Catholic Preaching

By Father Roger LandryReligion & Spirituality Christianity

Catholic Preaching episodes

April 29, 2024Lovingly Keeping God’s Word with the Help of the Holy Spirit, Fifth Monday of Easter, April 29, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Monday of the Fifth Week of Easter
Memorial of St. Catherine of Siena, Doctor of the Church
April 29, 2024
Acts 14:5-18, Ps 115, Jn 14:21-26

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.29.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
The fifth week of Easter is a time in which, through the readings, we enter much more deeply into Jesus’ words about the love of God. Pondering his words from Holy Thursday in the light of his resurrection, we will hear him speak to us about the motivation he has in laying down his life for us, about why he entered the world, about how we’re supposed to live with him in the world Risen from the dead. He will teach us about how to receive, remain in and pass on his love. It’s one of the most beautiful weeks of the liturgical year. But today Jesus says something to us very surprising. He almost seems to make God’s love for us conditioned on our loving him first. “Whoever loves me” by keeping my commandments, Jesus says, “will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.” Later, he reiterates, “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.” Is God’s love for us conditional in this way? The answer to the question is an emphatic no. St. John tells us in his first letter, “In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.” St. Paul tells us in his Letter to the Romans that God showed how much he loved us when we were absolutely not keeping his commandments. “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). The Father never stops loving the loving his prodigal children. If Jesus called us to love our enemies, he was modeling this precisely on God’s love, who “makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust” (Mt 5:45).
If God, however, loves us unconditionally, if God loves us even before we keep his commandments and his word, then how do we understand today’s Gospel? Jesus is saying that we will experience the love of God far more when we open ourselves up to it precisely through receiving and reciprocating it, through overcoming our own self-centeredness and freely, willingly, and wholeheartedly sacrificing ourselves out of love for God, through trusting in him to keep his commandments and acting on his word that together train us how to love like God loves and become more and more like him. Pope Francis likes to use the analogy of the human heart with its systolic and diastolic functions: if it’s not pumping out blood, it’s dead and incapable of receiving blood within. So if our heart is hardened toward the love of God and neighbor, which is the two-fold principle on the basis of which everything in the law and prophets depends (Mt 22:40), then we cannot receive the constant and unconditional love of God. Pope Benedict used to say, love is idem volle, idem nolle, wanting the same things and rejecting the same things. The more we want what God wants and reject what God rejects, the more we will open ourselves up to receive the full outpouring of his love.
What do we need to grow in this capacity to love God and receive the love he has for us from before the foundation of the world? Today we can focus on three things.
The first is the humility that makes us love God more than we love ourselves and seek God’s glory rather than our own. After the healing of the crippled man in Lystra, the people began to treat Paul and Barnabas as Hermes and Zeus respectively and wanted to sacrifice animals to them as if they were incarnate gods rather than emissaries of the Word-made-flesh. It would have been somewhat tempting for the two of them, after the sufferings of walking through the swamps of Perga and Pamphylia and ascending the dangerous cliff to Antioch in Pisidia, after they had been driven out of Antioch in Pisidia and Iconium, for them to have basked for a little while with people who were so grateful they were divinizing them. But Paul and Barnabas were coming not to get adulation but to help people love and adore the one true God. “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give the glory!,” we prayed in the Psalm, and that’s what they lived. They immediately sought to help the people open themselves up to the greater love of God than they had experienced until then through “heaven and earth and sea and all that is in them,” through the “rains from heaven and fruitful seasons,” through the “nourishment and gladness for your hearts.” But as we’ll see tomorrow, most of the people of Lystra didn’t really want to keep the Lord’s commandments, to live by his word, and enter into the way he wanted to love them. They wanted to adore gods of their own making. And when Paul and Barnabas, despite the miracle they had just worked, insistently called them through that miracle to worship the God who had accomplished it through them, they would rise up and kill Paul, stoning him to death, as we’ll see in tomorrow’s first reading, until the first Christians through their prayer raised him from the dead. The Lystrians didn’t have the humility to worship God as God wanted to be adored, they didn’t want to enter into the love of the Covenant on God’s terms. Paul and Barnabas were humble enough to do so, however, because they didn’t want to be gods but to glorify the one and true God through their own decreasing so that He might increase.
The second thing we need is suffering, which prunes us to love God more. Yesterday at Sunday Mass and again on Wednesday, we will hear Jesus give us the Parable of the Vine and the Branches. Jesus says about his Father, “He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and every one that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit.” We see how God was pruning Saints Paul and Barnabas today. St. Luke tells us in the Acts of the Apostles, “There was an attempt in Iconium by both the Gentiles and the Jews, together with their leaders, to attack and stone Paul and Barnabas.” We see earlier in Acts that they were likewise run out of Antioch in Pisidia. Tomorrow we’ll see that the very same people who were trying to sacrifice oxen for them will stone Paul to death before the nascent Church there surrounded up and prayed for his resuscitation. In all of these sufferings and contradictions, God was helping them better to live in his love. Jesus tomorrow will describe even his own sufferings, his own pruning, that would happen to him on Good Friday as a means to show the world that “I love the Father and that I do just as the Father has commanded me.” Our vicissitudes are an opportunity for us to live entirely on the love of God and for the love of God, by doing his will even when it’s hard and thereby giving a tremendous example of love for the world. We grow in love that way.
The third means we have to grow is by cooperating with the gift of the Holy Spirit, God’s love poured into our heart (Rom 5:5). Jesus tells us at the end of today’s Gospel, “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name he will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.” The Holy Spirit will teach us how to receive God’s love by helping us to remember what Jesus taught and put it into practice with passion. He will help us to love God and our neighbor with all our mind, heart, soul and strength. He who was the great teacher of Saints Paul and Barnabas, who is the instructor of the martyrs, the guide of virgins, and the source of courage, love and peace in every age, opens us to receive the love of God and to reciprocate it as much loved sons and daughters. He helps us to remain in God’s love as Jesus will command us later in the week.
Today the Church celebrates someone who, by the help of the Holy Spirit, with humility and through suffering, showed us how to unite the love of God to the doing of his will. Saint Catherine of Siena, even though she couldn’t read and write until late in her brief life, became a doctor of the Church because she was “docta” (or instructed by the Triune God personally). And she has become a great source of learning, helping us to embrace through her Christ and the Father who sent Christ. When she was six she had a remarkable mystical experience: looking up into the sky, she beheld the Lord seated in glory with St. Peter, St. Paul and St. John. Jesus looked upon her, smiled at her, extended his hand toward her and blessed her. From that point she was in a special way his and sought to live by prayer despite the various sufferings caused by her family for her not wanting to be like her many siblings or other children her age. She began to have interior dialogues with God, dwelled in a “cell” within her family home, and spent her formative years cut off in a sense from the world to be with God. As a sign of the Christian’s spiritual-ontological communion with Christ, she was mystically wed to him, with the Lord’s placing a ring on her finger invisible to everyone except her but one that would leave a mark finally visible to all upon her death. God told her one day, “I desire to become more closely united with you through charity toward your neighbor,” and so the Lord began to manifest himself to her in this way. She went out with courage to care for all the sick in hospitals or on the streets due to normal illness and the epidemic of the plague. She visited prisons and ministered in a special way to those who were on death row. She went to towns that had lost their faith to try to bring about religious revivals. She also courageously went out as a peacemaker between warring factions within families, within cities, and among battling city-states. She also brought the Church back together after the 70 year Avignon captivity of the papacy, boldly persuading Pope Gregory XI to return to Rome in 1378. Upon his arrival, the Pope, whom she called the “sweet Christ on earth,” summoned her to Rome to be at his side and advise him. In her relationship with the Holy Father, but also with many priests, religious and lay people, she served as a spiritual mother, with many voluntarily calling her “mamma,” as she helped them to receive Christ as he desired and enter into the life of the Blessed Trinity. For the last seven years of her life she subsisted off of nothing but Jesus in the Eucharist, whom she received every day. That was a rare privilege in the 1300s, when most religious and non-ordained monks received Holy Communion only a few times a year, because there was the sense that to receive him, you really needed to be detached totally from sin and few were living those types of lives to warrant it. Her love for and of Jesus in the Eucharist overflowed in her exercise of charity toward others, because she received Holy Communion with purpose: that in becoming one with Jesus in Holy Communion, because the Word became flesh and dwelled within her in the Eucharist, she became an extension of his charity. The same thing is meant to happen to each of us. She’s interceding with us for this to happen.
In Lystra, the Lycaonians cried out, “The gods have come down to us in human form.” Here at Mass, we ought to cry out, not as the ancient pagans, but in the fullness of the Christian faith, “God has indeed come down to us.” The same Second Person of the Trinity who assumed our human form in the womb of the Blessed Virgin comes here under sacramental appearances in order to aid our sanctification. We don’t come here to sacrifice oxen, but ourselves, together with his sacrifice to the Father. He tells us that the one who loves him keeps his commandments and here we, with love, fulfill his command to do this in his memory. And we prepare ourselves now for the indescribable gift of having God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit come to make their dwelling within us.
The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
ACTS 14:5-18
There was an attempt in Iconium
by both the Gentiles and the Jews,
together with their leaders,
to attack and stone Paul and Barnabas.
They realized it,
and fled to the Lycaonian cities of Lystra and Derbe
and to the surrounding countryside,
where they continued to proclaim the Good News.
At Lystra there was a crippled man, lame from birth,
who had never walked.
He listened to Paul speaking, who looked intently at him,
saw that he had the faith to be healed,
and called out in a loud voice, “Stand up straight on your feet.”
He jumped up and began to walk about.
When the crowds saw what Paul had done,
they cried out in Lycaonian,
“The gods have come down to us in human form.”
They called Barnabas “Zeus” and Paul “Hermes,”
because he was the chief speaker.
And the priest of Zeus, whose temple was at the entrance to the city,
brought oxen and garlands to the gates,
for he together with the people intended to offer sacrifice.
The Apostles Barnabas and Paul tore their garments
when they heard this and rushed out into the crowd, shouting,
“Men, why are you doing this?
We are of the same nature as you, human beings.
We proclaim to you good news
that you should turn from these idols to the living God,
who made heaven and earth and sea and all that is in them.
In past generations he allowed all Gentiles to go their own ways;
yet, in bestowing his goodness,
he did not leave himself without witness,
for he gave you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons,
and filled you with nourishment and gladness for your hearts.”
Even with these words, they scarcely restrained the crowds
from offering sacrifice to them.
Responsorial Psalm
PS 115:1-2, 3-4, 15-16
R. (1ab) Not to us, O Lord, but to your name give the glory.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Not to us, O LORD, not to us
but to your name give glory
because of your mercy, because of your truth.
Why should the pagans say,
“Where is their God?”
R. Not to us, O Lord, but to your name give the glory.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Our God is in heaven;
whatever he wills, he does.
Their idols are silver and gold,
the handiwork of men.
R. Not to us, O Lord, but to your name give the glory.
or:
R. Alleluia.
May you be blessed by the LORD,
who made heaven and earth.
Heaven is the heaven of the LORD,
but the earth he has given to the children of men.
R. Not to us, O Lord, but to your name give the glory.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Gospel
JN 14:21-26
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Whoever has my commandments and observes them
is the one who loves me.
Whoever loves me will be loved by my Father,
and I will love him and reveal myself to him.”
Judas, not the Iscariot, said to him,
“Master, then what happened that you will reveal yourself to us
and not to the world?”
Jesus answered and said to him,
“Whoever loves me will keep my word,
and my Father will love him,
and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.
Whoever does not love me does not keep my words;
yet the word you hear is not mine
but that of the Father who sent me.“
I have told you this while I am with you.
The Advocate, the Holy Spirit
whom the Father will send in my name
he will teach you everything
and remind you of all that I told you.”
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25 min
April 28, 2024The Open Secret of a Truly Happy and Successful Life, Fifth Sunday of Easter (B), April 28, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year B
April 28, 2024
Acts 9:26-31, Ps 22, 1 John 3:18-24, John 15:1-8

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.28.24_CCM_Mass_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
When you ask most people, especially young people, what they ultimately want out of life, questions increasingly on the mind of those preparing to graduate, most give two interrelated answers: they want to be happy and they want to leave the world a better place. Both good, solid answers, based not only on human nature, as Aristotle himself observed, but also out of a natural goodness to improve their situation and that of others. And in pursuit of these goals, they study hard and work diligently throughout childhood, adolescence, university, graduate school, and decades of labor striving for that happiness and that impact. And for those who marry and have children, they lovingly sacrifice to give their children not only that same shot at happiness and success but hope that their children will be happier and more successful than they are.
But with regard to both of these goals, their horizons can often remain flat. They look at happiness fundamentally as contentment, the possession of certain earthly markers like health, a good profession and the money it provides, a good home in a decent neighborhood, a loving family, loyal friends, a good reputation and so on. Most look at leaving the world a better place not in terms of achievements that will make them famous in future history books and Wikipedia pages but rather in terms of making a difference in the lives of others, beginning with those closest to them, but also perhaps helping those they have never met both now and in future generations.
I call these goals flat because, looked at from a Christian perspective, they’re not ambitious enough. Sure, people want happiness, but for how long? 70 or 80 years? And they want to make a difference, but, likewise, what type of difference and for how long? Two or three generations? The question that our materialist and consumerist age often gets us to forget —not to mention an educational system focused more and more on the practical pursuit of internships and jobs rather than on the big questions of human life — is the important question, “And then what?” Like a competitor on an obstacle course, we go from obstacle to obstacle without really asking what awaits at the end of the course and whether justifies all the effort. We presume that what we’re doing — studies, labors, sacrifices and the like — will all lead to what we desire, but as we’ve seen in the lives of so many of those who seemed to have checked off all the boxes and become wildly successful in worldly terms, they are often miserable in the midst of their fame and fortune, alone despite millions of social media followers, and feel like personal failures despite all their patents and discoveries. And so we have to have the courage and wisdom to step off the wheel in the rat race and ask the question, “And then what?” What’s next after Columbia? If grad school, then what’s next after grad school? If work, then what’s after work? If that’s ascending the corporate ladder or founding one or more companies, then what’s after that? If then marriage, not before, then what’s next? If family, then what happens when the kid or kids leave home? If grandkids, then what happens when the grand kids similarly achieve adulthood? If retirement, and travel, and volunteer work, then what’s after that? If inevitably more funerals of friends and family, gradual decline, and one’s own nearing and crossing the finish line of earthly life, then what? There’s an aphorism that if we don’t know where we’re going, any road will do. But when we do have a clear sense of the end, then we can more easily choose the means.
This is the context to understand what Jesus is saying in today’s Gospel in his famous image of the Vine and the Branches. It’s in the context of a chapter in which he focuses on his joy being in us and our joy being made complete (Jn 15:11). He wants us to be happy and not just for a specific period of time, like when we’re children or at college, but forever. Similarly in this image he focuses on what we need to do to, as he says tonight, “bear fruit that will last,” last not just for a year or two, or a decade or two, or a century or two, but last forever. He was saying these words to the apostles on Holy Thursday night, as they were about to have all of their earthly ambitions shattered, as Jesus would be arrested, interrogated, falsely convicted, tortured, crucified and murdered, and their hopes for posh positions in a worldly messianic administration would die with him. Jesus was preaching these words knowing that his apostles that night would all scatter, but he also knew that all 11 of them would return, reflect on his words anew in the light of Jesus’ resurrection, resolve to live them, and go throughout the whole world to help others live them, too. And so let’s look at what Jesus says to us about how we’re supposed to relate to him — individually and together as his Mystical Body the Church — as branches to the vine and how, he says, through that communion we will be able to achieve things that will last until eternity.
When Jesus used the image of the Vine and the Branches, the apostles would have heard them within a very rich context. This image of the fruitful union of God and his chosen people was foretold throughout the Old Testament. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, the psalmist and prophets compared Israel to a vine. Psalm 80 said, “You brought a vine out of Egypt, driving away the nations and planting it. You cleared the ground; it took root and filled the land. The mountains were covered by its shadow, the cedars of God by its branches. It sent out boughs as far as the sea, shoots as far as the river” (Ps 80: 9-12). Isaiah declared, “The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel” (Is 5:7). Hosea added, “Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit” (Hos 10:1). All of this was depicted visually in a stunning golden relief of a vine, with clusters of grapes as big as adults, running around the outside walls of the Temple of Jerusalem. Jesus and the Church are the fulfillment of this image. The temple stands for God and when the people attach themselves with faith to God, they become a luxuriant vine stretching out branches and bearing fruit even into the desert. Jesus was doubtless calling upon his apostles’ obvious knowledge of this golden sculpture as he was describing the image of the Vine and Branches on Holy Thursday evening, because they likely would have seen the gilded vine as they visited the temple earlier in the day.
The problem, we know from our knowledge of Sacred Scripture, is that Israel as a whole didn’t stay attached to God in this way. Even though, as Isaiah said, God had “spaded [the vineyard of Israel], cleared it of stones and planted the choicest vines,” even though he had “within it built a watchtower and hewed out a wine press, … he looked for the crop of grapes, but all it yielded was wild grapes.” God asked, “What more was there to do my for my vineyard that I had not done? Why, when I looked for the crop of grapes, did it bring forth wild grapes?” He looked for it to yield good fruit, but what it yielded was wild and bitter (Is 5:2). It didn’t bear good fruit because individually and collectively his people had detached themselves from him through sin. Jesus pointed this out in one of his strongest parables, in which, after using the very images Isaiah described, he said that he sent servants to the tenants to whom he had leased this rich vineyard to bring to him a portion of the crop, but they rejected, manhandled, and even killed his servants. Finally, he sent his Son to them, but they murdered him, too, in order to try to steal the vineyard (Mk 12:1-11). This was referring to salvation history and to the way Israel, together with the whole human race through sin, treated the prophets God sent to them and treated even Jesus himself. God looked to his people to bear good fruit — which are deeds of love in union with God — but the only harvest that was yielded was the wild fruit of a sinful life, rejecting God himself through rejecting his prophets, his word, his love, even his only begotten Son.
When Jesus, therefore, said at the beginning of today’s Gospel, “I am the true vine,” he was not only contrasting himself with the unfaithfulness of those who had failed to produce the harvest of love God wants in the world, but was announcing a new beginning. He had come to replant the vine, to become the new temple, to forgive us our sins and make possible our bearing good fruit. And he was going to do far more than that. He was going to unite us, individually and communally as the Church, into salvation history. He would, to some degree, make the fruit he would bear dependent on our being fruitful branches. A vine, we know, can’t bear fruit without branches. The stem bears only branches; it’s the branches that bear fruit. For Jesus to bear his fruit in the world, in other words, he has made himself dependent on us to remain attached to him so that we might bear that fruit. Otherwise, the great gift of God’s salvation and love won’t be seen in the world, people won’t be saved, the sap of his mercy will be wasted. This is why ultimately he created us and called us to be Christian: to participate in his divine rescue plan for the human race. Jesus wants to bear fruit in you and me. He wants his love to flow through you and me and through the Church. He trusts us enough to risk everything on our cooperation. He died and rose and sent the Holy Spirit to help us, through our choices and the time we have on earth, not bear wild grapes that are good for nothing, but rather fruit that will last to eternal life. You and I, and the Church, exist as branches on Christ the Vine precisely to bear this abundant harvest of the fruit of love.
For that to occur, Jesus says, we must abide in him. Whether we bear good fruit or not, whether our life is ultimately successful in the final analysis, whether we experience the joy he wants us to enjoy, all depend on whether we remain in him or not, whether we live in loving union with him. Jesus had said in the Sermon on the Mount, “Every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit” (Mt 7:17-19). The key for us is not to worry so much about the fruit we bear as to worry about remaining attached to Jesus the True Vine and the Good Tree. In today’s Gospel Jesus points to how we will bear fruit through remaining attached to him. “Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me.” When we do, he promises us, then we will bear not just a little fruit, but “much fruit.” We think about how much fruit Peter, Andrew, James, John and the other apostles bore through that communion with Jesus. We think about our Lady, about St. Mary Magdalene, about Martha and Mary of Bethany and others. We think about all those hidden figures in the early Church, relative nobodies in the eyes of the world, but as the Acts of the Apostles tells us today in the first reading, helped the Church to grow throughout Judea, Galilee, Samaria, even Antioch, because the Holy Spirit was uniting them to God and they were yielding a great harvest. We think about the saints throughout the centuries, including Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, whom the Vatican announced yesterday will be canonized next year, 100 years after his death at the age of 24. Through his friendship with Christ shown through daily Mass and adoration, his friendship with so many of his peers, his indefatigable but hidden and humble service of the poor, he bore so much fruit during his short time on earth, and he’s been bearing so much more fruit in the 99 years since, becoming an inspiration to so many and an intercessor for some incredible miracles. At the end of the Gospel today, Jesus says something startling: “By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.” He says we become his disciples, his true followers, genuine Christians, not by merely being baptized, not by just coming to Mass, not by only not committing serious sins, but when we bear much fruit to the Father’s glory. He wants us to be his disciples and, therefore, he wants to give us all the help he knows we need to bear much fruit. He will tell us later in this same chapter of St. John’s Gospel, “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will last.” That’s our fundamental Christian vocation.
To bear fruit, Jesus tells us, we must remain in him. To abide in him is far more than a wish to be in communion with him. It has many practical consequences that we see throughout the Gospel. We can focus briefly on five things Jesus tells us we need to do truly to remain in him so that we may be perfected in joy and bear fruit together with him.
First, to remain in him, we must keep His Commandments. He tells us just after today’s Gospel passage, “If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love” (Jn 15:10). St. John’s in today’s epistle said, “All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them” (1 John 3:24). The fourth evangelist also cautions us today against thinking we are abiding in Jesus when we really aren’t. “Whoever says, “I abide in him,” ought to walk just as he walked.” To walk as Jesus walked, to put the faith into action as he did, means to follow him on the path of self-sacrificial love. That’s why, later on in this Chapter of the Vine and the Branches, Jesus will say to us, “Love one another as I have loved you.” We will not remain in the Vine unless we’re loving, and loving means not just having nice, sympathetic feelings for others, but sacrificing ourselves for them. St. John tells us today, “Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” He wants our love to be not virtue signaling, but translated into virtuous acts in which we really care for those in need. St. John will tell us a little after the passage in today’s second reading, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20). We can’t love God unless we’re keeping his commandment to love one another just as he loved us, unless, therefore, we’re sacrificing for others and forgiving others. If we’re stingy following Jesus’ command to love others as he has loved us, if we ignore those in need or just give the minimum so that we can keep a certain human respect, it could very well be a sign of how little we are abiding in the Lord and in his love, why we might be bearing little fruit, no fruit, or bad fruit, and why we’re not yet as happy as God wants us to be.
Second, to abide in Jesus, we must listen to his word. St. John tells us, “Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you will abide in the Son and in the Father” (1 John 2:24). We must be men and women who abide in the Word of God, who let what God has said to us from the beginning echo within us. We must act on what Jesus said to the devil, “Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Mt 4:4). We must live by the principle by which St. Peter and the apostles lived: “Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (Jn 6:68). If we don’t know the word of God, if our Bibles just take up space on our bookshelves, if we don’t seek to become living commentaries on what God has taught us, then we will bear little fruit and experience little happiness. Prayerfully letting our life develop according to God’s word, like the Blessed Mother did, is an open secret, and pre-condition, to happiness and fruitfulness.
That leads to the third point: to abide in Jesus, we must be pruned by God the Father through the Word of God. Jesus tells us today that the Father “takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and every one that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit. You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.” The Word of God is like a “two-edged sword, … penetrating even joins and marrow” (Heb 4:12), helping us to cut off from our lives whatever won’t bear fruit in God. It helps us to set our priorities straight. It assists us, for example, not only to cut out the toxin of sin from our life but also to excise all the time we waste, for example, on our screens and in various distractions, so that we use our gift of time, not for selfish or sinful pursuits, not for worthless diversions, but for God and in love of others. Often we can do some of the pruning ourselves, through good resolutions flowing from times of prayer or rom retreats, so that our energies can go more and more into bearing fruit. But sometimes, when we can’t do so or don’t on our own, God the Father may out of love prune us himself, taking away certain relationships or things — often even good relationships and things — so that we may begin to grow in the joyful and fruitful way God wants us to grow. To remain in Jesus means to give God permission to do this pruning and to pray about how he wants us to be pruned, every day, so that we might cooperate in that important work.
Fourth, to remain in him, we must spread the faith. St. John writes, “God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God.” (1John 4:15). If God really abides in us and we in him, then we can’t help but spread love of him, as naturally as a good apple tree bears good, juicy, delicious apples. We can’t keep to ourselves the joy of living the faith, the happiness that comes from having Christ within. We become like the early Church, which St. Luke tells us in the first reading “with the consolation of the Holy Spirit grew in numbers.” If we are not actively trying to share the gift of our faith with others, so that they might be able to become branches on Christ the Vine and experience his life and love, then it is a tell-tale sign that our own faith is sterile and that we might be detached one way or the other from Christ.
Lastly, to remain in him, we must live a truly Eucharistic life. Jesus told us in his famous Bread of Life discourse in St. John’s Gospel, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them” (Jn 6:56). In Holy Communion Jesus comes to abide in us like for nine months at the beginning of his earthly life he abided in Mary. He abides in us, but we’re called likewise to abide in him. This begins, intentionally, even before we receive him in Holy Communion, through hungering to receive him in Holy Communion. The abiding continues through striving to unite our whole life to him and through remaining in a loving communion with all others who have entered in holy communion with him. And it flourishes in wanting to bear fruit and “do this in memory of him,” to give our body and blood out of love for him and others.
So to help us abide in him, he has given us the gift of his commandments of love, his word, the Father’s pruning, so many people with whom to share the faith, and the gift of the Holy Eucharist. Pope Francis, this morning, preaching in Venice, encouraged us all, “to safeguard the priceless gift that is the bond with Him, on which our life and our fruitfulness depend. He insistently repeats: ‘Remain in me and I in you.’ … This is what matters: remaining in the Lord, abiding in Him. …This verb, to remain, should not be interpreted as something static, as if it wanted tell us to stand still, parked in passivity; in truth, it invites us to get moving, because remaining in the Lord means growing, … growing in relationship with Him, dialoguing with Him, welcoming His Word, following Him on the path to the Kingdom of God, … and becoming witnesses of his love. … By remaining united with Christ we will be able to bring the fruits of the Gospel into the reality we live in: fruits of justice and peace, fruits of solidarity and mutual care.” And we know that Jesus together with God the Father sends the Holy Spirit upon us to help us remain in him in all of these ways, as St. John tells us at the end of the second reading, stating that “the way we know that [Jesus] remains in us is from the Spirit he gave us.” The Holy Spirit, through that mutual abiding with Christ he makes possible, also helps to find the fruit of joy and to make a difference that will last forever, like Mary, the apostles, the members of the early Church, soon-to-be Saint Pier Giorgio Frassati and more.
I finish with an image from the chapel of the North American College in the Vatican where I spent five-plus years preparing for the priesthood under the guidance of now Cardinal Dolan. The NAC chapel has so much beautiful art in it, mosaics, murals, sculptures. It’s normal for visitors to look up and around with pupil-dilating wonder. But perhaps the greatest message of all in the chapel is symbolically at everyone’s feet. When I used to lead tours, I would ask them to look at the floor and see if they could discern any symbolic Biblical message. The marble in the sanctuary where the altar and all the priest concelebrants would be, was reddish purple, as was the nave, but underneath the pews, where all the seminarians and guest were, the marble alternated between reddish purple and white. Most couldn’t decipher what the different colors of marble meant. Then I’d give a clue: “Think about John 15.” That’s when the more Biblically literate would speak up and say, “It’s supposed to be the Vine and the Branches!” The central image of the chapel is meant to illustrate what the Church is and how each of us and the Church as a whole finds joy and bears fruit. Everything starts from Christ in the sanctuary, from his gift of himself of his body and blood. But then it flows from Christ, the head of the Church, into his entire Mystical Body. That’s what happens in the Mass, which is the living summary of this Gospel of the vine and the branches. We consecrate the “fruit of the vine,” the true vine squeezed out during the Passion of the Lord on the Cross, but we also consecrate the “work of human hands,” the work of us who are the branches. God the Father returns this to us as our “spiritual drink,” which we offer to him and then consume under the appearance of wine. In the Eucharist, the fruit that we give with Christ, the fruit of the vine and the branches, reaches its climax. If we live this Eucharist, if we keep this communion with the Lord, if we live this loving union, then, Jesus promises, his joy will be in us and our joy will be brought to perfection and we will bear fruit that will last unto eternal life.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 ACTS 9:26-31
When Saul arrived in Jerusalem he tried to join the disciples,
but they were all afraid of him,
not believing that he was a disciple.
Then Barnabas took charge of him and brought him to the apostles,
and he reported to them how he had seen the Lord,
and that he had spoken to him,
and how in Damascus he had spoken out boldly in the name of Jesus.
He moved about freely with them in Jerusalem,
and spoke out boldly in the name of the Lord.
He also spoke and debated with the Hellenists,
but they tried to kill him.
And when the brothers learned of this,
they took him down to Caesarea
and sent him on his way to Tarsus.
The church throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria was at peace.
It was being built up and walked in the fear of the Lord,
and with the consolation of the Holy Spirit it grew in numbers.
Responsorial Psalm PS 22:26-27, 28, 30, 31-32
R. (26a) I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people.
or:
R. Alleluia.
I will fulfill my vows before those who fear the LORD.
The lowly shall eat their fill;
they who seek the LORD shall praise him:
“May your hearts live forever!”
R. I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people.
or:
R. Alleluia.
All the ends of the earth
shall remember and turn to the LORD;
all the families of the nations
shall bow down before him.
R. I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people.
or:
R. Alleluia.
To him alone shall bow down
all who sleep in the earth;
before him shall bend
all who go down into the dust.
R. I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people.
or:
R. Alleluia.
And to him my soul shall live;
my descendants shall serve him.
Let the coming generation be told of the LORD
that they may proclaim to a people yet to be born
the justice he has shown.
R. I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Reading 2 1 JN 3:18-24
Children, let us love not in word or speech
but in deed and truth.
Now this is how we shall know that we belong to the truth
and reassure our hearts before him
in whatever our hearts condemn,
for God is greater than our hearts and knows everything.
Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us,
we have confidence in God
and receive from him whatever we ask,
because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.
And his commandment is this:
we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ,
and love one another just as he commanded us.
Those who keep his commandments remain in him, and he in them,
and the way we know that he remains in us
is from the Spirit he gave us.
Alleluia JN 15:4A, 5B
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Remain in me as I remain in you, says the Lord.
Whoever remains in me will bear much fruit.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel JN 15:1-8
Jesus said to his disciples:
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower.
He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit,
and every one that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit.
You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.
Remain in me, as I remain in you.
Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own
unless it remains on the vine,
so neither can you unless you remain in me.
I am the vine, you are the branches.
Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit,
because without me you can do nothing.
Anyone who does not remain in me
will be thrown out like a branch and wither;
people will gather them and throw them into a fire
and they will be burned.
If you remain in me and my words remain in you,
ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.
By this is my Father glorified,
that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”
The post The Open Secret of a Truly Happy and Successful Life, Fifth Sunday of Easter (B), April 28, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
37 min
April 28, 2024Remaining Fruitful Branches of Christ the Vine, Fifth Sunday of Easter (B), April 28, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year B
April 28, 2024
Acts 9:26-31, Ps 22, 1 John 3:18-24, John 15:1-8

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
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The following text guided the homily:
I had the joy of being trained for the priesthood at the North American College in Rome. The chapel where we’d convene to pray twice a day was rich in art and symbolism. Behind the altar was an enormous, exquisite mosaic of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, to whom the Chapel as well as the United States is dedicated. There is an evocative Stations of the Cross made by Francesco Messina, the most famous Italian bronze sculptor of the twentieth century. The sanctuary features beautiful murals of the Joyful Mysteries of the Holy Rosary as well as scenes of Christ’s own priestly ministry. It has bas reliefs of the “eight” sacraments, with the eighth one being “preaching,” by which the words of Christ are made actual and efficacious in the lives of believers. It has an organ that once was the greatest in Rome. But while the eyes of most first-time visitors to the Chapel heads look up and around with wonder, the most important symbolic imagery of all remains at their feet. When I used to give tours of the chapel to visitors, I would ask them to look on what they’re standing to see if they can figure out what message it is sending. They think, at first, it’s a trick question, because all they see is polished marble, some dark (reddish purple, I was told — I’m color blind) and some off-white. They notice that it seems to fall into an interweaving pattern throughout the main body of the chapel where the pews are, and then they see that the sanctuary, where the altar is located and all the priests concelebrate, is totally in dark marble. After several guesses, most would give up. I would give them the hint, “Think about John 15,” and that’s when the more Biblically literate would speak up and say, “It’s supposed to be the Vine and the Branches.” The floor of the North American College is meant to illustrate what the Church is and how the Church bears fruit. Everything starts from Christ in the sanctuary, from his gift of himself of his body and blood. But then it flows from Christ, the head of the Church, into his entire Mystical Body. And when we abide in him, then we are able to bear much fruit in the world together with him. That’s the source of the North American College’s vitality. That’s the source of any seminary’s vitality. That’s the sole source of the Church’s fruitfulness.
As Jesus tells us today in the Gospel, he and the Church exist together as Vine and Branches. This image of the fruitful union of God and his people was foretold throughout the Old Testament. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, the prophets compared Israel to a vine. Psalm 80 said, “You brought a vine out of Egypt, driving away the nations and planting it. You cleared the ground; it took root and filled the land. The mountains were covered by its shadow, the cedars of God by its branches. It sent out boughs as far as the sea, shoots as far as the river” (Ps 80: 9-12). Isaiah declared, “The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel” (Is 5:7). Hosea added, “Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit” (Hos 10:1). All of this was depicted visually in a stunning golden relief of a vine, with clusters of grapes as big as adults, running around the outside walls of the Temple of Jerusalem. The Church is the fulfillment of this image. The temple stands for God and when the people attach themselves with faith to God, they become a luxuriant vine stretching out branches and bearing fruit even into the desert. Jesus was probably calling upon his apostles’ obvious knowledge of this golden sculpture as he was describing the image of the Vine and Branches on Holy Thursday evening, because they likely would have seen the gilded vine as they visited the temple earlier in the day.
The problem, we know from our knowledge of Sacred Scripture, is that Israel as a whole didn’t stay attached to God in this way. Even though, as Isaiah said, God had “spaded [the vineyard of Israel], cleared it of stones and planted the choicest vines,” even though he had “within it built a watchtower and hewed out a wine press, … he looked for the crop of grapes, but all it yielded was wild grapes.” God asked, “What more was there to do my for my vineyard that I had not done? Why, when I looked for the crop of grapes, did it bring forth wild grapes?” He looked for it to yield good fruit, but what it yielded was wild and bitter (Is 5:2). It didn’t bear good fruit, because it had detached itself from God through sin. Jesus pointed this out in one of his strongest parables, in which, after using the very images Isaiah described, he said that he sent servants to the tenants to whom he had leased this rich vineyard to bring to him a portion of the crop, but they took and beat servants, sending them back empty-handed, then they wounded and treated another shamefully, and killed a third emissary. Finally, he sent his Son to them, but they murdered him, too, in order to try to steal the inheritance (Mk 12:1-11). This was referring to salvation history and to the way Israel as a whole treated the prophets God sent to them and treated even Jesus himself. God looked to his people to bear good fruit — which are deeds of love in union with God — but the only harvest that was yielded was the wild fruit of a sinful life, rejecting God himself through rejecting his prophets, his word, his love, even his only begotten Son.
Jesus says at the beginning of the Gospel today, “I am the true vine.” By doing so, he was contrasting himself with the unfaithfulness of those who had failed to produce the harvest of love God wants in the world. He had come to replant the vine, to become the new temple, to make possible our bearing good fruit. And in the great mystery of today’s Gospel and salvation history, God makes the fruit he bears dependent on our being fruitful branches. A vine, we know, can’t bear fruit without branches. The stem bears only branches, but it’s the branches that bear fruit. For God to bear his fruit in the world, in other words, he depends on us to remain attached to him and to bear good fruit. Otherwise, the great gift of God’s salvation, God’s love, won’t be seen in the world, people won’t be saved, the sap of his love will be wasted. Jesus wants to bear fruit in you and me. He wants his love to flow through you and me and through the Church. He wants us to bear not wild grapes that are good for nothing, but fruit that will last to eternal life. The Church exists as branches on Christ the Vine precisely to bear this abundant harvest of the fruit of love.
For that to occur, Jesus says, we must abide in him. Whether we bear good fruit or not totally depends on whether we remain in him or not, whether we live in loving union with him. Jesus had said elsewhere, “Every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit” (Mt 7:17-19). The key for us is not to worry so much about the fruit as to worry about remaining attached to Jesus the True Vine and Good Tree. In today’s Gospel points to how we will bear fruit through remaining attached to him. “Abide in me, as I abide in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me.” When we do, he promises us, then we will bear not just a little fruit, but “much fruit.” Just think about the saints, like St. Teresa of Calcutta, like St. Gianna Molla, St. Peter Chanel, St. Louis de Montfort whom the Church remembers on April 28, all of whom bore great fruit not because of human talents but because they gave God permission. Look at the early Church, as we do every Easter season, and how much fruit a bunch of fisherman, tax collectors and relative nobodies bore because they were united to God so that he could work through them. As the Acts of the Apostles tells us today in the first reading, the Church continued to grow throughout Judea, Galilee, Samaria, even Antioch, because the Holy Spirit was uniting them to God and they were yielding a great harvest. At the end of the Gospel today, Jesus says that we become his disciples only when we bear much fruit to the Father’s glory. We become disciples not by merely being baptized, not merely by coming to Mass, not just by not committing serious sins, but by bearing fruit — indeed, “much” fruit. He has given us this vocation to bear fruit, saying to us later on in this same chapter of the Gospel, “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will last.”
To bear fruit, Jesus tells us, we must abide in him. To abide in him is far more than a wish to be in communion with him. It has many practical consequences that we see elsewhere in the Gospel. We can focus briefly on five things we need to do truly to abide in Jesus.
First, to abide in him, we must keep His Commandments.
He tells us in the continuation of today’s Gospel passage, “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). St. John’s in today’s epistle said, “All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them” (1 John 3:24). The fourth evangelist also cautions us today against thinking we are abiding in Jesus when we really aren’t. “Whoever says, “I abide in him,” ought to walk just as he walked.”
To walk as Jesus walked, to put the faith into action as he did, means to follow him on the path of self-sacrificial love. That’s why, later on in this Chapter of the Vine and the Branches, Jesus says to us, “Love one another as I have loved you.” We will not remain in the Vine unless we’re loving, and loving means not just having nice, sympathetic feelings for others, but sacrificing ourselves for them. St. John tells us today, “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action” (1 John 3:17). He tells us, “By this we know love,” that just as “Jesus laid down his life for us, we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.” (1 John 3:15). He adds later in his first letter, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20). We can’t love God unless we’re keeping his commandment to love one another just as he loved us, unless, therefore, we’re sacrificing for others and forgiving others. As the Servant of God Dorothy Day, a fruitful branch of Christ’s vine here in New York, once said, “We love the Lord to the extent that we love the person we like the least.” If we’re stingy following Jesus’ command to love others as he has loved us, if we try to ignore those in need or just give the minimum so that we can keep a certain human respect, it could very well be a sign of how little we are abiding in the Lord and in his love, and why we might be bearing little fruit, no fruit, or bad fruit.
Second, to abide in Jesus, we must listen to his word.
“Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you,” St. John tells us. “If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you will abide in the Son and in the Father” (1 John 2:24). We must be men and women, boys and girls, who abide in the Word of God, who let what God has said to us from the beginning echo within us. We must act on what Jesus said to the devil, “Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Mt 4:4). We must live by the principle by which St. Peter and the apostles lived: “Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (Jn 6:68). If we don’t know the word of God, if our Bibles just take up space on our bookshelves, if we don’t seek to become living commentaries on what God has taught us, then we will bear little fruit.
That leads to the third point: to abide in Jesus, we must be pruned by God the Father through the Word of God.
Jesus says that the Father “takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and every one that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit. You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.” The Word of God helps us to cut off from our lives whatever won’t bear fruit in God. It helps us to set our priorities straight. It assists us, for example, to cut out all the time we waste in various distractions, so that we use our gift of time, not for selfish pursuits, not for worthless diversions, but for God and in love of others. Often we can do the pruning ourselves, through good resolutions flowing from our prayer or our retreats, so that our energies can go exclusively into bearing fruit. But sometimes, when we don’t do so, God the Father may out of love prune us himself, taking away certain relationships or things, often even good relationships and things, so that we may begin to grow in the way God really wants us to grow. To abide in Jesus means to give God permission to do this pruning and to pray about how he wants us to be pruned, every day, beginning now.
Fourth, to abide in him, we must spread the faith.
John writes, “God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God.” (1John 4:15). If God really abides in us and we in him, then we can’t help but spread love of him, as naturally as a good apple tree bears good apples. We can’t keep to ourselves the joy of living the faith, the happiness that comes from having Christ live within. We become like the early Church, which St. Luke tells us in the first reading “with the consolation of the Holy Spirit grew in numbers.”
Lastly, to abide in him, we must live a truly Eucharistic life. Jesus told us in his famous Bread of Life discourse in St. John’s Gospel, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them” (Jn 6:56). In Holy Communion Jesus comes to abide in us like he for nine months at the beginning of his earthly life abided in Mary. But we’re called to abide in him. This abiding begins even before we receive him, through hungering to receive him in Holy Communion. The abiding continues through striving to unite all our life to him and through remaining in a loving communion with all others in holy communion with him. And it flourishes in wanting to bear fruit and “do this in memory of him,” to give our body and blood out of love for him and others.”
The Mass is the living summary of this Gospel of the vine and the branches. The whole world is a continuation of the Chapel of the North American College, beginning with Christ in the sanctuary and stretching out into the pews, and from the pews, into the living branches that stretch forth its boughs to the rivers, seas, mountains, street corners, homes, schools, workplaces, sports fields, soup kitchens and more. We consecrate here the “fruit of the vine,” the true vine squeezed out during the Passion of the Lord on the Cross, but we also consecrate the “work of human hands,” the work of us who are the branches. God the Father returns this to us as our “spiritual drink” that we offer to him under the appearance of wine. In the Eucharist, the fruit that we give with Christ, the fruit of the vine and the branches, reaches its climax. If we live this Eucharist, if we keep this communion with the Lord, if we live this loving union, then, Jesus promises, we will bear fruit that will last unto eternal life.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
Acts 9:26-31
When Saul arrived in Jerusalem he tried to join the disciples,
but they were all afraid of him,
not believing that he was a disciple.
Then Barnabas took charge of him and brought him to the apostles,
and he reported to them how he had seen the Lord,
and that he had spoken to him,
and how in Damascus he had spoken out boldly in the name of Jesus.
He moved about freely with them in Jerusalem,
and spoke out boldly in the name of the Lord.
He also spoke and debated with the Hellenists,
but they tried to kill him.
And when the brothers learned of this,
they took him down to Caesarea
and sent him on his way to Tarsus.
The church throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria was at peace.
It was being built up and walked in the fear of the Lord,
and with the consolation of the Holy Spirit it grew in numbers.
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 22:26-27, 28, 30, 31-32
R. (26a) I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people.
or:
R. Alleluia.
I will fulfill my vows before those who fear the LORD.
The lowly shall eat their fill;
they who seek the LORD shall praise him:
“May your hearts live forever!”
R. I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people.
or:
R. Alleluia.
All the ends of the earth
shall remember and turn to the LORD;
all the families of the nations
shall bow down before him.
R. I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people.
or:
R. Alleluia.
To him alone shall bow down
all who sleep in the earth;
before him shall bend
all who go down into the dust.
R. I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people.
or:
R. Alleluia.
And to him my soul shall live;
my descendants shall serve him.
Let the coming generation be told of the LORD
that they may proclaim to a people yet to be born
the justice he has shown.
R. I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Reading 2
1 Jn 3:18-24
Children, let us love not in word or speech
but in deed and truth.
Now this is how we shall know that we belong to the truth
and reassure our hearts before him
in whatever our hearts condemn,
for God is greater than our hearts and knows everything.
Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us,
we have confidence in God
and receive from him whatever we ask,
because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.
And his commandment is this:
we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ,
and love one another just as he commanded us.
Those who keep his commandments remain in him, and he in them,
and the way we know that he remains in us
is from the Spirit he gave us.
Alleluia
Jn 15:4a, 5b
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Remain in me as I remain in you, says the Lord.
Whoever remains in me will bear much fruit.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Jn 15:1-8
Jesus said to his disciples:
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower.
He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit,
and every one that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit.
You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.
Remain in me, as I remain in you.
Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own
unless it remains on the vine,
so neither can you unless you remain in me.
I am the vine, you are the branches.
Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit,
because without me you can do nothing.
Anyone who does not remain in me
will be thrown out like a branch and wither;
people will gather them and throw them into a fire
and they will be burned.
If you remain in me and my words remain in you,
ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.
By this is my Father glorified,
that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”
The post Remaining Fruitful Branches of Christ the Vine, Fifth Sunday of Easter (B), April 28, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
23 min
April 27, 2024Fifth Sunday of Easter (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, April 27, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, Vigil
April 27, 2024

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.27.24_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy for me to join you again at the end of the program as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with us this Sunday, when he is going to share with us one of his most memorable and powerful images, revealing the type of relationship he wants us to have with him and with others and describing for us how to have a truly successful life according to his terms.
We are living at a time of great fragmentation. The Church has been divided not only between Orthodox and Catholics, between Protestants and Catholics, but also among various groups of Catholics with regard to liturgy, morality, and truths of the faith. Politically we’re polarized and socially we’re stratified. As we’ve seen on many college campuses lately, like at Columbia where I serve as Catholic chaplain, we’re rancorously divided over what is happening in Gaza, what is happening on the campuses, and more. And all of these divisions ultimately trace themselves back to voluntarily separations from God through sin and choices against communion with others. That’s what makes Jesus’ words this Sunday so important, urgent, and helpful.
Jesus tells us, “I am the vine. You are the branches.” He and his faithful, he and the Church, exist together like vine and branches do. That’s first a sacramental, or ontological, reality. By our baptism we have been incorporated into Christ himself as part of the life-giving vine with his own life flowing through us. But it’s also meant to be a moral reality: we are called to live in communion with him and with others in communion with him. This image of the fruitful union of God and his united people was foretold throughout the Old Testament. The prophets often compared Israel to a vine. Isaiah declared, “The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel” (Is 5:7). Hosea added, “Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit” (Hos 10:1). All of this was depicted visually in a stunning golden relief of a vine, with clusters of grapes as big as adults, running around the outside walls of the Temple of Jerusalem. The Church is the fulfillment of this image. The temple stands for God and when the people in faith attach themselves to God, they become a luxuriant vine stretching out its branches and bearing fruit even into the desert. Jesus was probably calling upon his apostles’ obvious knowledge of this golden sculpture as he was describing the image of the Vine and Branches on Holy Thursday evening, because they likely would have seen the gilded vine as they visited the temple earlier in the day. The problem, we know from our knowledge of Sacred Scripture, is that Israel as a whole didn’t stay attached to God in this way. God would ask through Isaiah, “What more was there to do my for my vineyard that I had not done? Why, when I looked for the crop of grapes, did it bring forth wild grapes?” (Is 5:4) It didn’t bear good fruit, because it had detached itself from God through sin. Jesus mentioned this in one of his parables, when he said the Vineyard owner sent multiples waves of servants, and finally his Son, to collect his share of grapes at harvest time, but the tenants of the vineyard manhandled the servants and killed the Son (Mt 21:33-43). This was referring to salvation history and to the way Israel treated the prophets God sent to them and treated even Jesus himself. God looked to Israel to bear good fruit — namely, deeds of love in union with God — but so often the harvest that was yielded was the bitter fruit of a wild life, rejecting God’s prophets, God’s word, God’s love, even God’s very Son.
That’s why Jesus says at the beginning of this Sunday’s passage: “I am the true vine.” By doing so, he contrasted himself with the unfaithfulness of those who had failed to produce the harvest of love God wants in the world. He had taken on our humanity and entered our world to replant the vine, to become the new temple, to make possible our bearing good fruit. And in the great mystery of salvation history, God makes the fruit he bears dependent on our being fruitful branches. A vine can’t bear fruit without branches. The stem bears only branches, but it’s the branches that bear fruit. For God to bear his fruit in the world, in other words, he has chosen to depend on us, that we remain attached to him and bear good fruit. Otherwise the great gift of his salvation, his love, won’t be seen in the world, people won’t be saved, the sap of his love will be wasted. Jesus wants to bear fruit in you and me. He wants his love to flow through you and me and through the Church. He wants us to bear not wild grapes that are good for nothing, but fruit that will last to eternal life. The Church exists as branches on Christ the Vine precisely to bear this abundant harvest of the fruit of love.
For that to occur, Jesus says, we must abide in him. Whether we bear good fruit or not totally depends on whether we remain in him, whether we live in loving union with him. “Abide in me,” he tells us, “as I abide in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me.” To abide in him is far more than a wish to be in communion with him. It has many practical consequences that we see elsewhere in the Gospel. We can focus briefly on five things we need to do truly to abide in Jesus.
First, to abide in him, we must keep His Commandments. He tells us in the continuation of Sunday’s Gospel passage, “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 commandments train us to love God and love others, and we can’t be abiding in God unless we love him and try to love others as he has loved us first.
Second, to abide in Jesus, we must listen to his word. He tells us, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you…” We must be people who abide in the Word of God, who let what God has said echo within us. We must act on what Jesus said to the devil, “Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Mt 4:4). We must live by the principle St. Peter and the apostles lived by: “Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (Jn 6:68). If we don’t know the word of God, if our Bibles just take up space on our bookshelves, if we don’t seek to become living commentaries on what God has taught us, then we will bear little fruit. That’s why it’s so great millions of Catholics are listening to The Bible in a Year Podcast with Fr. Mike Schmitz, taking advantage of the excellent resources of Scott Hahn’s St. Paul Center or Bishop Barron’s Word on Fire, listening to this reflection each week, or otherwise trying to grow in their knowledge, love and living of Sacred Scripture. That brings us to the third point.
To abide in Jesus, we must be pruned by God the Father through the Word of God. Jesus says that the Father “takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and every one that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit. You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.” The Word of God helps us to cut off from our lives whatever won’t bear fruit in God. It helps us to keep our priorities straight. It assists us, for example, to cut out all the time we waste watching television or videos, scrolling through social media or in other distractions, so that we use our gift of time, not for selfish pursuits, not for worthless diversions, but for God and in love of others. Many times we can do that type of pruning ourselves, making resolutions through prayer or after retreats, so that our energies can go exclusively into bearing fruit. But sometimes, when we don’t do so or can’t on our own, God the Father may out of love prune us himself, taking away certain things that we might desire so that we may begin to grow in the way God really wants us to grow. To abide in Jesus means to give God permission to do this pruning and to pray about how he wants us to be pruned, every day, beginning now.
Fourth, to abide in him, we must spread the faith. St. John writes in his first letter, “God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God.” (1John 4:15). If God really abides in us and we in him, then we can’t help but spread love of him, as naturally as a good apple tree bears good apples. We can’t keep to ourselves the joy of living the faith, the happiness that comes from having Christ live within. We must share the faith.
Lastly, to abide in him, we must live a truly Eucharistic life. Jesus told us in his famous Bread of Life discourse in St. John’s Gospel, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them” (Jn 6:56). This begins with hungering for Jesus in Holy Communion and receiving him worthily. A Eucharistic life involves wanting a loving communion with others as the same Holy Spirit who hovers over the priest and altar to change the substance of the bread and wine into Jesus’ Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity hovers over priest and faithful to change us into one body, one spirit in Christ. And a Eucharistic existence flourishes in wanting to bear fruit and “do this in memory of him,” to give our body and blood out of love for him and others. This type of Eucharistic abiding is something that the ongoing Eucharistic Revival of the Church in the United States is trying to foster.
Every Mass is the living summary of this Gospel of the vine and the branches. In it, we consecrate the “fruit of the vine,” the “true vine,” Jesus himself, squeezed out during his Passion on the Cross, but we also consecrate the “work of human hands,” our hands, we who are the branches. God the Father returns this to us as our “spiritual drink” that we offer to him under the appearance of wine. In the Eucharist, the fruit that we give with Christ, the fruit of the Vine and the branches, reaches its climax, as we consecrate it together with Christ to the Father. If we live the Eucharist, if we keep this communion with the Lord, if we live this loving union with him and others, then we will indeed, he promises, bear fruit that will last until eternal life. This is the remedy to all of the division the evil one tries to sow in the world. This is indeed the way toward happiness now and forever.

The Gospel passage on which this homily was based was:
Gospel
Jn 15:1-8
Jesus said to his disciples:
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower.
He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit,
and every one that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit.
You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.
Remain in me, as I remain in you.
Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own
unless it remains on the vine,
so neither can you unless you remain in me.
I am the vine, you are the branches.
Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit,
because without me you can do nothing.
Anyone who does not remain in me
will be thrown out like a branch and wither;
people will gather them and throw them into a fire
and they will be burned.
If you remain in me and my words remain in you,
ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.
By this is my Father glorified,
that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”
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10 min
April 26, 2024Knowing and Following Jesus, Our Way, Truth and Life, Fourth Friday of Easter, April 26, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Parish, Manhattan
Friday of the Fourth Week of Easter
April 26, 2024
Acts 13:26-33, Ps 2, Jn 14:1-6

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.26.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
In today’s first reading we have the second part of St. Paul’s word of exhortation in the Synagogue of Antioch in Pisidia. Yesterday, if we didn’t have the proper readings for the Feast of St. Mark the Evangelist, we would have had the first 13 verses, today we have the next eight and the last five I’d urge you to do for homework. Throughout this “word of exhortation,” we see how St. Paul puts the Gospel into a context of what is relevant for his listeners.
He begins by discussing his listeners’ hopes and expectations, their longing for a Messiah, so that he can show how Jesus is the fulfillment of their deep desires. He shows there’s a purpose to history.
Second, he declares forthrightly that Jesus is the fulfillment of their hopes.
Third, he discusses that even though Jesus is their hope, many, in blind folly, rejected him, but that rejection didn’t have the final word, because God raised him from the dead, showing that hope placed in him is never in vain.
Finally, Paul makes that news actual, bringing us to a moment of decision. He describes how this is good news and joy for all of us who accept Jesus and begin to live by his ways — and bad news for those who disobey that summons.
This is the pattern of proclamation for us in every age. We begin with the context of people’s aspirations and hopes, how Jesus fulfills them, how God has triumphed over people’s sins and rejections and wants us to share in that victory, but then we turn to how we must choose to respond to that incredible offer. St. Paul would elsewhere describe his own conversion and how he was among those who initially opposed, but came to grasp this life and that’s what motivated him to share Jesus with others. Similarly, even with those who have never heard of God, we can always begin with their desire for happiness and lead them from that desire to see what we’ve found in Jesus as the fulfillment of our longings for happiness, give witness over time to the choice we’ve made for him and seek to help them imitate that choice.
Today in the Gospel Jesus meets those aspirations, where he gives us one of his most famous phrases: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” We’ve heard Jesus’ self-description as the Way, the Truth and the Life so many times that their revolutionary shock value is almost entirely lost on us, but to first century Jewish listeners, they would have heard Jesus saying that he was the full realization of their three deepest religious aspirations. Jews had been praying for centuries, “Teach me your ways, O Lord” and Jesus was saying, “I am the way.” They had been imploring God, “Teach me your decrees” that “I may walk in your truth,” and Jesus was saying, “I am the Truth.” They had been begging, “Show me the path of life,” and Jesus was indicating, “I am the Life.” Jesus was saying that he was the personification of their deepest religious aspirations and the answer to so many of their most insistent prayers. But these aspirations were not exclusively Jewish. They point to the perennial needs that spring up in every human life. Many times we’re lost, we don’t know where to go, we’re wandering through a valley of darkness with no clear sense of direction. To all of us in those circumstances, Jesus says, “I am the Way. Follow me!” There are many others who are stumped before life’s biggest questions, who are searching for answers and meaning, who don’t know what to believe, who don’t trust because they don’t know whom to trust. Jesus tells us, “I am the Truth. You have faith in God, have faith also in me.” And there are countless others who are struggling to have hope, who feel like they are having the marrow of existence sucked out of them, who are seeking happiness and human fulfillment sometimes in right places, sometimes in wrong. To them, Jesus responds, “I am the Life. Live off of me.” What does it mean to choose to build our lives on Jesus, the Way, the Truth and the Life? Let’s take each of Jesus’ affirmations individually and see.
Jesus says, “I am the Way.” In the Commandments, in his Word, we have the directions we need to get to where Jesus wants us to end up, to the place he’s prepared for us in this life and forever. But Jesus wants to personalize those directions, saying to us far more than “Follow the map” but rather “Come, follow me.” He’s the Good Shepherd who comes out to search for us whenever we’re lost sheep. Many times he meets us when we’re like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, wandering away from Jerusalem and everything it stands for. Jesus comes to us on that road to help us to rediscover our path. He sends us as our spiritual GPS the Holy Spirit. He gives us a sure and true set of coordinates in Sacred Scripture and in the Catechism and teachings of the Church he founded. In a life full of going through unchartered territory, occasional roadblocks and detours, he helps us to keep our eyes firmly fixed on him so that he can lead us to the eternal destination of the Father’s house.
Jesus next says, “I am the Truth.” The day after Jesus pronounced these words to the apostles in the upper room, Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?” If we’re going to understand Jesus’ expression and how we’re supposed to respond, we need first to answer Pilate’s question. Truth is, basically, the correspondence between something — a phrase, a thought, an idea — and reality. Truth is what is real. When Jesus says that he is the truth, what he is ultimately declaring is that he is the ground of all reality, that he is what is most real, that he is the source of all truth, that after everything we know passes away, everything we see and deal with on a daily basis, even our own body, that God still is. Too often, like many in the world, we can treat other things as more real than Jesus and the truths of faith. The real, real world, we convince ourselves, are the clothes we’re wearing, the money in our pockets, the people we’re meeting, or the silly reality shows we’re watching. The real, real world is what’s being determined by politicians or the courts, or the strength of military might, or the consequences of scientific discoveries. We can treat God’s word as if it’s a group of fables or morality plays. We can consider prayer as just a time of rest. We can treat the Sacrament of Confession as an optional psychological exercise. We can view the Eucharist as a metaphor or as a piece of bread. We can regard the gifts of the Holy Spirit as just make-believe moral powers. We can think of the whole life of grace as spiritual monopoly money. It’s actually the other way around. Jesus is most real of all. He says that he is the Truth, not just that he teaches us truths. To be most real, to ground ourselves most deeply in reality, he calls us to base everything we are and do on him. At a practical level, if we’re really building ourselves on Jesus the Truth, then we should have a real hunger to get to know what he teaches us. We should be striving to know the truth in such a way that it will set us free to love God and to love others and keep us from being enslaved to the lies and slogans to which so many in our day succumb.
Third, Jesus said, “I am the Life.” Jesus is more than just alive. He does more than give physical life (bios) to the world he created, to the plants, to the animals and to us, by making fruitful the love of our parents and infusing a soul. He does more than give us spiritual life (zoe) through the sacraments he instituted for our salvation. He is life incarnate. To the extent we’re alive at all, we’re alive in him. We owe our physical life to him and if he didn’t hold us in existence right now, we would disappear. We owe our spiritual life to him. And, God-willing, we will owe our eternal life to him, if we share in his life in this world, so as to share in it eternally in the next. Jesus came, as he said to us last week, so that “they may have life and have it to the full,” but he doesn’t force his life on us. He wants us to choose to live off of him, to draw our very existence from him. How do we do this? We do so most especially in the sacraments, in prayer and in the moral life of love. That life with Jesus begins in baptism, is restored in confession, and is nourished in Holy Communion. But this life of Jesus within us is more than simply batteries for the soul that keep us going. It’s supposed to be the principle of our existence so that, eventually, we are able to say with St. Paul, “It is no longer even I who live, but Christ who lives in me” and “the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave his life for me.” Whereas the world believes that the most important things in life, that the essential foundations, are money, property, education, influence and health, we recognize that it’s our relationship with Jesus. The most important thing in life is this personal discovery of Jesus, forming a life-changing friendship with him that will sustain us in life and into eternity.
In response to Jesus’ proclamation that he is the fulfillment of all of these aspirations, that he is the only way to the Father to whom the Jews for generations had been praying to show them the way, give them the truth and help them have life, Jesus asks us to trust in him. He tells us, “You have faith in God; have faith also in me.” Jesus wants to get us to see the connection between him and the Father and how the principal work of God we’re called to do is to believe in the One the Father sent, out of trust in the Father. Jesus tells us, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” So often our hearts are filled with all types of troubles and concerns. Jesus is trying to assure us that if we have faith in him and enter into communion with him, not even death will be able to rend it asunder.
It’s here at Mass that our faith in Jesus, the Way, the Truth and the Life is renewed each day. We have followed Jesus here today and seek to continue to follow him as he tells us to go in peace, glorifying the Lord by walking in his paths. We have heard his Truth in the Liturgy of the Word and seek to enflesh that truth in our way of life. We are about to receive His Life in the Liturgy of the Eucharist and draw our very life from him. We ask him to give us the grace he knows we need to strengthen us in this way, in our living the truth, and in our rejoicing in the life to the full he gives us so that we may grow in faith in God and in him in this world and come to eternal happiness in that house of the Father that Jesus out of love has gone to prepare for us.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 ACTS 13:26-33
When Paul came to Antioch in Pisidia, he said in the synagogue:
“My brothers, children of the family of Abraham,
and those others among you who are God-fearing,
to us this word of salvation has been sent.
The inhabitants of Jerusalem and their leaders failed to recognize him,
and by condemning him they fulfilled the oracles of the prophets
that are read sabbath after sabbath.
For even though they found no grounds for a death sentence,
they asked Pilate to have him put to death,
and when they had accomplished all that was written about him,
they took him down from the tree and placed him in a tomb.
But God raised him from the dead,
and for many days he appeared to those
who had come up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem.
These are now his witnesses before the people.
We ourselves are proclaiming this good news to you
that what God promised our fathers
he has brought to fulfillment for us, their children, by raising up Jesus,
as it is written in the second psalm,
You are my Son; this day I have begotten you.”
Responsorial Psalm PS 2:6-7, 8-9, 10-11AB
R. (7bc) You are my Son; this day I have begotten you.
or:
R. Alleluia.
“I myself have set up my king
on Zion, my holy mountain.”
I will proclaim the decree of the LORD:
The LORD said to me, “You are my Son;
this day I have begotten you.”
R. You are my Son; this day I have begotten you.
or:
R. Alleluia.
“Ask of me and I will give you
the nations for an inheritance
and the ends of the earth for your possession.
You shall rule them with an iron rod;
you shall shatter them like an earthen dish.”
R. You are my Son; this day I have begotten you.
or:
R. Alleluia.
And now, O kings, give heed;
take warning, you rulers of the earth.
Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice before him;
with trembling rejoice.
R. You are my Son; this day I have begotten you.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Alleluia JN 14:6
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
I am the way and the truth and the life, says the Lord;
no one comes to the Father except through me.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel JN 14:1-6
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Do not let your hearts be troubled.
You have faith in God; have faith also in me.
In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.
If there were not,
would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?
And if I go and prepare a place for you,
I will come back again and take you to myself,
so that where I am you also may be.
Where I am going you know the way.”
Thomas said to him,
“Master, we do not know where you are going;
how can we know the way?”
Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.”
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18 min
April 25, 2024Learning from the Flawed Author of One of the Most Important Books of All Time, Feast of St. Mark, April 25, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Feast of St. Mark, Evangelist
April 25, 2024
1 Pet 5:5-14, Ps 89, Mk 16:15-20

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.25.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
Four times a year we celebrate the Feast of an Evangelist. When we celebrate Matthew on September 21, most often we ponder his great conversion that is the center of the Gospel. When we mark St. Luke on October 18, it’s hard not to focus on the parts of his Gospel that are unique — like his extraordinary parables of God’s mercy — and to extend our treatment to the Acts of the Apostles. When we celebrate St. John on December 27, we do so within the Christmas Octave and meditate on how the Word became flesh and dwelled among us and how we have been able to see, hear, touch — and now, taste — him. I’ve always looked forward to the Feast of St. Mark every year because it gives us the chance to focus on how the Lord took a very humble man and made him one of the most famous writers of all time.
We celebrate today’s feast of St. Mark not primarily because he was the first bishop of Alexandria or even a martyr. We celebrate because he was an evangelist, likely (for lots of textual reasons) the first one to write down the account of Jesus’ life. It’s highly unlikely that when he did, he was thinking he was doing so for more than a specific audience. But while he wrote it for some, his work, inspired by the Holy Spirit, has nevertheless been preserved throughout the centuries, gone to the ends of the earth and been translated into hundreds of languages. St. Mark records Jesus’ valedictory in today’s Gospel, instructing the twelve, “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature,” and promising that signs would accompany their words — exorcisms, healings, new languages, and courage in the face of threats. St. Mark, who for a while accompanied his Uncle St. Barnabas and St. Paul and finished as Peter’s companion and assistant, as we see at the end of the first reading, detailed that as “they went forth and preached everywhere, … the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word through accompanying signs.” The Lord has also accompanied the propagation of the Gospel of St. Mark, confirming the word through so many miracles of faith in the lives of saints throughout the centuries, leading many to “believe” be “baptized” and be “saved.”
Thinking of St. Mark, we can ponder how the Lord wants us to be similarly creative. To write down an orderly account of Jesus was something new. Jesus had never sent the apostles into a room to write letters or record parables. He sent them out verbally to preach because they themselves were part of the message. But as they were getting ready to meet the Lord anew at the end of their lives on earth, St. Mark wrote down what is likely the Gospel that Peter was accustomed to preach, using his own writing skills and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. It was clearly an innovation, but one inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit, one that continues to bear extraordinary fruit. Little did St. Paul and St. John grasp that their letters would become part of our worship today. Little did St. Ignatius of Antioch grasp that his personal letters would be preserved and still guide many into the Church. Little did St. Therese think that the story of her soul, written under holy obedience, would feed multitudes and lead to her being declared a doctor of the Church. They just shared their faith and the Holy Spirit did the rest. We need to ponder this principle. Even though what we write or record or email will likely never be mentioned in the same breath as these spiritual classics, we, just like they, never know. Whatever we write will never take the place of in person testimony, but it can certainly be of help in the preaching of the Gospel to every creature. I’m amazed at how many people from so many countries, for example, read or listen to the homilies on CatholicPreaching.com. So much of the new evangelization today is happening through through videos, podcasts, websites, blogs, books and so many other means. The Lord is constantly accompanying our meager efforts and confirming the words through signs of faith and other means. One action item I used to always try to inspire among parishioners would be to write their own story of a soul, the history of their life of faith, for their family members, because that writing might be what helps them to imitate their relationship with Jesus, imitate their faith, and, God-willing, follow them on the path to salvation and eternal happiness. Likewise our phone calls, texts, emails, even thank you notes, all can be used by the Lord, like he used St. Mark’s Gospel, to spread the faith.
One of the things I love most about St. Mark is that he is a saint of perseverance. Many Scripture scholars believe, legitimately, that he was writing about himself during the Passion when he said, “Now a young man followed [Jesus] wearing nothing but a linen cloth about his body. They seized him, but he left the cloth behind and ran off naked” (Mk 14:51-52). How would he have known this, why would he have written it, unless it were he? But even though he had fled from the Lord in his time of need as a youth, he came back. Likewise most Scripture scholars think that he is the “John Mark,” the son of Mary, in whose house in Jerusalem many of the disciples would gather for prayer (Acts 12:12), the nephew of Barnabas, who accompanied SS. Paul and Barnabas on their initial journeys (Acts 12:25 ff). But when he got to Perga in Pamphylia and saw that malaria infested swamps and the high treacherous cliffs to get to Galatia, he chickened out and returned (Acts 13:13). But eventually Barnabas found him and incorporated him into his further journeys (Acts 15:37-40). He never gave up despite his weakness, his cowardice. And we see him in today’s first reading with St. Peter to the end. No matter how many times we may have failed to live up to the Gospel, we can learn from him not to quit.
Another thing we can learn from him is that sometimes the most fruitful thing we can do for the Church is to assist others. He assisted Paul, Barnabas and Peter. And it was from his association with them, particularly from St. Peter, that his Gospel was born. Often our great work will be not leading some mission, but supporting those leading it, learning from them and passing it on. We can therefore be grateful when we’re surrounded by greats. St. Peter didn’t write a Gospel. St. Paul didn’t. St. Barnabas didn’t. St. Mark did. God’s ways are not our ways. Today would be a great day to thank God for the people he has put into our life from whom we’ve heard the Gospel and we can ask that we will be able to pass on their witness to Christ, together with our own, to others.
The highlight of St. Mark’s Gospel is the Passion account. Some have said about his Gospel that it’s a Passion account with a long introduction. And in that Passion account he tells us, “While they were eating, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, and said, ‘Take it; this is my body.’ Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, and they all drank from it. He said to them, ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many.’” He would make those words come alive during the celebration of the Mass as the Bishop of Alexandria. Today as we seek to do the same and worship God at Mass, having heard St. Mark’s Gospel, we ask the Lord to send the Holy Spirit who inspired him to inspire us, never to give up, to profit from the witness of those he has put around us, and to use whatever we can, whatever is necessary, to become the pens with which the story of salvation in Jesus will be shared with a new generation and, if God so chooses, many generations to come.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 1 Pt 5:5b-14
Beloved:
Clothe yourselves with humility
in your dealings with one another, for:
God opposes the proud
but bestows favor on the humble.
So humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God,
that he may exalt you in due time.
Cast all your worries upon him because he cares for you.Be sober and vigilant.
Your opponent the Devil is prowling around like a roaring lion
looking for someone to devour.
Resist him, steadfast in faith,
knowing that your brothers and sisters throughout the world
undergo the same sufferings.
The God of all grace
who called you to his eternal glory through Christ Jesus
will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you
after you have suffered a little.
To him be dominion forever. Amen.
I write you this briefly through Silvanus,
whom I consider a faithful brother,
exhorting you and testifying that this is the true grace of God.
Remain firm in it.
The chosen one at Babylon sends you greeting, as does Mark, my son.
Greet one another with a loving kiss.
Peace to all of you who are in Christ.
Responsorial Psalm PS 89:2-3, 6-7, 16-17
R. (2) For ever I will sing the goodness of the Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
The favors of the LORD I will sing forever;
through all generations my mouth shall proclaim your faithfulness.
For you have said, “My kindness is established forever”;
in heaven you have confirmed your faithfulness.
R. For ever I will sing the goodness of the Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
The heavens proclaim your wonders, O LORD,
and your faithfulness, in the assembly of the holy ones.
For who in the skies can rank with the LORD?
Who is like the LORD among the sons of God?
R. For ever I will sing the goodness of the Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Blessed the people who know the joyful shout;
in the light of your countenance, O LORD, they walk.
At your name they rejoice all the day,
and through your justice they are exalted.
R. For ever I will sing the goodness of the Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Gospel 1 Cor 1:23a-24b
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
We proclaim Christ crucified;
he is the power of God and the wisdom of God.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel Mk 16:15-20
Jesus appeared to the Eleven and said to them:
“Go into the whole world
and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.
Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved;
whoever does not believe will be condemned.
These signs will accompany those who believe:
in my name they will drive out demons,
they will speak new languages.
They will pick up serpents with their hands,
and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them.
They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
Then the Lord Jesus, after he spoke to them,
was taken up into heaven
and took his seat at the right hand of God.
But they went forth and preached everywhere,
while the Lord worked with them
and confirmed the word through accompanying signs.
The post Learning from the Flawed Author of One of the Most Important Books of All Time, Feast of St. Mark, April 25, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
14 min
April 24, 2024Living with and Spreading Christ’s Light, Fourth Wednesday of Easter, April 24, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Easter
Memorial of St. Fidelis of Sigmaringen
April 24, 2024
Acts 12:24-13:5, Ps 67, Jn 12:44-50

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
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The following points were attempted in the homily:
Today we reach the midpoint of the Easter season and as we prepare to make the transition tomorrow to Jesus’ words from Holy Thursday, interpreted anew in the light of his Resurrection. In the Alleluia versicle today, we ponder Jesus’ words, “I am the Light of the World. Whoever follows me will have the light of life.” Jesus wants us all to have the light of life, to live with with him risen from the dead. That’s why today, on the 25th day of the 50- day Easter season, we have a shift in our Easter Mystagogical Catechesis as we take stock of all that we have experienced over the last three and a half weeks and examine our response to the reality of his resurrection and appearances, the gift of Baptism, the awesome truth of his Real Presence and of his shepherdly care.
Today’s passage is Jesus’ last public teaching prior to Holy Thursday. Jesus gives these words right after the crowds were challenging his’ Messianic credentials. John says, “Although he had performed so many signs in their presence, they did not believe in him… Nevertheless, many, even among the authorities, believed in him, but because of the Pharisees, they did not acknowledge it openly in order not to be expelled from the synagogue, for they preferred human praise to the glory of God” (Jn 12:37, 42-43). Some refused to believe; others believed but cared too much about human respect. Neither group received and walked in the light Jesus had brought into the world. The Church wants us to ponder those inadequate responses and then, positively, to believe with all our heart and to care above all about pleasing God by walking fully in is light.
Let’s get more deeply into the choice the Church wants us to make. In the Gospel today, Jesus reveals that he has come as the image of the Father. The one who sees Him, he says, sees the Father. The One who hears him, hears what the Father commanded him to say and speak. The one who believes in Him, believes in the Father who sent him. The way we respond to Jesus and to what he says and does, in other words, is the way we respond to God the Father and his redemptive will. God the Father, Jesus tells us, sent Jesus into the world to save the world, not to condemn it. In order to receive that gift, however, people need to respond freely and willingly and leave death row. They need to choose to leave the darkness and come into the light. Jesus has given us the Father’s commandment, which is “eternal life,” but we need to embrace and live by that commandment, otherwise God’s word, that commandment, will condemn us because we are ultimately rejecting the Father who through and in Jesus proclaimed that word. Jesus’ words are words-to-be-done, not just to hear. His call is something upon which to act with commitment, not something just to consider and remain where we are. The ultimate meaning of a human life depends on how we respond to Jesus’ light, his words, his person, his salvation, placing that gift above human respect and every other consideration.
Today in the first reading, we see those who have responded to Jesus in this way. Saints Paul and Barnabas and the other members of the Church of Antioch were seeking to live by the light of the Lord, to act on his word, to become the living echoes of his voice, and images of the image of the invisible God, radiating his light to those who were still in darkness. They were seeking to respond to the Father’s command of love, his will for them to have eternal life by coming to know Him and the Son whom he had sent. The Church was growing because of all those drawn to the light they saw radiating in Christians, for in hearing them, they were hearing Christ who had sent them and hearing God the Father; in seeing them, they were seeing icons of Christ and the Father he reflected; in believing in them, they were believing in Christ and in the Father who loved the world so much to send his Son to rescue it. So docile were they to the Lord’s command that when the Holy Spirit revealed to them his will while they were praying and fasting, to set Saul and Barnabas apart for the work he had in mind for them, they immediately acted. Paul and Barnabas gave God a blank check. The whole community allowed them to go rather than selfishly try to keep them to themselves. They knew they were being sent out as a light to the nations and they rejoiced and supported this Mission. And we see what happened. After Paul and Barnabas were set apart, “They, sent forth by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia and from there sailed to Cyprus. When they arrived in Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogues.” That detail is important because Barnabas was from Cyprus. They were beginning at home. We prayed in the Entrance Antiphon today, “I will praise you, Lord, among the nations; I will tell of your name to my kin” (Ps 18), and Barnabas and Paul set out to do that. They had begun a mission so that, as we prayed in the Responsorial Psalm, all the peoples might praise him, his ways be known about earth and his salvation be embraced among the nations. They were passing on to others Christ’s words, his commandment, his life, his very life risen from the dead in them. And from there they would begin to light the whole world ablaze.
Today we have another witness who shows us the light of life. St. Fidelis of Sigmarigen (born Mark Rey) was a philosopher, a lawyer and a young professor who heard the Lord calling him to more. While still teaching, he refused wine, wore a hair-shirt and distinguished himself for being modest, meek and chaste like Jesus. At 27 he became a traveling teacher and for six years attended Mass frequently, visited hospitals, adored the Blessed Sacrament, served the poor, and used his law practice to help the poor get justice. Eventually he entered the Capuchins, received the religious name Fidelis and continued to help people to learn how to believe in Christ, the light of the World, hear his words, accept and observe them. He became a famous preacher and confessor and was sent with other Capuchins by the Vatican’s Holy Office to try to bring back the Calvinists in eastern Switzerland. The Calvinists had separated themselves from the teaching and sacraments of the faith. St. Fidelis was successful enough that his life began to be threatened and eventually, on April 24, 1622, in Seewis, he was confronted by 20 Calvinist soldiers who demanded that he renounce the Catholic faith. “I am sent to you to confute, not embrace your heresy. The Catholic religion is the faith of all ages and I fear not death,” he replied. They struck him with a sword, he fell to his knees, stretched his arms in the form of a cross, prayed to God to forgive his enemies and he was struck on the skull and died. His life was luminously Eucharistic to the end and shows us what is possible for us.
The same Lord whom Paul and Barnabas knew and met and in whom they believed, the same Holy Spirit that set them apart for a special work, that same Spirit who suffused Saint Fidelis in all his missionary journeys, speaks to us at Mass, meets us in the Holy Eucharist, consecrates us for a special Mission and then sends us forth together with the Holy Spirit to bring his light, his word, his presence and his salvation. For us we’re not being sent to Cyprus, but like Barnabas, to our “kin,” here in the “capital of the world,” New York, empowered by the same gifts that strengthened them. The Church continues to pray for us. The Church continues to fast for us. The saints continue to intercede for us. And we, spurning human respect, seek to do it all for God’s glory. This requires great humility. In the Gospel Jesus spoke not of himself but of the Father. And we speak not of ourselves but of Christ, seeking the hallowing of God’s name not ours, the coming of his kingdom not ours, the doing of his will not ours. The more we do so the more we begin to share his attributes. We become united with him to such a degree that we decrease and he increases, that others in accepting us, or rejecting us, are accepting or rejecting him. We’ll see this reality played out in a special way in St. Paul’s life. He would eventually say, “I have been crucified with Christ and the life I now live I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me” (Gal 2:18-20). Today as we prepare to the Lord Jesus, the light and life of the world, he renews us in our calling to be set apart from ordinary things for the work to which he has called us, so that he might send us out to serve others in communion with the love flowing out from his heart. May we respond to this grace of our consecration, renewed each consecration of the Mass, like St. Paul and St. Barnabas did, so that we might spread God’s glory, receive the gift of eternal life that comes from acting on Jesus’ word, and help many others to come to experience with us the eternal kingdom of light.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 Acts 12:24—13:5a
The word of God continued to spread and grow.
After Barnabas and Saul completed their relief mission,
they returned to Jerusalem,
taking with them John, who is called Mark.
Now there were in the Church at Antioch prophets and teachers:
Barnabas, Symeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene,
Manaen who was a close friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul.
While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said,
“Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul
for the work to which I have called them.”
Then, completing their fasting and prayer,
they laid hands on them and sent them off.
So they, sent forth by the Holy Spirit,
went down to Seleucia
and from there sailed to Cyprus.
When they arrived in Salamis,
they proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogues.
Responsorial Psalm Ps 67:2-3, 5, 6 and 8
R. (4) O God, let all the nations praise you!
or:
R. Alleluia.
May God have pity on us and bless us;
may he let his face shine upon us.
So may your way be known upon earth;
among all nations, your salvation.
R. O God, let all the nations praise you!
or:
R. Alleluia.
May the nations be glad and exult
because you rule the peoples in equity;
the nations on the earth you guide.
R. O God, let all the nations praise you!
or:
R. Alleluia.
May the peoples praise you, O God;
may all the peoples praise you!
May God bless us,
and may all the ends of the earth fear him!
R. O God, let all the nations praise you!
or:
R. Alleluia.
Gospel Jn 8:12
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
I am the light of the world, says the Lord;
whoever follows me will have the light of life.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel Jn 12:44-50
Jesus cried out and said,
“Whoever believes in me believes not only in me
but also in the one who sent me,
and whoever sees me sees the one who sent me.
I came into the world as light,
so that everyone who believes in me might not remain in darkness.
And if anyone hears my words and does not observe them,
I do not condemn him,
for I did not come to condemn the world but to save the world.
Whoever rejects me and does not accept my words
has something to judge him: the word that I spoke,
it will condemn him on the last day,
because I did not speak on my own,
but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and speak.
And I know that his commandment is eternal life.
So what I say, I say as the Father told me.”
The post Living with and Spreading Christ’s Light, Fourth Wednesday of Easter, April 24, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
17 min
April 24, 2024Lawyers Like the Good Shepherd, CLSC Red Mass, April 23, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Red Mass for Columbia Law School Catholics
Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Easter
April 23, 2024
Acts 11:19-26, Ps 87, Jn 10:22-30
To listen to an audio recording of tonight’s homily, please click below:
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The following points were attempted in the homily:
It’s great news that Columbia Law School Catholics have been founded and that we are having the first of one we hope will be hundreds of Red Masses in the decades and centuries ahead.
Red Mass Tradition. 1243 by Pope Innocent IV for the ecclesiastical court. Grew quickly. Began judicial year. First Red Mass in the US was celebrated in 1928 by Cardinal Hayes at old St. Andrew’s Church, down by the courthouses.
Holy Spirit. Seven-fold gifts.
First called Christians in Antioch. Working together like Paul and Barnabas. Spreading faith like Cypriots and Cyrenians.
Providential this Mass is taking place at the end of a mid-Easter Triduum dedicated to meeting the Risen Lord Jesus as Good Shepherd. Throughout John 10, Jesus shows us how he wishes us first and foremost to relate to him but he also indicates the type of transformation he wishes to see in us as his disciples, as we are transformed more and more into his image and seek to care for his sheep and lambs.
There are several qualities he lists, meant to help every Catholic lawyer grow as a Catholic lawyer. :
He calls himself the Good Shepherd.
This is because there were many bad shepherds, whom he compared to thieves and marauders, who took advantage of the sheep, who milked them, sheared them, killed them, ate them. He, in contrast, used the adjective Good. He wanted what was best. He would sacrifice for them. He would love them
He knows his sheep and they know him.
He calls them by name
They sheep hear his voice.
They follow him.
He leads them to graze in green pastures. He feeds them. Word. Will. Material food. Eucharist.
He protects them from thieves and marauders. No one can take them from his hand.
He gives his life for them
He gives them to eternal life.
This is what the Lord is meant to do for all of us. But these qualities are similarly meant to describe how good Catholic lawyers are supposed to serve.
They are called to be good not just in competence but in character. There are some bad lawyers who have given every lawyer a bad name. They don’t really care for their clients. They essentially use them and take advantage of them.
They need to know their clients, take a personal interest in them.
They need to call them by name. None is anonymous. None is just one more.
They need to be trusted so that they will be listened to.
They need to be trusted so that they will be followed.
They need to feed their clients, to help them to understand.
They need to protect their clients, as much as they can, from injustice, from bandits, from being exploited.
They need to sacrifice themselves for their clients.
They need to help them keep the big picture, to strive for what matters most, to guide them, we can say, not ephemerally eschatologically.
It’s good for us to take an example of a lawyer who lived this way.
Last July I was in Zamora in northwest Spain. Tour of the Cathedral. Came across a tomb of a lawyer buried there, Venerable Luis de Trelles y Nogerol (1819-91). He has been declared by the Church to have lived the Christian life to an heroic degree.
He studied civil law at the University of Santiago de Compostela and, after graduating, taught there as a professor in 1839.
A year later he opened his own law firm and, in Vivero, La Coruña and Madrid, for several decades served as a “lawyer of the poor,” without receiving any compensation for that pro-bono work, fighting for justice for the oppressed. He succeeded in freeing 20,000 prisoners from death or captivity during his lifetime.
He served in the military, wrote for newspapers and magazines and was a Congressman. He was married to Adelaida and the father of three and adopted father to a fourth.
In this Eucharistic Revival of the Church in the US, he lived his life in communion with the Good Shepherd he would receive every day.
He also spent a lot of time receiving the counsel of the Eucharistic Lord.
He first encountered perpetual adoration in Paris in 1862 and it changed him. In 1868, he started it in Spain. By 1877, it had nocturnal adoration had spread to 50 different Spanish cities. He devoted long hours of prayer to Eucharistic Adoration. He died during nighttime adoration. He founded the Handmaids of the Eucharistic Jesus in 1881 in 30 different cities. He founded a magazine entitled, “Tabernacle Lamp” and wrote more than 10,000 pages.
He was a Good Lawyer because he was a Eucharistic Lawyer, capable of giving himself to others like the Good Shepherd laid down his life for him. He is called the 19th century Apostle of the Eucharist, which is amazing for a layman.
He shows us the integration between being a top-notch lawyer and a thoroughly Eucharistic Catholic patterning oneself off the Good Shepherd.
Work of the Holy Spirit is to form us to be like Jesus. Every Mass is a Perpetual Pentecost. We become witnesses, martyrs, with tongues of fire, with hearts of fire, going out.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 ACTS 11:19-26
Those who had been scattered by the persecution
that arose because of Stephen
went as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch,
preaching the word to no one but Jews.
There were some Cypriots and Cyrenians among them, however,
who came to Antioch and began to speak to the Greeks as well,
proclaiming the Lord Jesus.
The hand of the Lord was with them
and a great number who believed turned to the Lord.
The news about them reached the ears of the Church in Jerusalem,
and they sent Barnabas to go to Antioch.
When he arrived and saw the grace of God,
he rejoiced and encouraged them all
to remain faithful to the Lord in firmness of heart,
for he was a good man, filled with the Holy Spirit and faith.
And a large number of people was added to the Lord.
Then he went to Tarsus to look for Saul,
and when he had found him he brought him to Antioch.
For a whole year they met with the Church
and taught a large number of people,
and it was in Antioch that the disciples
were first called Christians.
Responsorial Psalm PS 87:1B-3, 4-5, 6-7
R. (117:1a) All you nations, praise the Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
His foundation upon the holy mountains
the LORD loves:
The gates of Zion,
more than any dwelling of Jacob.
Glorious things are said of you,
O city of God!
R. All you nations, praise the Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
I tell of Egypt and Babylon
among those who know the LORD;
Of Philistia, Tyre, Ethiopia:
“This man was born there.”
And of Zion they shall say:
“One and all were born in her;
And he who has established her
is the Most High LORD.”
R. All you nations, praise the Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
They shall note, when the peoples are enrolled:
“This man was born there.”
And all shall sing, in their festive dance:
“My home is within you.”
R. All you nations, praise the Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Alleluia JN 10:27
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
My sheep hear my voice, says the Lord;
I know them, and they follow me.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel JN 10:22-30
The feast of the Dedication was taking place in Jerusalem.
It was winter.
And Jesus walked about in the temple area on the Portico of Solomon.
So the Jews gathered around him and said to him,
“How long are you going to keep us in suspense?
If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.”
Jesus answered them, “I told you and you do not believe.
The works I do in my Father’s name testify to me.
But you do not believe, because you are not among my sheep.
My sheep hear my voice;
I know them, and they follow me.
I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.
No one can take them out of my hand.
My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all,
and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand.
The Father and I are one.”
The post Lawyers Like the Good Shepherd, CLSC Red Mass, April 23, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
32 min
April 23, 2024Hearing Christ’s Voice, Following Him and Helping Others Follow Him, Fourth Tuesday of Easter, April 23, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Easter
Memorial of St. George
April 23, 2024
Acts 11:19-26, Ps 87, Jn 10:22-30

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.23.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
This morning, Jesus completes the words we’ve been pondering over the last three days about how he is our Good Shepherd. The Church has us pray over these words in the heart of each Easter season so that we can learn better how to respond to him risen from the dead as his good sheep, so that he can give us life to the full, so that we can live united with him. Today he summarizes the whole discourse saying six things:
To believe Jesus we need to be his sheep: He says to those challenging him during the Feast of the Dedication in the Temple, “You do not believe because you are not among my sheep.” Many times we think we have to believe first and then follow, but what Jesus is saying is that while of course there is an initial gift of faith, we grow in faith by following Jesus as his good sheep. The old Latin aphorism salva ambulando applies here that Jesus saves us as we follow him. The most obvious application of this is Baptism for those of us who had the great fortune of being baptized as infants. We become his sheep on the day of our infant Baptism and only later are we able to grow in faith of him by the graces working within.
His sheep hear his voice: We are able to discern his voice from impostors’ because we’re constantly seeking to attune to his frequency in prayer, through Sacred Scripture, in the crucial work of the magisterium, in the solid example of the saints.
I know them: Jesus says that he knows each one by name and we are in a personal relationship with him. There’s the famous parable when those outside the wedding feast are knocking, seeking to enter, and the Lord says, “Truly I do not know you.” Jesus’ sheep have entered into a deep, intimate friendship with him. This is akin to Biblical spousal “knowledge” whereby we not only know the other intimately but come to know ourselves through the experience of being loved and loving in return, from being known.
They follow me: If we’re really Jesus’ sheep, we’re seeking to live by his example, to want what he wants, will what he chooses, and love as he loves. We get up from where we are and follow him to where we wants us to go, even when we’d prefer to stay in our spiritual comfort zones. We follow him on the inside and outside, even when others stretch out our arms and drag us to a place we’d rather not go.
He gives them eternal life: Jesus gives us the gift of eternal life not just later but now, because eternal life, as he says elsewhere, is to know the Father and Jesus Christ whom the Father has sent. This is what makes sense of the second part of the phrase, “and they shall never perish.” If that were referring only to the afterlife, it would be nonsensical, because no one in heaven will perish; but it likewise refers to now, that if we are experiencing the eternal life that comes from the intimate friendship and communion with Christ, we will never die forever, because death will be merely a change of address, or better, change of state. This truth is what gave so much strength to the martyrs.
No one can take them from my hand: I love this phrase. Once we’re in the Good Shepherd’s hands, no thief, no wolf, nothing in all of creation, can separate us from him, just like Jesus says no one can rip us from the Father’s strong, loving hands. The only thing that can take us out of God’s hand is our own free, frankly stupid, sinful choices by which we, like the Prodigal Son, voluntarily leave God’s loving embrace. And so remaining in Jesus’ hands, choosing to entrust ourselves to him, is the wisest decision we can ever make. And even when we wander, Jesus’ hands are still outstretched ready to embrace us back.
Today in the beautiful scene of today’s first reading we have three examples as to how Jesus seeks to bring all people to relate to him first as sheep disciples — who hear his voice, who have a deep personal relationships with Christ, who follow him, who remain in his hand, and who experience in this world and forever his eternal life — and then as shepherdly apostles, who strive to be God’s instrument to bring others into that same relationship.
The first example involves the Cypriots and Cyrenians who, scattered by the persecution against Christ’s followers, came to Antioch. There they did a first. They went not just to the Synagogues to meet Jews and God-fearing Gentiles, but directly to the Gentiles to share with them the Good News of the Lord. Previously the Gospel had been shared with the Samaritans, who were half-Jews. St. Peter had been led by the Lord to go to Caesarea Maritima to share the Gospel with Cornelius and his family. But Antioch, thanks to these anonymous sheep-shepherds from Cyprus and Cyrene, was the first place Gentiles were directly blessed with the gift of the Gospel. And they received it on good soil. They became Jesus’ sheep, heard his voice, developed a personal relationship with him and others in him, followed him, and through the Sacraments received the down payment of eternal life. It was here that Jesus’ sheep were first called “Christians,” literally, “little Christs,” because they, like Christ, were becoming Good Shepherds, desirous of sharing the faith with others, as we’ll see tomorrow. Antioch was the first place of evangelization among the Gentiles and the first place we see evangelized evangelizers.
St. Barnabas is the second example. As we see in today’s first reading, after the Church in Jerusalem had heard of how many converts were entering the Church in Antioch, they sent Barnabas to encourage them “to remain faithful to the Lord in firmness of heart” and to guide them into a deeper grasp of the Gospel. He was a “good man, filled with the Holy Spirit and faith,” who generously had sold his property and given it to the apostles. Named Joseph, he was nicknamed Barnabas, which means “son of encouragement” or “son of consolation,” because he filled others with strength and joy. St. Luke tells us today that his preaching and exhortation only served to make more converts. He was a great spiritual Shepherd after Christ’s example.
The third figure is one whom St. Barnabas helped to form. Barnabas was God’s instrument to help form and employ in the task of the Gospel Saul turned Paul, whom Jesus had said at the latter’s conversion would be his instrument to bring the Gospel to the Gentiles. It was Barnabas who prevented Paul’s gifts from being wasted, vouching for him with the leaders and members of the Church in Jerusalem who didn’t trust him because of his murderous past, and launching him on the trajectory that led to his founding so many Churches across the ancient world and bringing so many others into Jesus’ fold and hands. Eventually, after Paul’s life was endangered by people seeking to kill him, Paul was sent by the Church back to his native Tarsus, but Barnabas wouldn’t leave him there for ever. St. Paul’s story we know well. He was already a follower of God before his dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus, but he was following God in a partial way, trying to destroy what turned out to be God’s plan for salvation by seeking to extirpate what he thought was a blasphemous sect. But when Jesus struck him down and spoke to him on the Road to Damascus, saying, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?,” Saul entered into a relationship with Jesus and for the rest of his life tried to serve him with even greater zeal than he had shown before as, mistakenly, he tried to destroy Christ’s Mystical Body. So great would his union with the Good Shepherd become that he would eventually say, “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me,” and “For me to live is Christ.” St. Paul shows the way we’re supposed to follow the Good Shepherd until the end, laying down our lives for him who gave everything for us, and seeking to bring as many as possible into the Lord’s hands. And so when in Antioch, Barnabas recognized that he did not have the time to guide all of the converts himself and needed other expert help, he traveled to Tarsus to find Paul and bring him back to Antioch. And in Antioch “for a whole year they met with the Church and taught a large number of people,” forming them in the love of the Lord, as much loved sheep who would be tasked to feed and tend Christ’s sheep and lambs as well.
Today on April 23, in solidarity with our Holy Father on his name day, we can mention one last witness of a sheep turned shepherd, the martyr St. George. He was a Roman soldier from Cappodocia who converted after Diocletian published an edict against Christians. He was willing to give his life for Christ just as the Good Shepherd gave his life for him and, in the afterlife, he has continued to be an instrument of the Good Shepherd to shepherd many others under his celestial patronage, like knights, soldiers, scouts, fencers and archers. We ask him in a particular way to shepherd his name sake Jorge Bergoglio in his service of universal shepherd of the Church.
Today we come to the Good Shepherd in the Holy Eucharist and through the intercession of Saints Paul, Barnabas and George we ask for the grace to place ourselves so firmly in the hands of the Good Shepherd who so humbly places himself in our hands and mouths, that we may never cease to be embraced by him and that we may come one day to experience the eternal life of knowing the Father and Son to which every Eucharist is a bridge and foretaste!

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 ACTS 11:19-26
Those who had been scattered by the persecution
that arose because of Stephen
went as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch,
preaching the word to no one but Jews.
There were some Cypriots and Cyrenians among them, however,
who came to Antioch and began to speak to the Greeks as well,
proclaiming the Lord Jesus.
The hand of the Lord was with them
and a great number who believed turned to the Lord.
The news about them reached the ears of the Church in Jerusalem,
and they sent Barnabas to go to Antioch.
When he arrived and saw the grace of God,
he rejoiced and encouraged them all
to remain faithful to the Lord in firmness of heart,
for he was a good man, filled with the Holy Spirit and faith.
And a large number of people was added to the Lord.
Then he went to Tarsus to look for Saul,
and when he had found him he brought him to Antioch.
For a whole year they met with the Church
and taught a large number of people,
and it was in Antioch that the disciples
were first called Christians.
Responsorial Psalm PS 87:1B-3, 4-5, 6-7
R. (117:1a) All you nations, praise the Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
His foundation upon the holy mountains
the LORD loves:
The gates of Zion,
more than any dwelling of Jacob.
Glorious things are said of you,
O city of God!
R. All you nations, praise the Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
I tell of Egypt and Babylon
among those who know the LORD;
Of Philistia, Tyre, Ethiopia:
“This man was born there.”
And of Zion they shall say:
“One and all were born in her;
And he who has established her
is the Most High LORD.”
R. All you nations, praise the Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
They shall note, when the peoples are enrolled:
“This man was born there.”
And all shall sing, in their festive dance:
“My home is within you.”
R. All you nations, praise the Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Alleluia JN 10:27
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
My sheep hear my voice, says the Lord;
I know them, and they follow me.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel JN 10:22-30
The feast of the Dedication was taking place in Jerusalem.
It was winter.
And Jesus walked about in the temple area on the Portico of Solomon.
So the Jews gathered around him and said to him,
“How long are you going to keep us in suspense?
If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.”
Jesus answered them, “I told you and you do not believe.
The works I do in my Father’s name testify to me.
But you do not believe, because you are not among my sheep.
My sheep hear my voice;
I know them, and they follow me.
I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.
No one can take them out of my hand.
My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all,
and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand.
The Father and I are one.”

The post Hearing Christ’s Voice, Following Him and Helping Others Follow Him, Fourth Tuesday of Easter, April 23, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
20 min
April 22, 2024Entering the Gate of the Sheep, Fourth Monday of Easter, April 22, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Monday of the Fourth Week of Easter
April 22, 2024
Acts 11:1-18, Ps 42, Jn 10:1-10

To listen to this morning’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.22.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
The mystagogical catechesis of the Easter Season commences with the apparitions of the Risen Lord to convince us anew of the fact of his Resurrection and how he seeks to have us convert, seek the things that are above and live a new life. Then we have a four-day catechesis on the Sacrament of Baptism followed by an eight-day catechesis on the Eucharist. With Good Shepherd Sunday at the beginning of the Fourth Week, we begin to focus on various images and realities by which the risen Lord Jesus wishes to relate to us and bring us fully alive. Today is the second of three days on which we ponder the Risen Jesus as our shepherd. He summarizes the purpose of that relationship, the purpose of what he seeks to do in us through his passion, death and resurrection, at the end of today’s passage: “I came that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” St. John Paul II, in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae, said that by this phrase, Jesus presents “the heart of his redemptive mission.” Jesus wishes us to overflow with his risen zoe. That’s what we prayed for at the beginning of Mass when we asked God to grant us the “full measure of [his] grace for ages unending.” Grace is our participation as creatures in God’s own life. At the end of today’s first reading, the early Church grasped that God wanted his “life-giving repentance” to be preached and offered to all the nations because Christ has “other sheep” as he told us in yesterday’s Gospel that were not of the fold of the Jews.
In the Good Shepherd Discourse, we see how Jesus shepherds us to give us life in abundance, the full measure of his grace, in the following seven ways:
First he knows us — He knows us just like the Father knows him and he wants us to know him like he knows the Father. He is our friend and wants us to receive and reciprocate his friendship.
Second, he calls us by name — None of us is a number to him. None of us is anonymous. He summons us by name and calls us each individually. We’re special to him.
Third, he leads and guides us — He doesn’t call us and leave us on our own, but he constantly calls us to be with him. He goes before us so that he can turn to us and say “follow me.” Because he knows us individually, he knows that we need direction and he constantly gives that personal direction.
Fourth, he feeds us — In the most famous Psalm, which is all about how God shepherds us, we proclaim that with him, we lack nothing, but have it all. He leads us into green pastures to have us graze. He guides us to restful waters to refresh us. He sets a table before us and makes our cup overflow. In St. Matthew’s Gospel, when Jesus looked on the crowd because they were “like sheep without a shepherd,” on one occasion he worked the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fish and on other occasion he began to teach, knowing that people were hungering for nourishment for their souls as well. As our shepherd, Jesus always remembers to give us each day our daily bread, both material and spiritual.
Fifth, he protects us — The ancient shepherds used to risk it all to protect their sheep against savage animals like wolves but also against bandits who would come to steal them. Jesus came into our world courageously to do the same for us. When we get lost wandering away from the fold, he leaves everyone else to come to find us and rescue us when we’re in danger.
Sixth, he gives his life for us — Jesus lays down, and lays down freely, his life for his sheep. I’ve always considered it crazy for a human being to die for an animal. It’s silly for us to die for our hamsters or parakeets or even for our pet canines and felines. But shepherds actually would die protecting their flocks from wolves, or lions, or evil bandits. The distance between human beings and animals, however, is nothing compared to the gap between God and us his creatures, and yet that’s precisely what God does. And he does so because he loves us.
Seventh, he gives us eternal life — The ultimate aim of everything he does is to give give us life to the full, not just in this world but forever.
These are all characteristics of how the risen Lord Jesus wants to relate to us as our shepherd. Our first task is to respond to his shepherding in each of these seven ways.
To come to know him as he knows us — He wants us to know him the way the Father knows him and he knows the Father. That’s the mission of the Holy Spirit, who is the personal loving knowledge between the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit wants to help us to come to know Christ in prayer, in the sacraments, in charity and in life.
To respond to his call and singular involvement involvement in our life, to recognize that we’re special to him and summons us to a special bond with him and share in his saving mission. He says that his sheep hear his voice and don’t recognize the voice of a stranger. Yet one of the problems we face is that of discernment, because, after the Fall, we can’t always readily recognize his voice, and so we seek to attune our listening, with the help of others, to his constant calling. Each of us is called!
To follow him with docility and alacrity, knowing that we need his guidance and that he is constantly providing it. Our Christian life is not static, but dynamic. Jesus is always leading us out and he wants us following him. He’s leading us on a pilgrimage all the days of our life. Occasionally he will guide us through dark valleys with his rod and staff; we follow him there, too, as he gives us confidence to be with him even on the way of the Cross that is the path to glory.
To hunger for what he gives us, derive our nutrition from what he provides, with gratitude. It’s important for us to allow God to provide for us. That’s what God helped St. Peter to see in today’s first reading when God pronounced clean all food he had created. That’s key to spiritual childhood, that we recognize we need him. In the Psalm today, we pray, “Athirst is my soul for God, the living God.” This hunger and thirst are important physically but even more important spiritually, and God seeks to feed our souls even more lavishly than he feeds our bodies, because for our souls, he gives us himself as nutrition.
Not to run away from his protection to get his attention, but to stay close to his strong arm. That’s what gives us great confidence and happiness. There’s a beautiful part of today’s Gospel that says that the sheep “come in and go out and find pasture.” Those verbs point to the fact that they’re secure enough, under the protection of the Shepherd, to wander about, without being paranoid about the wolves or thieves.
To receive the fruits of laying down his life for us. Jesus died so that we might have new life, in fact, life to the full. The way we receive this gift is by coming alive, by seizing that gift of abundant life, which is not bios (biological life), but zoe (supernatural life). We don’t want Jesus’ gift of life to be wasted, but to invest it so that we may have more and more a share of his life, by entering into his life. That means we seek the things that are above, we thirst for the living God, and we seek to unite our whole life to him.
To long for the eternal life he gives us. Eternal life, Jesus says elsewhere, is knowing him and the Father who sent him. But that knowledge is supposed to grow so that we may become like him by seeing him as he is, which is the promise he makes about heaven. This means we live by the great hope, and set our hearts on the treasure of eternal life and love with him.
When we begin to share in Jesus’ life to the full, when we become Jesus’ good sheep knowing him, listening to him, following him, consuming what he gives, staying under his protection, receiving his life to the full and hungering to be with him always, Jesus helps us to make the transition from being good sheep to becoming good shepherds so that others through us may come to life to the full. Then we become capable of being his instruments in order to:
Helping others to know God — We share with them the Gospel, we introduce them into the sacramental life, and we teach them how to pray so that they may come to know God and know themselves known by him.
Calling others individually by name — Everyone is precious to God and we need to treat them as precious. It’s one of the reasons why it’s important to learn people’s names. Names are how we relate to each other on a personal level, and if God calls us by name, we’re called to relate to others by name as well.
Setting for them good example to lead them in the Master’s ways — The Lord wants to use us to guide people to him and after him to abundant life. The greatest way we can pass on the gift of faith is by showing others the faith rather than just verbally teaching it, and particularly by showing how beautiful the life of the faith is. It’s much easier for them to walk in Jesus’ footsteps if they see us doing it.
Feeding them with material and spiritual nourishment — Before Jesus worked the miracle of the multiplication of loaves and fish, having looked upon the crowd that was like sheep without a shepherd, he told his apostles, “You give them something to eat.” He asked for the five loaves and two fish they had. So he wants us to share in his shepherdly care for others, feeding them materially and spiritually.
Protecting them from wolves, thieves, and marauders — Jesus wants us, like him, to be good shepherds protecting others from harm. He contrasts himself from the “merchants” who run away when beasts or bandits arrive to harm the flock, putting their self-preservation over the protection of others. Jesus calls us to another form of life, one of prudent vigilance not just over ourselves but over others. That leads us to the next point.
Loving them to the extreme — St. John writes in his first letter, “The way we came to know love was that he laid down his life for us; so we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers” (1 John 3:16). In forming us to be Good Shepherds, Jesus is helping us to be courageous, to lay down our lives for others in little ways or even by the supreme sacrifice. This is what a Good Shepherd does. This is what fathers and mothers worthy of the name do for their children. This is what Jesus is calling us to do for all our brothers and sisters. When we’re willing to die for others, then loving them is so much easier. And like Jesus said in yesterday’s Gospel, we’re called to do so willingly, saying, “No one takes my life from me. I fully lay it down!”
Helping them to long for heaven — Jesus wants to give them eternal life. In the midst of so many worldly hopes, we’re called to help seek what Pope Benedict called the “great hope” surpassing all others. We’re called to speak about heaven, to order our choices there. The Responsorial Psalm today focuses on desire for God and this is meant to translate into a desire to be with God forever: “As the hind longs for the running waters, so my soul longs for you, O God. Athirst is my soul for God, the living God. When shall I go and behold the face of God?” Then the Psalm answers the question, not just with regard to this life but to eternity, not just to the earthly Jerusalem but the heavenly. We pray: “Bring me to your holy mountain, to your dwelling-place. Then will I go in to the altar of God, the God of my gladness and joy; Then will I give you thanks upon the harp, O God, my God!”
Jesus the Good Shepherd does all of this training here at Mass. It’s here where we get to know him intimately on the inside. It’s here he calls us. It’s here to which he guides us. It’s here that he feeds us. It’s here that he protects us from the evil one. It’s here that we receive his laying down his life for us on Holy Thursday and Good Friday. And it’s here that he gives us a foretaste of eternal life as we receive his Risen Body and Blood, the downpayment of lief to the full. In Psalm 23, we pray, “The Lord is my shepherd. There is nothing I shall want.” Indeed, with the Lord as our Good Shepherd, we have it all. And it’s here that on earth he seeks to give us, together with himself, every spiritual blessing in the heavens. Let us with joy come to meet him at the banquet he has set for us here on earth, which is a foretaste of the fullness of life he is seeking to give us in the eternal banquet he is preparing for us in the eternal verdant pastures.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 ACTS 11:1-18
The Apostles and the brothers who were in Judea
heard that the Gentiles too had accepted the word of God.
So when Peter went up to Jerusalem
the circumcised believers confronted him, saying,
‘You entered the house of uncircumcised people and ate with them.”
Peter began and explained it to them step by step, saying,
“I was at prayer in the city of Joppa
when in a trance I had a vision,
something resembling a large sheet coming down,
lowered from the sky by its four corners, and it came to me.
Looking intently into it,
I observed and saw the four-legged animals of the earth,
the wild beasts, the reptiles, and the birds of the sky.
I also heard a voice say to me, ‘Get up, Peter. Slaughter and eat.’
But I said, ‘Certainly not, sir,
because nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’
But a second time a voice from heaven answered,
‘What God has made clean, you are not to call profane.’
This happened three times,
and then everything was drawn up again into the sky.
Just then three men appeared at the house where we were,
who had been sent to me from Caesarea.
The Spirit told me to accompany them without discriminating.
These six brothers also went with me,
and we entered the man’s house.
He related to us how he had seen the angel standing in his house, saying,
‘Send someone to Joppa and summon Simon, who is called Peter,
who will speak words to you
by which you and all your household will be saved.’
As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them
as it had upon us at the beginning,
and I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said,
‘John baptized with water
but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’
If then God gave them the same gift he gave to us
when we came to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ,
who was I to be able to hinder God?”
When they heard this,
they stopped objecting and glorified God, saying,
“God has then granted life-giving repentance to the Gentiles too.”
Responsorial Psalm PS 42:2-3; 43:3, 4
R. (see 3a) Athirst is my soul for the living God.
or:
R. Alleluia.
As the hind longs for the running waters,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
Athirst is my soul for God, the living God.
When shall I go and behold the face of God?
R. Athirst is my soul for the living God.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Send forth your light and your fidelity;
they shall lead me on
And bring me to your holy mountain,
to your dwelling-place.
R. Athirst is my soul for the living God.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Then will I go in to the altar of God,
the God of my gladness and joy;
Then will I give you thanks upon the harp,
O God, my God!
R. Athirst is my soul for the living God.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Alleluia JN 10:14
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
I am the good shepherd, says the Lord;
I know my sheep, and mine know me.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel JN 10:1-10
Jesus said:
“Amen, amen, I say to you,
whoever does not enter a sheepfold through the gate
but climbs over elsewhere is a thief and a robber.
But whoever enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.
The gatekeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice,
as he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.
When he has driven out all his own,
he walks ahead of them, and the sheep follow him,
because they recognize his voice.
But they will not follow a stranger;
they will run away from him,
because they do not recognize the voice of strangers.”
Although Jesus used this figure of speech,
they did not realize what he was trying to tell them.
So Jesus said again, “Amen, amen, I say to you,
I am the gate for the sheep.
All who came before me are thieves and robbers,
but the sheep did not listen to them.
I am the gate.
Whoever enters through me will be saved,
and will come in and go out and find pasture.
A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy;
I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.”
The post Entering the Gate of the Sheep, Fourth Monday of Easter, April 22, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
21 min

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Father Roger J. Landry is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, who works for the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations in New York.