Catholic Preaching

By Father Roger LandryReligion & Spirituality Christianity

Catholic Preaching episodes

May 21, 2024 St. Thomas Aquinas and the Eucharistic Revival, St. Thomas Church, Fairfield, Connecticut, May 20, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Thomas Church, Ridgefield, Connecticut
Homily During Eucharistic Adoration for School Children and Parents
May 20, 2024
This talk was given to students of St. Thomas School, their parents and their parishioners during solemn Eucharistic exposition.
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.20.24_St._Thomas_Aquinas_and_the_Eucharistic_Revival_1.mp3

The post St. Thomas Aquinas and the Eucharistic Revival, St. Thomas Church, Fairfield, Connecticut, May 20, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
21 min
May 20, 2024 The Importance of the Eucharistic Revival, St. Mary’s Church, Bridgeport, Connecticut, May 19, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Mary’s Catholic Church, Bridgeport, Connecticut
May 19, 2024
This talk begins in English where I discuss the importance of the Eucharistic Revival and the four pillars for its parish phase. It finishes in Spanish when I mention how Mary helps us to cooperate with the Holy Spirit, particularly with regard to our reception and adoration of Jesus in the Eucharist and how we are called to bring him to others.
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.19.24_bilingual_reflection_at_St._Mary_Bridgeport.mp3

The post The Importance of the Eucharistic Revival, St. Mary’s Church, Bridgeport, Connecticut, May 19, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
20 min
May 19, 2024 The Holy Spirit and Adoration, St. Mary’s Church, New Haven, May 18, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Mary’s Church, New Haven, Connecticut
Holy Hour Reflection at the beginning of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage
May 18, 2024

To listen to an audio recording of the brief meditation during Eucharistic Adoration at the beginning of all night adoration, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.18.24_Holy_Spirit_and_Adoration_1.mp3
The post The Holy Spirit and Adoration, St. Mary’s Church, New Haven, May 18, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
20 min
May 18, 2024The Christian Life as a Eucharistic Pilgrimage, Prelude to the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage Seton Route, May 18, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Blessed Michael McGivney Pilgrimage Center
New Haven, Connecticut
May 18, 2024

To listen to an audio recording of this conference, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.18.24_The_Christian_Life_as_a_Eucharistic_Pilgrimage_1.mp3

The outline for the talk was:
Introduction
Thanks for coming as we prepare to begin today the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage eastern route, under the patronage of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, who converted to the Catholic faith because of faith in the Eucharist and in particular seeing a Eucharistic Procession.
This route, leaving from the Atlantic, is one of four routes. Another leaves from the Pacific in San Francisco. A third leaves from the Canadian border in northern Minnesota. A fourth leaves from the Mexican border, in Brownsville. All will converge in Indianapolis on July 16, where the following day we will begin the tenth National Eucharistic Congress, but the first in 83 years.
I’m very grateful for the work and help of the Knights of Columbus, without whom this pilgrimage, like so much good that takes place in the Church, would not be possible. The four-part pilgrimage will traverse 65 different US dioceses and in every one of them the Knights’ Councils and Assemblies will be present welcoming the pilgrims, helping out with logistics and safety, serving at liturgies, and most importantly, giving the example of manly prayer before the Lord Jesus present for us in the Holy Eucharist.
Those of us on the Seton Route are particularly grateful for the help of Peter Sonski, Director of Education and Outreach here at the Blessed Michael McGivney Pilgrimage Center who received so many of our supplies here, including support van and trailer that we will bless after the talk and before the reception, who arranged the expert help of Steve Evans and Brad Auger to outfit the trailer with clips and shelves and other things, and who is our host today.
Because of the extraordinary support of the Knights of Columbus, it’s fitting that we are able to have the prelude before the official launch of the eastern route of the Eucharistic Pilgrimage, which will take place at the Church that enshrines Blessed Michael McGivney, here at the Blessed Michael McGivney Pilgrimage Center.
This is a place where, first, people come on pilgrimage, to get to know this great parish priest who in the midst of his duties as a parochial vicar at St. Mary’s Church in New Haven, founded in its basement a group that was meant to help solve a few pastoral problems — security for the family in case of the injury or death of the breadwinner, true fraternity as an alternative to secret societies, and a means to form Catholic men more deeply in the Catholic faith — but that God has blessed to far exceed parish boundaries, becoming the largest Catholic men’s fraternal organization in the world. Fr. McGivney had a great love for Jesus in the Eucharist, which was the heart of his priestly life. And no doubt if we were having this pilgrimage in 1882 rather than in 2024, he would have been one of its most enthusiastic supporters.
No doubt Blessed Michael would be very happy that today this beautiful center is not just the destinationof a pilgrimage but a departure point on a pilgrimage not just to Indianapolis for a Eucharistic Congress but to the heavenly Jerusalem for the eternal nuptial Banquet to which the Eucharist on earth leads.
Pilgrimage
The theme of my talk is the Christian Life as a Eucharistic Pilgrimage. I want to make the case that what we are beginning today, even though it is the largest Eucharistic pilgrimage in the history not only of the Church in the United States but of the Church universal of the Church, over 6500 miles through a country the size of a continent, is not meant to be understood as something exceptional in the Church’s life but essential.
This is because the nature of the Church is one of pilgrimage.
Jesus never told us to “stay where you are,” “don’t move,” but instead constantly was summoning his disciples to “get up, let’s go.” He was summoning them and us to “come, follow me,” to “come to me all you are weary and find life burdensome and I will refresh you.” He was likewise instructing them and us to go, to “go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” to “go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature” (Mk 14:42; 10:21; 16:15).
The life of faith is summarized by this dynamism, by this journey from wherever one might be to Jesus and then with Jesus as he not only leads us but sends us.
The whole Christian life is defined by this movement.
It’s to walk “just as [Jesus] walked” (1 Jn 2:6).
It’s to walk in the light as he is in the light (1 Jn 1:7), to walk by faith (2 Cor 5:7), or to walk in the truth (3 Jn 3).
He who made the lame walk (Lk 7:22) says to each of us, “Rise and walk” (Mt 9:5).
Jesus responds to the prayer of his people across the centuries, “Show me the path I should walk” (Ps 143:8) not just by saying “This is the way; walk in it” (Is 30:21), but rather, “I am the Way,” “Follow me” (Jn 14:6; Mk 2:14).
Those who do so are able to say with joy, “I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living” (Ps 116:9).
We can all say as we prepare this national journey, “Happy are those … whose hearts are set on pilgrim roads!” (Ps 84:6)
That’s why, picking up on the Church’s dynamic nature, the Second Vatican Council, in her Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, stressed that the whole Church is on pilgrimage. It said that on earth we are “pilgrims in a strange land” directed and guided by Jesus in our “pilgrimage toward eternal happiness” (LG 7, 21).
We proclaim that faith in the liturgy, when we pray for God’s “pilgrim Church on earth” (Eucharistic Prayer III) and summarize our life in this world as our “earthly pilgrimage” (Eucharistic Prayer for Various Needs).
God formed his people precisely through pilgrimage, through the dynamism of getting up from where they were and following God in faith.
We see this with Abraham, who at 75 was sent on a journey with his whole family to a place God would show him.
We see it with Moses and the Jewish people, leaving Egypt so that they might worship him, passing dry shod through the Red Sea, journeying to God’s holy mountain at Sinai, crossing the desert for 40 years.
We see it with the prophet Elijah, journeying 40 days through the desert to the mountain of God where God would speak to him in a gentle breeze.
We see it with Jonah and his apostolic mission.
We see it in Tobit with the Archangel Raphael.
We see it in the penitential pilgrimage of the Jewish people to and finally back from Babylon.
In the law given to the Jewish people through Moses, God institutionalized the pilgrimage, instructing them to journey three times a year to the temple, in the spring for Passover, in the summer for Shavuot (the feast of weeks or Pentecost), and in the fall for Sukkot (or Tabernacles or Booths).
All three coincided with the harvest, Passover with the barley harvest, Pentecost with the wheat harvest, and Tabernacles with the fruit harvest, and the Jews would come to thank God for his gifts.
But there are clearly Eucharistic prefigurations in all three of these pilgrimages:
Passover, which foretold what Jesus himself did through his passion, death and resurrection;
Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came down upon the Church as he does at every Mass to change bread and wine through the ministerial priest into Jesus’ body and blood;
and Tabernacles, when we seek to dwell with God, which is made possible when the one who tabernacled himself among us in his human nature tabernacles himself for us under the appearances of bread and wine within the tabernacles in our sanctuaries.
Jesus himself, together with Mary and Joseph when he was young, and with the apostles and the disciples during his public ministry, would make these pilgrimages up and back to Jerusalem. So much of Jesus’ teaching took place along those journeys and within their destination, the Temple precincts.
It’s no surprise then that throughout Church history, the Church has lived out this pilgrim nature. The great commission is a reminder that we are meant always to be on the move, bringing the Gospel to every creature, crossing the road as Good Samaritans to care for those left wounded, following the good shepherd as he calls us by name and leads us out, being docile to the Holy Spirit who blows where he wills and came down on Pentecost as a strong driving wind capable of blowing the Church all over the then-known world.
We’ve seen this pilgrim nature throughout Church history:
When Christianity was illegal, Christians use to make secret pilgrimages to the holy sites, mainly in necropolises or catacombs where Christians were martyred.
As soon as Christian was legalized, Christians were coming in such great numbers that huge basilicas needed to be built to accommodate them. We see this in a most noteworthy way in Jerusalem where St. Helen had build huge basilicas over Calvary and the empty tomb, where Jesus was born in Bethlehem, where he grew up in Nazareth, and where he gave us the Our Father and likely ascended on the Mount of Olives. Likewise we see them in Rome where Constantine built a huge Cathedral — St. John Lateran — not to mention basilicas over where St. Peter was buried, St. Paul, St. Agnes, and St. Sebastian and other saints.
Huge pilgrimages eventually developed in Santiago de Compostela where the Apostle St. James’ tomb was, Roccamadour, where the tradition was St. Mary Magdalene was buried, not to mention others.
This pilgrim nature of the Church is not contradicted, but rather reinforced, by the whole notion of a parish. On first glance, a parish seems like a stable place where we go to stay, a spiritual home from which some might never leave over many decades. But the word parish comes from the Greek word paroikia, which means temporary dwelling, a residence in a strange land, or a “station.”
Para is an adverb in Greek that means next. Oikia is the word for house. Paroikia means to live next to, or beside, a house, a provisional residence, someone living temporarily, an exile. We see it used this way in Sacred Scripture, especially by St. Peter. In his letter he uses paroikos or parishioner to describe a foreign pilgrim or sojourner (1 Pet 2:11) and paroikia for pilgrimage, exile or sojourning (1 Pet 1:17).
As the great preacher to the papal household, Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa once said in a 2005 homily, “The life of Christians is a life of pilgrimage and exile. Christians are ‘in’ the world, but not ‘of’ the world (cf. John 17:11,16). Their true homeland is in heaven, and they await Jesus Christ the savior to come (cf. Phil 3:20). They do not have a stable dwelling, but are on the way to their future one (cf. Heb 13:14). The whole Church is no more than a great ‘parish.’”
So the Church understood as the family or people of God is meant always to be on the move. We see this, for example, in the tradition of the Station Churches in Rome, where for 40 days, the people of the city travel to a different ancient Church to pray. Lent is a time in which we go back to the basics spiritually, we repent and believe, and hence, from the time of Pope St. Gregory the Great, there has been this tradition in Lent, not of staying put, but of journeying. The practice of the Station Churches makes Lent an actual pilgrimage, which reinforces the spiritual pilgrimage of the season. Sometimes we can become so comfortable and stable at our own parishes that we can stop moving spiritually. This is a great danger, for as Archbishop Sheen used to say, “There are no plateaus in the spiritual life: if we’re not moving uphill, we’re sliding downhill!”
So that’s the first aspect of what I would like to emphasize, the dynamic nature of the Church as a people making a journey through time, walking as children of the light, following Christ the Way all the way.
Eucharistic Procession
The second thing I want to underline is that the pilgrimage the Church makes is a Eucharistic pilgrimage.
That’s because Jesus hasn’t left us orphans. As he was giving his valedictory address before ascending to his Father’s eternal right side, he gave us the great commission, to go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to carry out everything he has commanded us, something that I’ve already noted points to the essential dynamic nature of the Church. But then Jesus said, “Know that I am with you always until the end of the world.” While we are moving, Christ, risen and ascended, will be with us, he promises.
And the way he accompanies us until the end of time is first and foremost in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood.
It wasn’t enough for the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity to take on our nature and be conceived in and born of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
It wasn’t enough for him to be hunted down by assassins as an infant, an exile in Egypt, and a construction worker in a place from which Nathaniel wondered any good could come.
It wasn’t enough that he didn’t have a place to lay his head during three years of public ministry.
It wasn’t even enough that he was harassed, persecuted, and ultimately arrested, tried, beaten, scourged, crucified and murdered. It wasn’t enough that he rose on the third day and ascended 40 days later.
Jesus loved us so much that he willed to become our food. He didn’t just invite us but commanded us to gnaw on his flesh and drink his blood to have life in us. The Holy Eucharist is, in some ways, the summit of salvation history.
This is why Jesus, in his apparitions to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque 350 years ago this 18-month period (December 27, 1673 through June 16, 1675), called the Eucharist, “The Sacrament of Love.” The Eucharist is the efficacious sign of his love.
And so Jesus wants to accompany us through time in his Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, in his Real Presence, helping us along the way to unite everything in life to his saving work and sacrifice and making of our life a Eucharistic sacrifice with him, as we give our body, blood, sweat, tears, all we are and have, out of love for him and for others.
It’s in this context that we get, really, the greatest expression of the good news, of the kerygma, we can. It’s not just that Jesus took on human nature, suffered, died, rose, appeared and ascended. It’s as Pope Francis wrote in his beautiful first exhortation The Joy of the Gospel,
“Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you.” (164)
“We are convinced from personal experience that it is not the same thing to have known Jesus as not to have known him, not the same thing to walk with him as to walk blindly, not the same thing to hear his word as not to know it, and not the same thing to contemplate him, to worship him, to find our peace in him, as not to. …We know well that with Jesus life becomes richer and that with him it is easier to find meaning in everything. This is why we evangelize” (266).
And we are able to say that about Jesus in the Eucharist. We can exclaim, paraphrasing and building on St. Paul, “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son and did not just hand him over for us all but gives us his Son every day, how will he not also give us everything else along with him?”
This is what makes Eucharistic processions so important because they show the nature of the Church’s pilgrimage through time with the Eucharistic Lord Jesus.
In a Eucharistic procession, we take Jesus out of Church. Like the donkey on Palm Sunday, we transport him not through the walled gates of the ancient Jerusalem, but through the streets of our parishes, cities and towns.
In a Eucharistic procession, the same Jesus who 2,000 years ago used to make three pilgrimages a year to the Temple in Jerusalem (Ex 23:14) and who would traverse Jerusalem and Jericho, Judea, Samaria, and Galilee, passes, in sacramental form, through our neighborhoods.
During this pilgrimage he will traverse New Haven, New York, Chicago, Houston, San Francisco, Washington DC, New Orleans, Nashville, Sacramento, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Baltimore, Atlanta, Salt Lake City, Denver, Kansas City, Louisville, Indianapolis and more.
What the Church in the US is doing in combining both the tradition of a pilgrimage and the tradition of a Eucharistic process is something that has never been attempted in the long history of the Church: a coordinated Eucharistic pilgrimage — involving each day the celebration of Mass, one or more Eucharistic processions with local parishes and dioceses, holy hours, all night adoration, Eucharist-inspired charity and witness talks — of more than 6,500 miles throughout a country the size of a continent. None of the apostles were able to do this. None of the great saints like Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Claire of Assisi or Therese Lisieux, to name just a few. We have that privilege. It’s mind-blowing. How lucky we are to be alive right now. How lucky we are to be called to participate, whether for one-day or sixty-five days.
The bishops of the United States are to be applauded for their apostolic audacity in promoting this four-part Eucharistic Pilgrimage as part of the ongoing Eucharistic Revival of the Church in the United States, as do the intrepid young people, seminarians, religious, chaplains and others who will have the privilege to accompany the Eucharistic Lord over the Golden Gate and Brooklyn Bridges, over rivers and lakes, on country roads and the grand concourses of bulging metropolises.
The U.S. Bishops have called this “Our Emmaus Moment.” Like Jesus walked with the disciples on the Road to that two seven miles downhill from Jerusalem, the Eucharistic Jesus humbly accompanies us each day through daily life, waiting for us in prayer before the tabernacle, feeding us with the true Manna come down from heaven (Jn 6:32), and going out within us like Mary brought him to her cousin Elizabeth (Lk 1:39).
But just as it was essential for Jesus to make Cleopas and the other disciple’s hearts burn by showing them, by means of Moses and the prophets, how the crucifixion wasn’t a contradiction of the messianic prophecies, so he wants us, through Sacred Scripture — all the Old Testament typologies, all Jesus himself did and taught — to get our hearts racing with love for the reality of Christ present among us, so that we, like them, can recognize Jesus in the Breaking of Bread and so that we like then can run seven miles uphill even in darkness to say, “We have seen the Lord!” and not just seen him, but tasted him, and become one with him.
That brings us to the last point I want to emphasize. The apostolic dimension of the Church’s Eucharistic pilgrimage through time. We bring Jesus in the Eucharist out to the world he redeemed, to the people he loved enough to die for. Just as not all those in ancient Nazareth recognized him as anything more than a fellow Nazarene, so many today, including some Catholics, don’t see in the Eucharist anything more than bread, even if special bread.
Through Eucharistic processions, and even more so by a huge Eucharistic pilgrimage, we are boldly and unambiguously testifying that we believe what we are carrying in the monstrance is not a piece of bread at all, but, as Jesus said, the Living Bread come down from heaven, who has given us his Body and Blood for the life of the world (Jn 6:51).
I had the privilege to help organize the New York State Eucharistic Congress last October at the Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs in Auriesville, New York. One of those I invited to speak was the great Peter Kreeft. He spoke with the logical precision that has always characterized his 90 plus books and counting. He used the same logic that C.S. Lewis once used about Jesus’ divinity to apply it to the teaching about Jesus in the Eucharist. C.S. Lewis taught that Jesus was either who he said he was, a lunatic who thought he was actually God, or a liar. Dr. Kreeft said about the Eucharist:
The Catholic claim about the Eucharist is barely believable, incredibly incredible, stunningly stunning, astonishingly astonishing. Almighty God assumes human flesh and lets us eat his body and drink his blood!
This is so shocking that when Jesus preached it, in John 6, most of his disciples, who up to that point had left everything to follow Him, stopped following and started leaving. And you have to sympathize with those early protesters, those early Protestants. This startling Catholic claim is either true or false. If it is false, if the Eucharist is not Christ Himself but only a holy symbol of Christ or a ceremony established by Christ, but not the very self of Christ, then Catholics are the most shamefully sacrilegious and idiotic idolaters in history, bowing down to bread and worshipping wine, confusing chemicals with the Creator of chemicals.
The Eucharist is either to be worshipped as God, as the extension of the Incarnation, or denounced as the most blasphemous and ridiculous idolatry in history. The one thing it cannot possibly be is something comfortable, and compromising, something non-divine and therefore non-divisive, merely a holy symbol.
The reality is that many, indeed most, Catholics treat the Eucharist as something comfortable, as an accessory to their life at best, not as its source, summit, root and center. They treat the Eucharist as a what rather than a Who. They don’t treat this truth of faith as “incredibly incredible, stunningly stunning, astonishingly astonishing.” This Eucharistic Pilgrimage does. All the Eucharistic adoration that will take place does. The devout Masses do.
Eucharistic devotions in general, and processions in general, meekly confront the world — Catholics and non-Catholics both — with a choice: either those in procession are out of their minds, believing a piece of unleavened bread is the Creator of the universe, the Savior of the World; or that these processing Catholics are right and anyone not in the procession with them are the genuinely crazy ones.
Just as in Jesus’ time, many of his disciples responded to his teaching on the Eucharist by saying, “This teaching is hard; who can accept it?” (Jn 6:60) and abandoned him, so today, too, many sadly find the teaching difficult and unacceptable. Half of those who practice each Sunday and seven of ten Catholics overall say they do not believe in the doctrines of transubstantiation and the Real Presence.
But even if it is hard, we seek to reply like St. Peter, “Lord to whom shall we go?” We believe whatever the Son of God has said, because nothing can be truer than the Word of truth. This is the Res Mirabilis, but it is true that a pauper et servus humilis manducat Dominum, and can abide with him on the outside and on the inside.
Conclusion
Elizabeth Ann Seton was someone who grew to grasp this reality. One of the biggest reasons for her conversion was because of her faith in Jesus’ real presence in the Holy Eucharist and by seeing him pass by.
Before her conversion, she wrote to her Sister-in-law Rebecca, “How happy would we be if we believed what these dear Souls believe, that they possess God in the Sacrament and that he remains in their churches and is carried to them when they are sick.”
To Rebecca again. “The other day in a moment of excessive distress, I fell on my knees without thinking when the Blessed Sacrament passed by and cried in agony to God to bless me if he was there, that my whole Soul desired only him.”
Eventually she learned how to draw her whole life from him.
Similarly, the pilgrims on the other routes likewise teach us valuable lessons.
Juan Diego used to walk 15 miles each way to daily Mass;
Junipero Serra journeyed thousands of miles to bring the Eucharistic Jesus to missions he would establish throughout Mexico and California;
and Our Lady is the model of Eucharistic faith, shown in the way she received Jesus within her womb.
We ask their collective intercession as we begin this journey, that what begins on the commemoration of the birthday of the Church may lead to a true rebirth and indeed revival of Eucharistic faith in our country.
And because the Christian life is indeed a Eucharistic pilgrimage, we ask these patrons, together with Blessed Michael McGivney, to pray that that we and many others may as a result of the Church’s Eucharistic witness to join Jesus on the Eucharistic pilgrimage of earthly life all the way to its conclusion in the eternal nuptial feast where we pray we will meet them, be able to thank them, and be able to rejoice with them eternally at the place our Christian Eucharistic pilgrimage ends.

The post The Christian Life as a Eucharistic Pilgrimage, Prelude to the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage Seton Route, May 18, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
46 min
May 18, 2024What We Need for the Journey, Lectio Divina for the Seton Route Eucharistic Pilgrims, May 18, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Mary’s Rectory Chapel, New Haven, Connecticut
Reflection in Preparation for the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage
May 18, 2024

To listen to an audio recording of this meditation, please click below.
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.18.24_Meditation_on_What_We_Need_to_Prepare_1.mp3

The is the outline of the lectio divina.
As we prepare tonight, after we begin Pentecost, to start our National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, I thought it would be helpful for us to ponder, in lectio divina, the two passages when Jesus sent out the Twelve and when he sent out the Seventy-Two. There are many elements there that can guide us as we prepare to be sent out by Jesus with Jesus, assisted by the Holy Spirit, whose gifts we ask him to renew in us at the Vigil Mass tonight and then tomorrow.
Passages
Lk 9: Jesus summoned the Twelve and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal [the sick]. He said to them, “Take nothing for the journey, neither walking stick, nor sack, nor food, nor money, and let no one take a second tunic. Whatever house you enter, stay there and leave from there. And as for those who do not welcome you, when you leave that town, shake the dust from your feet in testimony against them.” Then they set out and went from village to village proclaiming the good news and curing diseases everywhere.
Lk 10: After this the Lord appointed seventy[-two] others whom he sent ahead of him in pairs to every town and place he intended to visit. He said to them, “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest. Go on your way; behold, I am sending you like lambs among wolves. Carry no money bag, no sack, no sandals; and greet no one along the way. Into whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this household.’ If a peaceful person lives there, your peace will rest on him; but if not, it will return to you. Stay in the same house and eat and drink what is offered to you, for the laborer deserves his payment. Do not move about from one house to another. Whatever town you enter and they welcome you, eat what is set before you, cure the sick in it and say to them, “The kingdom of God is at hand for you.’ Whatever town you enter and they do not receive you, go out into the streets and say, ‘The dust of your town that clings to our feet, even that we shake off against you.’ Yet know this: the kingdom of God is at hand. I tell you, it will be more tolerable for Sodom on that day than for that town. … Whoever listens to you listens to me. Whoever rejects you rejects me. And whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”
Elements
Appointment
“Jesus summoned the Twelve and gave them power and authority”
“The Lord appointed 72 others whom he sent ahead of him.”
We don’t choose the Lord, he chooses us. We have been chosen just like the 12, just like the first disciples.
Prayer
He said to them, “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.”
Jesus calls those praying.
We are sustained by the prayers of the Church from the beginning. The prayers of so many now.
Need for laborers, hard workers, not bodies.
Message
“He sent them to proclaim the Kingdom of God”
“Say to them, ‘The Kingdom of God is at hand for you.’
Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, said very powerfully back in 2000 in a talk to catechists from around the world, “The kingdom of God … is ‘not a thing.’ The Kingdom of God is God. The Kingdom of God means: God exists. God is alive. God is present and acts in the world, in our – in my life. God is not a faraway ‘ultimate cause,’ God is not the ‘great architect’ of deism, who created the machine of the world and is no longer part of it – on the contrary: God is the most present and decisive reality in each and every act of my life, in each and every moment of history.” The kingdom has come to a person when God is truly God of each and every act of one’s life.
The sick and the possessed
“He gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases…”
“Whatever town you enter and they welcome you, … cure the sick in it.”
There is a special mission to the sick and possessed. We must prioritize them.
Jesus will be with us to heal the sick and exorcise demons. There are so many who are wounded, who are under the sway of the devil’s lies and evil works. We pray for both groups as we journey.
Spiritual poverty
“Take nothing for the journey, neither walking stick, nor sack, nor food, nor money, and let no one take a second tunic.”
“Carry no money bag, no sack, no sandals.”
We think we’re traveling light!
Jesus tells us what not to take rather than what to take.
Jesus wanted us to proclaim our total trust in God and in his providence.
Sermon on the Mount: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat [or drink], or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? 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? Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span? 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. Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself.”
We take him for the journey. We lean on him rather than a walking stick. We eat him. We become rich in him. We are clothed in his virtues. We walk in his ways. In short, we trust in him to provide… always!
Focus
“Greet no one along the way.”
Not a green light to be rude but to stay focused.
This is not just to avoid bad things, but also good things that are not part of the mission.
Hospitality
“Whatever house you enter, stay there and leave from there.”
“Into whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this household.’ If a peaceful person lives there, your peace will rest on him; but if not, it will return to you. Stay in the same house and eat and drink what is offered to you, for the laborer deserves his payment. Do not move about from one house to another.
“Whoever listens to you listens to me. Whoever rejects you rejects me. And whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”
People in receiving us, receive Jesus and receive God the Father who sent Jesus. That’s why we need to allow ourselves to be received as missionaries of the Lord. Their goodness to us is a goodness to Jesus. Mt. 25.
Eat and drink what is offered. Not be fussy. Receive as a gift.
Stay in the same place. Shouldn’t be looking for a better deal.
We wish peace. The sum of all good. The tranquility of a right relationship with God and others that the Prince of Peace brings.
Opposition
“Behold, I am sending you like lambs among wolves.”
He wants us to be innocent like lambs.
He wants us to recognize that there are wolves. He does not want us to be naïve. We are going to encounter opposition just like he did. We shouldn’t be surprised or throw off. He was preparing us for rejection and to recognize that we will sometimes see the evil that his goodness can bring to the surface.
He tells us not to be afraid, to trust in the Father, to trust in him, to have the Holy Spirit’s gift of courage.
No resentment
“As for those who do not welcome you, when you leave that town, shake the dust from your feet in testimony against them.”
“Whatever town you enter and they do not receive you, go out into the streets and say, ‘The dust of your town that clings to our feet, even that we shake off against you.’ Yet know this: the kingdom of God is at hand. I tell you, it will be more tolerable for Sodom on that day than for that town. …
We shake the dust off our feet. We don’t take our resentments to the next town. We leave it behind so that we can then proclaim the good news.
Action
“Then they set out and went from village to village proclaiming the good news and curing diseases everywhere.”
It’s not enough to receive the instructions, even to prepare. We must do it.
Joy
The seventy[-two] returned rejoicing, and said, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us because of your name.” Jesus said, “I have observed Satan fall like lightning from the sky. Behold, I have given you the power ‘to tread upon serpents’ and scorpions and upon the full force of the enemy and nothing will harm you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice because the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice because your names are written in heaven.”
We will see great things too. I’m convinced we are going to see literal miracles both spiritual and physical. They’re all small change to the miracle of transubstantiation. There will be faith enough to move mountains. We hope to have at least a mustard seed of it ourselves.
The greatest gift is our relationship with the Lord. He knows our names. They are written in heaven. We rejoice in that. And that makes us unafraid, even of the things that might be difficult along the journey.
The Incredible Bonus
Jesus sent them out with these instructions and they were able to succeed in the mission.
But they still didn’t have a gift they would receive to help them bear greater fruit.
The gift of the Holy Spirit.
Tongues of Fire.
Good for you that I go.
Helps us to pray, to live, to be a temple, to develop our manifestations for the common good, to proclaim.
He gives us what to say.
We give common witness with him.
As we prepare for Pentecost and for our Eucharistic mission, we ask him to come down upon us so that we may live out Jesus’ missionary instructions and we are sent to the towns and villages that he sends us not two by two but as an apostolic band.

The post What We Need for the Journey, Lectio Divina for the Seton Route Eucharistic Pilgrims, May 18, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
36 min
May 18, 2024Beginning with the End in Mind, Seventh Sunday of Easter, May 18, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Mary’s Rectory Chapel, New Haven, Connecticut
Saturday of the Seventh Week of Easter
Votive Mass of Our Lady of the Cenacle
May 18, 2024
Acts 28:16-20.30-31, Ps 11, Jn 21:20-25

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.18.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
It is of course providential that the last day of preparation for our National Eucharistic Pilgrimage is the last day of the Easter Season. Throughout this Easter Season, we learn how to live with the risen Jesus. The Church has us begin this Season by focusing on how the Risen Jesus appeared to and converted his disciples who initially couldn’t fathom his resurrection no matter many times he told them about his upcoming crucifixion, death and resurrection on the third day. Then it brings us through a mystagogical catechesis, as we look to how in Baptism we die in Christ and he raises us to a new form of life, how in the Eucharist we receive him risen from the dead as the source of our life, how Jesus is our Good Shepherd knowing and calling us by name, feeding us, protecting us, and guiding us through dark valleys to verdant pastures, how we are attached to him as Vine to branches and summoned to receive, remain in and share his love, and how he sends us the Holy Spirit to remind us everything he taught us, lead us to all truth, convict us of sin, righteousness and condemnation, and make us truly one as he and the Father are one. This is what we go through in this mystagogy so that we may learn how to live the ordinary time of day to day life together with the Risen Jesus and cooperating with the Holy Spirit to complete Jesus’ saving work. In these last days as we pray for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, we huddle around Mary and she teaches us how to be overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, pray with the help of the Holy Spirit, live according to the Spirit, develop our manifestation of the Spirit for the common good and be ready with tongues of fire to burst forth from the Upper Room of our Churches to go out to the world to proclaim the Good News to every creature that God-with-us is still very much with us, wishing to raise us to new life.
In the readings the Church gives us on this last day of the Easter Season, we learn how to live our whole life with our end in mind, which is part of the Holy Spirit’s gift of wisdom. Jesus came so that we might have life, have it to the full, and have it forever, but we need to order our life in response to that gift. Today the readings help us to see three different ways saints were ordering their lives, at different parts of their spiritual trajectory. There’s much for us to learn.
The first is Peter’s, on which we focused some yesterday yesterday. Right after the Lord prophesied that he would give his life for him and keep his word that, given a second chance, he would die for him rather than deny him, Peter, like he did in Caesarea Philippi right after Jesus had changed his name from Simon to Rock had it changed again from Rock to Satan because he was opposing what Jesus foretold about his passion, death and resurrection, descends again from fulfilling Christ’s demand to “Follow me” to mere human curiosity, asking what would happen to St. John. Peter had lost focus as to what he was to be about as a shepherd after a Good Shepherd, tending and feeding Christ’s sheep and lambs. Jesus told him in reply that it was not his concern. Peter’s business, rather, was to follow Jesus. That is what he would do after the descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, as we’ll celebrate tomorrow. That’s how the Holy Spirit would help him, reminding him of what Jesus had told him and guiding him with ardent love. We, too, can often be distracted by curiosity questions such that we don’t focus on what our task is. Jesus wants each of us to follow him down the path of agapic love by feeding and tending his flock. The Holy Spirit wants to help us to keep that loving focus. St. Peter would eventually follow the Lord Jesus all the way and join him in crucifixion, stretching out his arms and letting another drag him to the stake in the Circus of Caligula and Nero. But he prepared to be faithful to that supreme witness by the martyrdom of each day, sacrificing himself in order to tend and feed Christ’s sheep and feed his lambs. Each of those self-denials to affirm God and others in love was a preparing for the ultimate test. It’s the same way for us. We prepare for the great witness by the witness of each day, of choosing Christ each day. The Holy Spirit helps us to live this daily martyrdom, whether white or red, dry or wet.
The second end is St. John’s, which we see in today’s Gospel. St. John writes today, “There are also many other things that Jesus did, but if these were to be described individually, I do not think the whole world would contain the books that would be written.” Even though not all the libraries on the planet would be enough to exhaust the mystery of Jesus, St. John didn’t spend the rest of his life writing about details. He essentialized, just like he did in the Gospel. He states today, “It is this disciple who testifies to these things and has written them.” John spent his whole life testifying to Jesus, verbally, then with his writing of the Gospel and letters, and finally by his own life in Jesus. He lived to be very old — hence the rumor in the early Church, which he debunks in today’s passage, that he would live forever! — and St. Jerome says that the story was passed that until he died, the message he proclaimed got increasingly simpler, just repeating, over and over again, “Little children, let us love one another,” saying he never tired of repeating that message because the Lord never did. That’s what he tried to do, to love each other, in imitation of the Lord’s love. That’s what the Holy Spirit wants us to do, too. That’s doubtless what our Lady, whom he took into his home and life, helped him accomplish.
The third end is St. Paul’s. Today we see the end of the Acts of the Apostles. It doesn’t describe St. Paul’s martyrdom by decapitation in the forest to the south of Rome, what is now called Three Fountains. It ends with St. Luke’s description of what he was doing under house arrest in Rome awaiting trial: “He received all who came to him, and with complete assurance and without hindrance he proclaimed the Kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ.” He wasn’t complaining about his imprisonment but using it for the Gospel. We see how hospitable he was, receiving “all who came to him.” We see his faith and boldness, proclaiming Christ the King and his Kingdom with “complete assurance and without hindrance.” One would have thought that it was impossible to proclaim a triumphant kingdom of one who was crucified or a kingdom at all that involves unjust imprisonment, but Paul did so with great faith. He was helped in giving this witness by the Holy Spirit who was advancing the Gospel in this way — not just then but with the future of the Church in mind — perhaps even more than he would have been had Paul been free. The Holy Spirit wants us likewise to receive everyone as dearly beloved of God and announce Christ to them without fear and full of faith.
I’d like to add a couple of other ends.
The first is St. John Paul II. Today is his 104th birthday. How happy he would doubtless be that his beloved young people would courageously be making a 1200 mile pilgrimage out of love for the Eucharist. The Eucharist was his whole life. As he drew toward the end of his life, he proclaimed a Year of the Eucharist, a year in which God would in fact come to take him. He wrote in his beautiful encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia (“The Church draws her life from the Eucharist”), “When I think of the Eucharist, and look at my life as a priest, as a Bishop and as the Successor of Peter, I naturally recall the many times and places in which I was able to celebrate it. … I have been able to celebrate Holy Mass in chapels built along mountain paths, on lakeshores and seacoasts; I have celebrated it on altars built in stadiums and in city squares… This varied scenario of celebrations of the Eucharist has given me a powerful experience of its universal and, so to speak, cosmic character. Yes, cosmic! Because even when it is celebrated on the humble altar of a country church, the Eucharist is always in some way celebrated on the altar of the world. It unites heaven and earth. It embraces and permeates all creation. The Son of God became man in order to restore all creation, in one supreme act of praise, to the One who made it from nothing. He, the Eternal High Priest who by the blood of his Cross entered the eternal sanctuary, thus gives back to the Creator and Father all creation redeemed. He does so through the priestly ministry of the Church, to the glory of the Most Holy Trinity. Truly this is the mysterium fidei which is accomplished in the Eucharist: the world which came forth from the hands of God the Creator now returns to him redeemed by Christ.” He celebrated Mass with that cosmic dimension in mind. He saw the celebration of the Mass as what united God and man, heaven and earth, and prepared him for heaven. That’s why in an exhortation for the Year of the Eucharist he sought to increase what he called “Eucharistic amazement” so that we would see the Eucharistic Jesus as the magnetic pole of our whole life drawing us to him and in him, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to the Father. But I’d like to focus on just one aspect of his Eucharistic teaching, what he says about the eschatological dimension of the Eucharist. We pray in the Memorial Acclamation he notes, “until you come in glory.” He said, “The Eucharist is a straining towards the goal, a foretaste of the fullness of joy promised by Christ (cf. Jn 15:11); it is in some way the anticipation of heaven, the ‘pledge of future glory.’ In the Eucharist, everything speaks of confident waiting ‘in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.’ Those who feed on Christ in the Eucharist need not wait until the hereafter to receive eternal life: they already possess it on earth, as the first-fruits of a future fullness which will embrace man in his totality. For in the Eucharist we also receive the pledge of our bodily resurrection at the end of the world: ‘He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day’ (Jn 6:54). This pledge of the future resurrection comes from the fact that the flesh of the Son of Man, given as food, is his body in its glorious state after the resurrection. With the Eucharist we digest, as it were, the ‘secret’ of the resurrection. For this reason Saint Ignatius of Antioch rightly defined the Eucharistic Bread as ‘a medicine of immortality, an antidote to death.’ … Proclaiming the death of the Lord ‘until he comes’ (1 Cor 11:26) entails that all who take part in the Eucharist be committed to changing their lives and making them in a certain way completely ‘Eucharistic.’ It is this fruit of a transfigured existence and a commitment to transforming the world in accordance with the Gospel which splendidly illustrates the eschatological tension inherent in the celebration of the Eucharist and in the Christian life as a whole: ‘Come, Lord Jesus!’ (Rev 22:20).” And so he urges us to receive every communion as Viaticum, as Jesus “with us on the way,” as we together with the whole pilgrim Church on earth make our journey through time with the Eucharistic Jesus until he comes in glory anew.
The one who shows us this Eucharistic eschatology that helps us to follow Jesus rather than get diverted by curiosity, who helps us to essentialize everything to Christ’s love shown for us here as a way of life, the one who helps us learn how to proclaim the kingdom with complete assurance and without hindrance is Our Lady of the Cenacle. The Archangel Gabriel said to her at the Annunciation, what St. Teresa of Calcutta called her “first communion day,” “the Lord is with you.” And as St. John Paul II loved to point out, she was able to receive the blessed Fruit of her womb within her anew in the Holy Eucharist from St. John, St. Peter and the other apostles in the Masses they would celebrate for the early Church. She teaches us how to consecrate our whole life to this mystery, how to have our “Amen” echo her “Fiat” and how to live this Eucharistic Pilgrimage as the overflowing of the Mystery of the Visitation, as we take Jesus with and within us out to others so that he can make them leap for joy. We ask her help so that we might live this Eucharistic eschatology, this Christian life with the end in mind, each day of our pilgrimage and beyond.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 ACTS 28:16-20, 30-31
When he entered Rome, Paul was allowed to live by himself,
with the soldier who was guarding him.
Three days later he called together the leaders of the Jews.
When they had gathered he said to them, “My brothers,
although I had done nothing against our people
or our ancestral customs,
I was handed over to the Romans as a prisoner from Jerusalem.
After trying my case the Romans wanted to release me,
because they found nothing against me deserving the death penalty.
But when the Jews objected, I was obliged to appeal to Caesar,
even though I had no accusation to make against my own nation.
This is the reason, then, I have requested to see you
and to speak with you, for it is on account of the hope of Israel
that I wear these chains.”He remained for two full years in his lodgings.
He received all who came to him, and with complete assurance
and without hindrance he proclaimed the Kingdom of God
and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ.
Responsorial Psalm PS 11:4, 5 AND 7
R. (see 7b) The just will gaze on your face, O Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
The LORD is in his holy temple;
the LORD’s throne is in heaven.
His eyes behold,
his searching glance is on mankind.
R. The just will gaze on your face, O Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
The LORD searches the just and the wicked;
the lover of violence he hates.
For the LORD is just, he loves just deeds;
the upright shall see his face.
R. The just will gaze on your face, O Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Alleluia JN 16:7, 13
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
I will send to you the Spirit of truth, says the Lord;
he will guide you to all truth.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel JN 21:20-25
Peter turned and saw the disciple following whom Jesus loved,
the one who had also reclined upon his chest during the supper
and had said, “Master, who is the one who will betray you?”
When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about him?”
Jesus said to him, “What if I want him to remain until I come?
What concern is it of yours?
You follow me.”
So the word spread among the brothers that that disciple would not die.
But Jesus had not told him that he would not die,
just “What if I want him to remain until I come?
What concern is it of yours?”It is this disciple who testifies to these things
and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true.
There are also many other things that Jesus did,
but if these were to be described individually,
I do not think the whole world would contain the books
that would be written.
The post Beginning with the End in Mind, Seventh Sunday of Easter, May 18, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
21 min
May 18, 2024Pentecost Sunday (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, May 18, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for Pentecost Sunday
May 18, 2024

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.18.24_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us on Pentecost Sunday. In the Gospel we will hear, Jesus will tell the first apostles in the Upper Room, and, through them, all of us, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” These are words that I hope to interpret in a particularly Eucharistic key, because I am now in New Haven, Connecticut, where on the vigil of Pentecost, with various other pilgrims, I will begin a 65-day Eucharistic Pilgrimage walking with the Eucharistic Jesus to Indianapolis. There are three other teams starting on Pentecost, one from near the Canadian border in northern Minnesota, another from the Mexican border in Brownsville and a third from the west coast in San Francisco, all bound for the National Eucharistic Congress that will take place starting July 17 in Indiana.
As we approach Pentecost during this pivotal time of the Eucharist Revival, it’s fitting to deepen our awareness and appreciation for the role of the Holy Spirit in the Eucharistic knowledge, faith, gratitude, amazement, love and life.
It’s not a coincidence that Pentecost took place in the same Upper Room where Jesus, 53 days earlier, had celebrated the first Eucharist. During the Last Supper, Jesus had already spent much of his time speaking about the Holy Spirit, instructing us that the Holy Spirit would testify to him, remind us of all that he told us, teach us everything, guide us to all truth, give us what belongs to Jesus, convict the world with regard to sin, righteousness and condemnation, and declare to us the things that are coming (Jn 14:26, 15:26, 16:8, 16:13-14). Jesus even made the astonishing assertion that it was “better” for him to “go” — to die, rise and ascend — so that he could send us the Holy Spirit, as if the Holy Spirit were, somehow, a superior Gift (16:7).
In his beautiful 1986 encyclical on the Holy Spirit, St. John Paul II dedicated five rich paragraphs to the connection between the Holy Spirit and the Eucharist. The same Holy Spirit who overshadowed Mary at the Incarnation making it possible for the Word to become flesh and dwell among us within her womb overshadows the priest and the altar to transform bread and wine into the continuation of that Incarnation. To bring about the Eucharistic sacrifice and communion, the sacramental realization of Christ’s salvific presence, the pope asserted, is part of the Holy Spirit’s mission.
We see this in the earliest days of the Church, when Christians, right after Pentecost, were led by the Spirit to devote themselves to the “Breaking of the Bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42), which, John Paul II stated, “expressed and confirmed” the Church’s identity as the Bride and Body of Christ formed through the Eucharist and helped her become an efficacious sign of Christ’s presence in the world.
When we look at the principal works of the Holy Spirit, they can all be understood with reference to Christ in the Eucharist.
First, the Holy Spirit teaches us how to pray, since we don’t know how to pray as we ought (Rom 8:26), which helps us to pray the Mass, to adore Jesus on the altar, in the tabernacle and monstrance, and within us in Holy Communion, and with Jesus to praise, thank, beg for mercy, intercede and petition God the Father with the confidence of beloved sons and daughters.
Second, the Holy Spirit helps us to live a truly Eucharistic life, which is life according to the Spirit (Rom 8:5-17; Gal 5:16-25), putting to death in us all worldly life according to the flesh so that we might lift up our hearts and set them on the things of God.
The Holy Spirit, third, helps to bring about in us through worthy reception of the Holy Eucharist the spiritual communion — “one Body, one Spirit, in Christ,” as we pray in Eucharistic Prayer III — that Jesus prayed for repeatedly during the Last Supper (Jn 17:11, 21-23).
Fourth, the Holy Spirit helps us to make our lives a commentary on the words of consecration, teaching us interiorly how to make our entire existence — our body, blood, sweat, tears, joys and sufferings — a gift of love to God and to others, bestowing on us certain charisms and “manifestations of the Spirit” for the good of the Church and the world (1 Cor 12:7).
Finally, the Holy Spirit forms us to give joint witness with Him to the risen Lord Jesus in the Eucharist, making our hearts burn, illuminating our minds with his seven-fold gifts, and igniting our tongues to proclaim zealously and effectively that Christ is truly alive and with us until the end of time, just as he promised, in the Holy Eucharist.
Therefore, this Pentecost, it’s clear that one of the principal ways by which we can grow in Eucharistic knowledge, faith, amazement, gratitude, love and life is to grow in appreciation of the Holy Spirit’s role in the celebration of the Mass that makes the Eucharist possible.
We begin Mass in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, something that reminds us of our baptism, when we, through water, were baptized with the “Holy Spirit and fire” (Mt 3:11).
Immediately afterward the priest, on behalf of the Church, echoes St. Paul’s prayer (2 Cor 13:13) that we will receive Christ’s grace, God the Father’s love, and the Holy Spirit’s “communion.” The Holy Spirit is the personal communion between the Father and the Son. We have been made in the image and likeness of that Trinitarian communion personified by the Holy Spirit, the communion for which Christ prayed during the first Mass and that the Mass effectuates through the worthy reception of holy communion.
Next, the Holy Spirit helps us acknowledge and confess our sins and implore God’s pardon. The Holy Spirit searches everything (1 Cor 2:10), convicts us about sin (Jn 16:9), helps us reject the works of the flesh (Gal 5:19-21) as well as to trust in and cry out for God’s mercy (Mt 12:31-32, 1 Cor 12:3).
Throughout the Liturgy of the Word, the Holy Spirit is very much at work, guiding us through the Biblical readings he inspired, to “all the truth,” to remember and live all that Jesus taught, and to receive this revelation like little children (Lk 10:21). He similarly seeks to help those ordained to proclaim God’s word to preach it in a way that can cut to the heart (Acts 2:37, Mt 10:19-20, Lk 12:12).
The culmination of the Creed, accentuated often in liturgical music as well as by genuflections twice a year, is when we ponder how “by the power of the Holy Spirit, [Jesus] was born of the Virgin Mary and became man.” We also proclaim the Holy Spirit as “Lord” and “giver of life,” to be “worshipped and glorified” and heeded as he has “spoken through the prophets” and speaks still.
When we pray the General Intercessions, not only are we assisted by the Holy Spirit (Eph 6:18) who intercedes for us and helps us to pray with the simplicity and confidence of beloved children (Rom 8:26), but the Holy Spirit is the principal response God the Father gives (Lk 11:13).
In the Liturgy of the Eucharist, the Holy Spirit’s becomes even more explicit and prominent. He is the one who helps us to lift up our hearts to the Lord (Rom 8:5; Col 3:1-2) and fills us with a desire to thank God the Father always and everywhere.
The most obvious work of the Holy Spirit happens at the time of the “epiclesis,” when we ask God the Father to send the Holy Spirit over the bread and wine to transform them into the Body and Blood of his Son. After the consecration, we beg the Father to send the Holy Spirit down once more so that we may be “gathered into one by the Holy Spirit” (Eucharistic Prayer II), “become one body, one spirit in Christ” (III), “make us an everlasting gift” to Him (III) and “become a living sacrifice in Christ” (IV).
In the doxology at end of the Liturgy of the Eucharist, we summarize the entire Eucharistic sacrifice by giving God the Father all glory and honor “in the unity of the Holy Spirit,” who seeks to unite us to each other and to Christ and, through, with and in Christ, to the Father.
The Holy Spirit effuses the recitation of the Our Father. He helps us to cry out “Abba! Father!” (Gal 4:6, Rom 8:14-17), to hallow God’s name by transforming us into his image (2 Cor 3:17-18), to enter into God’s kingdom (Jn 3:5-6), to accomplish God’s will (Rom 8:27; 12:2), to give us each day our supersubstantial Bread (Jn 6:63), to bring us the forgiveness of sins (Jn 20:22-23), to protect us when tempted (Mt 4:1), and deliver us from the evil one (Mt 12:28).
At the Lamb of God, the Spirit helps the whole Church as Christ’s Bride say, “Come!” (Rev 22:17).
In Holy Communion, he helps us to become the true temple and tabernacle of God (1 Cor 3:16; 6:19), to guard the treasure entrusted to us (2 Tim 1:14) and to give thanks (Eph 5:18-20).
At the final Trinitarian blessing, we are sent to glorify God by our life, which is a Eucharistic life according to the Spirit, and to “announce the Gospel of the Lord” in tandem with the Holy Spirit, leaving the Upper Room strengthened by the Holy Spirit like the first disciples did on Pentecost.
In his Message for the 23rd World Youth Day, held in Sydney in 2008, Pope Benedict XVI called the Eucharist a “perpetual Pentecost,” since “every time we celebrate Mass we receive the Holy Spirit who unites us more deeply with Christ and transforms us into him.”
This is a recognition and reality in which we’re called to grow during this Eucharistic Revival!
When Jesus says to us, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” he speaks those words now truly present in the Holy Eucharist as the Spirit comes to help us pray, love and live the Mass as Christ desires. Happy Pentecost!

The Gospel on which the homily was based was:
Gospel
Jn 20:19-23
On the evening of that first day of the week,
when the doors were locked, where the disciples were,
for fear of the Jews,
Jesus came and stood in their midst
and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.
The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them,
“Receive the Holy Spirit.
Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,
and whose sins you retain are retained.”
The post Pentecost Sunday (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, May 18, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
10 min
May 18, 2024The Foundation of Our Pilgrimage, Seventh Friday of Easter, May 17, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Mary’s Rectory Chapel, New Haven, Connecticut
Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter
Memorial of St. Pascal Baylon
May 17, 2024
Acts 25:13-21, Ps 103, Jn 21:15-19

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.17.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
Today, as we prepare for the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, we have one of the most powerful and poignant scenes in the Gospel, which the Church gives us to help us to summarize the graces of the Easter Season and to send us forward onto the Pilgrimage and beyond. It’s a continuation, in a sense, of the Easter Octave, since it’s the second half of the Gospel we had on Easter Friday, April 5. Jesus meets Peter and six other disciples on the seashore of Galilee where he cooks them breakfast. At the end of the meal, he takes Simon Peter aside in order to restore his confidence after having totally denied Jesus three times on Holy Thursday just a couple of hours after saying that even if he should have to die for Jesus, he would never betray him. Peter was not yet able to experience the joy of Jesus’ resurrection fully because of the trauma of his sins. But Jesus needed him. Jesus wanted to solidify the rock on whom he was building his Church. So in response to Peter’s three-fold denial, Jesus gave him a chance to make a three-fold affirmation of love.
Buried within their dialogue is a real drama, but to see it, we have to know a little Greek. The first time Jesus asks Peter if he loves him, the word he uses for love is agape, which means a total self-sacrificial type of love, the type of love Jesus himself showed when he said, “No one has any greater love than to lay down his life for his friends.” “Simon, son of John,” he was asking, “do you love me with agape?” Peter’s response, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you,” doesn’t use the word “agape,” but rather “philia.” He replies, in other words, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you as a friend.” Peter, after having broken his promise to die for Jesus before he ever would deny him, wasn’t going to make the same promise again. He was still carrying around the weight of his betrayal. Jesus had called him a friend during the Last Supper because he had revealed to him and the other apostles all that the Father had told him, but Peter had been stripped of the confidence that had made him commit to love Jesus by Jesus’ life-giving standard, that the greatest love is to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. So Jesus asked him a second time, “Peter, do you love me with agape, with total self-sacrificial love?” Peter replied again, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you with philia, as a friend.” So Jesus in the third question lowered himself to where Peter was comfortable and asked, “Simon, Son of John, do you love me with philia?” That’s when Peter was distressed. He knew the Lord was calling him to more but the Lord was acknowledging that Peter didn’t think he was capable of heroic love. He replied, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you as a friend.” Jesus, however, wasn’t going to leave Peter there. He said to him that when he was younger, he used to dress himself and go about as he pleased. But when Peter would grow old, another would “stretch out his hands” — a Greek euphemism for crucifixion — and lead him to a place he didn’t want to go, something, St. John said, was indicating the type of death by which Peter would glorify God. Jesus was telling him, “Even if you don’t want to say again publicly that you love me enough to die for me, you will love me that way, even being crucified for me.” And Jesus, to emphasize the point said to him, “Follow me,” because Peter would follow him all the way.
What’s the lesson for us on this day before we begin our 65-day pilgrimage with Jesus? Each of us, too, has had times when we haven’t been faithful to God, but no matter what our falls, Jesus wants to restore us to be capable of a love like his, of a total self-giving love in response to Jesus’ love for us. And he indicates to Peter and to us how to show it, by feeding his lambs and sheep, by tending his flock. In other words, the way we will demonstrate our love for Jesus will be by sacrificing ourselves, by giving of ourselves, out of love for those he loved so much to die for. Jesus didn’t say, “Love me as I have loved you,” but “Love one another as I have loved you,” because our love for him would be shown in our love for his flock.
St. Paul, who was on trial in today’s first reading because of his love for Jesus and for Jesus’ sheep and lambs, wrote to the Corinthians of the importance of this type of agape. He said that if we have faith to move mountains, if we even give our bodies over to the torturers in defense of the faith but don’t have love, we are just a noisy gong and a clashing cymbal. To love by Jesus’ standard isn’t easy and Jesus knows it. St. Peter himself learned it the hard way. St. Paul gave his words to the Corinthians out of experience because he himself needed to learn each of the virtues he would predicate of love: “Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, it is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” Christ’s love transformed both of them.
Jesus gives us two gifts to love by his standard. The first is the gift of himself in the Holy Eucharist. Jesus himself enters us with his own love so that from the inside we are able to love others with the total gift of ourselves in communion with him. He who says to us with love, “This is my Body given for you, this is the Chalice of my Blood poured out for you,” strengthens us from within to echo in our own lives his words, so that we may give our body, our soul, our sweat, our lives loving others with the same love we here receive. The second gift is the one we’re preparing to receive anew on Sunday, the feast of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit came down upon Peter, the Apostles, Mary and the members of the early Church as tongues of fire, so that with ardent love they might give witness to the faith. One of his great gifts is the gift of courage; one of the great fruits of life according to the Holy Spirit is agape. The Holy Spirit changed Peter from an apostate to an apostle, from a chicken to a shepherd. He upgraded his love from philia to agape and strengthened him by the gift of courage to remain faithful. And the Holy Spirit seeks to work the same moral miracle in us.
Today the Church has an example of someone who always sought to respond to Jesus’ question, “Do you love me?” with an emphatic yes to Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. St. Pascal Baylon, the patron saint of Eucharistic Congresses, used to spend long periods of prayer in front of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and also for defending the doctrine of the Eucharist against the Huguenots and Calvinists of his day who denied it. His love for the Eucharistic Jesus became infectious to those around him and it translated into the love he had for all those who came to the door when he was porter or were otherwise in need. How providential it is that on our last day of preparation for the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage we are able to ponder his example of love and ask for his intercession.
Today at Mass Jesus calls each of us by name like he called Simon Peter, Paul, and Pascal, and asks, “Do you love me?” He gives his here his agapic love and tells us to “do this” in his memory. Our love for him is shown by receiving his gift and then, together with him, impelled by the Holy Spirit, to tend and feed his sheep and lambs. May each of us today, strengthened by the Holy Spirit, reply to Jesus’ ever present question by saying in Holy Communion, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you with a total self-sacrificial gift of love,” and live it by the way we, like Peter, Paul and Pascal, love the lambs and sheep he entrusts to our shepherdly care.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 ACTS 25:13B-21
King Agrippa and Bernice arrived in Caesarea
on a visit to Festus.
Since they spent several days there,
Festus referred Paul’s case to the king, saying,
“There is a man here left in custody by Felix.
When I was in Jerusalem the chief priests and the elders of the Jews
brought charges against him and demanded his condemnation.
I answered them that it was not Roman practice
to hand over an accused person before he has faced his accusers
and had the opportunity to defend himself against their charge.
So when they came together here, I made no delay;
the next day I took my seat on the tribunal
and ordered the man to be brought in.
His accusers stood around him,
but did not charge him with any of the crimes I suspected.
Instead they had some issues with him about their own religion
and about a certain Jesus who had died
but who Paul claimed was alive.
Since I was at a loss how to investigate this controversy,
I asked if he were willing to go to Jerusalem
and there stand trial on these charges.
And when Paul appealed that he be held in custody
for the Emperor’s decision,
I ordered him held until I could send him to Caesar.”
Responsorial Psalm PS 103:1-2, 11-12, 19-20AB
R. (19a) The Lord has established his throne in heaven.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Bless the LORD, O my soul;
and all my being, bless his holy name.
Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits.
R. The Lord has established his throne in heaven.
or:
R. Alleluia.
For as the heavens are high above the earth,
so surpassing is his kindness toward those who fear him.
As far as the east is from the west,
so far has he put our transgressions from us.
R. The Lord has established his throne in heaven.
or:
R. Alleluia.
The LORD has established his throne in heaven,
and his kingdom rules over all.
Bless the LORD, all you his angels,
you mighty in strength, who do his bidding.
R. The Lord has established his throne in heaven.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Alleluia JN 14:26
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The Holy Spirit will teach you everything
and remind you of all I told you.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel JN 21:15-19
After Jesus had revealed himself to his disciples and eaten breakfast with them,
he said to Simon Peter,
“Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?”
Simon Peter answered him, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.”
He then said to Simon Peter a second time,
“Simon, son of John, do you love me?”
Simon Peter answered him, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
He said to him, “Tend my sheep.”
He said to him the third time,
“Simon, son of John, do you love me?”
Peter was distressed that he had said to him a third time,
“Do you love me?” and he said to him,
“Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.”
Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.
Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger,
you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted;
but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands,
and someone else will dress you
and lead you where you do not want to go.”
He said this signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God.
And when he had said this, he said to him, “Follow me.”
The post The Foundation of Our Pilgrimage, Seventh Friday of Easter, May 17, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
18 min
May 12, 2024Show Us Whom You Have Chosen, Seventh Sunday of Easter (B), May 12, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Seventh Sunday of Easter, Year B
May 12, 2024
Acts 1:15-17.20-26, Ps 103, 1 John 4:11-16, Jn 17:11-19

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.12.24_CCM_Mass_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
It’s normal at the end of an academic year, as students prepare for the summer, and especially for those graduating as they get ready for life after Columbia, to ask about what’s next and to wonder about the future. A similar, more intense, thing was happening among the members of the early Church in the days immediately after Jesus’ Ascension into heaven. Before returning to the right hand of the Father, Jesus told his students or disciples, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to carry out everything I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the world” (Mt 28:18-20). To help us fulfill that Mission, Jesus instructed them “not to depart Jerusalem but to wait for the promise of the Father about which you have heard me speak, [for] in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit … [and] 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” (Acts 1:4-8). Every year, during these ten days between Jesus’ Ascension into heaven and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, the Church imitates the first disciples, huddling around Mary in prayer, imploring the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, so that we, strengthened by the Holy Spirit, may faithfully and fruitfully continue Jesus’ mission. As we will celebrate next Sunday, the Holy Spirit comes upon the Church as “tongues of fire” so that we might proclaim Jesus with ardent love and as a “strong driving wind” pushing us beyond our comfort zones and familiar places, so that, in tandem with the Holy Spirit, we might fulfill the trust Jesus has placed in us and the mission in which Jesus has lovingly given us a share. The same Holy Spirit who took Jesus’ first followers, almost all of whom had abandoned him on Holy Thursday, and made them intrepid witnesses, wants to work a similar moral miracle in us. That’s what we pray for in these days. That’s what we prepare for. That’s what we are helped to yearn for.
The readings the Church gives us for the Seventh Sunday of Easter are meant to be read in this light of preparing us to give this testimony. Praying to God the Father aloud in today’s Gospel, Jesus says, “As you sent me into the world, so I sent them.” Just as Jesus has a divine mission, so do we. But we need to be ready and willing to assume that mission.
That’s what today’s first reading is all about. This event happened in the Upper Room when the early Church got together to pray in anticipation of Pentecost. Saint Peter stood up among the 120 disciples and said that they had to replace Judas, who had betrayed the Lord Jesus. “It is necessary,” he said, “that one of the men who accompanied us the whole time the Lord Jesus came and went among us… become with us a witness to his resurrection.” The qualifications were, first, someone who been with Jesus and the apostles, someone who knew Jesus personally and not just about him second-hand; and second, someone who would become with them a witness to the resurrection, a testifier that Jesus wasn’t dead but was very much alive. Those remain the vocational criteria and missionary task of every Christian in every age. We need to be people who know Jesus through prayer, the sacraments and the moral life, who hear Jesus, who see Jesus, who touch Jesus, who follow Jesus, who are friends with Jesus, and not just people who can explain his biographical info or his doctrine. Likewise, we need to be people who are able not just to tell others that he is alive, but show people he is alive by the way he vivifies us, raising us from sin and the various necroses sin assumes in human life, and filling us with the joy he entered the world to give and perfect in us.
We see that when it came time for the election of the new apostle, they nominated two candidates and allowed God to choose by lot. This was a familiar practice for the Jews because it was the way priests were chosen for service in the temple. The 800-1000 priests who were assembled at a given time for a week’s service in the Temple all wrote their name on rocks and the rocks were put into a big container and shaken until one came out. The name on the rock would be the one chosen to preside over the morning or evening sacrifice or to serve at the altar of incense. In this case, they put the names of Matthias and someone named Joseph, who was also called Barsabbas (Son of the Sabbath) or Justus (the Just One), on rocks and shook them out. The lot fell to Matthias and he was constituted among the apostles. On paper, if one were choosing by human criteria, it would have seemed likely that the one selected would have been the one who had already earned two nicknames because of the way he lived the faith as a just man distinguished by his love of the Sabbath day. But God’s ways are not our ways, and Matthias was the one chosen. He said yes to the call, became a witness to the Risen Jesus, and ended up giving his life in testimony not only of Jesus’ resurrection but of his faith that even after being martyred, he, too, would rise.
This scene is so important in the history of the Church not just because of what it teaches about what we call apostolic succession. It’s key so that every Christian can learn how to cultivate a spirituality of Saint Matthias, whose feast day the Church will celebrate on Tuesday, not uncoincidentally the day on which many of those graduating will receive their diplomas. Many Catholics can treat Joseph-Justus-Barsabbas as if he were their patron saint! We can say, “Whew! Thanks be to God that he chose someone else to spread the faith so that I can just remain quietly on the sidelines!” Many don’t believe that they’ve been chosen to spread the faith and they’re happy about being supposedly overlooked. Not everyone, of course, is chosen to be a successor of the apostles, or a priest, or a religious, or even a catechist, but every Christian has been chosen by the Lord’s lot, like Matthias, to know Jesus personally, to experience his risen life, and to spread knowledge and love of him. God doesn’t always choose the people who would seem most likely. It made no sense by human logic that among the apostles there would be — instead of rabbis and scribes and Pharisees — fishermen, tax collectors and relative nobodies. On paper it likewise made little sense that Matthias would have been chosen above Joseph-Justus-Barsabbas. But God’s ways are not ours. Out of all the people on earth, we are among the 2.5 of eight to have been mysteriously allotted to be aware of God’s love incarnate in Christ and 1.4 of eight to have been chosen to receive the plenitude of love through the Sacraments and fullness of revelation in the Catholic Church. It’s not that we’re better than others, or loved more by God than others, just like God didn’t love Matthias more than Joseph-Justus-Barsabbas. But we were allotted to become more aware of that love of God and to have the chance to live in it through Christ’s Mystical Body. But with that gift comes a task: it’s to pass the knowledge of that treasure on. To whom more is given, more is to be expected. Just like God chose the Jews as the people to receive his revelation so that one day that light could be brought to all nations, so God has allotted each of us to receive the gift of himself, his words, his presence, his love, so that we may bring those gifts to others and others to God. Our names have been written on him who is the “stone rejected by the builders who has become the cornerstone.” Our names have been inscribed on the rock on whom Jesus built his Church and are united in communion with Peter and his successors. Each of us is called, from one generation to the next, to pass on to others as of first importance the faith we ourselves have received (1 Cor 15:3). We are called to take the place not only of those, like Judas, who betrayed the Lord and the Gospel, but also of the other 11 who remained faithful to the end. When we pray, as the first members of the Church did, “Show us whom you have chosen!,” God has us look in the mirror of his eyes of love and discover our deepest identity.
So each of us has been chosen. Each of us has been given the office to take the place of those before us who were selected to transmit the Gospel. But the question is, how we can pass on that treasure effectively? How do we give that joint witness with the Holy Spirit, like St. Matthias, the other apostles, and faithful Christians throughout the centuries? We learn several lessons from the other readings today.
The first lesson is about unity. The Gospel for the Seventh Sunday of Easter each year is taken from the seventeenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel, Jesus’ great priestly prayer on Holy Thursday, in which three times he prays to God the Father out loud that we — his followers, the members of his Mystical Body — might be one just as he and God the Father are one. In next year’s passage he will tell us why this is so important: because through the disciples’ unity, he says to the Father, “The world may know that you sent me and that you loved them even as you loved me” (Jn 17:23). The whole credibility of Jesus’ saving mission, and our continuation of it, will hinge, Jesus says, on our communion. If we’re fractured or fighting, we proclaim a counter-Gospel. That’s why the devil, the “diabolos” in Greek, the one who throws us off course, always tries to defeat Christ’s mission by dividing the Church. He’s been rather successful, when you look at the great schism of 1054 between East and West, the Protestant Reformation of 1517, and so many subsequent divisions since. But Jesus’ prayer has no expiration date. And the Holy Spirit whom he sends, the personal union between God the Father and God the Son, is more powerful than the devil, and wills to reunite us, if only we cooperate, if only we choose it with perseverance. Over the last two Sundays, we have focused on that unity. Jesus reminded us two weeks ago that, sacramentally and ontologically, he is the Vine and we are the Branches, and, if we’re united with him and in him with all of the other branches, then we will bear fruit that will perdure. Last Sunday, Jesus spoke to us of the moral communion he seeks, reminding us that he loves us just as much and as perfectly as the Father loves him, and commands us first to remain in his love and then to love others as he has loved us. St. John, in today’s second reading, doubles down on the lesson. He reminds the first Christians and all of us, “We have come to know and believe in the love God has for us,” and adds, “If God so loved us, we must also love one another.” We have been made in the image and likeness of God who is love, and if we are going to give effective witness to him, we must show by our love for each other a glimpse of the love of God for us and for them. The credibility of the Gospel, the success of our Christian mission, begins and depends on this loving communion that the Holy Spirit wants to effectuate. Today with Jesus we pray for that unity.
The second lesson is about consecration. Jesus asks the Father to consecrate us so that we might belong not to the world but to the Father just like he belongs to the Father. To be consecrated literally means to be cut off (sacer) to be with (con) some other reality. In consecrating us, God sets us apart, he cuts us from worldliness, from the profane, so that we can be with him. Consecration is a sacred dedication in which we transfer our belonging, the title of the ownership of our life, totally to God. Jesus stresses twice that he doesn’t belong to the world and we shouldn’t belong to the world, emphasizing that we do not belong to the world “any more” than he does. Those are extraordinary words. He says that we’re supposed to have the same relationship to the world that he does and that we shouldn’t belong to the world any more than he. He says in the Gospel that he doesn’t want God the Father to take us out of the world, but to protect us from the evil one. He wants us in the world, but not of the world. He wants us to belong not to the world, or worse, to the evil one, but to Him. We’re never going to fulfill our mission as his disciples if we’re only part-time followers or half-hearted believers. He wants us to be consecrated. We were, in fact, consecrated to him in Baptism, but we need to live out that baptismal consecration, rejecting Satan, his evil works and empty promises, and staking our whole life on our faith in God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, in the holy Catholic Church Christ has founded, in the communion of saints here and in heaven, in the forgiveness of sins through baptism and penance, in the resurrection of the body, and in eternal life. The Holy Spirit helps us to live out this consecration faithfully.
The third lesson is about how God will consecrate us and help us to live out our consecration: through the truth. After Jesus prays that the Father consecrate us in truth, he says, “Your word is truth.” Jesus is the truth incarnate, the Word-made-flesh. To be consecrated in the truth means that we remain in him, in his Word, in his teaching. It means that we listen to his words as words to be done. It means that we are seeking always to “live the truth” and sever any disordered attachment to the world and to the prince of this world, whom Jesus calls the father of lies. On Holy Thursday, Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth and to remind us of everything Jesus, the truth, taught us. We ask the Holy Spirit for that gift that will enable us to live out the reality of our consecration.
The fourth lesson is to be prepared to suffer as Jesus did out of love for God and for the truth. Jesus mentions that the world will hate us, just like it hated him, because we belong to God and do not belong to the world. Jesus many times in the Gospel straightforwardly told us that we would be hated by those who don’t want to believe, love and follow God; that what they did to him, they would try to do to us. He said God the Father would permit this, just like he permitted it to happen to Jesus, so that we would be able to give more effective witness, so that we could show that we believe in the love that God has for us and that we are willing to die out of love for him as he did out of love for us, conscious that if we live and die with him, we will live forever. At the end of the Beatitudes, Jesus’ moral Magna Carta, Jesus declared, “Blessed are you when people hate you, revile you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me” for “your reward will be great in heaven.” The animosity we suffer from others is not strong enough to take away our unity, or annul our consecration, or change the truth, or negate the Father’s protection. And the Holy Spirit has been sent to infuse us with the gift of courage so that when we are dragged before those who hate us, we will not have to worry about what we are to say, because, Jesus promises, we will be given in that moment what we are to say, for it will not be us speaking but the Spirit of our Father speaking through us (Mt 10:19-20).
The fifth thing we see in today’s Gospel is the necessity of joy to proclaim the Gospel effectively, even in the midst of the hatred we sometimes have to endure. Jesus prays that we may “share [his] joy completely.” As he told us last Sunday, he came so that his joy might be in us and our joy be made complete (Jn 15:11). The Easter Season is meant to help us to focus on that joy, the joy that flows from God’s love, from his triumph over sin and death, and from his continuous risen presence. If we don’t live the Christian faith with joy, we risk making the Good News seem like a lie. But if we do live with true joy, then people will eventually be busting down the doors of our Catholic Churches to discover our secret. Each day God announces to us “good news of great joy for all the people,” and, like the angels on Christmas morning, we’re called to share that good news of great joy with the whole world. And one of the principal fruits of the Holy Spirit in us, along with love, peace, patience, kindness and self-mastery, is joy.
When we think about living out our mission as faithful disciples of the Lord Jesus and seeking to bring Jesus to others, we have no greater teacher than the one who is the model of the Church, Mary. She meditated on the word of God so much that the word literally took on her flesh. She was so docile to the Holy Spirit that the Holy Spirit overshadowed her not just at Jesus’ conception but throughout her whole life. As soon as she had received the incarnate love of God within her, she went with haste to share it with her cousin Elizabeth and with St. John the Baptist. After her Son’s Ascension, so that the disciples and apostles might be made ready to be consecrated by God’s word and strengthened for the mission of love he gave them, she became their great teacher, as she got the whole Church ready to receive the Holy Spirit and respond. Today, as we celebrate Mother’s Day during this month dedicated to her, we huddle around her like the first disciples, with love and trust. The same Holy Spirit who overshadowed her is about to overshadow this altar and all of us. The same Word that took her flesh is about to enter us. It is through our Holy Communion with Christ, made possible by the action of the Holy Spirit in the Mass, that we become united with others. And it is from the Mass that Jesus, who was sent by the Father, sends us out with him within, ignited by the Holy Spirit, and blessed in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit to announce the Gospel. Today as the Church prays for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and for an answer to the prayer, “Lord, you who know the hearts of all, show us [whom] you have chosen,” we, led by the Spirit, grasp that our vocation is not to be the Joseph-Justus-Barsabbases of our own day but the new St. Matthiases, receiving the torch from those who have gone before us and passing on as of the first importance what we ourselves received. This is the way we will set the world ablaze. With all the graces that God has bestowed on us during the last year and, for graduates, during their blessed time at Columbia, let’s joyfully get down to life-saving work.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
Acts 1:15-17, 20a, 20c-26
Peter stood up in the midst of the brothers
—there was a group of about one hundred and twenty persons
in the one place —.
He said, “My brothers,
the Scripture had to be fulfilled
which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand
through the mouth of David, concerning Judas,
who was the guide for those who arrested Jesus.
He was numbered among us
and was allotted a share in this ministry.“For it is written in the Book of Psalms:
May another take his office.
“Therefore, it is necessary that one of the men
who accompanied us the whole time
the Lord Jesus came and went among us,
beginning from the baptism of John
until the day on which he was taken up from us,
become with us a witness to his resurrection.”
So they proposed two, Judas called Barsabbas,
who was also known as Justus, and Matthias.
Then they prayed,
“You, Lord, who know the hearts of all,
show which one of these two you have chosen
to take the place in this apostolic ministry
from which Judas turned away to go to his own place.”
Then they gave lots to them, and the lot fell upon Matthias,
and he was counted with the eleven apostles.
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 103:1-2, 11-12, 19-20
R. (19a) The Lord has set his throne in heaven.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Bless the LORD, O my soul;
and all my being, bless his holy name.
Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits.
R. The Lord has set his throne in heaven.
or:
R. Alleluia.
For as the heavens are high above the earth,
so surpassing is his kindness toward those who fear him.
As far as the east is from the west,
so far has he put our transgressions from us.
R. The Lord has set his throne in heaven.
or:
R. Alleluia.
The LORD has established his throne in heaven,
and his kingdom rules over all.
Bless the LORD, all you his angels,
you mighty in strength, who do his bidding.
R. The Lord has set his throne in heaven.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Reading 2
1 Jn 4:11-16
Beloved, if God so loved us,
we also must love one another.
No one has ever seen God.
Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us,
and his love is brought to perfection in us.This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us,
that he has given us of his Spirit.
Moreover, we have seen and testify
that the Father sent his Son as savior of the world.
Whoever acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God,
God remains in him and he in God.
We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us.
God is love, and whoever remains in love
remains in God and God in him.
Alleluia
Cf. Jn 14:18
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
I will not leave you orphans, says the Lord.
I will come back to you, and your hearts will rejoice.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Jn 17:11b-19
Lifting up his eyes to heaven, Jesus prayed saying:
“Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me,
so that they may be one just as we are one.
When I was with them I protected them in your name that you gave me,
and I guarded them, and none of them was lost
except the son of destruction,
in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled.
But now I am coming to you.
I speak this in the world
so that they may share my joy completely.
I gave them your word, and the world hated them,
because they do not belong to the world
any more than I belong to the world.
I do not ask that you take them out of the world
but that you keep them from the evil one.
They do not belong to the world
any more than I belong to the world.
Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth.
As you sent me into the world,
so I sent them into the world.
And I consecrate myself for them,
so that they also may be consecrated in truth.”
The post Show Us Whom You Have Chosen, Seventh Sunday of Easter (B), May 12, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
34 min
May 12, 2024Sent into the World By and Like Jesus as a Agents and Signs of Communion, Seventh Sunday (B), May 12, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx
Seventh Sunday of Easter, Year B
May 12, 2024
Acts 1:15-17.20-26, Ps 103, 1 John 4:11-16, Jn 17:11-19

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.12.24_MCs_Homily_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
We are now within the novena between the Lord’s Ascension and Pentecost Sunday. On Ascension Thursday we saw that as the Lord was ascending to heaven, he left his disciples with a mission, specifically his mission. He himself had come from heaven to earth in order to bring the entire human race into a communion of love, a family. He prays in today’s Gospel that we may be one, as He and the Father are one. While he could have chosen to remain on earth to fulfill this mission of loving communion himself, he loved us so much, and trusted us so much, that he put this mission into our hands. And he told us how we would accomplish this mission of bringing about real unity, genuine communion with God and with each other in his last words: he said “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature… , baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to carry out everything I have commanded you” (Mk 16:15-18; Mt 28:18-20). There were three things he said that needed to be done to bring about this communion:
Proclaiming the Gospel — In order to come into communion, we must first realize that and why we need it, and be invited into it. This communion is based on the truth about God, about us made in his image, about the destiny God wishes to give us, and that is what makes this preaching such Good News and so necessary. We cannot possibly have the type of communion that exists in God if we are still in ignorance.
Baptizing in the name of the Blessed Trinity — This communion toward which we’re called is something beyond our own abilities. We need God’s help for it to be achieved and he gives us that help through baptism and the sacraments to which baptism leads.
Teaching others to carry out everything Christ has commanded us — To remain in communion, we must live the Christian moral life, doing what Christ told us we would need to do to keep our union with him in all our choices. The Christian moral life is summarized in the dual commandment of love of God and love of neighbor. As Jesus said to us in last Sunday’s Gospel, “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love” (Jn 15:10).
The Church was founded by Christ at the end of the end of the first decenarium between his Ascension and Pentecost in order to be what the fathers of the Second Vatican Council called a “sacrament of communion” (LG 1), an external sign of communion with God and with each other that brings about what it signifies. The Church is meant to be a visible witness of communion with God and with each other and is the means God has chosen to achieve that communion. Pope Benedict, in his first encyclical Deus Caritas Est, shows that the essence of the Church involves the three elements Christ described right before his Ascension. He referred to them by the Greek terms used by St. Luke in the Acts of the Apostles: kerygma/martyria, leitourgia, and
The Church first must be distinguished by kerygma, which is the Greek word for the proclamation of Christ’s saving work. This is the first step in the building of communion, because no one can come to faith in Christ unless others proclaim the Gospel. St. Paul asks the early Christians in Rome, “How are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?” (Rom 10:14). For others to come into this communion, the Gospel must be preached. We wouldn’t be here today in this chapel unless the first Christians took up this mission, unless the second generation was faithful to it, unless the third did their part, unless our parents did their part, and unless so many priests, religious and catechists did their part during our lifetime. And others, in our own generation and succeeding generations, will not come to this communion for which Jesus died unless we do our part. This proclamation to which Jesus calls us is not done exclusively with words. This is what the second word Benedict gives us signifies — martyria, which literally means “witness.” The Gospel is proclaimed not just by our lips but by our body language. Saint Teresa of Calcutta’s message would likely have been just as strong even if she had had laryngitis her entire life, because, as a Missionary of Charity, she proclaimed the Gospel to people’s eyes before their ears, giving a tangible witness to the Gospel by teaching others how lovable they are in God’s eyes. But this word martyria also refers to martyrdom, when we proclaim by the witness of our choices that Jesus is someone worth living for and worth dying for, the pearl of great price (Mt 13:46) worth giving up everything else we have, including earthly life itself, in order to obtain.
The second thing which the Church must do to symbolize and effectuate communion with God and each other is leitourgia, the worship of God through the sacraments. We get our word “liturgy” from this Greek root. Liturgy refers to all the public prayer of the Church, but particularly the most important public prayer, the celebration of the sacraments, which bring us into communion with God, restore us to that communion, or intensify it. Baptism, for example, wipes away sin and brings us, as God’s beloved sons and daughters, into his family. Holy Communion brings us into communion with God, through the reception of Jesus’ body and blood, and into communion with each other as members of that same body. To have true communion with Christ we need to have communion with each other.
The third and final essential aspect of the Church’s nature is diakonia, the Greek word for loving service. We get our word “diaconate” from this service, because deacons are supposed to carry out the charity of Christ in service to the needy. If we recognize the communion that God wills to exist, we realize that everyone is called to be our brother or sister and we’re called to love them as we would a brother or a sister in need.
Pope Benedict taught that for the Church to be true to her mission, she had to be marked at every level of the Church — individual faithful, religious community, parish, diocese and the Church as a whole — by all three of these activities Christ gave us as he ascended to heaven. Christ calls us to excel in each of them.
The readings given to us today help us to focus on all three of these aspects. Christ says at the end of today’s Gospel in prayer to his Father, “Just as you have sent me into the world, so I send them.” The Father sent Jesus into the world to found a family in loving communion, and before he ever commissioned them to do it in the three ways he described, he modeled for them what needed to be done.
Jesus himself sought to bring about communion by preaching the truth. It’s hard to read the Gospel without seeing Jesus’ great compassion on the crowds shown first and above all by his teaching them about the truths that are in the final analysis the most important of all. In his interrogation by Pontius Pilate on Good Friday, he summarized his whole life saying, “I came to give witness to the truth” (Jn 18:37). In his three years of preaching and teaching, he showed the criteria about how to be his “mother, brother or sister” by “doing the will of my Father in heaven” (Mt 12:47).
Jesus likewise came to establish the sacraments as the means by which that communion would be symbolized and effectuated. He sent the Twelve out to baptize. He ordained them priests on Holy Thursday and sent them out to continue the celebration of the Mass, telling them to “do this in memory of me.” On Easter Sunday evening, he said to the apostles, “Just as the Father sent me, so I send you,” breathed on them, gave them the Holy Spirit, and empowered them with the ability to forgive and retain sins in God’s name (Jn 20:21-23).
Finally, Jesus came not just to teach us about how we should behave but to lead us by example, telling us that our charity is supposed to be modeled on his own: “love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 15:12). He symbolically did the work of a slave on Holy Thursday and washed his disciples’ feet, telling them, “I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you” (Jn 13:15).
The Lord who gave us this great commission to carry on his saving work in these three areas also taught us by word and example that this mission of bringing the world into communion with God and with each other would not be easy. He told us there would be opposition. He died for it after all. He told us that we would suffer for it as well. In today’s Gospel, he prayed to his Father that he might “protect us … from the evil one” — so that we may be one as He and the Father are one. The evil one, of course, is the devil. The word for the devil in Greek is diabolos, and it means literally the one who “throws us off course.” If God’s plan is to unite us in an eternal communion with him and with each other, then the devil’s goal is to thwart that communion. And if God’s means to bring about that vertical and horizontal communion is through preaching, the sacraments, and works of charity, then the devil is going to try to steer us off course in all three of those ways.
If Jesus prayed in today’s Gospel that we be “consecrated in the truth,” which is the word of God, the devil, whom Jesus called “a liar and the father of lies” (Jn 8:44), is going to try to get us not to take the word of God seriously. For some people, he has been successful in getting them to ignore the word of God altogether. They never read the Bible, they never come to Mass, they never watch the many programs on television, etc. For others, he tries to convince them that they should show no initiative with becoming one with the word of truth that will sanctify us. They may hear the word of God at Mass, but they’ll never really water the seeds of the word, or pick up the Bible on their own and allow God to make them holy through it. With others, he tries to poison the seeds of the word with weeds, with lies, by, for example, reducing love to sentimentality or by trying to substitute human wisdom for divine. One way or the other, he tries to take our attention off the word of God, which is the means by which God has given us to “sanctify us in the truth.”
The second means the devil employs to steer us off path is through trying to separate us from the sacraments. He tries to get some to think that baptism isn’t really necessary for salvation, but just a beautiful ceremony to celebrate the birth of a baby. He gets many to think Sunday Mass is optional and that we’ve got so many more pressing things to do. He tries to separate us from Christ in the Sacrament of Penance, so that we may never receive the forgiveness without which we cannot be saved. He tries to separate couples who have been joined by God in the Sacrament of Marriage, driving wedges between them. He tries to separate priests and faithful from their bishop and the faithful from the Holy Father.
Third, the devil tries to steer us off course with respect to works of charity. Real charity is shown in forgiveness and in sacrificing ourselves for others, especially for those for whom we would not normally make sacrifices — like our enemies, or strangers, or those whom we find on a human level difficult to love. The evil one can try to lie to us to convince us that “justice” says not to forgive, or that we shouldn’t help them so that they can learn to help themselves, etc. He can convince us that we are loving and good people, because we love those who love us, those who are good, those who are faithful, etc. But God calls us to love everyone, including those we find hard to like. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?” (Mt 5:43-46). So we, too, must make our sun rise on the evil and the good, on those whom we think deserve our love and those who we think do not, on those who have forgiven us and on those who have not yet forgiven us. The only way to real communion is merciful love, and God wants us to be loving and merciful. The devil wants us to maintain grudges.
All three of these aspects are essential, but if there’s one that’s particularly necessary today, it’s the first. Jesus prayed to his Father in the Gospel than we might be “consecrated in the truth,” the truth of his word. He said that he made himself holy so that we might be likewise made holy through that word. By our baptism and particularly by our confirmation, we were consecrated by God and to God for this verbal witness. In the first reading today, we see what happened in the early Church. After Judas’ betrayal, the early Church convened to see who would take his place. They prayed to God saying, “Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which of these two you have chosen.” The lot fell to Matthias, and he began with them to preach the Gospel until he was eventually martyred for the faith. Likewise, today, after so many Christians have been unfaithful to God — lay people, religious, priests, even some bishops — we turn to God, who knows every heart, and pray, “Show us whom you have chosen,” and he responds by choosing us. You and me. The Second Vatican Council said that all of us through baptism share in Christ’s three-fold mission as prophet, priest and shepherd, to proclaim the word of God, to participate in the sacraments and to lay down our lives for others out of love. The Lord has chosen us to give this witness. If we love God and love others, we will proclaim the Gospel. St. John says in the second reading that God’s love “abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God.” If we know God and love God, how could we not talk about him?
To help us overcome the devil as well as our own weaknesses, Christ promised a great gift. As he was ascending to heaven, he told the disciples to return to the Upper Room and pray for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Not only would the Holy Spirit work in all the sacraments to bring us into communion with God, not only would he fill our hearts with love and help us to serve others with genuine Christian charity, but he would help us to proclaim the Gospel as we should. Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would lead us into all truth (Jn 16:13) so that we might consecrated in the truth. He would teach us everything and remind us of everything Christ has said to us (Jn 14:26), so that we could put it into practice and pass it on to others. Against all opposition, Jesus said, “Do not worry beforehand about what you are to say; but say whatever is given you at that time, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit” (Mk 13:11).
The Holy Spirit has been given to the Church to help us to accomplish the very mission for loving unity that Jesus entrusted to us. As we get ready to celebrate next week the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the first generation of disciples, we ask Him to come and fill the hearts of us, his faithful, and enkindle in us the fire of his love, so that we may always remain in that love of God and love of others which is the whole mission of the Church.
We have no greater teacher of what this means than she who is the model of the Church, Mary. She meditated on the word of God so much that the word actually took on her flesh. She was so docile to the Holy Spirit that the Holy Spirit overshadowed her not just at Jesus’ conception but throughout Mary’s whole life. And after Jesus’ Ascension, so that they might be made ready to be consecrated by God’s word and strengthened for the mission of love he gave them, the apostles huddled around Mary to learn from her these lessons. Today, as we celebrate Mother’s Day during this month dedicated to her, we huddle around her, too, with love and trust. The same Holy Spirit who overshadowed her is about to overshadow this altar and all of us. The same Word that took her flesh is about to enter us. It is through our Holy Communion with Christ, made possible by the action of the Holy Spirit in the Mass, that we become united with others. Hence it is fitting that it was on the day of the first Mass that Jesus prayed the words of today’s Gospel that we, all his disciples, may be one, just as the persons of the Blessed Trinity are one. Through this communion, may the Lord bring about that communion, and help us to be his instruments to bring everyone else into it as well.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
Acts 1:15-17, 20a, 20c-26
Peter stood up in the midst of the brothers
—there was a group of about one hundred and twenty persons
in the one place —.
He said, “My brothers,
the Scripture had to be fulfilled
which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand
through the mouth of David, concerning Judas,
who was the guide for those who arrested Jesus.
He was numbered among us
and was allotted a share in this ministry.“For it is written in the Book of Psalms:
May another take his office.
“Therefore, it is necessary that one of the men
who accompanied us the whole time
the Lord Jesus came and went among us,
beginning from the baptism of John
until the day on which he was taken up from us,
become with us a witness to his resurrection.”
So they proposed two, Judas called Barsabbas,
who was also known as Justus, and Matthias.
Then they prayed,
“You, Lord, who know the hearts of all,
show which one of these two you have chosen
to take the place in this apostolic ministry
from which Judas turned away to go to his own place.”
Then they gave lots to them, and the lot fell upon Matthias,
and he was counted with the eleven apostles.
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 103:1-2, 11-12, 19-20
R. (19a) The Lord has set his throne in heaven.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Bless the LORD, O my soul;
and all my being, bless his holy name.
Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits.
R. The Lord has set his throne in heaven.
or:
R. Alleluia.
For as the heavens are high above the earth,
so surpassing is his kindness toward those who fear him.
As far as the east is from the west,
so far has he put our transgressions from us.
R. The Lord has set his throne in heaven.
or:
R. Alleluia.
The LORD has established his throne in heaven,
and his kingdom rules over all.
Bless the LORD, all you his angels,
you mighty in strength, who do his bidding.
R. The Lord has set his throne in heaven.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Reading 2
1 Jn 4:11-16
Beloved, if God so loved us,
we also must love one another.
No one has ever seen God.
Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us,
and his love is brought to perfection in us.This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us,
that he has given us of his Spirit.
Moreover, we have seen and testify
that the Father sent his Son as savior of the world.
Whoever acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God,
God remains in him and he in God.
We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us.
God is love, and whoever remains in love
remains in God and God in him.
Alleluia
Cf. Jn 14:18
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
I will not leave you orphans, says the Lord.
I will come back to you, and your hearts will rejoice.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Jn 17:11b-19
Lifting up his eyes to heaven, Jesus prayed saying:
“Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me,
so that they may be one just as we are one.
When I was with them I protected them in your name that you gave me,
and I guarded them, and none of them was lost
except the son of destruction,
in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled.
But now I am coming to you.
I speak this in the world
so that they may share my joy completely.
I gave them your word, and the world hated them,
because they do not belong to the world
any more than I belong to the world.
I do not ask that you take them out of the world
but that you keep them from the evil one.
They do not belong to the world
any more than I belong to the world.
Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth.
As you sent me into the world,
so I sent them into the world.
And I consecrate myself for them,
so that they also may be consecrated in truth.”
The post Sent into the World By and Like Jesus as a Agents and Signs of Communion, Seventh Sunday (B), May 12, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
23 min

About Catholic Preaching

From the publisher's feed

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.