Catholic Preaching

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

 

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

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The following text guided the homily: 

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

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.1.21_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.

* 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

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.30.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

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

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.29.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

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

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.28.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

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: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.27.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

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...

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,