Catholic Preaching

By Father Roger LandryReligion & Spirituality Christianity

Catholic Preaching episodes

June 26, 2025Building Our Life on the Word of God Calling Us to Holiness, 12th Thursday (I), Memorial of St. Josemaria Escrivà, June 26, 2025
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Acton University, Grand Rapids, MI
Thursday of the 12th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Josemaria Escrivà, on the 50th Anniversary of his Death
June 26, 2025
Gen 16:1-12.15-16, Ps 106, Mt 7:21-29

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
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The following outline guided the homily:
Two things in the Gospel in summary of the Sermon on the Mount:
Doing the will of God
Building our life on the rock.
It’s not enough to give God lip service or even being his instrument for great miracles. He wants us growing into his image and likeness, becoming more like him.
Similarly it’s not enough for us to listen to his words. He wants us to build our life on him.
The analogy of building houses is illustrative. In the ancient world some would build on sandy creek beds. Seemed easy. But wouldn’t last. Jesus wants us to build on his word.
Sara didn’t. God had spoken clearly to Abram and to Sara, but Sara grew impatient. She ceased to trust. She took matters into her own hands. Then it led to problems for Hagar, Ishmael and Abraham.
James called us to be doers of the word, not just idle listeners. Like Mary, let the word take on our flesh. To be a true member of his family, by hearing the Word of God and doing it.
Gregory the Great said, vita bonorum viva lectio.
Today the Church celebrates St. Josemaria Escriva. on the 50th anniversary of death. He was someone whose life was a commentary on Sacred Scripture. He responded to his vocation as a priest. Then to found Opus Dei. To take seriously our being made in God’s image and likeness. Be holy. Be perfect. This is God’s will for you, your sanctification. Not just in his own life but in everyone’s particularly the laity, particularly in one’s work.
Act on God’s call. To do his will. To build our life and all our work on his ongoing work of forming us to be more and more his image.
Today is the 26th anniversary of my priestly ordination. Priests are men of the word. Receive the Gospel. Most important thing is that they can help people hear the Word of God and act on it. To help people live the word of God.
Today we hear the word of God. We build on it. We don’t just cry out, but we seek to do his will as he says, “Do this in memory of me.”

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
Genesis 16:1-12, 15-16
Abram’s wife Sarai had borne him no children.
She had, however, an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar.
Sarai said to Abram:
“The LORD has kept me from bearing children.
Have intercourse, then, with my maid;
perhaps I shall have sons through her.”
Abram heeded Sarai’s request.
Thus, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan,
his wife Sarai took her maid, Hagar the Egyptian,
and gave her to her husband Abram to be his concubine.
He had intercourse with her, and she became pregnant.
When she became aware of her pregnancy,
she looked on her mistress with disdain.
So Sarai said to Abram:
“You are responsible for this outrage against me.
I myself gave my maid to your embrace;
but ever since she became aware of her pregnancy,
she has been looking on me with disdain.
May the LORD decide between you and me!”
Abram told Sarai: “Your maid is in your power.
Do to her whatever you please.”
Sarai then abused her so much that Hagar ran away from her.
The LORD’s messenger found her by a spring in the wilderness,
the spring on the road to Shur, and he asked,
“Hagar, maid of Sarai, where have you come from
and where are you going?”
She answered, “I am running away from my mistress, Sarai.”
But the LORD’s messenger told her:
“Go back to your mistress and submit to her abusive treatment.
I will make your descendants so numerous,” added the LORD’s messenger,
“that they will be too many to count.
Besides,” the LORD’s messenger said to her:
“You are now pregnant and shall bear a son;
you shall name him Ishmael,
For the LORD has heard you,
God has answered you.
This one shall be a wild ass of a man,
his hand against everyone,
and everyone’s hand against him;
In opposition to all his kin
shall he encamp.”
Hagar bore Abram a son,
and Abram named the son whom Hagar bore him Ishmael.
Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 106:1b-2, 3-4a, 4b-5
R. (1b) Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good,
for his mercy endures forever.
Who can tell the mighty deeds of the LORD,
or proclaim all his praises?
R. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Blessed are they who observe what is right,
who do always what is just.
Remember us, O LORD, as you favor your people.
R. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Visit me with your saving help,
that I may see the prosperity of your chosen ones,
rejoice in the joy of your people,
and glory with your inheritance.
R. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Alleluia
John 14:23
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Whoever loves me will keep my word,
and my Father will love him
and we will come to him.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Matthew 7:21-29
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’
will enter the Kingdom of heaven,
but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.
Many will say to me on that day,
‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name?
Did we not drive out demons in your name?
Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’
Then I will declare to them solemnly,
‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.’
“Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them
will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.
The rain fell, the floods came,
and the winds blew and buffeted the house.
But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock.
And everyone who listens to these words of mine
but does not act on them
will be like a fool who built his house on sand.
The rain fell, the floods came,
and the winds blew and buffeted the house.
And it collapsed and was completely ruined.”
When Jesus finished these words,
the crowds were astonished at his teaching,
for he taught them as one having authority,
and not as their scribes.
The post Building Our Life on the Word of God Calling Us to Holiness, 12th Thursday (I), Memorial of St. Josemaria Escrivà, June 26, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
17 min
June 25, 2025 The Entrepreneurial Vocation, Acton University, June 25, 2025
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
2025 Acton University, Grand Rapids, MI
June 25, 2025

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Tne Entrepreneurial Vocation 2025

The post The Entrepreneurial Vocation, Acton University, June 25, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
1 hr 16 min
June 22, 2025Remembering the Lord in the Way He Asks, Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of the Lord, June 22, 2025
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs, Auriesville, New York
Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of the Lord, Year C
June 22, 2025
Gen 14:18-20, Ps 110, 1 Cor 11:23-26, Lk 9:11-17

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
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The following text guided the homily:
We mark this year’s celebration of Corpus Christi, the great feast of the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus, in two special ways.
The first is yesterday’s celebration of the centenary of the beatification of the North American Martyrs.
Saint Isaac Jogues, St. Rene Goupil, St. Jean de Lalande, who gave their lives for God on these hallowed grounds, and their five fellow Jesuits who were killed in Ontario, left France to come here not just to bring books of the Bible and the holy words of God. They came not just to bring the works that flow from faith and try to bring education, care for the poor and elderly, medical care and more. They came to bring Christ himself in the Sacraments, especially in the Eucharist. They came not just to baptize individuals but to form communities of faith, Churches, built up by Christ himself in the Holy Eucharist, so that they might be one body, one Spirit in Christ.
The work of the North American martyrs was intensely Eucharistic. They came here essentially to help people enter into the pilgrim Church on earth, and our pilgrimage is a Eucharistic procession in which Christ in the most Blessed Sacrament accompanies us.
We see their Eucharistic love in the way St. Isaac Jogues responded to receiving Holy Communion after his arrival in France. Because he had had his canonical digits amputated in captivity, he couldn’t celebrate Mass according to the rubrics of the day and there were no other priests from whom he could receive. But after 18 months, on Christmas Day, back in France, he was able to receive, he said, that it was then that he could taste the sweetness of his deliverance from captivity, it was then that he began to live again.
We can see their Eucharistic love in the way the faith was passed on to St. Kateri Tekakwitha who was born here ten years after their martyrdom. As soon as she was baptized, she longed to receive Jesus in Holy Communion, and once she did, she sought to receive him every day and spend hours in adoration. She knew by faith the Eucharist is Jesus and she prioritized him. That’s what the missionaries, of course, were hoping for.
And we see it ultimately in why St. Isaac died. He died for wanting to celebrate Mass here. After he escaped to France, he longed to return. He was the only priest in the world who spoke Mohawk. He did return but the first time he came, he came as Ambassador of France protected by the French. He left here a Mass kit so that he wouldn’t have to carry on on a subsequent visit when he would return as a priest to serve the people. In the interim, the Mohawks suffered an influenza and they blamed it on the locked black box he had left, so that when he returned with the donné Jean de la Lande, the tomahawked him to martyrdom. He was killed for wanting to bring the Eucharist here.
And so today we remember that Corpus Christi isn’t merely something to celebrate, but to share. We’re called to be missionaries bringing Christ to others. As priests, sure. As lay people, as much as we can, particularly through inviting people to Mass and making Mass a priority, just like St. Kateri did.
That brings us to the second celebration.
The National Eucharistic Revival
Today is the formal end of the three year National Eucharistic Revival of the Church in the United States. We give thanks for the abundant fruits of the Revival. There were four pillars
To Reinvigorate Worship — In the last three years, Mass attendance, which had been on a seven-decade decline from 74 percent in the 1950s to 16 percent in 2021 climbed back to 24 percent over the last three years. It increased, in other words, by 50 percent during the Revival.
Personal Encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist through Eucharistic adoration, holy hours, Eucharistic processions and more — We’ve seen an explosion of Eucharist adoration across the land, especially among the young. Youth and young adult conferences now feature adoration and those are the highlights of their time together. Last year we had the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, 6500 miles combined, making a Eucharistic benediction over the country. This year there was a pilgrimage from Indianapolis to LA, finishing today, as well as a statewide procession in New Hampshire, another throughout Long Island, another along the coast of California. There have been more Eucharistic Corpus Christi processions in the last three years that most Catholic seniors have seen from the time they were children. We likewise have had many Eucharistic Congresses, like the one held here for the State of New York two years ago, with 8000 in attendance. Like the National Eucharistic Congress last year, with 55,000 in Indianapolis. We give thanks for all of these.
Robust Faith Formation — The bishops called for us to get to know our Eucharistic faith so much better. To realize that the Eucharist is Jesus under sacramental forms. They’ve urged us to pass it on with greater passion in our parishes, in our religious education classes, etc. One of the fruits we’ve seen over this time is a record numbers in recent times of young people wanting to become Catholic. Many college campuses have reported huge numbers of those in OCIA. They’re hungering for God!
Mission — The final pillar was mission, to share our Eucharistic faith with others, and to show the transformational power of the Eucharist in the way we make our lives Eucharistic, giving our own body and blood, our sweat, tears, efforts, money, all we are and have to bring Christ to others and others to Christ. This has received a great jump start during these last three years as we have been asked to invite people back one-by-one, and we see the fruits of the numbers in just the last three years.
While we give God abundant thanks for that progress, we recognize that there’s still so much work to be done.
Yes, we’ve had a 50 percent increase in Mass goers in the US over the last three years coming back from the post-COVID decline, but still three of four Catholics prioritize other things than Jesus on the Lord’s Day.
Yes, we’ve had an explosion of Catholics making time for Jesus in Eucharistic adoration, but most Catholics do not make one hour for Jesus a week.
Yes, we had a huge Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis, but even with 60,000, that was still only one of 1,000 of the 60 million Catholics in the US.
And we still have so many who treat Jesus in the Eucharist as a thing rather than as the eternal Son of God and Son of Mary.
There’s still so much work to do.
At a personal level, what impact has the Eucharistic Revival had on you? Where are you today compared to three years ago? Where are you today compared to where God wants you?
Do you prioritize coming to receive Jesus at Mass, not just on Sundays, but as often as you can during the week?
Do you make time for Jesus in adoration, even if that means coming a half hour before Mass to pray or staying after Mass?
Do you make time to celebrate and thank Jesus publicly for the Eucharist, by coming to things like yesterday’s Eucharistic Procession here on these beautiful grounds?
Have you learned the Catholic faith particularly about the Eucharist so that you can pass it on more faithfully to the young people in your family and parishes, so that you can pass it on to co-workers who aren’t Catholic, so that you can attract fallen away Catholics back?
And what type of impact does the Eucharist have in your life. Sometimes Catholics expect so little from receiving Jesus inside. They know if they take two Advil or Tylenol to expect some relief from a headache, but don’t think anything will take place from receiving the eternal Son of God. Does it inspire you to become holy, like the one you receive in Holy Communion? Does it inspire you to do this in memory of him, giving yourself to others in Christ-like love? Does receiving Jesus inspire you to bring Christ to others, like it inspired the North American Martyrs.
The formal end of the Eucharistic Revival is an opportunity for us not just to thank God for the gifts he’s given us, but to commit ourselves to extending the Revival in us and around us. The celebration of Corpus Christi is really not just to be a one-and-done thing each year, but the culmination of truly Eucharistic lives, as we allow Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist to change us.
The readings the Church gives us today are meant to help us appreciate two fundamental things about the Eucharistic Lord Jesus.
The first is that the Eucharist is the summit of salvation history. It wasn’t enough for Jesus to take on our human nature and be born of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It wasn’t enough for Jesus to preach, and heal, and exorcise. It wasn’t enough for him even to suffer, die, rise and ascend. He loved us so much that he gave us himself as our spiritual food, so that we, through, with and in him, might enter into the inner life of the Blessed Trinity, so that we might become one with him and with all those who are united in him.
All of history prepared us for this, from the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden onward: the sacrifice of Abel, the manna in the desert, the Passover Lamb, Jesus’ being born in Bethlehem, literally called House of Bread, and place in a manger, where animals were accustomed to eat. If you go to Mother Angelica’s beautiful Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville Alabama, there’s a Way of the Eucharist, like a Way of the Cross, with 12 different prophetic acts pointing to the Eucharist. If you go to the most beautiful Church in the country dedicated to the Eucharist, St. Jean Baptiste in New York City, you will find nearly 30 stained glass windows pointing to these scenes.
Today the Church gives us two of them. The first is Melchizedek and Abraham in the first reading. The thanksgiving sacrifice of Melchizedek, literally the Righteous King, was of bread and wine. This is obviously a foreshadowing of what Jesus, the true King of Righteousness, would offer, changing both bread and wine into his body and blood. The second is the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fish to feed the vast multitude, which is a foreshadowing of how Jesus has multiplied what he did at the Last Supper to feed us all. Just as in the multiplication Jesus asked the cooperation of the disciples and started with the meager raw materials of a couple fish and a few loaves of bread, so he asks us to cooperate in the Mass, not just providing the work of human hands in preparing bread and wine from his gift of grain and grapes, but ultimately providing ourselves, putting our lives on the paten, so that his gift of himself as Bridegroom and Head might be complemented by our gift as his Bride and Body. All of salvation history, indeed, has pointed to our becoming one with Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection, through the Mass, our entering into holy communion with him, our becoming one body, one spirit in him.
The second thing we learn is that this is the way Jesus wants us to remember him. Every Mass we hear the words, “Do this in memory of me.” He doesn’t just want us to do something, whatever we like. He wants us to do He wants us to celebrate Mass. He literally doubles down on this in today’s second reading when St. Paul recalls Jesus’ words. He tells us, “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’” Jesus wants us to remember him by meeting him in the Mass. The Jewish idea of remembrance — zikkaron — does not mean just to recall something from the past, but to actualize the past in the present. When they celebrated the Passover, they were just looking back centuries to ancient Egypt, but they were bringing the Passover into the here and now. When zikkaron was translated into Greek, the first Christians used the word anamnesis, literally not-forgetting. When we use the Memorial Acclamation, we do more than proclaim a fact. That’s why we can no longer use the phrase that was popular before the revision of the missals in 2011 — Christ has died, Christ is Risen, Christ will come again,” because it was just factual. The Memorial acclamation we proclaim is our entrance into the mysteries: “Save us, Savior of the World, for by your Cross and Resurrection, you have set us free;” “We proclaim your death, O Lord, and profess your resurrection, until you come again;” “When we eat this Bread and drink this Cup, we proclaim your death, O Lord, until you come again.” It’s all a conversation with a living Lord. We remember it’s he, here, for us, with us, right now. So when we remember Jesus, we just don’t recall his heroic, saving deeds of yesterday. He wants us to remember him in a way in which we meet him in the present, by this incredible gift of his Real Presence.
That’s why Jesus says, “Do this” in memory of him. He wants to encounter us. And so we have to ask, if we love the Lord Jesus, if we believe in him and everything he’s said and done, can we make him in the Eucharist the true center of our life. I remember as a freshman in college when the reality of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist finally dawned on me in all its beauty, I asked myself whether there was anything I could be doing on a Monday more important than receiving him, receiving God, inside. The answer was obvious. Same for a Tuesday. Same for every day. And I rejoice that I haven’t missed Mass since that day, September 23, 1988, as a layman or as a priest. Similarly, that’s what led me to want to spend time not just praying, but praying before him, as often as I could, in Eucharistic adoration, getting up earlier in order to pray in his presence. That’s ultimately one of the ways that he drew me to be a priest, so that I could make it possible for others to remember Jesus in this way, to receive him, to be with him, to take him out on Eucharistic processions and more. And so in his name I’d like to appeal to you to ask yourself whether you can respond to his self-giving love in the Holy Eucharist in greater ways through coming to Mass during the week, through getting to Church to pray before him in the tabernacle or monstrance, through inviting others to remember Jesus, too, in the way that he specifies.
This is what the Church over the last three years, helped by God from above, has been trying to revive. This is why St. Isaac Jogues, St. Rene Goupil, St. Jean de la Lande left France to come here to give their lives to help the natives learn and live. This is what Jesus is hoping for, as he says to us, “This is my body, given for you!” and “This is the chalice of my blood, the blood of the new and eternal covenant, poured out for you!”

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading I
Genesis 14:18-20
In those days, Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine,
and being a priest of God Most High,
he blessed Abram with these words:
“Blessed be Abram by God Most High,
the creator of heaven and earth;
and blessed be God Most High,
who delivered your foes into your hand.”
Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 110:1, 2, 3, 4
R (4b) You are a priest for ever, in the line of Melchizedek.
The LORD said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand
till I make your enemies your footstool.”
R You are a priest for ever, in the line of Melchizedek.
The scepter of your power the LORD will stretch forth from Zion:
“Rule in the midst of your enemies.”
R You are a priest for ever, in the line of Melchizedek.
“Yours is princely power in the day of your birth, in holy splendor;
before the daystar, like the dew, I have begotten you.”
R You are a priest for ever, in the line of Melchizedek.
The LORD has sworn, and he will not repent:
“You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.”
R You are a priest for ever, in the line of Melchizedek.
Reading II
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
Brothers and sisters:
I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you,
that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over,
took bread, and, after he had given thanks,
broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you.
Do this in remembrance of me.”
In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying,
“This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup,
you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.
Sequence
Lauda Sion
Laud, O Zion, your salvation,
Laud with hymns of exultation,
Christ, your king and shepherd true:
Bring him all the praise you know,
He is more than you bestow.
Never can you reach his due.
Special theme for glad thanksgiving
Is the quick’ning and the living
Bread today before you set:
From his hands of old partaken,
As we know, by faith unshaken,
Where the Twelve at supper met.
Full and clear ring out your chanting,
Joy nor sweetest grace be wanting,
From your heart let praises burst:
For today the feast is holden,
When the institution olden
Of that supper was rehearsed.
Here the new law’s new oblation,
By the new king’s revelation,
Ends the form of ancient rite:
Now the new the old effaces,
Truth away the shadow chases,
Light dispels the gloom of night.
What he did at supper seated,
Christ ordained to be repeated,
His memorial ne’er to cease:
And his rule for guidance taking,
Bread and wine we hallow, making
Thus our sacrifice of peace.
This the truth each Christian learns,
Bread into his flesh he turns,
To his precious blood the wine:
Sight has fail’d, nor thought conceives,
But a dauntless faith believes,
Resting on a pow’r divine.
Here beneath these signs are hidden
Priceless things to sense forbidden;
Signs, not things are all we see:
Blood is poured and flesh is broken,
Yet in either wondrous token
Christ entire we know to be.
Whoso of this food partakes,
Does not rend the Lord nor breaks;
Christ is whole to all that taste:
Thousands are, as one, receivers,
One, as thousands of believers,
Eats of him who cannot waste.
Bad and good the feast are sharing,
Of what divers dooms preparing,
Endless death, or endless life.
Life to these, to those damnation,
See how like participation
Is with unlike issues rife.
When the sacrament is broken,
Doubt not, but believe ‘tis spoken,
That each sever’d outward token
doth the very whole contain.
Nought the precious gift divides,
Breaking but the sign betides
Jesus still the same abides,
still unbroken does remain.
The shorter form of the sequence begins here.
Lo! the angel’s food is given
To the pilgrim who has striven;
see the children’s bread from heaven,
which on dogs may not be spent.
Truth the ancient types fulfilling,
Isaac bound, a victim willing,
Paschal lamb, its lifeblood spilling,
manna to the fathers sent.
Very bread, good shepherd, tend us,
Jesu, of your love befriend us,
You refresh us, you defend us,
Your eternal goodness send us
In the land of life to see.
You who all things can and know,
Who on earth such food bestow,
Grant us with your saints, though lowest,
Where the heav’nly feast you show,
Fellow heirs and guests to be. Amen. Alleluia.
Alleluia
John 6:51
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
I am the living bread that came down from heaven, says the Lord;
whoever eats this bread will live forever.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Luke 9:11b-17
Jesus spoke to the crowds about the kingdom of God,
and he healed those who needed to be cured.
As the day was drawing to a close,
the Twelve approached him and said,
“Dismiss the crowd
so that they can go to the surrounding villages and farms
and find lodging and provisions;
for we are in a deserted place here.”
He said to them, “Give them some food yourselves.”
They replied, “Five loaves and two fish are all we have,
unless we ourselves go and buy food for all these people.”
Now the men there numbered about five thousand.
Then he said to his disciples,
“Have them sit down in groups of about fifty.”
They did so and made them all sit down.
Then taking the five loaves and the two fish,
and looking up to heaven,
he said the blessing over them, broke them,
and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd.
They all ate and were satisfied.
And when the leftover fragments were picked up,
they filled twelve wicker baskets.
The post Remembering the Lord in the Way He Asks, Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of the Lord, June 22, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
41 min
June 21, 2025The North American Martyrs and Christian Heroism, Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs, Auriesville, New York, June 21, 2025
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs, Auriesville, NY
Centenary of the Beatification of the North American Martyrs
“The North American Martyrs and Christian Heroism”
June 21, 2025

To listen to an audio recording of today’s conference, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.21.25_The_North_American_Martyrs_and_Christian_Heroism_1.mp3

The following outline guided the conference:
Introduction
It’s a joy to be with you today here on these hallowed grounds to celebrate what happened 100 years ago today in the Vatican, when Pope Pius XI, the “Pope of the Missions,” beatified the North American Martyrs: St. Isaac Jogues, St. Rene Goupil and St. Jean de la Lande, who gave their lives for Christ and the Mohawks here, as well as St. Jean de Brébeuf, St. Antoine Daniel, St. Gabriel Lalemant, St. Charles Garnier, and St. Noel Chabanel, who gave the supreme witness of Christian faith, hope and love in Ontario.
Little did Saints Rene, Isaac and Jean know as they suffered here, as they were being tomahawked to death here, that they would be celebrated in St. Peter’s Basilica centuries later. Little did they know we would convene here today to give thanks to them and to God for them. But how fitting it is that we and the whole Church give that thanks.
It was 400 years ago Thursday, on June 19, 1625, that St. Jean de Brébeuf and St. Charles Lalemant arrived in Quebec with Fr. Énemond Massé to begin years of difficult and seemingly fruitless labors trying to plant the Gospel on North American soil. They would labor until 1629, when the British took over the territory and they would have to vacate New France. They had not gained during that time one single convert. But when France gained title over the region once more in 1633, they crossed the Atlantic anew, to try again. In the interim, St. Jean had helped to build a new seminary and was fruitfully forming new Jesuit priests for Christ. He could have continued that work. But he longed to bring Christ and his Gospel to the people here. And with courage and faith, he returned. Waves of others Jesuits joined. They would preach the Gospel with their words. They would preach the Gospel with their witness and example. They would ultimately testify to it by their blood.
All of us in the United States rejoice at the election of Pope Leo XIV six weeks ago, the first pope ever born in the United States. But today we celebrate something more significant. When the North American Martys were beatified a century ago today, Saints Isaac, Rene and Jean, became the first from America to be raised to the altars. There had never been a blessed from these shores. Likewise, when they were canonized five years and eight days later, they became the first to be canonized. The hierarchy that matters most is not that in the Church militant but the Church triumphant, and they are the first blessed and saints from the US. They are the first of what God wants to be a multitude. And as are forefathers in the universal call to holiness, they have much to teach us.
I’ve entitled this talk this morning “The North American Martyrs and Christian Heroism,” because they have much to teach us about the heroic virtue that sanctity demands. We look to them as true heroes of faith. But we are also urged to look on them as personal heroes, those whom we look up to, those whom we seek to imitate to the extent possible in our own circumstances.
You may know that on the road to beatification and canonization, the first step is an investigation of one’s life to determine whether one has lived the Christian faith to an heroic degree, especially that one’s life has been marked by heroic faith, hope and love. When someone dies a martyr, the determination is that one has died with heroic faith, hope and love as others sought to kill in hatred against the Christian faith. In both cases, we look not just for the theological virtues of faith, hope and love, but those virtues lived with heroism, lived when it wasn’t easy, lived in situations where that faith, hope and love would be tested and proven. Few of us will be asked to run the gauntlet, as Saints Isaac and Rene were upon their arrival in 1642 up the hill of martyrs, as they passed through people with sticks and clubs on both sides pummeling their bones, their flesh and their head. Few of us will have our fingers chewed to the bone or thumbs sawed off by a shell. Few of us will be starved and malnourished for years. Few of us will be tomahawked to death. But we will all, eventually, have our faith, hope and charity tested. That’s why we need heroes. Their example can strengthen us in our own circumstances to remain faithful, hopeful and loving at those moments and until the end. So that’s what I hope to focus on today, as we invoke the intercession of the North American Martyrs so that we, imitating their heroic virtues, we might come to share their heavenly reward.
So I would like to look at what they teach us about faith, hope and love, as well as about the courage to live them heroically.
Faith
We are now celebrating this year the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea and the Symbol, or Creed, they formulated and we profess each Sunday.
Against Arius, who denied Christ’s divinity. The Council proclaimed that Jesus was God from God, Light from Light, consubstantial with the Father and with the Holy Spirit.
We focus on the two aspects of faith.
Trust in God
Based on that trust in God, trust in what God reveals
Faith is first a total trust in God, a total adhesion of our being. The Catholic act of faith is that we believe in God who revealed himself to be Trinitarian, who took on our flesh, who founded a Church, who sent the Holy Spirit to guide that Church into all truth. Because of that trust, we believe in what God says and does, even when it exceeds our human capacity to know by reason.
As we mark the centenary of the beatification of the North American martyrs, we see this in Martha’s faith in the resurrection.
On this vigil of Corpus Christi, we see it Peter’s proclamation of the Eucharist.
The North American Martyrs had this type of faith. The believed in everything the Church taught. It was, and is, the real, real world. It was the light that guided their paths. It was the truth that set them free. It was the rock on which they sought to build their whole life. And because of that faith, they wanted others to come to live by that light, that truth, on that rock.
What about our faith? How fundamental is it to the way we look at everything in the world? Do we walk by faith? Do we prioritize the things of faith? How has our faith been tested? Has it been tested by particular moral teachings and temptations? Has it been tested by scandals in the Church? Has it been tested by the presence of other religions or the attacks by those of no religion? How do we respond to those tests?
It would have been easy for the North American Martyrs to have their faith tested.
It would have been tested when they became Jesuits, when French rationalists, when the still young Protestants and when Catholics who thought they loved God enough opposed their vocations and challenged them as to whether they were throwing their lives away.
It would have been tested hard during their seminary years as their Jesuit formators broke them down to build them up again, as they looked at their defects in a magnifying glass and needed to die to themselves so that Christ could live.
It would have been tested when they made the decision to give their lives to the missions in an unknown world. When they crossed the stormy seas. When they needed to adjust to the bitter cold winters, canoeing and then portaging or carrying their canoes and supplies over snow and ice.
It would have been tested living among those who believed and lived in a vastly different way and showed little receptivity to the Gospel. Three and a half years with no convert! Sowing on hardened soil. Is it possible they suffered temptations to wonder whether it was true for everyone.
It would have been tested obviously when they needed to suffer for it.
But it was precisely those tests, which they passed, that helped their faith to become heroic.
It is similarly going to be the tests our faith faces that will help them to become heroic.
God allows us those tests because he wants us to become holy. He allows us to be challenged by our culture, by our classmates, by our friends and family, even sometimes by those in the Church. But he’s with us always in the midst of those trials, perhaps seemingly asleep in the boat, seeking to help us of little faith learn to trust in him more. He wants us, too, to become heroic in faith, because that’s not only what we need but the Church needs. That’s the way we’re going to be able to show the real attraction of our faith in such a way that others can come to the Gospel, just like the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.
In this 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, we can look at whether we really live our life on our faith, on what we proclaim for example in the Creed, or whether we really just state the words.
Do I believe in God the Father and that he created the world?
Do I believe in God the Son, that God himself really entered the world by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, that he suffered and died, rose and ascended, and will come to judge the earth?
Do I believe in the Holy Spirit, as Lord and the one who gives us life, who has spoken through the prophets and wants to help us speak with true tongues of fire?
Do I believe in the Catholic Church as one, holy, catholic and apostolic?
Do I believe in what the Church teaches about baptism?
Do I believe in what the Church teaches about the forgiveness of sins? Our sins in the Sacrament? Our forgiving others their sins 70 x 7 times?
Do I believe in the communion of saints?
Do I believe in the resurrection of the flesh?
Do I believe in life everlasting?
Do I believe in these articles enough to give my life for them?
These questions lead us to the second virtue
Hope
We are now in the midst of the Jubilee of Hope.
Should have been a Jubilee of Faith but Pope Francis thought a Jubilee of Hope was more urgent. B16 wrote an encyclical in 2007 on hope because he thought it was urgent too.
We see the need for hope in high rates of despair, flowing from loneliness, isolation, individualism, fear and anxiety, lack of meaning, broken friendships and families, the problem of suffering and more.
We see the consequences of a lack of hope in all those pushing, and taking advantage of, what is euphemistically dubbed Medical Assistance in Dying, Physician Assisted Suicide, and other forms of euthanasia
We see the need for hope in the drug epidemic and other addictive behaviors, whether games, porn, or social media, all of which are escapes from reality.
We’ve seen it in the despair among young people that the world was imminently to cease because of climate catastrophes.
We’ve seen it in collapsing birthrates.
In the US, we’ve seen it in the results of the CDC’s biennial Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data Summary and Trends Report for 2011-2021, which showed the truly alarming, and rapidly worsening, situation of the mental and spiritual health of high school students in the United States.
42% of U.S. high school teens in 2021 said they felt persistently sad or hopeless, 22% seriously considered attempting suicide in the previous year, 18% had come up with a concrete plan on how they would end their life, and 10% actually tried to carry out that plan.
It’s worse for girls. 57% of high school girls felt persistently sad or hopeless, 30% of girls seriously contemplated suicide in the previous year, and 24% had a suicide plan.
Since 2011, persistent sadness and hopelessness among girls had grown from 36 to 57%, suicidal thoughts from 19 to 30, and suicide plans from 15 to 24, a 60% increase in each category in a decade.
The CDC looked at some factors that might be contributing causes to the crisis, but noted that, over the course of the last decade, bullying, drug use, promiscuity and sexual violence all decreased or stayed about the same. It likewise looked into students’ sense of connectedness in school, their housing situation, and communication with their family, but none of these situations correlated to the swiftly growing problem.
It’s obvious that there is a crisis of hope underneath the persistent sadness and the consideration of ending one’s life. This is linked to a crisis of meaning, of the “why” of living, of what gives motivation to be able to change own circumstances for the better, not to mention change one’s environment and the world.
This crisis of hope is linked to a crisis of faith. Gen Z, those born between 1999 and 2015, are experiencing a rapid decline of faith in God.
Since 2010, religious practice among high schoolers has dropped 27 percent.
Thirteen percent now define as atheist, 16 percent as agnostic.
These are all reasons why we need a Jubilee of Hope.
It’s a time in which we are called to grow in hope, to rejoice in hope, and to give others, always, the reason for the hope we bear.
It’s a time for us Christians to be men and women, master-teachers and missionaries of hope.
What does it mean to hope?
Pope Benedict, in his 2007 encyclical called “Saved in Hope” (Spe Salvi) didn’t define hope, but he gave us a clear indication of what it is based on St. Paul’s words to the Ephesians. St. Paul said that prior to the Gospel, those in Ephesus were “living without God and without hope in the world.” To be hopeless is to live without God. Therefore, he argued, hope is really to “live with God in the world.”
We know that, no matter what we’re facing, when we confront the situation with Christ, everything changes. Everything is possible for him.
When we see Jesus visibly at our side, smiling at us, telling us not to be afraid, your our would is totally different. That’s what it means to live with hope.
It’s to live with “Christ Jesus our Hope,” as St. Paul defines him in his first letter to St. Timothy
The Catechism does define hope as “the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relyingnot on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (1817).
The Catechism focuses our attention, first, on our trust in Christ’s promises.
That’s why Pope Benedict, for example, links hope to faith, saying they’re almost the same thing, because when we really believe in Jesus, we trust in his words and works, and therefore place our hope in him and in them
Second, the Catechism focuses us on God’s help in ordinary circumstances. We trust in the God the Holy Spirit helping us. We no longer rely on ourselves or on other human beings but on God.
Third, the Catechism turns us to the kingdom of heaven and eternal life. The kingdom of heaven is not just something later, but it means living with Christ the King here and now, living by the virtues and values of the kingdom he describes in his Parables and other teachings. The Kingdom of God is ultimately God, that he’s the most decisive reality of our life, one that gets us to look at everything differently. This hope leads us to desire heaven.
Pope Benedict said one of the reasons why many begin to lose hope is by substituting this “great hope” of eternal life with God by lots of lesser hopes, short-term, and worldly. These hopes are not necessarily bad in themselves, but even if we get them, the joy we receive can be fleeting. Either way, our appetite for the great hope wanes.
The North American Martyrs
They did not just have hope but were heroic in hope.
They never gave up hope when they struggled to get anyone to accept the faith and baptism.
They never gave up hope when they were in captivity or nursing their wounds or preparing to die.
They knew that God was with them in the world.
They desired the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as their happiness. They placed their trust in Christ’s promises and relied not on their own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit.
And they were ready, and wanted, to give an explanation of the reason for their hope to everyone, including the indigenous.
Our hope
What about us? Do we live by hope? Do we live it heroically?
Are we conscious of God in the world? Do we abide in the presence of God? When we face challenges, do we trust in him, that we can do all things in him who strengthens us?
Do we desire to live in Christ’s kingdom here on earth and forever? Do we seek eternal happiness? Or are we satiated and numbed by seeking this worldly small-h hopes in this world?
Do we persevere with hope heroically when we face challenges, or do we easily surrender hope?
If our parish church is closed, do we move to the next with hope? If one of our family members or friends loses faith or begins to live contrary to the Gospel, do we maintain hope, and particularly in God’s desire for their conversion, and ours?
Do we look long-term to the horizon to get our bearings, confident that all things work out of the good for those who love God?
The North American Martyrs were heroic in hope. They did everything to bring hope to the peoples here. Not only did the threat of death not shake their hope, but strengthened it! They are interceding for us now.
Love
Paul tells us in his First Letter to the Corinthians, “So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” And the North American Martyrs were great, indeed heroic, in love.
Jesus called us to heroic love when he summoned us to love others as he has loved us. His love was heroic. He said, “No one has greater love than to lay down his life for his friends,” and that’s the type of love on which he acted on Good Friday.
He gave us the grounds for love on Holy Thursday.
Just as the Father loves me, so I love you.
Remain in my love
You will remain in my love if you keep my commandments, just as I have kept the Father’s commandments and live in his love.
This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you.
Love is not a feeling, but a sacrifice, a gift. It leads us to do heroic things for the one we love. Jesus loves us in a total self-giving way to enable us to love God and others with that same total self-giving.
The North American Martyrs loved like this
We can of course comment on this by turning to the six priests among the eight North American Martyrs, who showed their love for Christ by sacrificing worldly desires and becoming not just religious, not just priests, but missionaries.
But I’d like to focus on the two non-priest Jesuits who were martyred here, St. Rene Goupil and St. Jean de Lalande.
Both of them were called “donnés,” literally, “given” or better “gifts.” They gave themselves over to the missions.
Rene Goupil wanted to become a Jesuit but because of hearing impairments he wasn’t able to. Instead, he became a medical doctor and came to the missions as a physician. St. Jean left France at the age of 19 to serve in the missions as a donné. He came here with Isaac on his third visit. When Isaac was tomahawked on October 18, 1646, he was killed the following day trying to bury his body.
Their love for God, and their love for each other, were the characteristics of their life.
Our love
What about us?
Are we donnés? Have we given ourselves as a gift to God in love? Have we given ourselves as a gift to the Church, no matter our state of life? Have we given ourselves as a gift to others, especially those who don’t yet know the love of God in their life?
For us to make that gift, we first must know of the love of God. In this is love, St. John the Evangelist says, not that we have loved God but that he has loved us and given his life as a ransom for our sins. Do we realize how loved we are? That God has given himself to us? That he gives himself to us each day in the Eucharist? That he is the first donné?
Do we remain in his love? Not just visit there but build our dwelling, our house, there in his loving us, pondering it every day, letting our whole existence be characterized by it?
Do we love him back? Do we make time for him? Prioritize him? Choose him over other loves? Do we keep his commandments, which are not arbitrary means to love God but the truth pathway to love God and others? Do we seek to give our life for others like he gave his life for us? Or do we try to hold ourselves back? What do we do to share the gift of the Given, of the God who is love, with others? Would we be willing to give our whole life to the missions if God really asked? Even if he doesn’t want us to leave our native land, like the North American martyrs, and go to the 5.5 billion who don’t believe in God of the 8.0 billion out there, what types of sacrifices are we willing to make to share and spread the faith? Would we sacrifice 10 percent of what we earn for the missions? Would we sacrifice more, leaving, for example, most or all of what we’ve earned to spreading the faith?
Is our love heroic? Is it willing to sacrifice and sacrifice all?
The North American Martyrs show us that it is possible to love this way and they’re interceding for us now that we might.
Courage
The last virtue I want to speak about this morning is courage. The North American Martyrs were capable of believing, hoping and loving to an heroic degree because they were courageous. Courage made their theological virtues heroic and those virtues inspired and strengthened their courage.
Courage does not mean fearlessness, but rather than strength to do what one ought despite their fears. The North American Martyrs were not masochists, but they were capable of steering down the threats of torture and death, of remaining faithful, hopeful and loving even for those who had made themselves their enemies, because they were courageous.
We live in an age in which we need courage.
The popes have spoken about this repeatedly.
John Paul II, in his inaugural homily that began his papacy, addressed it, thundering famously in St. Peter’s Square October 22, 1958: Non abbiate paura! He saw that fear was eating man alive. He saw that so many demagogues were exploiting that fear. He saw that the Church was weak because of fear, and so he said: “Brothers and Sisters, do not be afraid to welcome Christ and accept his power. … Do not be afraid. Open wide the doors for Christ. … Do not be afraid. Christ knows ‘what is in man.’ He alone knows it. So often today man does not know what is within him, in the depths of his mind and heart. So often he is uncertain about the meaning of his life on this earth. He is assailed by doubt, a doubt that turns into despair. We ask you therefore, we beg you with humility and trust, let Christ speak to man. He alone has words of life, yes, of eternal life.”
Pope Benedict returned to the theme of fear in his own inaugural homily in 2005, because the problem had not disappeared. He developed John Paul II’s thought.
“My mind goes back to 22 October 1978, when Pope John Paul II began his ministry here in Saint Peter’s Square. His words on that occasion constantly echo in my ears: ‘Do not be afraid! Open wide the doors for Christ!’ The Pope was addressing the mighty, the powerful of this world, who feared that Christ might take away something of their power if they were to let him in, if they were to allow the faith to be free. … [But] the Pope was also speaking to everyone, especially the young. Are we not perhaps all afraid in some way? If we let Christ enter fully into our lives, if we open ourselves totally to him, are we not afraid that He might take something away from us? Are we not perhaps afraid to give up something significant, something unique, something that makes life so beautiful? Do we not then risk ending up diminished and deprived of our freedom? And once again the Pope said: No! If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great. No! Only in this friendship are the doors of life opened wide. Only in this friendship is the great potential of human existence truly revealed. Only in this friendship do we experience beauty and liberation. And so, today, with great strength and great conviction, on the basis of long personal experience of life, I say to you, dear young people: Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing away, and he gives you everything. When we give ourselves to him, we receive a hundredfold in return. Yes, open, open wide the doors to Christ – and you will find true life. Amen.
Pope Francis similarly has been speaking like a broken record about “parrhesia,” the boldness that comes from the Holy Spirit, with which we’re called to speak up, to persevere, to love and, as he likes to say, to get “dirty” in caring for others.
Pope Leo when he gave his first Regina Caeli address added it, “Do not be afraid.”
One of the most common phrases in Sacred Scripture is “Be not afraid!” It appears 104 times in the Old Testament, 44 times in the New. Against our fears, God insistently tells us to take courage.
Jesus tells us not to be afraid of his call (Lk 5:10), of drowning at sea (Mt 8:26), of wars and insurrections (Lk 21:9), of the death of loved ones (Lk 8:50), of those who can only kill the body but can’t harm the soul (Mt 10:28), or of what will happen to him in his Passion (Jn 14:1).
To believe in him, to trust in his accompaniment, to have faith in his victory over suffering and death, he suggests, is to be filled with courage. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the capacity to do what we ought despite our fear — because of the strength that we receive from God.
If one can’t help becoming more Marian visiting Guadalupe, Lourdes and Fatima or more Eucharistic at Lanciano or Orvieto, one also can’t help growing in holy audacity here, as we pray, as we traverse the sacred spots fertilized by the blood of Isaac, Rene and Jean, as we ponder the faith and love that made them dauntless until the end, as we convene in this place fittingly called the “Colosseum” after the Flavian Amphitheater in Rome where so many early Christian martyrs proved that they had more valor than the greatest gladiators.
We can’t help but grow in courage here in this place that Saints Isaac and Rene needed ran the gauntlet, as people beat them with clubs. We can’t help but grow in courage here in this place that Saint Isaac had his fingers cut off at the bone. We can’t help but grow in courage here in this place that they were tomahawked, where St. Rene’s body was dragged into the ravine and later the bodies of Saints Isaac and Jean were tossed into the Mohawk river.
The blood of the martyrs is the seed of Christians. The Iroquois wanted to drink the blood of St. Jean de Brébeuf’s heart so that they might obtain some of his valor. The soil here is drenched in martyrs’ blood. It’s what helped make St. Kateri Tekakwitha, born here a decade after Jean’s and Isaac’s martyrdom, courageous in faith despite sufferings and threats because of her conversion.
Our pilgrimage here today helps us breath the air of audacity and bolster us with the courage needed to remain faithful on the pilgrimage of life as we seek to live that courage in the way we trust in God and what he teaches, in the way we hope against hope, in the way we love to the end.
One hundred years ago today the heroic faith, hope and love of the North American Martyrs was celebrated in St. Peter’s Basilica built over the tomb of the courageous fisherman from Galilee who was crucified in imitation and in love of the one who was crucified for us. The North American Martyrs knew that in becoming Christian, they were signing up to follow that crucified God-man to Calvary, to deny themselves, pick up their cross each day and follow him. At Jesus’ right side in heaven, they, with gratitude for our presence today and our trust in their prayers, are interceding for us that we might, by the power of the Holy Spirit in the love of God the Father, imitate their heroic trust in Jesus and all that he and his Church have taught, live with Christ in the world with the values of his kingdom and hope in all his promises that after death, whether peaceful or violent, he wants to bring us to live with him forever, and allow his love in us to overflow to the extreme.
Saints Isaac, Rene and Jean, pray for us, that we might be for those in our age and after, witnesses of heroic Christian faith, hope and love, like you are for us! Amen!

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1 hr 4 min
June 12, 2025 The Missionary Identity and Spirituality of the Priest, Part II, Diocese of San Angelo Clergy Days, June 11-12, 2025
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Diocese of San Angelo Clergy Days
San Angelo and Odessa, Texas
June 11-12, 2025
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1 hr 4 min
June 12, 2025 The Missionary Identity and Spirituality of the Priest, Part I, Diocese of San Angelo Clergy Days, June 11-12, 2025
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Diocese of San Angelo Clergy Days
San Angelo and Odessa, Texas
June 11-12, 2025
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56 min
June 05, 2025Christ’s Prayers for the Church’s Mission of Unity, 7th Thursday of Easter, June 5, 2025
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
New York City Chapter of the Leonine Forum
Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter
Memorial of St. Boniface, Bishop and Martyr
June 5, 2025
Acts 22:30.23:6-11, Ps 16, Jn 17:20-26

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The following points were attempted in the homily:
Today in the Gospel we see what and for whom Jesus was praying on Holy Thursday. We look at his words in the light of his resurrection and in anticipation of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. Jesus first prays for the apostles present with them, but then for all “those who will believe in me through their word.” He was praying for us. He was praying for all those who would ultimately come to hear the faith through the work of the ones Jesus would send out from the Upper Room when the Holy Spirit would descend upon them 53 days later. He was praying for the generations of Christians before us. He was praying for those generations of Catholics who will come after us. He was praying for those who would announce and live the word of God and for all those who would hear in and be summoned to live it. It’s an extraordinary thing to think about, that Jesus has prayed for the success of the fishers of men he has sent out, he’s prayed for the harvesters, he’s prayed for the sowers of the Seed of the Word of God, and we know his prayers are heard. What an incredible consolation to ponder that we received well the word of God because of Jesus’ prayers. What an even more unbelievable gift for us to remember that Jesus has prayed for all those with whom we will attempt to share him, and his word, and his life. As we conclude the first year of the Leonine Forum and seek to bring what we’ve learned out to a world that needs Catholic social teaching, fraternity, the worship of God and charity as much as we do, we do so not on our own, not just helped by the Holy Spirit, but with Jesus’ prayers for us.
During the Last Supper, Jesus was praying for something specific for those who would announce and receive the Word of God throughout the centuries. He said it multiple times in John 17, what has come to be known as Jesus’ great Priestly Prayer. He prayed us to be one, just as the Father and the Son are one in the person of the Holy Spirit. 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, just as we saw him do with the first family in the Book of Genesis in the distrust between Adam and Eve and in the fratricide of Cain versus Abel. 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 Church’s mission to the nations and of the new evangelization of those who have given up the practice of the faith. 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 is the stated mission of our new Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, encapsulated in his papal motto, In illo uno, unum, “One in the one Christ.” This dual communion with God and with each other 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 in the communion of saints.
What is obvious to us, though, is that we do not have this union in this world. We see the ugliness of disunity, of the lack of the Holy Spirit, in today’s first reading in the dispute between the Pharisees and Sadducees about the Resurrection, and about the way so many of the Sadducees and Pharisees were not only fighting each other but against Paul and the proclamation of the Gospel. But we see such seemingly intractable divisions often. So many families are in fact divided today. Countries, like our own, are polarized. Even the Church is fractured into so many camps. This is not a new problem. In the early days of Christianity, there was the division between the Greeks and the Jews especially with regard to the care of widows. There were the numerous heresies that divided the Church: Gnosticism, Marcionism, Sabellianism, Donatism, Arianism, Nestorianism, Eutychism, Monophysitism, Monotheletism and the Iconoclasm controversy. Since 1054, the Church has been divided between Catholics and Orthodox. For the last 508 years, the Church in the West has been divided between Catholics and Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Pentecostals and 40,000 other Protestant denominations. Outside observers studying the Church today will often notice far more easily what divides us than the unity that Christ prayed would exist.
But it is not as if the type of unity for which Jesus prays and worked has never been approximated. The first disciples approached it. The members of the Church in Jerusalem “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers,” as we read in the Acts of the Apostles. “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.” And the impact of their loving union was dramatic, obtaining the results Jesus prayed such union would bring about: “Day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved” (Acts 2:42-47).
The chronicle of division that has happened in the Church since then is not a sign that Jesus’ prayer was ineffectual or had an expiration date. Jesus’ prayer was heard and God the Father will certainly not withhold the graces necessary for this communion. The reason for division rests in our not receiving those graces, in the actions various Christians have committed over the course of the centuries against communion, and in the various things we have failed to do in order to keep communion. Every sin ruptures communion. Every genuine act of Christian love begins to repair it. If this communion with God and with each other meant so much to the Lord that, on the night he was betrayed, he poured out his very soul praying for it to the Father, then each of us who loves him must make it our life’s mission to try to bring about that union of love.
The saints are those who do. Today the Church celebrates a great Missionary who sought to bring both Germany and Holland into communion with Christ and with the Church. St. Boniface became a Benedictine in England early in life. At the age of 41 left his monastery where he was a Latin scholar and a Scripture teacher to become a Missionary. In his first attempt, in modern Holland, he was rejected. He went to Rome where the Pope ordained him and sent him as a Bishop to evangelize Germany, where he helped pagans overcome their worship of trees and through four decades of labor built up the communion and structure of the Church. At the very end of his life, he went back to Frisia, to Holland, to try to bring them, too, into communion, but they killed him as he was preparing for Mass. Pope Benedict gave a catechesis on him in 2009 in which he stressed his zeal to bring the Word of God even as an old man. “Although he was getting on in years (he was almost 80), he prepared himself for a new evangelizing mission: with about 50 monks he returned to Frisia where he had begun his work. Almost as a prediction of his imminent death, in alluding to the journey of life, he wrote to Bishop Lull, his disciple and successor in the see of Mainz: ‘I wish to bring to a conclusion the purpose of this journey; in no way can I renounce my desire to set out. The day of my end is near and the time of my death is approaching; having shed my mortal body, I shall rise to the eternal reward. May you, my dear son, ceaselessly call the people from the maze of error, complete the building of the Basilica of Fulda that has already been begun, and in it lay my body, worn out by the long years of life.’ While he was beginning the celebration of Mass at Dokkum (in what today is northern Holland) on 5 June 754, he was assaulted by a band of pagans. Advancing with a serene expression he forbade his followers from fighting, saying, ‘Cease, my sons, from fighting, give up warfare, for the witness of Scripture recommends that we do not give an eye for an eye but rather good for evil. Here is the long awaited day, the time of our end has now come; courage in the Lord!’ These were his last words before he fell under the blows of his aggressors.” Pope Benedict asked, “Centuries later, what message can we gather today from the teaching and marvellous activity of this great missionary and martyr? For those who approach Boniface, an initial fact stands out: the centrality of the word of God, lived and interpreted in the faith of the Church, a word that he lived, preached and witnessed to until he gave the supreme gift of himself in martyrdom. He was so passionate about the word of God that he felt the urgent need and duty to communicate it to others, even at his own personal risk. … At the age of 80, he went to a region in which he foresaw his martyrdom. By comparing his ardent faith, this zeal for the Gospel, with our own often lukewarm and bureaucratized faith, we see what we must do and how to renew our faith, in order to give the precious pearl of the Gospel as a gift to our time.” Jesus had prayed for him and he acted on those prayers. Jesus is praying for us, too, to imitate St. Boniface’s missionary zeal and courage to seek to bring all people into one in Christ.
We pray at Mass that the Holy Spirit will make us “one body, one Spirit in Christ.” To make us one body with Him and with others, Jesus commanded us to consume his body. It is not coincidental that since the beginning, we have called our reception of the Lord Jesus’s real presence “Holy Communion,” because by receiving God inside, we are supposed to be caught up into communion with God and with all of the other members of the Church, the “Body of Christ.” The reception of Holy Communion is supposed to be sign of a communion that already exists and a source of a deepening of that communion. Saint Thomas Aquinas used to teach that the ultimate effect of the Sacrament of Holy Communion is not Jesus’ real presence on the altar. Jesus’ real presence is both an effect and a sacrament of something else: namely the communion that he seeks to bring about in us as we, in communion with him, enter into communion with each other. To the extent that we receive Jesus in Holy Communion and don’t seek communion with each other, we’re receiving poorly. That’s why Jesus told us in the Sermon of the Mount that if we come to the altar and recognize that our brother has something against us, that we should first reconcile and then come and bring our gift. We can’t have communion with Jesus but not ardently desire communion with each other. When we truly receive Jesus well, he is at work within us, helping us to become more like him, so that we might love others the way he does, and enter into a communion of love with him. Let us pray this Mass and receive Holy Communion today earnestly desiring that unity that Jesus prayed for in the first Mass! And then let us go out like St. Boniface, strengthened by the Holy Spirit and by everything we’ve received this year in the Leonine Forum, to bring those for whom Jesus prayed into communion with us here on earth and, we pray, eternal communion with Him, with St. Boniface and with all the saints!

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 ACTS 22:30; 23:6-11
Wishing to determine the truth
about why Paul was being accused by the Jews,
the commander freed him
and ordered the chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin to convene.
Then he brought Paul down and made him stand before them.
Paul was aware that some were Sadducees and some Pharisees,
so he called out before the Sanhedrin,
“My brothers, I am a Pharisee, the son of Pharisees;
I am on trial for hope in the resurrection of the dead.”
When he said this,
a dispute broke out between the Pharisees and Sadducees,
and the group became divided.
For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection
or angels or spirits,
while the Pharisees acknowledge all three.
A great uproar occurred,
and some scribes belonging to the Pharisee party
stood up and sharply argued,
“We find nothing wrong with this man.
Suppose a spirit or an angel has spoken to him?”
The dispute was so serious that the commander,
afraid that Paul would be torn to pieces by them,
ordered his troops to go down and rescue Paul from their midst
and take him into the compound.
The following night the Lord stood by him and said, “Take courage.
For just as you have borne witness to my cause in Jerusalem,
so you must also bear witness in Rome.”
Responsorial Psalm PS 16:1-2A AND 5, 7-8, 9-10, 11
R. (1) Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Keep me, O God, for in you I take refuge;
I say to the LORD, “My Lord are you.”
O LORD, my allotted portion and my cup,
you it is who hold fast my lot.
R. Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.
or:
R. Alleluia.
I bless the LORD who counsels me;
even in the night my heart exhorts me.
I set the LORD ever before me;
with him at my right hand I shall not be disturbed.
R. Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Therefore my heart is glad and my soul rejoices,
my body, too, abides in confidence;
Because you will not abandon my soul to the nether world,
nor will you suffer your faithful one to undergo corruption.
R. Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.
or:
R. Alleluia.
You will show me the path to life,
fullness of joys in your presence,
the delights at your right hand forever.
R. Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Alleluia JN 17:21
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
May they all be one as you, Father, are in me and I in you,
that the world may believe that you sent me, says the Lord.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel JN 17:20-26
Lifting up his eyes to heaven, Jesus prayed saying:
“I pray not only for these,
but also for those who will believe in me through their word,
so that they may all be one,
as you, Father, are in me and I in you,
that they also may be in us,
that the world may believe that you sent me.
And I have given them the glory you gave me,
so that they may be one, as we are one,
I in them and you in me,
that they may be brought to perfection as one,
that the world may know that you sent me,
and that you loved them even as you loved me.
Father, they are your gift to me.
I wish that where I am they also may be with me,
that they may see my glory that you gave me,
because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
Righteous Father, the world also does not know you,
but I know you, and they know that you sent me.
I made known to them your name and I will make it known,
that the love with which you loved me
may be in them and I in them.”’
The post Christ’s Prayers for the Church’s Mission of Unity, 7th Thursday of Easter, June 5, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
15 min
May 30, 2025The Ascension, St. Peter and Future Priests, Solemnity of the Ascension, Altar of the Tomb, St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, May 29, 2025
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
St. Peter’s Basilica, Altar of the Tomb, Vatican
Rome Experience Program for Seminarians
Solemnity of the Ascension, Year C
May 29, 2025
Acts 1:1-11, Ps 47, Eph 1:17-23, Lk 24:46-53

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:
St. Peter was present at the Ascension of the Lord and shows us how to live its three principal lessons.
The first lesson is about the reality of heaven and the desire we are called to have for it. Jesus has ascended to prepare a place for us. We’re called to seek the things that are above. St. Peter in his first letter, written to Christians under persecution, helped them to have real hope in heaven. He himself clung to Jesus, who had the words of eternal life, and wanted them to trust in Jesus’ promises, too. That gave them courage. He’s interceding for us to have a similar trust and desire.
The second lesson is about the great commission. Jesus entrusted to us his mission for the salvation of the world. St. Peter took that mission seriously and dedicated his life to proclaiming the Gospel to the ends of the earth to the end of his life, making his supreme testimony just a few feet from here and buried right behind this altar. He’s interceding for us to be just as “all in” to this work of completing Jesus’ saving mission.
The third lesson is about the gift Jesus gives us to help us desire heaven and proclaim him and his Gospel to the ends of the earth. It’s the gift of the Holy Spirit, who gave Peter a tongue of fire to proclaim the Gospel, and we see what a difference it made in Peter on that first Pentecost. The Holy Spirit seeks to make a similar impact on us. Jesus told Peter and the apostles to go to pray until they be given power on high. They did around Mary for ten days until Pentecost. We begin today the “decenarium” or ten days of prayer for the outpouring of the same Holy Spirit, invoking the prayers of Mary.
Jesus likewise gives us himself in the Holy Eucharist to strengthen us, just as he strengthened Peter, after his Ascension. Jesus links the Eucharist to his Ascension when he spoke about having to eat his flesh and drink his blood to have life in us and that if eat his flesh and drink his blood we will live forever. To those challenging his teaching as too hard to endure, he said, “What if you were to see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before?” The Eucharistic is meant to be lived eschatologically. A Eucharistic life is the path of our own Ascension, as we lift up our hearts to seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father. St. Peter is praying for us to unite ourselves to the Risen Lord Jesus in Holy Communion in such a way that this internal embrace will lead to an eternal one.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading I
Acts 1:1-11
In the first book, Theophilus,
I dealt with all that Jesus did and taught
until the day he was taken up,
after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit
to the apostles whom he had chosen.
He presented himself alive to them
by many proofs after he had suffered,
appearing to them during forty days
and speaking about the kingdom of God.
While meeting with them,
he enjoined them not to depart from Jerusalem,
but to wait for “the promise of the Father
about which you have heard me speak;
for John baptized with water,
but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”
When they had gathered together they asked him,
“Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”
He answered them, “It is not for you to know the times or seasons
that the Father has established by his own authority.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you,
and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem,
throughout Judea and Samaria,
and to the ends of the earth.”
When he had said this, as they were looking on,
he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight.
While they were looking intently at the sky as he was going,
suddenly two men dressed in white garments stood beside them.
They said, “Men of Galilee,
why are you standing there looking at the sky?
This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven
will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.”
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 47:2-3, 6-7, 8-9
R (6) God mounts his throne to shouts of joy: a blare of trumpets for the Lord.
or:
R Alleluia.
All you peoples, clap your hands,
shout to God with cries of gladness,
For the LORD, the Most High, the awesome,
is the great king over all the earth.
R God mounts his throne to shouts of joy: a blare of trumpets for the Lord.
or:
R Alleluia.
God mounts his throne amid shouts of joy;
the LORD, amid trumpet blasts.
Sing praise to God, sing praise;
sing praise to our king, sing praise.
R God mounts his throne to shouts of joy: a blare of trumpets for the Lord.
or:
R Alleluia.
For king of all the earth is God;
sing hymns of praise.
God reigns over the nations,
God sits upon his holy throne.
R God mounts his throne to shouts of joy: a blare of trumpets for the Lord.
or:
R Alleluia.
Reading II
Ephesians 1:17-23
Brothers and sisters:
May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory,
give you a Spirit of wisdom and revelation
resulting in knowledge of him.
May the eyes of your hearts be enlightened,
that you may know what is the hope that belongs to his call,
what are the riches of glory
in his inheritance among the holy ones,
and what is the surpassing greatness of his power
for us who believe,
in accord with the exercise of his great might:
which he worked in Christ,
raising him from the dead
and seating him at his right hand in the heavens,
far above every principality, authority, power, and dominion,
and every name that is named
not only in this age but also in the one to come.
And he put all things beneath his feet
and gave him as head over all things to the church,
which is his body,
the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way.
Alleluia
Matthew 28:19a, 20b
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Go and teach all nations, says the Lord;
I am with you always, until the end of the world.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Luke 24:46-53
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer
and rise from the dead on the third day
and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins,
would be preached in his name
to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
You are witnesses of these things.
And behold I am sending the promise of my Father upon you;
but stay in the city
until you are clothed with power from on high.”
Then he led them out as far as Bethany,
raised his hands, and blessed them.
As he blessed them he parted from them
and was taken up to heaven.
They did him homage
and then returned to Jerusalem with great joy,
and they were continually in the temple praising God.
The post The Ascension, St. Peter and Future Priests, Solemnity of the Ascension, Altar of the Tomb, St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, May 29, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
16 min
April 18, 2025Concluding Reflection on Ave, O Crux, Spes Unica: The Jubilee of Hope and Jesus’ Seven Last Words from the Cross, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, April 18, 2025
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Meditations for the Seven Last Words of Jesus
Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, New York City
Good Friday 2025
April 18, 2025

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The following text guided the homily:
After Jesus shouted his last word of entrustment to the Father, the Cross fell silent.
Jesus’ body continued to speak and give, as his side and heart were pierced with a soldier’s lance and out flowed blood and water, a sign of baptism and the Eucharist, the font of sacramental life in the Church.
Nature created by Jesus also began to speak. The earth quaked, rocks were split and tombs were opened.
The house of God began to speak as the curtain in the holy of holies in the temple was torn from top to bottom.
Spectators began to speak, like a centurion, who observing Jesus’ words and actions and the revulsions taking place in nature, cried out, “Truly this was the Son of God.”
Silent were the words of the apostles. The Shepherd was struck and the sheep were scattered. They soon eventually reconvened fearfully in the Upper Room behind locked doors, using it as a hideaway rather than as a place to do what Jesus the previous night had told them to do in his memory and rather than as a launch pad for mission.
Mary, however, continued to stand by the Cross of her Son confident in hope of how this was not the end, but the prelude to the greatest revolution of all time, about to erupt 40 hours later. With help from others, like Joseph of Arimathea, who had gone to Pilate to ask for Jesus’ body, Mary would be present as Jesus bloody, scourged, thorn-crowned and crucified body was taken down from the Cross and placed in her arms. She had so many times when he was an infant held him in her arms as he slept. Now she held him anew, asleep once more in expectation of the fulfillment of his promises.
Here in St. Patrick’s, behind the sanctuary, there is a resplendent marble pietà, not as famous as that done by a 25-year-old Michelangelo, but a masterpiece nonetheless. Sculpted in 1906 by William Ordray Partridge, Jesus is not horizontal across Mary’s lap, but place vertically between her legs with his own limp legs bent as a pair on the ground, his back leaning against her right leg, and his left arm resting on her left thigh. Mary holds in her left hand her Son’s glorious scarred left hand and with her right hand she lovingly takes her Son’s head and tilts it back so that she can she can his face as she caresses with maternal love his beard. It is an expression of reverence and awe for what Jesus has done. Mary shows her love for his sacred body not just as a mother but as a Christian, a preparation for the way we are meant to treat him whenever we receive him in Holy Communion, as Jesus, risen from the dead, entrusts himself to each of us. With similar love she would supervise as Joseph and Nicodemus and the women prepared Jesus’ body for burial. As Mary put the loving final touches on the linen shroud wrapping Jesus’ body and burial clothes wrapping his dead, she doubtless was preparing inwardly for what would occur on the third day.
What happened to the Cross? After Jesus’ body was taken down, it was forsaken by the Christians as the awful instrument that brought about his death. It was eventually thrown into a cavern underneath the limestone skull-shaped hill, enclosed in a pagan temple by the emperor Hadrian and finally rediscovered by St. Helen after the legalization of Christianity. It began an instrument of miracles. It became a means of faith. It became a reminder of the great victory of Christ. And now is enshrined in the Church built over St. Helen’s old house — Rome’s Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem — and shared in various reliquaries across the globe. That Cross remains an eloquent sign and means of hope because of what Christ accomplished on it. It’s a message of hope that never expires.
One of the classic hymns sung for centuries on this day is the Pange Lingua Gloriosi Proelum Certaminis,” “Sing my tongue the Glorious Battle.” The eighth of ten verses contain the hymns most famous words. They’re words of praise for the Cross on which hung the Savior of the World, the Cross that symbolically each of us will have the chance to venerate at the Passion Service that will begin at 330. “Crux fidelis,” we sing, “inter omnes arbor una nobilis.” In John Neale’s beautiful translation, we pray, “Faithful cross, true sign of triumph, Be for all the noblest tree; None in foliage, none in blossom, None in fruit thine equal be; Symbol of the world’s redemption, For the weight that hung on thee!” The Cross is indeed the noblest tree of all time, an instrument of death, which became the tree of life, an instrument of torture that became mankind’s greatest source of blessing. Cicero had called crucifixion, “a nefarious action such as that is incapable of description by any word, for there is none fit to describe it.” But Christ turned that nefarious action incapable of description into a saving, grace-filled deep that, while still ineffable, has inspired poets, and hymn writers and mystics ever since.
Beholding the Cross anew, now bereft of its most sacred fruit of the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus, we ask for the grace to follow Jesus by putting our own body there, taking up our Cross every day. To hail the Cross as indeed our only hope and to be ready always and everywhere, but especially today, to give an explanation of the reason of our hope to anyone and every who asks. This Christian hope was validated at dawn on the third day when the seemingly impossible happened and the Crucified Carpenter, as the Word of God who has spoken these seven words to us, rose from the dead, as the Resurrection and the Life burst from the tomb, as the Light of the World irradiated the darkness that had covered the planet on Good Friday and had remained unabated until dawn on the first day of the week. That resurrection shows that Christian hope is not wishful thinking, is not in vain, does not disappoint, but is a confidence, a trust, that all God has promised will indeed come true, that right now God is with us, and wants to fulfill his work in us and bring us to fulfillment of our great hope of which Jesus’ resurrection is the foretaste, and in the meantime make us his instruments to complete his saving work in the world.
What is that work? As we’re about to sing. It’s to lift high this Cross, proclaiming the love of God it displays, until all the world proclaims the Savior’s name! Ave O Crux spes unica! Amen!

The post Concluding Reflection on Ave, O Crux, Spes Unica: The Jubilee of Hope and Jesus’ Seven Last Words from the Cross, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, April 18, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
4 min
April 18, 2025Father, Into Your Hands, I Commend My Spirit, The Jubilee of Hope and Jesus’ Seven Last Words from the Cross, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, April 18, 2025
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Meditations for the Seven Last Words of Jesus
Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, New York City
Good Friday 2025
April 18, 2025

To watch a video of this word, please click below:

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The following text guided the homily:
Jesus’ very last words, as he was preparing to die within seconds, were of tremendous trust and confidence in His Father. To give out a loud cry would have been incredibly painful and jarring, but he did it anyway. He would finish by channeling everything he had in one more act and sign of love to the Father. “Father,” he shouted with love, “Into your hands, I commend my Spirit,” and St. Luke tells us, immediately after saying that, he breathed his last.
“His garments,” Archbishop Sheen said, “are consigned to his executioners, his blood to the earth, his body to the grave, his mother to John and [now] His soul to His heavenly Father.” He indeed entrusted all he had left, all he was and had, to his Father in heaven. It was the exclamation point of a life fully given.
“Into your hands, I commend my spirit” was the prayer that Jewish boys and girls were taught to pray before they went to bed. They still pray it today, as do Christians who pray Night Prayer in the Liturgy of the Hours. The words come from Psalm 31, which is a great hymn of trust in God, whom we call our rock, refuge, fortress, rescuer and redeemer. Like with Psalm 22 in the fourth word, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?,” so Jesus in quoting verse 5 of Psalm 31, was incorporating all of the psalm into his dramatic valedictory. In this Psalm, which he would have prayed countless times in life, he repeatedly said, “I will rejoice and be glad in your love. … I trust in you, O Lord. … My times are in your hands. … Let your face shine upon your servant. Save me in your kindness.” The Psalm finishes first with praise, “Blessed be the Lord, who has shown me wondrous love,” and then with encouragement to everyone: “Love the Lord, all you faithful. … Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the Lord!” Jesus’ words of total entrustment are therefore a great display of hope, in which he says to us in his last phrase before death, “Love the Lord, all you faithful. Be strong and take heart all you who love in the Lord,” because Jesus was showing us on the Cross that the Lord will fulfill all the hopes we place in him. He was urging us not only to die this way, strong, stouthearted and hopeful, but to live this way. Because, he says, our times are in God’s hands and his hesed, his steadfast love and kindness, will never fail.
Jesus’ whole earthly life can be summarized in helping us learn how to entrust ourselves to God the Father. All his prayers begin with the word, “Abba,” or Father. He tells us during the Last Supper, “The Father himself loves you” (Jn 16:27). He urges us to trust in his providential care.
In the Sermon on the Mount, he urged us, “Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they? … Why are you anxious about clothes? Learn from the way the wild flowers grow. They do not work or spin. But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them. If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith? So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’ All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom [of God] and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides.”
In the Sermon on the Plain, he doubled down, saying, “What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the holy Spirit to those who ask him?” No matter what we ask for with filial trust, Jesus was saying, God will give himself in return, a Gift of the Divine giver far greater than any thing he might bestow.
When his disciples asked him to teach them how to pray, he conveyed this trust in the Father, this trust in his providence, “give us this day our daily bread”; in his mercy, “forgive us our trespasses as we have forgiven those who have trespassed against us”; and in his protection, “lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.” But he also helped us to trust in him. When we pray, “Hallowed by thy name,” we recognize, as St. John wrote to the first Christians, that God has given us his name and loved us so much that we’re not just called children of God but indeed are. When we pray, “Thy kingdom come!,” we know that God’s plan is to have us eternally enter that kingdom, to make us heirs and heiresses of that kingdom, joint heirs with Christ, members of the royal family. When we pray, “Thy will be done!,” we now that his will is that we become holy as he is holy, merciful as he is merciful, perfect as he is perfect, love as he loves. His will for us is far greater than anything we could want for ourselves. And so Jesus teaches us to trust in that love.
Jesus’ last words from the Cross are meant to help perfect our trust in the Father if we imitate him. The Cross strips us indeed of all worldly comforts so that we can, like Jesus, give all.
We see this is some of the saints.
We see it in St. Stephen, in the pit, as he was being stoned outside the Lion’s Gate of Jerusalem, as he cried out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”
We see it in St. Lorenzo Ruiz, the first Filipino saint, who as he was being tortured as part of his martyrdom in Japan and urged by his executioners to save his life by apostasy, famously said, “Had I many thousands of lives I would offer them all for him. Never shall I apostatize. You may kill me if that is what you want. To die for God—such is my will.”
We see it in St. Thomas More who serenely went to the guillotine as the good servant of King Henry who has decreed his execution, but God’s faithful servant and son first. God the Father is our ultimate hope. Great hope. The Father indeed stretches out his arms.
But we’re supposed to see this not just at the end of our life but during our life. And the best way that we’re able to have that trust at the end is by exercising that trust all along the journey. This was a lesson driven home in 2011 by Cardinal Justin Rigali, who as Archbishop of St. Louis, ordained Cardinal Dolan a bishop in 2001. Two days before Cardinal Rigali would retire as the Archbishop of Philadelphia, he wrote an incredible letter to his priests about how to prepare each day to die, what he called an “uplifting” though “challenging” theme. He said, somewhat provocatively, “Preparing for death is the greatest opportunity in our lives.” Rather than dreading death as the inexorable occasion in which our life will be taken from us, he said we need to learn from Jesus how to make our death an act of supreme self-giving love. Sometimes we view the crucifixion as if Jesus suffered it passively, exclusively as a victim. Jesus, however, in foretelling his death, clarified that he was approaching it with full freedom, love and courage. In his Good Shepherd discourse, Jesus had declared, “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down” (Jn 10:11, 18). Likewise, Cardinal Rigali asserted, all of us have been given by Jesus’ death and resurrection a similar power. “We have the possibility to rehearse our death,” Cardinal Rigali wrote, “not in its minute details—although saints have found this useful—but in the sense of accepting it in anticipation by an act of our will that will be consummated freely at the moment of our death and offered to the Father in union with the death of Jesus. He urged us to pray Jesus’ words “Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit!” every day, whether at our early morning offering of the whole day to God conscious that it may be our last day, or at Mass when we enter into Jesus’ self-giving, or at night at our examination of conscience when we pray those words as part of the Compline of the Church. The result of this habit of freely entrusting ourselves to God the Father, he says, will be to liberate us from the fear of a sudden death and get us ready no matter when God will call us to breathe our last. “When the hour of death comes,” he noted, “we may not be conscious. It may come very suddenly, by reason of an accident, by reason of a heart attack. … The point is: the surrender will have been made thousands of times! The Father will understand that each of us had the power, which we exercised, the power, with His Son Jesus, to lay down our life freely, lovingly and definitively. Then there will be no obstacle to the consummation of our love. Life and holiness will be ours forever in the communion of the Most Blessed Trinity.” Death will therefore become the final renewal of our baptismal promises and the fulfillment of our self-offering with Christ to the Father in the Holy Eucharist. And the Father will be able to view our death as the “re-enactment” of the death of his Son and apply to us the “full salvific power of the cross and resurrection.”
In his last words from the Cross, as Cardinal Rigali suggests, Jesus is inviting us to learn from him how to entrust ourselves together with Jesus to the Father. Just as Jesus prayed each day as a faithful Jew the words of Psalm 31, so we have the opportunity, freely, to make not only those words but the entrustment underneath them to God the Father every day. And if we do so, together with Jesus, if we entrust ourselves to him and his mercy and avail ourselves of the means Christ gives us through the Church to do so in communion with him, then our death can be like Jesus’ and a passage from death into the fullness of life.
And so we pray: Hail, O Cross, which strips us of worldliness so that we might give all to the Father, you are our only hope! Help us to lift high that Cross, and the trust with which Jesus mounted it, all our days!

The post Father, Into Your Hands, I Commend My Spirit, The Jubilee of Hope and Jesus’ Seven Last Words from the Cross, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, April 18, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
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Father Roger J. Landry is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, who works for the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations in New York.