning, a seeming stranger on the shore — whose appearance and it seems also his voice had changed after the Resurrection — told them to cast the net onto the other side of the boat. They did and caught an enormous draft of fish. That’s when St. John, who was present on the Sea of Galilee when Jesus originally called him and his brother James, Peter and his brother Andrew three years earlier, grasped that it was the Lord. That original scene of their calling is highly significant to the post-Resurrection scene. Peter, Andrew, James and John had on that previous occasion worked all night and had caught nothing. They had come in, had cleaned their boats and net, and Peter had allowed Jesus to use his boat as a pulpit to move a little from the shore because the crowd was crushing him. After that favor, Jesus told Peter to put out into the deep water and lower his...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for Divine Mercy Sunday, C, Vigil

April 23, 2022

 

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.23.22_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday. It’s a dialogue that happened on the night Jesus triumphantly rose from the dead. It’s a colloquy that reveals Jesus’ true priorities, why he entered the world, why he suffered, died and rose. He did it all to impart Divine Mercy. That’s why since 2000, this Sunday, the exclamation point of the Easter Octave, is called Divine Mercy Sunday, and is meant to help us focus on and enter far more deeply into that great mystery and gift.

* It’s a gift ever actual. I’m not sure whether you’ve had a chance to see Mark Wahlberg’s new movie called Father Stu, which focuses on the inspiring true story of Father Stuart Long, a priest of the Diocese of Helena, Montana, who died in 2014 of the debilitating disease after only six-and-a-half years as a priest. He is an extraordinary icon and ambassador of Divine Mercy. He was the son of nominally Protestant parents, a football player, wrestler, Golden gloves championship boxer, and English major, who ended up moving to Hollywood in search of movie stardom, only to work as a bartender, bouncer and security guard. This fun-loving, strong, self-confident, kind big boy had his life upended in a life-threatening motorcycle accident at the age of 30. When he recovered, he was convinced that his life had been saved for a reason. He started to search for that reason. A desire to wed his live-in girlfriend, Cindy, who would only marry in the Catholic Church, led him to enroll in classes to become a Catholic. As he was being baptized at the Easter Vigil in 1994, he felt God calling him to become a priest. He acted on that call, eventually entered seminary and was ordained a transitional deacon a dozen years later at 42. Around that time, he started to experience various physical difficulties, which were eventually diagnosed as inclusion body myositis, a progressive disease that eventually takes away one’s control over one’s muscles such that one is practically paralyzed and even can lose the ability to breathe. Bishop George Thomas of Helena, however, after much prayer decided to ordain him a priest anyway, convinced in prayer that the Lord wanted Stu to be an icon of Christ, the Suffering Servant, and show the redemptive power of Christian suffering. Fr. Stu’s unlikely calling manifests the power of God’s mercy in calling sinners to become ambassadors of his mercy. In the movie, when he’s being interviewed for the seminary, the future Father Stu mentions God’s calling Saints Paul, Augustine and Francis of Assisi to prove that sometimes God’s most effective ambassadors of mercy are those whose being and history exude it. He preaches three times in the movie, in a talk at a prison, in a reflection as a seminarian at Mass, and at his ordination, and each time describes that God in his mercy cares for us all. And after he enters the nursing home, where he spent the last three years of his his priesthood, we see how his principal ministry was anointing the sick and hearing the confessions of his fellow residents, staff and people from all over greater Helena, who, at 8:30 each morning, would start to form a long line stretching even outside the front door. They found in Father Stu someone whom they knew could understand their moral failings as well as someone...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Church of the Holy Family, Manhattan, NY

Easter Thursday

Memorial of St. Anselm

April 21, 2022

Acts 3:11-26, Ps 8, Lk 24:35-48

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.21.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* At Easter, Jesus wants to work a transformation in us like he worked in the first disciples. And as we’ve been seeing during these days, there’s a very familiar pattern to the metamorphosis he worked on Easter that we’ve been seeing in each of the readings this Easter week:

* At first the disciples who encounter Jesus are bewildered, shocked, fearful, unbelieving in his resurrection; no matter how many times Jesus told them exactly what would occur to him, they still didn’t believe when they saw him a couple of days after his brutal execution.

* The second stage is that Jesus convinces them that he’s real, that he’s alive, that he’s risen from the dead and he begins to instruct them, to show them that everything that happened to him was supposed to happen to him.

* Third, once they hear and see Jesus, they come to faith in his Resurrection and living Presence in front of them.

* Lastly, Jesus sends them out on a mission to complete his own mission.

* On Monday and Tuesday we see how this happened with Mary Magdalene from the perspectives of St. Matthew’s and St. John’s Gospels respectively. Yesterday we saw it with the disciples on the Road to Emmaus. And in today’s Gospel, we see these same four stages occur with the apostles in the Upper Room.

* Jesus enters the other room while Cleopas and the other disciple are briefing them on what just happened on their journey home to Emmaus. The disciples were “started and terrified and thought they were seeing a ghost.” They couldn’t believe that it was Jesus, even after the witness of the Emmaus disciples, of Mary Magdalene and the other Mary whom Jesus met on the way. Just like the two disciples of Emmaus, their hearts were slow to believe: their will wasn’t yet in it, they were too dejected, too afraid. Jesus confronts those fears straight on. He says, “Peace be with you!” He asks, “Why are you troubled? And why do questions arise in your hearts?” Again, not their minds, but their hearts. Then he removed their cardiac doubts about his physical reality by saying, “Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have.” After showing them his wounds and his feet, he proves that he’s not a ghost even more powerfully by eating a piece a baked fish, which only a real person could digest. And then he started to do for them what we saw him do with the disciples on the Road to Emmaus yesterday. He reminded them that he had to suffer, just as he and the prophets had foretold. “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and in the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled.”

* St. Luke stresses that, having opened their hearts, he then “opened their minds to understand the Scriptures,” saying, “Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” Doubtless their own hearts began to burn like the hearts of the Emmaus disciples and their minds got that warmer blood of faith and they began to believe. Then Jesus gave them their mission as he similarly opened their mouths: “You are witnesses of these things.” They were to be witnesses of Christ’s resurrection, but not only his resurrection.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Church of the Holy Family, Manhattan

Wednesday of Easter Week

April 20, 2022

Acts 3:1-10, Ps 105, Lk 24:13-35

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.20.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* In these readings of Easter Week, the Church helps us to ponder the dramatic transformation that Jesus’ Resurrection is supposed to have in our life. We have seen over the course of the last two days the stunning metamorphosis in Mary Magdalene and the 3,000 people listening to St. Peter on Pentecost Sunday. Today we see the total changes wrought in the crippled man at the Beautiful Gate and the astonishment and amazement of all those who were accustomed to seeing him at the gate. We also see the transformation in the disciples on the road to Emmaus.

* It’s important for us to resist the temptation for Easter to become routine, that the biggest change in us resulting from the liturgical remembrance of Jesus’ resurrection be that now we can consume the food and beverages we gave up for Lent. The celebration of Easter is supposed to lead us to the newness of life St. Paul described at the Easter vigil, helping us to be dead to sin and alive for God in Christ Jesus. The power of Easter is meant to bring about in us the long litany of effects the Church sang about in the Exsultet on Saturday night. The whole Church — Peter, John, their successors and the whole Mystical Body says during the Easter season — say to us and through us to others, “Arise and walk,” be raised and start journeying, freely, following the footsteps of the Risen Lord knowing that he accompanies you along the way. The power of Easter, however, is meant to do something in us far greater than what happened in this crippled man in Jerusalem. But for that to take place we need to participate in this transition.

* Let’s enter into the change that takes place in the disciples of Emmaus in today’s Gospel. We could describe the change as a heart transplant. At the Easter Vigil, Ezekiel prophesies that the redemption will involve God’s sprinkling clean water upon us — our Baptism — removing from us our “stony hearts” and replacing them with “hearts of flesh,” placing his own spirit within us. We could rephrase that heart transplant in the words of today’s Gospel as a transition from “slowness of heart” to a “burning heart.” When Jesus anonymously and gently upbraids the disciples on the Road to Emmaus, he didn’t say “How slow of head,” “How dull of mind, you are not to believe all that Moses and the prophets taught,” but “How slow of heart.” Their hearts were literally retarded because they were unwilling to let go of some of their previously conceived notions. Eventually, after Jesus takes them on a journey, their hearts were racing, their hearts were burning, as Jesus spoke to them along the way. That journey was a retracing of the steps of salvation history showing how all of it pointed to how the Messiah needed to suffer to help the two disciples — who had been leaving Jerusalem and symbolically the place of God, and who had been heading into the sunset instead of the rising sun — see that Jesus’ crucifixion and death were not a contradiction of the Jews’ Messianic hopes but a confirmation. Jesus helped them to see that what happened to him was the fulfillment of the killing of the just man Abel, of the sacrifice of Isaac, of the Passover lamb led to the slaughter, of the just man beset, of the Suffering Servant, of Psalms 22 and 69 and so many others. That spiritual pilgrimage on which the anonymous wayfarer led the two disciples during their seven mile walk into the darkness of the night reawakened their hearts and heads. They were transformed.