Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Manhattan

Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year B

Memorial Mass for Aris and John Aroutiounian

April 25, 2021

Acts 4:8-12, Ps 118, 1 John 3:1-2, Jn 10:11-18

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.25.21_Aroutiounian_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

The Fourth Sunday of Easter is called Good Shepherd Sunday because every year we focus on a part of the tenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel in which Jesus tells us, “I am the Good Shepherd” and then describes what he does for us, his beloved sheep: He knows us intimately and calls us by name, he leads and walks ahead of us, he protects us from thieves and marauders, he comes in search for us when we’re lost and brings us back, he lays down his life for us, and he gives us life to the full.

These words of Jesus were powerful when he preached them in the Temple area during the eight day Hanukkah celebrations several months before his death. But the Church has us read them in the heart, the midway point, of the Easter Season, because when looked at in the light of his Passion, Death and Resurrection, they take on much deeper meaning. They show us not only how to relate to Jesus risen from the dead, but also how to allow the power of his resurrection to transform us so that we might be able to love others as he has loved us first, in order that, being his faithful sheep who hear his voice calling us to follow him, we might in turn become shepherds to others after his own shepherdly heart. For us to live the Easter season well, for us to experience the fullness of our Christian vocation, we must enter into the metamorphosis Jesus seeks to bring about in our lives through his resurrection.

Many of us, when we reflect on the resurrection, think about it as a fact, an event, a mind-blowing occurrence that happened early on a Sunday within Joseph of Arimathea’s freshly hewn tomb outside the city gates in ancient Jerusalem. The resurrection is a fact. Alongside the fact of the Son of God’s entering humanity at the incarnation, it’s one of the two most important facts of all time. Yet for Jesus, the resurrection wasn’t so much a fact but a relationship. When Martha, four days after her brother Lazarus had died, told Jesus that if he had been present, Lazarus would still be alive, Jesus told her, “Your brother will rise.” Martha replied, doubtless based on some of the conversations she had had with Jesus in her home in Bethany about what would happen after we die, replied with faith, “I know he will rise in the resurrection on the last day.” But then Jesus upgraded her — and our — understanding of the resurrection. He said, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Jesus was stressing that eternal life, as he said elsewhere, is to know Christ Jesus and the Father who sent him. It is a relationship that death cannot kill. When we know Jesus truly as a friend, as a Savior, as a Lord, as a Bridegroom, as a Good Shepherd, when we enter into communion with him, death is nothing other than a change of address, or more accurately, a change of state. As Jesus says in John 10, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hand.” When we remain in the strong, loving, gloriously scarred hands of Jesus, when we stay in that loving covenant with him, he continues to embrace us into eternal life. That’s why St. Paul would exclaim in his Letter to the Romans, “I am convinced that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities … nor an...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Agnes Church, Manhattan

Third Sunday after the Easter Octave

April 25, 2021

1 Pet 2:11-19, Jn 16:16-22

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.25.21_Homily_EF_1.mp3

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* At the end of today’s Gospel, Jesus says something extraordinary about the consequences of his resurrection in the life of believers. The passage is taken from St. John’s Account of Jesus’ Last Supper discourse to the apostles. Jesus is describing how he is going to be temporarily ripped away through his passion and death and how they will weep and mourn while the members of the Sanhedrin, Annas and Caiphas, Herod and Pilate, Barabbas and the mob, the devil and the fallen angels will rejoice, but he says that that grieving will be just a fleeting anguish, like the labor of a woman giving birth. When Jesus rises and returns, when he sees them and us, again, he tells us, “Your hearts will rejoice and no one will take your joy away from you.”

* The joy of Easter is something that no one is ever supposed to take away. Easter joy is not meant to be an ephemeral experience on Easter Sunday or one that lasts just for an octave or even a 50-day season. It’s not something, to paraphrase St. Peter from today’s first reading, that’s contingent on who is king or governor or president, or what community we live in, or whether we’re slave or free, or suffering or in good health. It’s not conditioned by the Dow Jones Industrial Average, or which sports team is in first place, or what we had for breakfast. Truth incarnate is pretty emphatic about the impact Easter is supposed to give us: “Your hearts will rejoice,” he says, “and no one will take your joy away from you.”

* The Church proclaims this joy at Easter. “Haec dies quam fecit Dominus: exultemus and laetemur in ea,” we sing in the Gradual on Easter Sunday: “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad!” In the Exultet that begins the Easter Vigil, we proclaim, “Laetetur et mater Ecclesia…,” “Rejoice, let Mother Church rejoice, arrayed with the lightning of [Jesus’ risen] glory, let this holy building shake with joy, filled with the mighty voices of the peoples.” I love the Eucharistic Preface in the Ordinary Form that I celebrate with the Sisters of Life most mornings, in which to the Preface of the 1962 Missal we’ll use later the words, “Profusis paschalibus gaudiis” are added: “Therefore, overcome with Paschal Joy, every land, every people exults in your praise.” Easter joy is meant to overwhelm us. It’s supposed be profusely flowing out of our pores! This is the joy we proclaim this joy in our hymns: “Regina Caeli, laetare,” “Rejoice, Heavenly Queen!,” “O Let us swell the joyful strain,” “Raise your joys and triumphs high.” Not only the entire Easter season but the whole of Christian life is meant to be an Ode to Joy given to God for what Easter is and means. Jesus came into the world, took on our nature, lived among us, preached, suffered, died, rose, ascended and sent the Holy Spirit so that, as he said earlier on Holy Thursday in St. John’s Gospel, “My joy may be in you and your joy be complete!” And no one, he says, can rob that joy from us. The only one who can eradicate that gift is ourselves, if we refuse to live in the joy of Easter or fritter or toss that joy away.

* Perhaps the greatest scandal in the Church, and certainly one of the biggest pastoral problems, is that so many Catholics — including, sadly, not a few bishops, priests, religious and consecrated, Sunday and daily Mass-goers — simply do not radiate joy. They don’t rejoice in the Lord’s day or most any other day. Their hymns, even during the Easter season, are rather glum,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

April 24, 2021

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.24.21_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.

* The Fourth Sunday of Easter each year is called Good Shepherd Sunday, because on this day the Church focuses on the tenth Chapter of the Gospel of St. John in which Jesus reveals the relationship he has with each of his faithful followers. Jesus says about himself: “I am the Good Shepherd.” And we, his faithful followers, with the some of the most famous words God has ever inspired, respond, “The Lord is my shepherd. I want, I lack, for nothing!” We mark this truth in the heart of the Easter Season each year, because it is the heart of our Easter joy: with the Risen Lord Jesus as our Shepherd, we truly have it all!

* But it’s key for us to believe and live by those famous words of the most famous Psalm. By them, we publicly confess as Catholics that our treasure is Jesus, that if we have him, but don’t have everything else in the world, we still recognize how rich we are. In the midst of a consumerist society, in which we’re bombarded with advertisements that pretend that we’ll be happy only if we obtain what they’re selling, that we’ll be fulfilled only if we have money and houses, fame and fortune, power and position, we focus instead on the Jesus the Good Shepherd, risen from the death, as the pearl of great price. We confess that what Jesus provides is far more fundamental to happiness in this world, and is absolutely essential to eternal felicity with him in the eternal sheepfold, than anything and everything else.

* Throughout the Good Shepherd discourse Jesus gives us in the tenth Chapter of St. John, roughly a different of third of which we get each year, Jesus reveals that he does for us essentially three things. For us to be good sheep of the Good Shepherd, we need to allow him to shepherd us in these three ways:

* He calls each of us by name and leads us out. He gives us a vocation. We hear and recognize his voice. He guides us and we follow him.

* He lays down his life for us. “No one,” he says, takes my life from me; I freely lay it down. I have the power to lay it down and the power to take it up again.” That’s what Jesus does in his passion, death and resurrection. He loves us enough that he freely dies so that we may leave. He leaves the 99 behind and comes after us! What an incredible Good Shepherd we have!

* He gives us eternal life, puts us in the Father’s strong hands, protects us from thieves and marauders and promises that if we remain with him we shall never perish.

* Jesus continues to call us, lay down his life for us, and give us eternal life, but does it for the most part by calling some of his sheep and making them effective shepherds. He takes disciples and makes them apostles and guardians. He wants to do this with each of us. If we’re good sheep, then he wants us to become in our own circumstances a good shepherd of others, someone who helps Jesus feed, guide and protect others in this name. This is what is meant to happen in the lives of young people who become parents. This is what occurs when older brothers and sisters mature. This is what occurs with godparents faithful to their responsibility. This is what is supposed to occur in every Christian as we look at family members,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Saturday of the Third Week of Easter

Memorial of St. Fidelis of Sigmaringen

April 24, 2021

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

 

To listen to a recording of this homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.24.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in this homily: 

* Today we come to the dramatic conclusion, the eighth part of our second Easter octave, the “mystagogical catechesis” of Jesus’ Bread of Life discourse that the Church has us ponder every Easter season to help us to enter more deeply into Jesus’ risen life through the Holy Eucharist. After Jesus communicates to us that he is the True Manna God the Father gives us each day, that in order for us to have life we must live off of him, that he in the Eucharist is the fulfillment of the miracle of the multiplication of loaves and fish, today we are confronted with three possible responses to all he has said. These responses are those of every age, and they can help us gauge our own.

* The first response is rejection. Throughout the Discourse, Jesus has been dialoguing fundamentally either with the “crowds” or the leaders of the “Jews.” They struggled with Jesus’ words about gnawing on his flesh and drinking his blood, which — without the Eucharistic context we are now aware of after the Last Supper — sounded cannibalistic and gross. But today Jesus’ dialogue is with the disciples and then with the twelve disciples whom he had chosen as apostles. These were the people who had been with Jesus for up to two years, observing him heal lepers, the lame, the blind, watching him cast out demons and raise the dead, hearing his great sermons and parables, and making the decision to follow him. But many of the disciples slammed on the breaks when it came to what Jesus was saying about the need to eat his flesh and drink his blood to have any life within them. “This saying is hard,” they say in today’s Gospel, “who can accept it?” They were right that the teaching is hard, but let’s face it, many of Jesus’ teachings are hard: to forgive 70 times 7 times, to love our enemies, to pray for our persecutors, to turn the other cheek, to pick up our Cross each day to follow him, to save our life by losing it, to go the way of the grain of wheat, to cut off our hands and feet and pluck out our eyes if they lead us to sin, and — most of all — to love the Lord with all our mind, heart, soul and strength. These are all hard. Some are even excruciatingly hard. But who can accept it? Someone with faith can accept it! These disciples seemed to behave as if they didn’t anticipate Jesus would challenge them to leave their comfort zones, not to mention to die to themselves so as to live by Him. But that’s what he was doing. That’s what he is always doing. And that’s what we have to confront. Jesus calls them out on this. He says, “Does this shock you? What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? … But there are some of you who do not believe.” They simply didn’t have the faith or the willingness to accept something shocking, even if Jesus were saying it. Ultimately they didn’t believe in Jesus enough. And St. John tells us later, “As a result of this, many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer walked with him.” They abandoned Jesus because of his teaching about the Eucharist. Note that Jesus didn’t run after them saying that they had misunderstood him. He also didn’t water down the truth. He knew that they had understood him clearly but they just didn’t have the faith to believe in Him enough to believe in what he taught. Still today there are many who don’t believe in Jesus’ teaching in the Eucharist, finding it too hard to endure.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, New York, NY

Friday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time

Memorial of St. George

April 23, 2021

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

 

To listen to a recording of this homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.23.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in this homily: 

* Today and tomorrow Jesus gets to the climax of his Bread of Life discourse in the Capernaum Synagogue that the Church has us ponder as a mystagogical catechesis every Easter season so that we may experience the “newness of life” that Jesus died and rose to give us. Today we get to the doctrinal climax; tomorrow to the moral climax. After speaking to us about how he is the True Manna given to us every day as our supersubstantial nourishment, how the Father draws us to this gift, and how we’re supposed to respond to this gift by faith — listening to, learning and doing what Jesus says — today Jesus summarizes everything in words that would have sounded almost brutally raw and somewhat sickening to his original listeners.

* After Jesus said at the end of yesterday’s Gospel that the bread he would give for the life of the world “is my flesh,” the Jews quarreled among themselves asking a totally understandable question, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” At first glance it would seem almost as if he were calling them to cannibalism. None of what Jesus was asking would make sense until a year later when Jesus would take bread and wine during the Last Supper, totally change it into his Body and Blood and give it to them to eat and drink. But Jesus was here stressing the aspect of faith, that trusting in him means to trust in what he was saying. They might have legitimate questions about how they would eat his flesh and drink his blood, but they shouldn’t doubt the reality of what he was saying. And Jesus would say that whether or not they ate and drank his body and blood worthily was something of tremendous consequences.

* Swearing an oath, he said, “Amen, amen I say to you, unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood, you do not have life within you.” The Greek word for “eat” is actually gnaw, the way an animal rips every last ounce of meat off of a bone. Jesus assures us that we’re lifeless unless we enter into communion with him through his Body and Blood. We’re lifeless unless we’re living off of him. But if we live off of him we will live forever: “Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.” Then he gives two analogies as to how this works, the first of food and the second of filiation. “For my Flesh is true food, and my Blood is true drink. Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood remains in me and I in him.” We simply become what we eat and if we eat Jesus’ living flesh and blood we will remain in him and his irrepressible life will remain in us. The second analogy is filiation: “Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.” Jesus in the Eucharist will become the source of our regeneration, our rebirth, our remaking through our entering into his own eternal sonship. That’s the essence of the Christian life. In baptism, we die in Christ and are raised from the dead in him, but we grow in that new life day-by-day through Eucharistic communion with Jesus.

* This lesson about living off of Jesus in Holy Communion each day and thereby becoming one with him is illustrated in today’s memorable first reading that details the conversion of St. Paul. When Saul was “breathing murderous threats against the disciples of the Lord” and had gone 117 miles to Damascus to try to arrest Christians and drag the...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Thursday of the Third Week of Easter

April 22, 2021

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

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.22.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today Jesus continues his Bread of Life discourse reinforcing a couple of the points he’s made earlier during the mystagogical catechesis of this “second octave of Easter” focused on how we encounter him Risen from the dead in the holy Eucharist and how we enter into communion with the eternal life he gives us through that encounter. As the true Manna, he compares and contrasts himself to the manna God provided in the desert. “Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat of it and not die.” He is the daily food of everlasting life that God gives. But we need to respond with faith to this gift. Jesus says, “Whoever eats this bread will live forever… and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” Just like the Jews needed to eat the Passover lamb, just like the Israelites needed to consume the manna, so we need to eat the nourishment God gives us. But doing so isn’t a magical act, that if we consume the Eucharist we will automatically live forever. St. Paul tells us that those who eat the body and blood of the Lord unworthily eat and drink condemnation upon themselves (1 Cor 11:29). The Sequence of Corpus Christi reminds us that the Bread of Life becomes the bread of death for those who consume unworthily (Sumunt boni, sumunt mali, sorte tamen inaequali, vitae vel interitus. Mors est malis, vita bonis: vide paris sumptionis quam sit dispar exitus: “both good and bad receive, but to totally different results, one to life and the other to the tomb. Death to the evil, life to the good. Behold how different is the end of a similar consumption”). Eating the Body and drinking the Blood of the Lord is meant to lead us to a true Holy Communion of life with Jesus, to enter into a new life, a risen life, and it’s that communion of life that brings us to eternal life.

* This main focus of this section is how to approach Jesus in the Eucharist with consequential faith, as he seeks to train us to enter into that communion with him. It’s about docility. Right before this passage, Jesus’ listeners objected saying, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph? Don’t we know his mom and dad? How can he say, ‘I have come down from heaven?’” In tomorrow’s passage, we’ll see how many of Jesus’ disciples object to his “difficult” teaching asking, “Who can endure it?” And on Saturday, Jesus will ask his apostles point-blank whether they can accept what Jesus is saying or whether they’ll abandon him over his teaching on the Eucharist. So just as Jesus yesterday talked about faith, today he talks about the docility that comes in faith. “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him, and I will raise him on the last day.” God will give us the grace to be drawn to the Eucharist, but we need to let him help us overcome our resistance. Jesus adds, “It is written in the prophets, ‘They shall all be taught by God,” and we need to allow ourselves to be taught by him. This involves both listening and learning. Jesus says, “Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me.” God the Father draws us by letting us hear his words through his Son, but we need to do more than hear idly. We need to allow Jesus the Master to teach us. We must become his faithful disciples (students), by believing what he teaches, learning the truth, and living it. In the Opening Prayer of today’s Mass,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the Third Week of Easter

April 21, 2021

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/4.21.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following points were pondered in the homily:

* Today Jesus continues for us his Bread of Life Discourse in Day Five of the mystagogical Eucharistic catechesis that the Church gives us every Easter season so that we can ponder how we’re supposed to encounter the Risen Jesus and experience within us the power of his resurrection and risen life. While he was saying these words in the Capernaum Synagogue, no one really knew what he meant, about how he was to be the Bread of Life, how we were to eat his flesh and drink his blood and have life because of him. As we’ll see on Saturday, not even the apostles could understand how that was possible. It would only begin to make sense one year later when Jesus would take bread and wine into his hands during the Last Supper and totally change them into his Body and Blood, give himself to the apostles to eat and ordain them with the power to go out and do this in memory of him, so that we, too, could live off of Jesus. At the time, however, people were wrestling with the unpleasant cannibalistic overtones not to mention the aspects of Jewish law, particularly concerning touching not to mention drinking blood, that would make them ritually impure. So Jesus needed to focus on faith. He had said before that the work of God is to believe in the One God sent, and obviously to believe in Jesus is to believe in what he said. At the very end of the discourse, when Jesus asked the apostles whether they wanted to abandon him over the hard teaching of the Eucharist, Peter said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” He was confessing he had no idea how he would eat Jesus’ Body and drink his blood, but because he believed in Jesus, he would believe in what he was teaching, even though it exceeded his capacity for imagination and comprehension at the time. Today Jesus focuses on the process of faith needed to accept his words on the Eucharist and enter into risen life with him through his Body and Blood.

* Jesus’ words about faith in the Eucharist are really important for us today because, frankly, many Catholics have ceased to be scandalized by the Eucharist. Instead of thinking they’re consuming Jesus’ body and blood, many just believe they’re consuming “bread” and “wine.” They might think they’re doing something holy, but they’re not really conscious that they are preparing to do by far the most unbelievable action a human being could ever do, which is to enter into Communion with the One through whom all things were made. Just like Jesus said to those in the Capernaum Synagogue, so he could say to many Catholics, “Although you have seen me, you do not believe.” So let us ask Jesus to increase our faith as we ponder anew the words he says to us today!

* Jesus describes various stages of the process of faith in today’s Gospel.

* The first stage is grace. “Everything that the Father gives me will come to me.” Elsewhere he’ll say that no one can come to him unless the Father draw him. Faith is an unmerited gift of the loving Father. The Father first attracts.

* The second step is coming to Jesus. We come into his presence. “I will not reject anyone who comes to me,” Jesus says.

* The third step is seeing Jesus. Like St. John seeing the empty tomb, we need to “see and believe.” We need to do more than behold Jesus with physical eyes; we need to see him, we could say,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Tuesday of the Third Week of Easter

April 20, 2021

Acts 7:51-8:1, Ps 31, Jn 6:30-35

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.20.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily:

* Today we enter into the fourth day of the Octave of mystagogical catechesis on the Holy Eucharist and how through this divine gift we intensify our relationship with the Risen Christ.

* Today, after Jesus stressed that the work of God was to believe in Him whom the Father had sent — which, to facilitate that faith, Jesus had worked the “sign” of the multiplication of loaves and fish and walked on water — the crowds nevertheless asked, “What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you?” The sign that he had just worked across the Sea of Galilee for them, multiplying a small boy’s dinner of five buns and two small fish to feed a crowd of 5,000 men, a sign that got them to follow him several miles along the upper lip of the Sea in a flotilla of boats, was apparently not miraculous enough for them, nor were any of the scores of cures that he had worked in Capernaum in previous visits. Still obsessed about food and free meals, they asked him for a sign that the rabbis had long said that the prophet whom Moses had said would eventually come after him (Deut 18:15) would work to show that he was Moses’ successor: just like Moses had fed the Israelites in the desert with manna, so the one who would come after him would do the same and rain down from them this daily nourishment from heaven. So they said to him, “What can you do? Our ancestors ate manna in the desert, as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”

* We remember the story of the manna. The Jews were grumbling in the desert, fearful that they would starve to death. So Moses brought their complaints and pleas to God, and God replied by saying, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day” (Exod 16:4). And every morning for forty years, they awoke to find a miraculous edible dew that looked like coriander seed, with the white like gum resin, tasting like wafers made with honey (Num 11:7; Exod 16:31). They Israelites had no idea what it was, and hence called it “manna,” which literally means, “What is it?” Moses told them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat” and instructed them to gather as much of it as each one needed for a day. This is how they survived in the desert for forty years, until they reached the promised land.

* In reply to that test for a sign, Jesus first corrected them, saying it wasn’t Moses who gave them the manna, but God the Father. Then he basically said that the rabbis were right and the One to whom Moses would point would in fact give them this celestial food, but that he was that true Manna, the food that people need to survive in the desert of human life: “Amen, amen, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

* Their response was materialistic but nevertheless prophetic: “Sir, give us this bread always,” and Jesus made plain what the sign he would give a year later during the Last Supper as a perpetual response to that prayer would be: “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.” That’s the food for which he wants us to labor — as he told us in yesterday’s section of this discourse — more than the most hardworking parent strives to put material food on his kids’ table.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Monday of the Third Week of Easter

April 19, 2021

Acts 6:8-15, Ps 119, Jn 6:22-29

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.19.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today in the Gospel we continue our annual “second” Easter Octave within the Church’s mystagogical season of Easter, allowing Jesus to show us the most important way we will be able to experience the newness of life to which our share in his Resurrection that begins in baptism — today is the 51st anniversary of my baptism —  is meant to lead us: a communion with him in his Risen life by means of the Holy Eucharist. On Friday, we witnessed the foretaste of the miraculous multiplication of his Body and Blood throughout all time and space in the multiplication of the loaves and fish. This was not only a Messianic sign, even a divine sign of the Lord’s preparing a banquet on a mountain for his people (Is 25), but something pointing to the two greater banquets: the banquet of the Eucharist and the banquet of eternal life. Immediately after that miracle, Jesus went up on the mountain to pray and the disciples got into the boat from and crossed westward toward Capernaum. As we saw on Saturday, Jesus walked on the water toward them to show that he transcended the power of death, symbolized by the churning waters and the drowning they portended, so that, upon disembarking, he would be able to take those following him from the natural to the supernatural, by offering them the food that would help them transcend the power of death by entering into communion with Him risen from the dead.

* Those who had received the free meal had come the seven-mile journey along the north lip of the Sea of Galilee looking for Jesus there. Because they knew Jesus hadn’t gotten into the boat with the other disciples, they asked, “Rabbi, when did you get there?” But Jesus wasn’t interested in small talk. He wanted to help them to grow in faith, to help them to recognize why they were following him and to challenge him to follow him for the right reasons. “Amen, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs” — in other words, because you saw me perform a miracle and it’s led you to put faith in me and in my words — “but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” They came looking for another free meal, a divine handout, seeking Jesus as a means to address their material hungers and needs. This is not evil in itself. Jesus would teach us to pray, “Give us today our daily bread.” Many come to the Lord not just with wants but real material needs, not knowing how to pay the rent, or put food on the table, purchase medications, or find a job to help support loved ones. God wants to hear these prayers. As a loving Father, he wants us to bring our needs to him. It wasn’t this that Jesus was criticizing. Jesus was criticizing the fact that they had stopped there, that they were concerned most about their material needs. Just as with all the healing miracles, however, Jesus in the multiplication of the loaves and the fish was doing a sign to help them to come to ask him for something far more than loaves and fish.

* Jesus tells them, and tells us, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” So many people, good people, spend most of their lives working to put food on the table, to nourish themselves and their families. We all know how important that is, but Jesus is saying that as hard as we work to fulfill that duty of love, we must work much harder for the food that he will give us, the food of eternal life.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

April 17, 2021

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.17.21_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.

* If ever there were a day for a party, it was the day Jesus rose from the dead! It was the happiest day in all of human history, made more jubilant by ending the terrible despair and dejection of the disciples over the previous two days. And once the immense shock of seeing Jesus risen from the dead walk through the closed doors of the Upper Room to greet them had worn off, St. Luke tells us that the disciples were “incredulous for joy and amazed.” But they didn’t run out for gallons of wine or ask Jesus to convert water into champagne. Jesus didn’t call for cakes and fruit and other Middle Eastern celebratory fare. Instead, in the midst of the joy of his resurrection, Jesus turned the Upper Room into a vocational training school and began to finish the training of the disciples and apostles to fulfill his saving mission. There was a certain urgency involved in this that Jesus didn’t want to put off until the morrow: the fields were white and ready for the harvest (Jn 4:35) and Jesus wanted the apostles and the disciples with them to get ready to go out to take in that harvest.

* In the Gospel, we see how he finishes his preparations so that they might become his witnesses to all nations. He did it in three steps.

* First, he allowed himself to be seen, to be encountered, to be embraced — They were troubled and he came to give them his peace. This, we can say, points to the need for prayer, to come into the presence of the Lord, so that he may likewise give us his peace. He showed them his body and invited them to touch him. He wasn’t a ghost. He wasn’t imaginary. He was real. St. Luke tells us that they were amazed and incredulous for sheer joy. This points to the need for us to recognize that Jesus’ presence with us isn’t phantasmic, but real. He’s not a ghost but he’s got real flesh and blood. We can see him. We can touch him and not just on the “outside” but on the inside. All of this points to the importance of the Eucharist, which is meant to amaze us and make us “incredulous for sheer joy.” This truth that seems too good to be true actually is true, God is with us in his risen body and blood, and he comes to give himself to us. Any apostle needs to live a Eucharistic life, to be amazed at God’s gift of himself and bring that joy out to others.

* Second, “he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.” — Just like he had done hours before with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, whose hearts he had made burn as he interpreted to the things about himself in the scriptures, so Jesus filled his apostles with a similar fire, showing them, too, how everything foretold had been accomplished. He was the fulfillment of Joseph’s being betrayed by his brothers; of the innocent Abel, killed by his brother Cain; of Isaac, who carried the wood of the sacrifice on his shoulders to be sacrificed on Mount Moriah (which later became Jerusalem); of the Suffering Servant, whom Isaiah prophesied would be “wounded for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities”; of the Passover Lamb, who needed to be slain and eaten for the Jews to be set free; of all of the prophecies of the traits of the Messiah and more. As St. Luke’s Gospel summarizes,