Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Memorial of Mary, Mother of the Church

Foundation Day of the Sisters of Life

June 1, 2020

Gen 3:9-15.20, Ps 87, Jn 19:25-34

 

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

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today for the third time, the Church celebrates with joy the Memorial of Mary, Mother of the Church, decreed in 2018 by Pope Francis to occur on the Monday after Pentecost. Today is also the 29th anniversary of the foundation of the Sisters of Life. It’s a blessed concurrence, because so many of the elements of the maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary are so central to your charism.

* Today’s feast is not just about growing in appreciation and understanding of the importance of Mary’s spiritual maternity but also concerns the way we’re all called not just to receive the fruits of her love but to love her as Jesus did. Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, wrote in his Decree establishing this memorial that in the scene we have in today’s Gospel of Mary with John on Calvary, “The Mother standing beneath the cross accepted her Son’s testament of love and welcomed all people in the person of the beloved disciple as sons and daughters to be reborn unto life eternal. She thus became the tender Mother of the Church which Christ begot on the cross handing on the Spirit. Christ, in turn, in the beloved disciple, chose all disciples as ministers of his love towards his Mother, entrusting her to them so that they might welcome her with filial affection.” So this feast is not just about the privilege we have to receive Mary’s love but about the call we have, with Christ, to love his mother with filial affection!

* It’s important for us to understand a little bit of the history of this feast because it shows us how the Holy Spirit has been guiding the Church throughout the centuries to recognize Mary’s maternity of the Church and respond with Christ-like Marian love.  St. Augustine and St. Leo the Great all spoke about the maternity of Mary in the Church. St. Augustine said that she is “acknowledged and honored as being truly the Mother of God and of the redeemer” but she must also be considered “the mother of the Members of Christ … since she has by her charity joined in bringing about the birth of believers in the Church, who are members of its head.” St. Leo said that the birth of Christ the head is also the birth of the Church his Body. Pope Benedict XIV in 1748 and Pope Leo XIII affirmed Mary as mother of the Church but it was Pope St. Paul VI who formalized the title. It was a result of the focus that the Second Vatican Council gave to Mary, taking a schema for a separate document on Mary and incorporating its insights and the Council’s teaching on Mary into the eighth and “summit” chapter of Lumen Gentium, its dogmatic constitution on the Church. On November 21, 1964, as the third session of the Council was closing, St. Paul VI reflected joyfully on the significance of putting Mary into the dogmatic Constitution and said it was time to “fulfill the vow we highlighted at the end of the last Session and that many Council Fathers have made their own, insistently asking that during this Council the maternal mission that the Blessed Virgin Mary fulfills in the Christian people be explicitly declared. For this reason, it seems necessary that in this public setting we officially announced a title with which the Blessed Virgin is honored,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Pentecost Sunday 2020

May 31, 2020

Acts 2:1-11, Ps 104, 1 Cor 12:3-7.12-13, Jn 20:19-23

 

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

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The following text guided today’s homily: 

* Ten days ago, we pondered how Jesus, before he ascended to the Father, enjoined the apostles not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the “promise of the Father” about which they had heard him speak, for “in a few days,” he said, “you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” The apostles and the other followers of Jesus very wisely huddled around Mary in the same Upper Room in which Jesus had given them his Body and Blood, the same Upper Room in which they had barricaded themselves after Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion, the same place wherein he had appeared to them on Easter Sunday. And it was there that they all “devoted themselves with one accord to prayer.” They prayed together with Mary in order to learn from her how to get ready to receive the “promise of the Father,” for it was she who was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit at Jesus’ virginal conception and who continually lived as a Spouse of the Holy Spirit, receiving and responding to his inspirations in an exemplary way.

* During these days they doubtless contemplated the words of Sacred Scripture, how the Spirit of God hovered over surface of the deep and helped bring creation out of chaos (Gen 1:2), how God through the Prophet Joel had promised, “I will pour out my spirit on all flesh and your sons and your daughters will prophesy” (Joel 3:1-2), how God through the Prophet Ezekiel had said, “I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes” (Ez 36:26-28), how through the Prophet Jeremiah God had declared, “I will put my law within them and I will write it upon my hearts.” During these days they similarly would have pondered Jesus’ words about how Jesus had first told the Samaritan woman and later those present in the Temple area, “Let the one who believes in me drink. Just as Scripture says, ‘From within him will flow rivers of living water,’” and St. John tells us, “He said this about the Spirit whom those who believed in him were going to receive” (Jn 4:10.13-14, 7:37). They would have meditated on the many things he had said to them at the Last Supper, that the Father and He would send them another Advocate or Paraclete, who would teach them all things, remind them of everything Jesus taught, guide them into all truth, teach us what we ought to say, bear witness to and glorify Jesus, convict the world about sin, righteousness and condemnation, and dwell in us and be in us (Jn 14:6,16,26; Jn 15:26; Jn 16:8,13-14; Mt 10:17-20). They would also have prayed over the scene in today’s Gospel, on the night of the Resurrection, when Jesus walked through the closed doors of the Upper Room, breathed on them just like God had breathed into Adam at the beginning of Creation, and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

* United with Mary as their retreat director, they prayed and they waited. Jesus hadn’t told them how long they were to remain in prayerful expectation of the fulfillment of the Father’s promise. So their first holy hour stretched into a day of recollection. They eventually went to bed and awakened and prayed a whole second day. They might have thought that, just as God the Father had had them wait until the third day for Jesus’ resurrection, the Holy Spirit would come after three days that seemed like an eternity. But he didn’t come. So they prayed a fourth day. A fifth day. Now this was taking on the form of a retreat. A sixth day. They were doubtless wondering if the Holy Spirit would come on the seventh day, the day of divine rest. But they were thwarted again.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for Pentecost Sunday (A), Vigil

May 30, 2020

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.30.20_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us on Pentecost Sunday.

* The Gospel we have, Jesus tells the first apostles in the Upper Room and all of us, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” What does it mean to receive the Holy Spirit?

* We can ponder several things from Sacred Scripture. For example, on Holy Thursday, during the Last Supper, Jesus said that the Holy Spirit: would teach us everything and remind us of all that Jesus had told us, that the Holy Spirit would testify to Jesus and help us testify, and that the Holy Spirit would convict the world with regard to sin, and righteousness and condemnation. To receive the Holy Spirit, therefore, means that we cooperate with the Holy Spirit’s assistance to get to know Jesus and his teaching much better, to remember it, to share it, to live it, to thank God incessantly for it. To receive the Holy Spirit means to cooperate with him in testifying to Jesus, that he is with us always until the end of time, calling us to joy, to life, to love. To receive the Holy Spirit means to fight against sin, to seek righteousness or holiness, and to rejoice in the condemnation of the ruler of this world.

* To receive the Holy Spirit. We can learn a lot about how to do that through remembering what happened on that first Pentecost. Before his Ascension Jesus had enjoined the apostles not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the “promise of the Father” about which they had heard him speak, for “in a few days,” he said, “you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” The apostles and the other followers of Jesus very wisely huddled around Mary and “devoted themselves with one accord to prayer.” They prayed together with Mary in order to learn from her how to get ready to receive the Holy Spirit, for it was she who was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit at Jesus’ virginal conception and who continually lived as a Spouse of the Holy Spirit, receiving and responding to his inspirations in an exemplary way. United with her they prayed and they waited. Jesus hadn’t told them how long they were to wait in prayerful expectation. So their first holy hour stretched into a day of recollection. They eventually went to bed and awakened and prayed a whole second day. They might have thought that, just as God the Father had had them wait until the third day for Jesus’ resurrection, the Holy Spirit would come after three days that seemed like an eternity. But he didn’t come. So they prayed a fourth day. A fifth day. Now this was taking on the form of a retreat. A sixth day. They were doubtless wondering if the Holy Spirit would come on the seventh day, the day of divine rest. But they were thwarted again. The eighth day. Were they going to have to do this forever? The ninth day. They kept praying and waiting. And it was finally on the tenth day, the feast of Pentecost, that the Holy Spirit burst through the windows of the upper room like the noise of a strong driving wind, came down upon each of them as tongues of fire.

* It’s important for us to ask why God had made them wait so long in prayerful vigil. Some might say that he wanted to wait until Pentecost, the day on which the Jews celebrated their harvest festival and the giving of the law on Mt. Sinai, to show that the Holy Spirit was the law of the New Covenant being place...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Feast of the Visitation (translated)

May 30, 2020

Zeph 3:14-18, Is 12:2-6, Lk 1:39-56

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.30.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily:

* It’s a great joy, today, as we prepare for Pentecost tomorrow and thank God for the gift of the Easter Season that we are able to celebrate the patronal feast of your Convent and the model mystery of your ministry to pregnant women, the Visitation. Throughout the Easter Season, we ponder the reality of the presence of the Risen Jesus with us, helping us, as St. Paul tells on at the Easter Vigil, to experience a “newness of life,” and in the Visitation, we see the difference the presence of Jesus makes. During this Decenarium to the Holy Spirit that we have been making since the Ascension, we seek to grow in our awareness of, and docility to, the action of the Holy Spirit, his gifts and the fruit of his presence, and in the Visitation we see the impact he makes in the life of all of the principal characters. And so it is fitting that we look at the Visitation in a special way through the prism of Pentecost and how the Holy Spirit helps people become aware of the presence of Jesus and respond.

* As we ponder the Mystery of the Visitation in the Holy Rosary every Monday and Saturday, we normally are drawn toward the five principal characters. The Holy Spirit impacts all five and his interaction with them can help us to learn how he seeks to help us relive part of the mystery more deeply.

* The first figure is the Blessed Virgin Mary. Today’s scene is a continuation, a complement, of what happened at the Annunciation when, as St. Matthew tells us, “she was found with child through the Holy Spirit” (Mt 1:18) as a result of what St. Luke tells us that the Archangel Gabriel had said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore he who is to be born will be called holy, the Son of God” (Lk 1:35). The prophet Isaiah had foretold that “the Spirit of the Lord will rest upon … the shoot that shall sprout from the stump of Jesse” (Is 11:1-2; 61:1) but here we see that the Holy Spirit’s descent upon Mary, and her miraculous virginal conception of that Shoot, is highlighted. God’s self-giving and Mary’s self-giving together in a spousal bond brings about the miracle. The Holy Spirit had already acted upon her in her Immaculate Conception. The cooperation between Mary and the Holy Spirit led to the incarnation and her response, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word,” (Lk 1:38) is already itself a fruit of the work of the Holy Spirit within her.  After the departure of the Angel, still overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, Mary similarly departed with haste. The Archangel didn’t tell her to go. He didn’t even suggest it. But at the mere mention of Elizabeth’s being pregnant in old age, Mary went with alacrity to help her. This shows her enormous faith in everything the Archangel said, not merely that she was pregnant with the eternal Son of God but that her seemingly sterile elderly cousin was similarly pregnant. The two pregnancies were linked by the Angel, just as the two mysteries are interconnected. She shows us how the Holy Spirit impels us, together with Jesus, to charity, to go faithfully in haste to care for those in need. We also see how the Holy Spirit was influencing her prayer along the way, leading her to all truth, helping her through the gift of Understanding to synthesize revelation in what was happening in her life.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

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

Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter

Memorial of St. Paul VI on the 100th Anniversary of his Priestly Ordination

May 29, 2020

Acts 25:13-21, Ps 103, Jn 21:15-19

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.29.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* In today’s Gospel, we have one of the most powerful and poignant scenes in the Gospel, which the Church gives us to help us to summarize the graces of the Easter Season and send us forward into Pentecost and beyond. Jesus meets Peter and six other disciples on the seashore of Galilee where he cooks them breakfast. At the end of the meal, he takes Simon Peter aside in order to restore his confidence after having totally denied Jesus three times on Holy Thursday just a couple of hours after saying that even if he should have to die for Jesus, he would never betray him. Peter was not yet able to experience the joy of Jesus’ resurrection fully because of the trauma of his sins. But Jesus needed him. Jesus wanted to solidify the rock on whom he was building his Church. So in response to Peter’s three-fold denial, Jesus gave him a chance to make a three-fold affirmation of love.

* But buried within the dialogue is a real drama, but to see you, we have to know a little Greek. The first time Jesus asks Peter if he loves him, the word he uses for love is agape, which means a total self-sacrificial type of love, the type of love Jesus himself showed when he said, “No one has any greater love than to lay down his life for his friends.” “Simon, son of John,” he was asking, “do you love me with agape?” Peter’s response, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you,” doesn’t use the word “agape,” but rather “philia.” He replies, in other words, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you as a friend.” Peter, after having broken his promise to die for Jesus before he ever would deny him, wasn’t going to make the same promise again. He was still carrying around the weight of his betrayal. So Jesus asked him a second time, “Peter, do you love me with agape, with total self-sacrificial love?” Peter replied again, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you with philia, as a friend.” So Jesus in the third question lowered himself to where Peter was comfortable and asked, “Simon, Son of John, do you love me with philia?” That’s when Peter was distressed. He knew the Lord was calling him to more but the Lord was acknowledging that Peter didn’t think he was capable of heroic love. He replied, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you as a friend.”

* Jesus, however, wasn’t going to leave Peter there. He said to him that when he was younger, he used to dress himself and go about as he pleased. But when Peter would grow old, another would “stretch out his hands” — a Greek euphemism for crucifixion — and lead him to a place he didn’t want to go, something, St. John said, was indicating the type of death by which Peter would glorify God. Jesus was telling him, “Even if you don’t want to say again publicly that you love me enough to die for me, you will love me that way, even being crucified for me.” And Jesus to emphasize the point said to him, “Follow me,” because Peter would follow him all the way.

* What’s the lesson for us? Each of us, too, has had times when we haven’t been faithful to God, but no matter what our falls, Jesus wants to restore us to be capable of a love like his, of a total self-giving love in response to Jesus’ love for us. And he indicates to Peter and to us how to show it, but feeding his lambs and sheep, and tending his flock. In other words, the way we would demonstrate our love for him would be by sacrificing ourselv...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

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

Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter

May 28, 2020

Acts 22:30.23:6-11, Ps 16, Jn 17:20-26

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.28.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today as we continue our preparations for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, we are provoked by today’s readings to examine the Holy Spirit’s work of unity. He is the personified loving union between the Father and the Son and he has been sent by the Father and the Son so that we might enter into that communion with God and with others, so that we might become one Body, one Spirit, in Christ. The ultimate, eschatological battle in which all of creation is engaged is one of communion versus disunity. Jesus came to reconcile all things in himself, to draw all things to himself on the Cross, to make us one flock with one Shepherd. This will culminate in heaven, when we hope to enter into the communion of saints within the communion of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But it is opposed by the work of the devil, who is always seeking to isolate us, divide us, and permanently alienate us from God and from others. The most accurate image of Hell is not one full of flames; it’s one in which everyone is as far as possible away from others… The choices we make here on earth are ultimately able to be understood as choices for or against communion with God and others.

* Jesus prays in the Gospel that we might be as united with each other as Father and Son are united, something that’s impossible for us but not impossible for God. This communion of saints among the communion who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit is the Spirit’s principal work. Everything else is an explicitation of that mission. Jesus prays for the success of that Mission in today’s Gospel with insistence, begging him that we might be one so that the world might know that he was sent by the Father and that the Father loves us just as he loves him. That’s an extraordinary prayer that points to the Holy Spirit’s mission. The world will be convinced of Jesus’ presence and mission by the way we’re united with each other. The world will be convinced of God’s personal love for each of us by the way love each other. Our union, our Christian communion brought about by the Holy Spirit, is the most important element of the new evangelization. That’s why we pray for that unity at every Mass as well, uniting ourselves as Bride to Bridegroom, as Body to Head, praying for that gift.

We might be tempted to dismiss Jesus’ prayer as something that sounds beautiful, but which is obviously utopian and beyond our grasp. But Jesus would never have prayed for something impossible. He, through whom we and the whole world were created, never engaged in “wishful thinking.” He not only knew the Truth about us and God, but enfleshed that Truth, fully aware of what was possible and what was not. It is also true that the Father would never refuse the prayer of his Son. As Jesus prayed before the raising of Lazarus, “I thank you, Father, for having heard me. I know that you always hear me” (Jn 11:42). The Father always hears his prayer. Therefore, if Jesus were praying that we be one, that we be as united among ourselves as are the Persons in the Blessed Trinity and that we abide in them as they abide in each other, then that must mean it is possible and is what should be the reality among us. This dual communion is, in fact, what will happen in heaven. If by God’s mercy we follow Christ all the way to heaven, we will be in full communion with the Communion-of-Persons-in-Love who is the Holy Trinity and in that communion, we will be in full communion with everyone else ...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the Seventh Week of Easter

Memorial of Saint Augustine of Canterbury

May 27, 2020

Acts 20:28-38, Ps 68, Jn 17:11-19

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.27.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were considered in today’s homily: 

* Today we continue to enter into Jesus’ prayer to the Father on Holy Thursday. Jesus says out loud the reason why he was speaking out loud to the Father, “I speak this in the world so that they may share my joy completely.” He said them aloud so that the apostles could hear them — and through them, we could hear them — and that we might share the joy Jesus came into the world to give us. Yesterday we focused on Jesus’ glorifying the Father and his leaving us in the world so that we might continue that work of glorification, by completing Jesus’ mission. Today Jesus mentions five different aspects of how we’re to complete that mission in communion with God and with each other.

* The first is a mind-blowing reality: He says that he’s one with the Father and he wants us to be as united to each other as the Father and the Son are united. That’s a gift of the Holy Spirit to bring about our communion just as he is the loving communion of the Father and the Son. Two days ago, we marked the 25th anniversary of St. John Paul II’s encyclical on Christianity Unity, “Ut Unum Sint,” taken from these words, “May they be one.” Insofar as Jesus will mention these words tomorrow twice more, we’ll leave them until then.

* Jesus stresses not once but twice that he doesn’t belong to the world and we shouldn’t belong to the world, emphasizing that we do not belong to the world “any more” than he does. Those are extraordinary words. He says that we’re supposed to have the same relationship to the world that he does and that we shouldn’t belong to the world any more than he.

* The way he brings about that “not belonging to the world” is he helps us to belong to the Father. He asks the Father to consecrate us so that we might belong to the Father just like he belongs to the Father. To be consecrated means to be cut off from the profane (sacer) to be with (con) God to such a degree that we share the mission the Father gave the Son. Jesus wants to cut us off from the world to be united to him so that united to him we might come out of love for the world to continue his work, so that the world might be saved.

* The way we will be consecrated to the Father is “in the truth” of his word. He is the Truth. He is the Word made flesh. To be consecrated in the truth means that we remain in him. It also means that we earnestly seek to remain in him through his Word, that we listen to his words as words to be done, words that help us to enter more deeply into the communion of God. That means we are “living the truth” and not attached to the world and the prince of this world, who is the father of lies.

* But Jesus knows that even after our consecration in baptism, we are still vulnerable, and so he asks the Father to protect us, just as Jesus himself sought to protect us in the Father’s name. He says that the world will hate us because, like him, we do not belong to the world, and the darkness of the world will seek to extinguish the light of Christ. For that reason, Jesus prays, not that we be taken out of harm’s way, but that we be protected from the Evil One and what the Evil One ultimately wants to accomplish, which is to make us worldly and through that alienate us forever from God. The response of Jesus to that diabolical strategy is consecration.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Easter

Memorial of St. Philip Neri

May 26, 2020

Acts 20:17-38*, Ps 68, Jn 17:1-19*

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.26.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* During the second half of the Easter Season, we focus on Jesus’ words during the Last Supper taken from the Gospel of John. For the past several weeks we have been pondering what we could call Jesus’ instructions to the apostles: for example, his washing the disciples’ feet to give us the example of washing other’s feet; his words about loving others as he has loved us; remaining attached to him the Vine and in him to the other branches; the suffering we’ll have to endure to give witness to Christ; the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and what the Holy Spirit will do. Today he continues to teach but he teaches us mystagogically, not pedagogically, as he prays and allows us to eavesdrop and enter into his prayer. It’s been called his great priestly prayer and in it we see why Jesus was living. He was living to glorify the Father. He asked God the Father to glorify him so that he could in turn glorify the Father. He glorified the Father by accomplishing the work the Father had given him to do, the work of revealing the Father’s love to the extreme in saving his sons and daughters. He also glorified the Father by leaving the disciples in the world so that they in turn could continue that saving work. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus, the Light of the World, said that his disciples would reflect his light and that others, in seeing their good deeds of love, would glorify God the Father in heaven. The greatest glorification of God the Father would take place when Jesus was exalted on the Cross. And the most luminescent, greatest deed of all is when we are lifted up on the Cross with Jesus, when we are willing to lay down our lives out of love for others, in simple deeds all the way to martyrdom.

* Someone who glorified God in this way and led many others to do so is St. Paul. Today we have his valedictory address to the Church in Ephesus, meeting with them at the port of Miletus. He describes his sufferings, tears and trials, the imprisonments and hardships that he endured and those that still awaited him, but through all of it, he says, he “did not shrink from telling you what was for your benefit,” “from proclaiming to you the entire plan of God,” from “bear[ing] witness to the Gospel of God’s grace, doing so in the square and in private, “in public or in your homes.” As he said to the Romans elsewhere, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel,” because he thought the whole Gospel was “good news” with power to save, and he wanted everyone else to know the truth that would set them free. Everything was with that goal in mind, to proclaim the full Gospel of God, including and especially the Cross. We spoke last week that he did not preach on the Cross in Athens, but when he arrived in Corinth, he resolved to know nothing but the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ and to preach it as God’s power and wisdom. Later, he would write to the Galatians that he glories in nothing but the Cross, by which the world has been crucified to him and him to the world. He would go so far as to say he had been crucified — glorified — with Christ and the life he now lives, he lives by faith in the Son of God who loved him and gave his life for him. He proves Jesus’ point about those disciples in the world glorifying both the Son and the Father, as his whole post-conversion life bore this witness.

* Today the Church celebrates a saint whose life simi...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Seventh Sunday of Easter (A), Vigil

May 23, 2020

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.23.20_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.

* This Sunday is frankly one of the more difficult ones for me to prepare a homily for a national and international broadcast because it’s different depending upon where you live. Some countries and dioceses have transferred the Solemnity of the Ascension from the 40th day after Easter, which was Thursday, until Sunday. Others have retained the Ascension on the 40th So we have two conversations we need to consider and connect today. Let’s try to do our best. Insofar as Jesus is our interlocutor in every prayerful conversation with the Gospel, everything is intrinsically coherent.

* We’ll take the Gospel for the Seventh Sunday of Easter first, since it happened first in time. In it we have the awesome privilege not only to eavesdrop on the prayer Jesus made to God the Father the night he was betrayed but to enter into Jesus’ conversation with the Father. Jesus begins by asking the Father to glorify him so that he could by glorify the Father. That mutual glory would happen, he says, through his giving eternal life to us and he defines eternal life as knowing God, knowing not in the sense of acquaintances or even great friends but Biblically, knowing someone in a totally committed spousal form. That mutual glory would happen, Jesus continued, by Jesus’ accomplishing the word the Father had given him to do, which was to save the human race through his passion, death and resurrection. That glory would also happen, Jesus says, by his being glorified in us, the Church, through our continuation of his mission. Jesus tells God the Father that while he is coming to the Father, we will remain in the world, and so he prays for us. He prays, as we see later in John 17, for three things.

* First, that we may be one, just as Jesus and the Father are one. That way, he says, everyone will know that the Father sent the Son and loves us just like he loves the Son. That’s an incredible prayer, that our communion with each other would resemble the communion in the Blessed Trinity. That’s why prayer and work for Church unity are so important for any true disciple of Jesus.

* Second, that God the Father protect us from the evil one. This is what we pray at the end of the Our Father, that we may not be led into temptation but delivered from evil. God the Father does protect us, while leaving us free, meaning we must choose to entrust ourselves to him rather than presumptuously thinking we can cavort with evil with no consequences.

* Third, that God the Father make us saints. Jesus asks that God the Father will consecrate us in the truth of God’s word. That word consecrate means to sanctify.

* The fourth flows from the first three: that the love with which the Father loves the Son may be in us and Jesus be in us. This is what happens when we truly united with God and each other, when we’re free of the evil one, when we become holy as God is holy.

* That conversation between Jesus and the Father is ultimately one of the most consequential conversations that has ever occurred. Jesus wants us to cooperate with that prayer for unity, for protection, for sanctity and for love. But we see in Jn 17 that he prays not only for us,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

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

Friday of the Sixth Week of Easter

May 22, 2020

Acts 18:9-18, Ps 47, Jn 16:20-23

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.22.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted during the homily: 

* It’s easy to see why the Church gives us today’s Gospel passage on the day after the Ascension of the Lord. Jesus says to us today, “I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice and no one will take your joy away from you.” These words certainly apply to what is to happen, we pray by God’s mercy, to each of us one day when we see Jesus in all his glory and we have a chance to rejoice with all the saints. But we know that these words were said during the Last Supper and were referring more precisely to what would happen over the course of the subsequent three days, that Jesus would be taken away from them, that they would mourn as many in the world were rejoicing, but that when Jesus would return risen from the dead, they would indeed rejoice with a joy that would know no bounds or end.

* What I’d like to focus on today, however, are two things that Jesus says to us in the Gospel that are central for our living our Catholic faith in light of Jesus’ Resurrection and Ascension to God’s right hand where he’s gone to prepare a place for us. The first is his image of childbirth as an analogy of what he was about to endure and what we as Christians need to endure. To describe the passage from grief to joy, he said, “When a woman is in labor, she is in anguish because her hour has arrived; but when she has given birth to a child, she no longer remembers the pain because of her joy that a child has been born into the world.” After the Fall, no woman looks forward to labor, but once a child is born, the pain of contractions and childbirth are all relativized due to the great joy of holding her baby in her arms. To experience that joy, however, you have to go through birth pangs. You can’t have the joy of a mom without it. It’s similar in the spiritual life. In order to enter into the joy of Jesus’ resurrection, we need to enter into his labor, his contractions, his pangs to bring about a new world. We need to enter into his Passion, death and resurrection. One of the reasons why many people, including Catholics, don’t experience this joy is precisely because they haven’t entered into labor with Christ. They haven’t grieved with Jesus over the sins that brought about the pains of spiritual childbirth. Jesus permits us some sufferings precisely so that we can appreciate the joy that comes from his redeeming presence. There’s a similar pain in the life of spiritual motherhood or fatherhood exercised by parents as well as by religious and priests. St. Paul wrote to the Galatians, “My children, for whom I am again in labor until Christ be formed in you!”(Gal 4:19). We suffer until the presence, the love, the joy of Christ be brought to completion in others. In summary, in human life there’s a concomitant experience between the pangs of childbirth and the joy of possession, but the latter is meant to overwhelm the former.

* That leads to the second point I want to capture from today’s Gospel: how Jesus says that when he comes back, “on that day you will not question me about anything.” They will have no more questions precisely because Jesus through his Resurrection — and all the more through his Ascension and eventual second coming — will become the definitive Answer to every fundamental question we have. If we’re wondering about the meaning of our or a loved one’s or a sick child’s suffering and death, we’re able to see that after the childbirth contractions of those sufferings,