Fr. Roger J. LandrySacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, New York, NYThursday of the Fifth Week of EasterMay 6, 2021Act 15: 7-21, Ps 96, Jn 15:9-11

 

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

Today in the Gospel Jesus says what I believe are the most important words in the history of the world. They’re important whenever anyone says them, but the fact that God himself said them in the way that he said them, and then put them into his own body language, makes them the most life-changing phrase ever: “I love you,” he tells us. We need to stop and ponder the reality of those words! “I love you.” But then Jesus puts them into a context that ought to astound us: “Just as the Father loves me, I love you.” The Father loves him perfectly, profoundly and intimately — and Jesus tells us that he loves us in that same way. And he doesn’t merely love us “all” in that way, but he loves each of us in that way, as St. Paul wrote in his letter to the Galatians, “He loved me and gave his life for me” (Gal 2:20).

Grasping this reality is essential not only for the Christian life but for human life. “Man cannot live without love,” St. John Paul II wrote in his first encyclical Redemptor Hominis. “He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it.” This is true for love in general. We need the love of family, the love of friends, the spousal love of a husband or wife (either human or mystical), the total self-giving love of someone who values us that much. Without it, we’re lost. Many people who don’t experience this love spend their lives looking for it in places they won’t find it. If they haven’t experienced the love of a mom or dad, they often get themselves into trouble seeking that love in relationships that will never truly substitute. If they’ve suffered violence in relationships that should have been loving, often they’ll get involved in lifestyles that will try to reconstruct the love that should have been present in the first place.

And what is true in terms of human love is also true in terms of divine. There are many people — and many Catholics — who have never really experienced the love of the Lord. Their notion of God is perhaps an angry God, or a distant, negligent God, or a God who is a stern taskmaster making sure they fulfill all their duties lest they be punished, or even an indulgent God who doesn’t care about them enough to concern himself with their self-destructive choices. They haven’t experienced a loving God. Many people are filled with a type of self-pity or self-hatred because they have never experienced God’s love and often don’t believe they are lovable by God or anyone else, that they can never please him, that they’re constantly letting him, themselves and everyone else down. Today Jesus says to them, and to all of us, “I love you … just as my Father loves me!” And he shows them how much he loves them by telling them that he will lay down his life for them out of agapic philia, which we will have in tomorrow’s continuation of today’s Gospel: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” He will love them to the extreme of his self-giving.

After Jesus says the most important words in history he then gives us the most important command of the Christian life. “Remain in my love.” As much as he loves us, he knows that many of us run away from that love. That type of burning love can make us uncomfortable because we don’t think we’re worthy of it,

Fr. Roger J. LandryVisitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, ManhattanWednesday of the Fifth Week of EasterMay 5, 2021Acts 15:1-6, Ps 122, Jn 15:1-8

 

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

Today in the Acts of the Apostles, we come to one of the most pivotal events not only in the history of the early Church but the history of the Church, period. It’s the Council of Jerusalem, the first such Council in the history of the Church. It came about because “there arose no little dissension and debate” after some Christians coming from Judea were telling the Gentile Christians in Antioch, “Unless you are circumcised according to the Mosaic practice, you cannot be saved.” The question was far broader than merely of circumcision, but about the ground of salvation, the way we relate to God, the role of the Mosaic law in the faith and the manner in which Jewish and Gentile Christians were to behave with regard to each other. So Paul, Barnabas and others went up to Jerusalem to confer with the apostles and priests about it.

St. Paul was once a Pharisee and believed that salvation happened through rigid observance of the Mosaic Law in all its details. But after he was converted on the road to Damascus, converted from a false notion of the holy life to a true one, he began to see that one is saved by Christ and not by our own actions obeying all 613 commands and all the other precepts of the Mosaic law. We’re saved by God’s mercy rather than by our merit. He would spend most of his apostolic life proclaiming this truth. He wrote two letters (one to the Romans and another to the Galatians) explaining in detail how Christ, rather than the law, is our Savior, and he spent parts of two other letters (Colossians and Philippians) talking about how baptism rather than circumcision enters us into the life of faith and the Covenant with God. He brought all of these inspirations to the Council in Jerusalem and we’ll see later how the Holy Spirit led the early Church to the solution with regard to the Gentiles.

We learn in this scene two essential truths. First that we’re saved by God’s action to which we freely respond, not principally by our own action. The Mosaic law functions to help us prepare to receive the fullness of that saving action in Christ, when he comes to bring us fully into communion with God through his passion, death and resurrection and through the sacraments he instituted so that we might enter into his life. Second, we learn how to relate to each other. One of the reasons why this dispute between Jews and Gentiles was such a big deal was not simply the question of whether Gentiles needed to be good Jews before they could be good Christians, but it was because stricter Jews, like the Pharisees, had no interaction with Gentiles. They avoided them as if they were lepers. They didn’t eat with them. They didn’t enter into their houses. That was the background as to why the Hellenist widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of the bread, because many of the Jewish Christians would just keep their cultural tradition of complete separation. That obviously couldn’t work in the communion of the Church. The Council of Jerusalem was crucial so that Christians would live in communion with each other, which is what Jesus intended from the beginning, that we would be one as he and the Father is one.

And that brings us to the Gospel, where Jesus gives us the powerful and beautiful image of the Vine and the Branches, which is an image of the type of unity we’re all supposed to have in Jesus, an image of how our works are supposed to flow from our saving bond with him rather than detached from him and his redeeming grace,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Easter

May 4, 2021

Acts 14:19-28, Ps 145, Jn 14:27-31

 

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One of the greatest paradoxes in the Christian faith, one of the most important things for us to grasp and live, involves the reality of God’s peace in the Christian life, especially in times of persecution. Jesus tells us in the Gospel today and reiterates for us in every Mass, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you.” He was saying these words to the apostles just hours before he would be arrested and on the vigil of his being massacred by Roman soldiers. He wanted them to remain at peace during all that would transpire, just as he would be at peace. At the beginning of this discourse, which we heard on Friday, Jesus said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God. Have faith also in me.” Today he repeats those words, “Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.” He reiterates that he is going away but will come back and has given them these words of peace before everything would transpire “so that when it happens you may believe.” Now that it has happened, and the Church reflects on these words in the light of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, it’s important to check how deeply we believe in these words about peace (and everything else) Jesus tells us. He reminds them that the “ruler of this world is coming” but clarifies that “he has no power over me.” Jesus will allow everything that will occur to happen to him so that the world will know “that I love the Father and that I do just as the Father has commanded me.” Jesus peacefully underwent even his crucifixion in order to show his love for the Father, because real love is shown in trial.

Jesus was able to say these words because, as we’ve been talking about all Easter season long, by his resurrection he would show that not even a brutal crucifixion is enough to take one’s peace away, that there’s nothing truly to be afraid of, that in the end God triumphs and all of us who live and die in him will share that victory. That’s the ultimate ground for the peace he gives us and leaves with us. Our peace is grounded in our living relationship with him, the Prince of Peace. It is made possible by the peace treaty he signs in his own blood with God the Father through his mercy. It’s made possible by the gift of the Holy Spirit that he and the Father send. We see both fully on display on Easter Sunday evening when Jesus enters the closed doors of the Upper Room, twice wishes his startled followers peace, and then says “Receive the Holy Spirit” and “those whose sins you forgive are forgiven.” Pope Francis said several years ago in a homily in the Vatican that the peace Jesus leaves and gives is fundamentally the Holy Spirit, remembering that when Jesus in the Upper Room wished the apostles “peace be with you” he then breathed on them and said “Receive the Holy Spirit.” The peace that Jesus leaves with us, the peace that the world can’t give or rob, is the peace that flows from our grounding our entire life on God. If God is our treasure, if God is our foundation, if Jesus is our way, truth and life, if we’ve constructed our existence on him the cornerstone, if we are living by the Holy Spirit, then persecution, trouble, or even crucifixion can’t take that peace away but rather can confirm it.

If this is true, why is there such lack of peace in the world, in our country, in so many of our families, religious communities, parishes and dioceses, even in our own hearts? That’s because the vast majority of people haven’t tr...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Basilica of the Sacred Heart

University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana

Nuptial Mass for Nicholas Marr and Alexandra DeSanctis

May 1, 2021

Tobit 8:4-8, Ps 103, Rom 8:31-35.37-39, Jn 2:1-11

 

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The first of May is a special day in the life of the Church. It is the beginning of the month especially dedicated to Mary. It is also the day since 1955 dedicated in a special way to Saint Joseph the Worker, which in this Year of Saint Joseph takes on adding meaning.

And so it’s fitting, here at the university dedicated to Our Lady, in this beautiful Basilica erected to the honor of the Sacred Heart that first beat within her womb, on this day in which we remember the loving labor by which Saint Joseph, through toil, sweat and callouses supported them in their vocations, that we give thanks to Jesus, Mary and Joseph for getting you to this day, Nick and Alexandra, and ask their intercession so that through the great sacrament you minister and receive today you may become a truly holy family.

Saint Joseph is very much involved in this day. Alexandra has long has a devotion to Saint Joseph, which she learned from her father Joseph’s deep devotion to his patron. In 2019, while on pilgrimage to Spain, Alexandra prayed a novena to Saint Joseph in anticipation of his March 19 Solemnity. She prayed for her future husband, whoever he might be, entrusting her vocation to God and praying that Saint Joseph would help “bring the right man at the right time” into her life. In essence, she put Saint Joseph the Worker to work, and he didn’t waste any time! Immediately after the pilgrimage she needed to go to a conference in Arizona. Nick and Alexandra had been introduced five months prior by Professor Phil Muñoz, had had a couple of brief conversations and exchanged a few emails related to an article Nick was working on. But Nick, seeing that Alexandra would also be at the conference, emailed to ask if Alexandra might want to go to daily Mass with him at a nearby parish the following morning, at … 6:30 am. Alexandra “very uncharacteristically” — because of the early time, but perhaps responding to Lenten graces — said yes. They spent that whole day of March 22 together, quickly became friends, had what Nick called “a blast,” kept in close touch and started dating on April 28.

Saint Joseph, it turns out, indeed brought the right man into her life at the right time.

Our Lady is similarly very much a part of their relationship. Alexandra has always praised Nick for his intentionality and Nick chose to propose on August 22, the feast of the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. They went to Mass together at St. Rita’s in Alexandria, and after Mass, across the Potomac at the Lincoln Memorial, Nick proposed. For Mary, to reign is to serve, and the Queen of the Family was very much there that day, serving and praying for them as they began their 252-day preparation for what Christ, her Son, will be doing in them today.

Mary is always at the service of the young couples and the family, as she seeks to help them enter into the covenant of her Son the Bridegroom with his Bride the Church, as she intercedes that they may grow together more and more into the image of God who created the human person male and female so that through their communion of persons in love open to life they might bear the image of the Trinitarian communion.

We see Mary’s powerful service in support of authentic human love in the Gospel Nick and Alexandra chose.

Jewish wedding receptions at the time of Jesus were extraordinary eight-day affairs,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Easter (B), Vigil

May 1, 2021

 

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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.

* He is going to give us one of his most powerful images, which reveals the type of relationship he wants us to have with him and with others. He also describes for us the means for us to have a truly successful life according to his terms.

* Jesus tells us, “I am the vine. You are the branches.” He and his faithful, he and the Church, exist together as vine and branches. This image of the fruitful union of God and his people was foretold throughout the Old Testament. The prophets often compared Israel to a vine. Isaiah declared, “The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel” (Is 5:7). Hosea added, “Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit” (Hos 10:1). All of this was depicted visually in a stunning golden relief of a vine, with clusters of grapes as big as adults, running around the outside walls of the Temple of Jerusalem. The Church is the fulfillment of this image. The temple stands for God and when the people in faith attach themselves to God, they become a luxuriant vine stretching out its branches and bearing fruit even into the desert. Jesus was probably calling upon his apostles’ obvious knowledge of this golden sculpture as he was describing the image of the Vine and Branches on Holy Thursday evening, because they likely would have seen the gilded vine as they visited the temple earlier in the day. The problem, we know from our knowledge of Sacred Scripture, is that Israel as a whole didn’t stay attached to God in this way. God asked through Isaiah, “What more was there to do my for my vineyard that I had not done? Why, when I looked for the crop of grapes, did it bring forth wild grapes.” It didn’t bear good fruit, because it had detached itself from God through sin. Jesus mentioned this in one of his parables, when he said the Vineyard owner sent multiples waves of servants, and finally his Son, to collect his share of grapes at harvest time, but the tenants of the vineyard manhandled the servants and killed the Son. This was referring to salvation history and to the way Israel treated the prophets God sent to them and treated even Jesus himself. God looked to Israel to bear good fruit — which are deeds of love in union with God — but so often the harvest that was yielded was the wild fruit of a wild life, rejecting God’s prophets, God’s word, God’s love, God’s son.

* That’s why Jesus says at the beginning of this Sunday’s passage: “I am the true vine.” By doing so, he contrasted himself with the unfaithfulness of those who had failed to produce the harvest of love God wants in the world. He had come to replant the vine, to become the new temple, to make possible our bearing good fruit. And in the great mystery of salvation history, God makes the fruit he bears dependent on our being fruitful branches. A vine can’t bear fruit without branches. The stem bears only branches, but it’s the branches that bear fruit. For God to bear his fruit in the world, in other words, he has chosen to depend on us, that we remain attached to him and bear good fruit. Otherwise the great gift of his salvation, his love, won’t be seen in the world, people won’t be saved, the sap of his love will be wasted. Jesus wants to bear fruit in you and me.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the Fourth Week of Easter

Memorial of St. Pius V

April 30, 2021

Acts 13:26-33, Ps 2, Jn 14:1-6

 

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* In today’s first reading we have the second part of St. Paul’s word of exhortation in the Synagogue of Antioch in Pisidia. Yesterday we had the first 13 verses, today the next eight and the last five we have for homework. Throughout this “word of exhortation,” we see how St. Paul puts the Gospel into a context of what is relevant for his listeners.

* He begins by discussing his listeners’ hopes and expectations, their longing for a Messiah, so that he can show how Jesus is the fulfillment of their deep desires. He shows there’s a purpose to history.

* Second, he declares forthrightly that Jesus is the fulfillment of their hopes.

* Third, he discusses that even though Jesus is their hope, many, in blind folly, rejected him, but that rejection didn’t have the final word, because God raised him from the dead, showing that hope placed in him is never in vain.

* Finally, Paul makes that news actual, bringing us to a moment of decision. He describes how this is Good News, joy, for all of us who accept Jesus and begin to live by his ways — and bad news for those who disobey that summons.

* This is the pattern of proclamation for us in every age. We begin with the context of people’s aspirations and hopes, how Jesus fulfills them, how God has triumphed over people’s sins and rejection in the past, and how he wants us to share in that victory, but we must choose to respond to that incredible offer. St. Paul would elsewhere describe his own conversion and how he was among those who initially opposed, but came to grasp this life and that’s what motivated him to share Jesus with others. Similarly we can always begin, even with those who have never heard of God, with their desire for happiness and lead them from that desire to see what we’ve found in Jesus as the fulfillment of our longings for happiness, give witness over time to the choice we’ve made for him and seek to help them imitate that choice.

* Today in the Gospel Jesus meets those aspirations. He gives us one of his most famous phrases: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” We’ve heard Jesus’ self-description as the Way, the Truth and the Life so many times that their revolutionary shock value is almost entirely lost on us, but to first century Jewish listeners, they would have heard Jesus saying that he was the full realization of their three deepest religious aspirations. Jews had been praying for centuries, “Teach me your way, O Lord” and Jesus was saying, “I am the way.” They had been imploring God, “Teach me your decrees” that “I may walk in your truth,” and Jesus was saying, “I am the Truth.” They had been begging, “Show me the path of life,” and Jesus was indicating, “I am the Life.” Jesus was saying that he was the personification of all their religious aspirations and the answer to so many of their most insistent prayers. But these aspirations were not exclusively Jewish. They point to the perennial needs that spring up in every human life. Many times we’re lost, we don’t know where to go, we’re wandering through a valley of darkness with no clear sense of direction. To all of us in those circumstances, Jesus says, “I am the Way. Follow me!” There are many others who are stumped before life’s biggest questions, who are searching for answers and meaning, who don’t know what to believe,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Chapel of the Sisters of LIfe, Manhattan

Thursday of the Fourth Week of Easter

Memorial of Saint Catherine of Siena, Doctor of the Church

April 29, 2021

Acts 13:13-25, Ps 89, Jn 13:16-20

 

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The following points were made in the homily: 

* Yesterday was officially the half-way point of the Easter Season. Starting today, for the entirety of the second half of the 50 days of Easter, we will ponder Jesus’ words during the Last Supper, looking at them from through the prism of the Resurrection. He said in today’s Gospel, at the beginning of a lengthy Holy Thursday discourse, “From now on I am telling you before it happens, so that when it happens you may believe that I AM.” We know how what has happened and our response is to grow in faith in the divinity of Jesus as the great “I AM,” and because of that faith, believe more intensely in everything he said on Holy Thursday and beyond and act on it. “If you understand this,” he said today, “blessed are you if you do it.” And so what are we to believe from today’s Gospel? What are we to do?

* Jesus say something quite shocking in today’s Gospel. He swears an oath and says, “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.” This is not an “intentional” point but in some deep way a sacramental-ontological one: the reason why in receiving us others receive Christ is because they’re receiving us-in-communion-with-Christ, and because of that communion they’re always receiving God the Father because Christ is in perpetual communion with the Father. When we are sent out by Christ to proclaim the Gospel, we’re not just proclaiming words but in our own flesh we are bringing Christ — or at least we’re supposed to be! — and hence in accepting us they are welcoming Christ’s Mystical Body that is in organic communion with Christ, the Head of that Body. Jesus to some degree — we don’t want to take it too far, but we do need to ponder deeply his words — is making others’ reception of the Father and the Son whom he sent at least partially dependent on their receiving those whom he sends out, meaning us. And how can they receive us — and the Son and the Father as a consequence — unless we give ourselves to be received?

* We see the importance of this self-giving of ourselves together with Christ in the scene with Saints Paul and Barnabas in today’s first reading. Saints Paul and Barnabas are asked by the leader of the Synagogue in Antioch in Pisidia, “My brothers, if one of you has a word of exhortation for the people, please speak.” God wants us all to have that “word of exhortation” from him and wants us to give it. We’re called, like St. Peter wrote in his first letter, always to be willing to give the reason for the hope we contain within us. In the Psalm today, we prayed, “Forever I will sing the goodness of the Lord” and professed that “through all generations my mouth shall proclaim your faithfulness.” The Lord wants us to be so inspired by our consecrated communion with him that we’re always singing of his goodness — to us, to the world, to others — and to proclaim his fidelity to all his promises. Many times in life rather than singing of the Lord’s goodness, we can give into the temptation to complain monotonously about our problems, or to criticize, or to spread bad news rather than Good. Rather than giving a word of encouragement we give discourses of discouragement. Instead of sharing a word of exhortation, we deflate others with pessimism. Rather than praising God’s faithfulness,

Fr. Roger J. LandryVisitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, ManhattanWednesday of the Fourth Week of Easter

Memorial of St. Louis de Montfort, St. Peter Chanel, and St. Gianna Beretta Molla

April 28, 2021Acts 12:24-13:5, Ps 67, Jn 12:44-50

 

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today we reach the midpoint of the Easter season and as we prepare to make the transition tomorrow to Jesus’ words from Holy Thursday, interpreted anew in the light of his Resurrection. In the Alleluia versicle today, we ponder Jesus’ words, “I am the Light of the World. Whoever follows me will have the light of life.” Jesus wants us all to have the light of life, to live with with him risen from the dead. That’s why today, on the 25th day of the 50- day Easter season, we have a shift in our Easter Mystagogical Catechesis as we take stock of all that we have experienced over the last three and a half weeks and examine our response to the reality of his resurrection and appearances, the gift of Baptism, the awesome truth of his Real Presence and of his Shepherdly care.

* Today’s passage is Jesus’ last public teaching prior to Holy Thursday. Jesus gives these words right after the crowds were challenging his’ Messianic credentials. John says, “Although he had performed so many signs in their presence, they did not believe in him… Nevertheless, many, even among the authorities, believed in him, but because of the Pharisees, they did not acknowledge it openly in order not to be expelled from the synagogue, for they preferred human praise to the glory of God” (Jn 12:37, 42-43). Some refused to believe; others believed but cared too much about human respect. Neither group received and walked in the light Jesus had brought into the world. The Church wants us to ponder those inadequate responses and then, positively, to believe with all our heart and to care above all about pleasing God by walking fully in is light.

* Let’s get more deeply into the choice the Church wants us to make. In the Gospel today, Jesus reveals that he has come as the image of the Father. The one who sees Him, he says, sees the Father. The One who hears him, hears what the Father commanded him to say and speak. The one who believes in Him, believes in the Father who sent him. The way we respond to Jesus and to what he says and does, in other words, is the way we respond to God the Father and his redemptive will. God the Father, Jesus tells us, sent Jesus into the world to save the world, not to condemn it, but in order to receive that gift, people need to respond freely and willingly and leave death row. They need to choose to leave the darkness and come into the light. Jesus has given us the Father’s commandment, which is “eternal life,” but we need to embrace and live by that commandment, otherwise God’s word, that commandment, will condemn us because we are ultimately rejecting the Father who through and in Jesus proclaimed that word. Jesus’ words are words-to-be-done, not just to hear. His call is something upon which to act with commitment, not something just to consider and remain where we are. The ultimate meaning of a human life depends on how we respond to Jesus’ light, his words, his person, his salvation, placing that gift above human respect and every other consideration.

Today in the first reading, we see those who have responded to Jesus in this way. Saints Paul and Barnabas and the other members of the Church of Antioch were seeking to live by the light of the Lord, to act on his word, to become the living echoes of his voice, and images of the image of the invisible God,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Easter

April 27, 2021

Acts 11:19-26, Ps 87, Jn 10:22-30

 

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:

* This morning, Jesus completes the words on which we’ve been pondering over the last three days about how he is our Good Shepherd. The Church has us pray over these words in the heart of each Easter season so that we can learn better how to respond to him risen from the dead as his good sheep, so that he can give us life to the full, so that we can live united with him. Today he summarizes the whole discourse saying six things:

* To believe Jesus we need to be his sheep: He says to those challenging him during the Feast of the Dedication in the Temple, “You do not believe because you are not among my sheep.” Many times we think we have to believe first and then follow, but what Jesus is saying is that while of course there is an initial gift of faith, we grow in faith by following Jesus as his good sheep. The old Latin aphorism salva ambulando applies here that Jesus saves us as we follow him. The most obvious application of this is Baptism for those of us who had the great fortune of being baptized as infants. We become his sheep on the day of our infant Baptism and only later are we able to grow in faith of him by the graces working within.

* His sheep hear his voice: We are able to discern his voice from impostors’ because we’re constantly seeking to attune to his frequency in prayer, through Sacred Scripture, in the crucial work of the magisterium, in the solid example of the saints.

* I know them: Jesus says that he knows each one by name and we are in a personal relationship with him. There’s the famous parable when those outside the wedding feast are knocking, seeking to enter, and the Lord says, “Truly I do not know you.” Jesus’ sheep have entered into a deep, intimate friendship with him. This is akin to Biblical spousal “knowledge” whereby we not only know the other intimately but come to know ourselves through the experience of being loved and loving in return, from being known.

* They follow me: If we’re really Jesus’ sheep, we’re seeking to live by his example, to want what he wants, will what he chooses, and love as he loves. We get up from where we are and follow him to where we wants us to go, even when we’d prefer to stay in our spiritual comfort zones. We follow him on the inside and outside, even when others stretch out our arms and drag us to a place we’d rather not go.

* He gives them eternal life: Jesus gives us the gift of eternal life not just later but now, because eternal life, as he says elsewhere, is to know the Father and Jesus Christ whom the Father has sent. This is what makes sense of the second part of the phrase, “and they shall never perish.” If that were referring only to the afterlife, it would be nonsensical, because no one in heaven will perish; but it likewise refers to now, that if we are experiencing the eternal life that comes from the intimate friendship and communion with Christ, we will never die forever, because death will be merely a change of address, or better, change of state. This truth is what gave so much strength to the martyrs.

* No one can take them from my hand: I love this phrase. Once we’re in the Good Shepherd’s hands, no thief, no wolf, nothing in all of creation, can separate us from him, just like Jesus says no one can rip us from the Father’s strong, loving hands. The only thing that can take us out of God’s hand is our own free, frankly stupid, sinful choices by which we, like the Prodigal Son,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Monday of the Fourth Week of Easter

April 26, 2021

Acts 11:1-18, Ps 42, Jn 10:1-10

 

To listen to this morning’s homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.26.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* The mystagogical catechesis of the Easter Season commences with the apparitions of the Risen Lord to convince us anew of the fact of his Resurrection and how he seeks to have us seek the things that are above and live a new life. Then we have a four-day catechesis on the Sacrament of Baptism followed by an eight-day catechesis on the Eucharist. With Good Shepherd Sunday at the beginning of the Fourth Week, we begin to focus on various images and realities by which the Lord Jesus wishes to relate to us and bring us fully alive. Today is the second of three days on which we ponder the Risen Jesus as our shepherd. He summarizes the purpose of that relationship, the purpose of what he seeks to do in us through his passion, death and resurrection, at the end of today’s passage: “I came that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” St. John Paul II, in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae, said that by this phrase, Jesus presents “the heart of his redemptive mission.” Jesus wishes us to overflow with his risen zoe. That’s what we prayed for at the beginning of Mass when we asked God to grant us the “full measure of [his] grace for ages unending.” Grace is our participation as creatures in God’s own life. At the end of today’s first reading, the Church grasped that God wanted his “life-giving repentance” to be preached and offered to all the nations because Christ has “other sheep” as he told us in yesterday’s Gospel that were not of the fold of the Jews.

* In the Good Shepherd Discourse, we see how Jesus shepherds us to give us life in abundance, the full measure of his grace, in the following five ways:

* First he calls us by name — None of us is a number to him. He knows us by name and calls us each individually. We’re special to him.

* Second, he leads and guides us — He doesn’t call us and leave us on our own, but he constantly calls us to be with him. He goes before us so that he can turn to us and say “follow me.” Because he knows us individually, he knows that we need direction and he constantly gives that personal direction.

* Third, he feeds us — In the most famous Psalm, which is all about how God shepherds us, we proclaim that with him, we lack nothing, but have it all. He leads us  into green pastures to have us graze. He guides us to restful waters to refresh us. He sets a table before us and makes our cup overflow. In St. Matthew’s Gospel, when Jesus looked on the crowd because they were “like sheep without a shepherd,” on one occasion he worked the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fish and on other occasion he began to teach, knowing that people were hungering for nourishment for their souls as well. As our shepherd, Jesus always remembers to give us each day our daily bread, both material and spiritual.

* Fourth, he protects us — The ancient shepherds used to risk it all to protect their sheep against savage animals like wolves but also against bandits who would come to steal them. Jesus came into our world courageously to do the same for us. When we get lost wandering away from the fold, he leaves everyone else to come to find us and rescue us when we’re in danger.

* Finally, he loves us enough to die for us — Jesus lays down, and lays down freely, his life for his sheep. I’ve always considered it crazy for a human being to die for an animal. It’s silly for us to die for our hamsters or parakee...