Catholic Preaching

By Father Roger LandryReligion & Spirituality Christianity

Catholic Preaching episodes

April 04, 2024Witnesses of the Risen One, Easter Thursday, April 4, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Easter Thursday
April 4, 2024
Acts 3:11-26, Ps 8, Lk 24:35-48

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.4.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
At Easter, Jesus wants to work a transformation in us like he worked in the first disciples. And as we’ve been seeing during these days, there’s a very familiar pattern to the metamorphosis he worked on Easter that we’ve been seeing in each of the Gospels this Easter week:
At first the disciples who encounter Jesus are bewildered, shocked, fearful, unbelieving in his resurrection; no matter how many times Jesus had told them exactly what would occur to him, they still didn’t believe, even when they saw him a couple of days after his brutal execution.
The second stage is that Jesus convinces them that he’s real, that he’s alive, that he’s risen from the dead and he begins to instruct and show them that everything that happened to him was supposed to happen to him.
Third, once they hear and see Jesus, they come to faith in Him, his Resurrection and his living Presence in front of them.
Lastly, Jesus sends them out on a mission to complete his own divine mission.
On Monday and Tuesday we see how this happened with St. Mary Magdalene from the perspectives of St. Matthew’s and St. John’s Gospels respectively. Yesterday we saw it with the disciples on the Road to Emmaus. And in today’s Gospel, we see these same four stages occur with the apostles in the Upper Room.
Jesus enters the other room while Cleopas and the other disciple are briefing them on what just happened on their journey home to Emmaus. The disciples were “started and terrified and thought they were seeing a ghost.” They couldn’t believe that it was Jesus, even after the witness of the Emmaus disciples, of Mary Magdalene and the other Mary whom Jesus met on the way. Just like the two disciples of Emmaus, their hearts were slow to believe: their will wasn’t yet in it, they were too dejected, too afraid. Jesus confronts those fears straight on. He says, “Peace be with you!,” and asks, “Why are you troubled? And why do questions arise in your hearts?” Note that like in Emmaus, the problem was not with their minds but their hearts. Then he removed their cardiac doubts about his physical reality by saying, “Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have.” After showing them his wounds and his feet — a witness not only to the continuity with his life prior to death but also a sign of their sins that caused the wounds — he proves that he’s not a ghost by eating a piece a baked fish, which only a real person with a real body could digest. Then he started to do for them what we saw him do with the disciples on the Road to Emmaus: he reminded them that he had to suffer, just as he and the prophets had foretold. “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and in the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled.”
St. Luke stresses that, having opened their hearts, he then “opened their minds to understand the Scriptures,” saying, “Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” Doubtless their own hearts began to burn like the hearts of the Emmaus disciples and their minds got that warmer blood of faith so that they began to believe. Finally, Jesus gave them their mission as he similarly opened their mouths: “You are witnesses of these things.” They were to be witnesses of Christ’s resurrection, but not only his resurrection. They were to testify to how Jesus fulfilled everything that was “written about [him] in the law of Moses and in the prophets and psalms,” that “the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead … and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be preached in his name to all the nations beginning from Jerusalem.” They would testify to him as well as to the way we would share in the fruits of his victory.
We see St. Peter fulfilling that very mission in today’s first reading. As the crippled man they healed in yesterday’s Gospel was clinging to him, he started to explain the significance of the man’s healing to the assembled crowd in Solomon’s Portico in the Temple: this man was walking and healed not because of Peter or John, but because of the saving name of the Risen and Living Jesus. Peter used the man’s obviously miraculous healing as an opportunity to preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins in that same holy name to all nations, beginning right there in the heart of Jerusalem. “Why are you amazed at this, and why do you look so intently at us as if we had made him walk by our own power or piety?” It wasn’t their power; it was the power of Jesus, “whom you handed over and denied in Pilate’s presence, when he had decided to release him.” He told them they preferred Barabbas over the “Holy and Righteous One” and murdered the “Author of life” — both of the latter terms expressions that Jesus was God. “But,” St. Peter said, “God raised him from the dead; of this we are all witnesses. And by faith in his name, this man, whom you see and know, his name has made strong.” So after he helps them through their period of incredulity or hardness of heart, he seeks to get them to the stage of faith by demonstrating how all that happened to Jesus was supposed to happen, and offer to them the same mercy through repentance and the forgiveness of sins that Jesus had offered them. “Now I know, brothers and sisters, that you acted out of ignorance, just as your leaders did; but God has thus brought to fulfillment what he had announced beforehand through the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer.” God had also foretold the times of reconciliation, the “universal restoration of which God spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old. For Moses said: ‘A prophet like me will the Lord, your God, raise up for you from among your own kin; to him you shall listen in all that he may say to you. Everyone who does not listen to that prophet will be cut off from the people.’ Moreover, all the prophets who spoke, from Samuel and those afterwards, also announced these days. … For you first, God raised up his servant [Jesus] and sent him to bless you by turning each of you from your evil ways.” Just as much as Peter who had his heart, mind and mouth opened by the Lord to be a witness of all the things that happened to Jesus, he also became a witness by his life and not just by his lips. St. Peter had said that God prophesied that “his Christ would suffer,” and that’s not just a reference to Jesus the “anointed,” the “Messiah,” (which is what the Greek word “Christ” means) but for everyone who is anointed by God in union with Jesus. Every Christian is, literally, a little Christ and will suffer on account of our witness to him. Peter and John, immediately after this scene are going to be arrested by the very same people who conspired to have Jesus crucified. But they were unafraid because if God could raise Jesus from crucifixion on the third day, then there was no need for any of his followers to fear even brutal death. That’s why they were able to preach with a holy parrhesia, a Spirit-inspired boldness, that no one could intimidate. They weren’t afraid to suffer any longer because they knew that their sufferings would be salvific and their death would be merely a change of address, to a place where Jesus had gone to prepare for them.
We similarly, having met the Risen Lord Jesus, having been schooled by him in Sacred Scripture, having believed in him, are now called like Peter to be witnesses to the fact that he is very much alive. The same Jesus who met the terrified disciples in the Upper Room meets us here to bring about that transformation. Just as he led them through a “liturgy of the word” to understand how all that the prophets and he had foretold had to transpire, so he has led us on a similar journey. Just as he told them to see and touch him, so he wants us not just to touch him but to be touched by him on the inside and become one with him in Holy Communion. And just as he sent them out as witnesses of risen life and his teachings to the end of the world, beginning from Jerusalem, so he will say to us at the end of this Mass, “Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord” to all nations, beginning from West 114th Street. We will suffer for doing so, but it’s here that Jesus not only opens our minds and mouths but strengthens us to remain faithful when we do, so that repentance for the forgiveness of sins — and the Divine Mercy that meets that repentance — will allow people to learn how to hear, know, love and proclaim Jesus’ holy, saving name, receive and live by his Divine Mercy, and come to share in this world and forever Jesus’ resurrection!

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
ACTS 3:11-26
As the crippled man who had been cured clung to Peter and John,
all the people hurried in amazement toward them
in the portico called “Solomon’s Portico.”
When Peter saw this, he addressed the people,
“You children of Israel, why are you amazed at this,
and why do you look so intently at us
as if we had made him walk by our own power or piety?
The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,
the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus
whom you handed over and denied in Pilate’s presence,
when he had decided to release him.
You denied the Holy and Righteous One
and asked that a murderer be released to you.
The author of life you put to death,
but God raised him from the dead;
of this we are witnesses.
And by faith in his name,
this man, whom you see and know,
his name has made strong,
and the faith that comes through it
has given him this perfect health,
in the presence of all of you.
Now I know, brothers and sisters,
that you acted out of ignorance, just as your leaders did;
but God has thus brought to fulfillment
what he had announced beforehand
through the mouth of all the prophets,
that his Christ would suffer.
Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away,
and that the Lord may grant you times of refreshment
and send you the Christ already appointed for you, Jesus,
whom heaven must receive until the times of universal restoration
of which God spoke through the mouth
of his holy prophets from of old.
For Moses said:
A prophet like me will the Lord, your God, raise up for you
from among your own kin;
to him you shall listen in all that he may say to you.
Everyone who does not listen to that prophet
will be cut off from the people.
“Moreover, all the prophets who spoke,
from Samuel and those afterwards, also announced these days.
You are the children of the prophets
and of the covenant that God made with your ancestors
when he said to Abraham,
In your offspring all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
For you first, God raised up his servant and sent him to bless you
by turning each of you from your evil ways.”
Responsorial Psalm
PS 8:2AB AND 5, 6-7, 8-9
R. (2ab) O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth!
or:
R. Alleluia.
O LORD, our Lord,
how glorious is your name over all the earth!
What is man that you should be mindful of him,
or the son of man that you should care for him?
R. O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth!
or:
R. Alleluia.
You have made him little less than the angels,
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him rule over the works of your hands,
putting all things under his feet.
R. O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth!
or:
R. Alleluia.
All sheep and oxen,
yes, and the beasts of the field,
The birds of the air, the fishes of the sea,
and whatever swims the paths of the seas.
R. O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth!
or:
R. Alleluia.
Gospel
LK 24:35-48
The disciples of Jesus recounted what had taken place along the way,
and how they had come to recognize him in the breaking of bread.
While they were still speaking about this,
he stood in their midst and said to them,
“Peace be with you.”
But they were startled and terrified
and thought that they were seeing a ghost.
Then he said to them,
“Why are you troubled?
And why do questions arise in your hearts?
Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself.
Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones
as you can see I have.”
And as he said this,
he showed them his hands and his feet.
While they were still incredulous for joy and were amazed,
he asked them,
“Have you anything here to eat?”
They gave him a piece of baked fish;
he took it and ate it in front of them.
He said to them,
“These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you,
that everything written about me in the law of Moses
and in the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled.”
Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.
And he said to them,
“Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer
and rise from the dead on the third day
and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins,
would be preached in his name
to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
You are witnesses of these things.”
The post Witnesses of the Risen One, Easter Thursday, April 4, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
17 min
April 03, 2024 St. Peter Julien Eymard and Becoming Apostles of the Divine Eucharist, Arnold Hall Seminar for Priests, April 3, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Arnold Hall Seminar for Priests
Great Priest Saints of Eucharistic Revival:
What We Can Learn From Them To Live and Catalyze the US Eucharistic Revival
Pembroke, MA
April 3, 2024
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1 hr 13 min
April 03, 2024 St. John Vianney and the Eucharistic Charitable Heart of the Priest, Arnold Hall Seminar for Priests, April 3, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Arnold Hall Seminar for Priests
Great Priest Saints of Eucharistic Revival:
What We Can Learn From Them To Live and Catalyze the US Eucharistic Revival
Pembroke, MA
April 3, 2024
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57 min
April 03, 2024 St. Thomas Aquinas and Letting Eucharistic Faith Overflow into Eucharistic Adoration, Arnold Hall Seminar for Priests, April 3, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Arnold Hall Seminar for Priests
Great Priest Saints of Eucharistic Revival:
What We Can Learn From Them To Live and Catalyze the US Eucharistic Revival
Pembroke, MA
April 3, 2024
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.3.24_St._Thomas_Aquinas_and_Letting_Eucharistic_Faith_Overflow_into_Adoration_1.mp3
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1 hr 5 min
April 03, 2024 St. Manuel Gonzalez Garcia and the Eucharistic Life of a Priest, Arnold Hall Seminar for Priests, April 2, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Arnold Hall Seminar for Priests
Great Priest Saints of Eucharistic Revival:
What We Can Learn From Them To Live and Catalyze the US Eucharistic Revival
Pembroke, MA
April 2, 2024
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.2.24_St._Manuel_Gonzalez_Arnold_Hall_1.mp3
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1 hr 9 min
April 03, 2024Arise and Walk, Easter Wednesday, April 3, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Arnold Hall Seminar for Priests, Pembroke, MA
“Great Priest Saints of Eucharistic Revival:
What We Can Learn From Them To Live and Catalyze the US Eucharistic Revival”
Wednesday of Easter Week
April 3, 2024
Acts 3:1-10, Ps 105, Lk 24:13-35

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
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The following text guided the homily:
In the readings of the Easter Octave, the Church helps us to ponder the dramatic transformation that Jesus’ Resurrection is supposed to have in our life. We have seen over the course of the last two days the stunning metamorphosis in Mary Magdalene and the 3,000 people listening to St. Peter on Pentecost Sunday. Today we see the massive change wrought in the crippled man at the Beautiful Gate and the astonishment and amazement of all those who were accustomed to seeing him at the gate. We also see the transformation in the disciples on the road to Emmaus.
It’s important for us to resist the temptation for Easter to become routine, seen in the biggest change in us resulting from the liturgical remembrance of Jesus’ resurrection being that now we can consume the food and beverages we gave up for Lent. The celebration of Easter is supposed to lead us to the newness of life St. Paul described at the Easter vigil, helping us to be dead to sin and alive for God in Christ Jesus. The power of Easter is meant to bring about in us the long litany of effects the Church sang about in the Exultet on Saturday night. The whole Church — Peter, John, their successors and the entire Mystical Body — proclaims during the Easter season to us and through us to others, “Arise and walk,” be raised up and start on pilgrimage, freely and enthusiastically following the footsteps of the Risen Lord, knowing that he journeys with us along the way. The power of Easter is meant to do something in us far greater than what happened in this crippled man in Jerusalem. But for that to take place we need to participate in this transition.
Let’s examine the change that’s supposed to occur by entering into the experience of the disciples on the Road to Emmaus in today’s Gospel. And, insofar as we are looking it in the midst of the ongoing Eucharistic Revival taking place in the Church in our country during a Seminar on Great Priest Saints of Eucharistic Revival and What We Can Learn from Them let’s look at the Emmaus scene from within a Eucharistic key, helped by the saint the 19th anniversary of whose natus spiritalis the Church marked yesterday.
As we spoke about last night, the pilgrim Church on earth’s journey throughout time is essentially a Eucharistic procession in which the risen Eucharistic Lord Jesus accompanies us like he accompanied Clopas and the other disciple, to the way he used to accompany his disciples as they traversed the cities of Jericho and Jerusalem and the towns and villages of Galilee, Samaria and Judah. The Road to Emmaus was only seven miles; the four Eucharistic pilgrimages that the Church in our country will be making starting 45 days from now will be closer to 7,000 miles. But what takes place is meant to be the same: a life-changing encounter with the Risen Lord Jesus, who has chosen to remain with us until the end of time in the Holy Eucharist in order to accompany us on the pilgrimage of life. Let’s see four ways he meets us and bids us to rise and walk with him.
The first is in our conversations, in what we are thinking and speaking about. As the two disciples were leaving from Jerusalem and all that it symbolized and heading downhill and downcast into darkness, Jesus, whose risen physical appearance and voice they didn’t recognize, drew near, walked with them and asked, “What are you discussing as you walk along?” They wondered whether he was the only person in Jerusalem who was oblivious to the things that had happened to Jesus of Nazareth, how they had placed their hopes in him to redeem Israel, but he had been crucified, and how women had returned from the tomb saying his body was missing and angels had appeared announcing that he was alive. Jesus, the seemingly anonymous wayfarer, calls them “slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke” and revealed to them how Moses and all the prophets had shown it was “necessary that the Messiah suffer in this way and so enter his glory.” In other words, the crucifixion wasn’t a contradiction of the messianic prophecies, but a confirmation. As Jesus opened up the Scriptures and helped them to understand the fulfillment of Cain’s killing his just brother Abel, the sacrifice of Isaac, the Passover lamb led to the slaughter, the just man beset in Wisdom 2, the Suffering Servant of Isaiah, Psalms 22 and 69 and so many other passages and scenes, their slow hearts began to burn. Notice the problem wasn’t so much with their heads, but with their hearts; not with their reason but with their will and emotions. They didn’t want to believe what Jesus had said three times before, that the Son of Man must be betrayed, handed over to the religious authorities, be crucified and raised. But the Risen Lord Jesus entered into their disappointment, accompanied them, and sped up their hearts by showing them how the reason they were sad and departing Jerusalem contained the seed of their return. The same Jesus wants to enter our lives, and whatever crushed expectations, doubts or disappointments we may have. He wants to help us with the Word of God see things, including the hardest things like the suffering and death of loved ones, in the proper light. And he seeks to do this each day in the Holy Eucharist. In the liturgy of the Word at Mass, on Sunday and each day during the week, the Church starts with Moses, the Prophets, the Psalms, and adds the very words of Jesus as well as of his apostles to help us see our day-to-day life in his light. Similarly in personal prayer before Jesus in Eucharistic adoration, Jesus speaks to us “heart to heart” to burn away whatever slows and weighs down our heart and ultimately give us the heart transplant prophesied by Ezekiel in the Easter vigil’s seventh reading. We are celebrating with joy and thanksgiving during the Eucharistic Revival the Lord’s accompaniment at Mass and in the tabernacle and monstrance. And in the Eucharistic Pilgrimage, we show how Jesus wants to join our journey on the very streets we live, walk, bike, and drive.
The second moment of the scene we can ponder is when the two disciples, reaching home, turn to Jesus, still not recognizing him, and urge him, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.” That invocation has turned over the course of the centuries into a great Christian aspiration. Mane nobiscum, Domine! It even became the title of a Eucharistic apostolic exhortation St. John Paul II left us 20 years ago which was the subject of the first Arnold Hall Seminar for Priests. “Stay with us, Lord!” Jesus wants to be invited in. He wants to remain with us. But he won’t force himself on us. The Risen Lord Jesus, as he was preparing to ascend to the Father, promised us that he would be with us always until the end of time. But we can structure our life either with him or without him. He wants us to bid him to stay with us full-time, to stay with us in the rectory and the office, to stay with us in the morning, midday and evening, to live our whole life in communion with him. And he keeps that desire in the most concrete way in the Holy Eucharist, as he stays with us in our tabernacles full-time and, for a while after each Holy Communion, literally dwells within us. The Eucharistic Revival is meant to help each of us appreciate the incredible gift of the Lord’s real presence and to bid him to stay with and within us always.
The third moment of the Emmaus scene we should examine is what Jesus did in the disciples’ home. St. Luke tells us that “While he was with them at table, Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke it and gave it to them.” We know what the sequence of those four verbs means: we hear them every Mass. Jesus, three days after the Last Supper, after the liturgy of the Word along the seven-mile trek, was celebrating the liturgy of the Eucharist at their table, changing the bread into his Risen Body. “With that,” St. Luke continues, “their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight.” As soon as Jesus made himself present in the Eucharist, the unrecognized traveler disappeared, but all that had happened is that the Risen Lord Jesus had changed appearances again, as he continued to fulfill their hope to stay with them. Later the disciples recounted how Jesus made himself known to them in the “breaking of the bread,” one of the expressions the first Christians would use to refer to the celebration of the Mass. Jesus wants all our eyes to open to recognize him in the Eucharist. There are many Catholics — and, sadly, some Catholic priests and bishops — who, despite Church teaching, still relate to the Eucharist in practice as a thing, rather than as Someone, rather than as Jesus Christ. Like the disciples on the journey, their eyes don’t recognize Jesus even when he walks with us, even when he seeks to speak to us. The Eucharistic Revival is meant to heal our blindness and deafness with regard to the real, true and substantial presence of the Risen Lord Jesus in the Holy Eucharist and to help us respond with love to Jesus as he reveals himself in the breaking of the bread.
The last element we can take up is what happened next. They couldn’t keep the joy of meeting the Lord Jesus to themselves. Even though they had journeyed seven miles downhill into darkness, even though they were doubtless drained by the drama of Christ’s crucifixion, St. Luke tells us, “They set out at once and returned to Jerusalem.” They hastened seven miles up hill, at least a two-hour journey, so that they could share with the eleven apostles what had taken place along their journey home and how the Lord had made himself known to them. This points to the joy we should have at meeting the Risen Lord. It points to the way we ought to leave each Mass or our time with Jesus in prayerful adoration. We encounter the same Lord Jesus the two disciples did; he just looks different. St. John Paul II wrote in his exhortation Mane Nobiscum, Domine, “Once we have truly met the Risen One by partaking of his body and blood, we cannot keep to ourselves the joy we have experienced. The encounter with Christ, constantly intensified and deepened in the Eucharist, issues in the Church and in every Christian an urgent summons to testimony and evangelization. … Entering into communion with Christ in the memorial of his Pasch also means sensing the duty to be a missionary of the event made present in that rite. The dismissal at the end of each Mass is a charge given to Christians, inviting them to work for the spread of the Gospel and the imbuing of society with Christian values.” This is what the Eucharistic Revival is meant to provoke in us, this urgent vocation to witness and sharing our faith, especially the greatest news of all, that God-with-us, Emmanuel, is still very much with us, just as he promised, until the end of time. In the Eucharist, the Risen Lord wants to enter into our conversations, doubts, journeys — in short, into our whole life — bringing the light of his Resurrection, making our hearts burn, and helping us to recognize him at our side. And he wants to inspire us to share news of this love with others, so that they, too, may learn to say to him, “Stay with us, Lord!”
So today, here and now, during the heart of our Seminar, the risen Lord Jesus — as the altar proclaims, Panis de caelo descendens — wants to come to us and warm our hearts, to ignite us just like he did the two disciples, just like he did Peter, Mary Magdalene, the 3,000 on Pentecost, St. John Paul II and so many saints throughout the centuries. He wants to transform us so that we will be able to go out with him along the paths of the world to encounter so many for whom he died, help them to learn how to turn around toward the heavenly Jerusalem, and with them, go out to light the hearts of the world ablaze. He seeks to do it here, in the “breaking of the bread,” in the Holy Eucharist preceded by the heart-igniting liturgy of the Word. If we allow him to do his thing and stir into a flame these graces, we will be filled with God and his holy joy so that, like those in Jerusalem marveled at the healed former cripple, others will be “filled with amazement and astonishment” at what has happened to us and at the way God through us helps them to arise in the risen Christ and walk with him and us!

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 Acts 3:1-10
Peter and John were going up to the temple area
for the three o’clock hour of prayer.
And a man crippled from birth was carried
and placed at the gate of the temple called “the Beautiful Gate” every day
to beg for alms from the people who entered the temple.
When he saw Peter and John about to go into the temple,
he asked for alms.
But Peter looked intently at him, as did John,
and said, “Look at us.”
He paid attention to them, expecting to receive something from them.
Peter said, “I have neither silver nor gold,
but what I do have I give you:
in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean, rise and walk.”
Then Peter took him by the right hand and raised him up,
and immediately his feet and ankles grew strong.
He leaped up, stood, and walked around,
and went into the temple with them,
walking and jumping and praising God.
When all the people saw him walking and praising God,
they recognized him as the one
who used to sit begging at the Beautiful Gate of the temple,
and they were filled with amazement and astonishment
at what had happened to him.
Responsorial Psalm PS 105:1-2, 3-4, 6-7, 8-9
R. (3b) Rejoice, O hearts that seek the Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Give thanks to the LORD, invoke his name;
make known among the nations his deeds.
Sing to him, sing his praise,
proclaim all his wondrous deeds.
R. Rejoice, O hearts that seek the Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Glory in his holy name;
rejoice, O hearts that seek the LORD!
Look to the LORD in his strength;
seek to serve him constantly.
R. Rejoice, O hearts that seek the Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
You descendants of Abraham, his servants,
sons of Jacob, his chosen ones!
He, the LORD, is our God;
throughout the earth his judgments prevail.
R. Rejoice, O hearts that seek the Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
He remembers forever his covenant
which he made binding for a thousand generations—
Which he entered into with Abraham
and by his oath to Isaac.
R. Rejoice, O hearts that seek the Lord.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Alleluia Ps 118:24
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
This is the day the LORD has made;
let us be glad and rejoice in it.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel Lk 24:13-35
That very day, the first day of the week,
two of Jesus’ disciples were going
to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus,
and they were conversing about all the things that had occurred.
And it happened that while they were conversing and debating,
Jesus himself drew near and walked with them,
but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.
He asked them,
“What are you discussing as you walk along?”
They stopped, looking downcast.
One of them, named Cleopas, said to him in reply,
“Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem
who does not know of the things
that have taken place there in these days?”
And he replied to them, “What sort of things?”
They said to him,
“The things that happened to Jesus the Nazarene,
who was a prophet mighty in deed and word
before God and all the people,
how our chief priests and rulers both handed him over
to a sentence of death and crucified him.
But we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel;
and besides all this,
it is now the third day since this took place.
Some women from our group, however, have astounded us:
they were at the tomb early in the morning
and did not find his Body;
they came back and reported
that they had indeed seen a vision of angels
who announced that he was alive.
Then some of those with us went to the tomb
and found things just as the women had described,
but him they did not see.”
And he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are!
How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke!
Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things
and enter into his glory?”
Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets,
he interpreted to them what referred to him
in all the Scriptures.
As they approached the village to which they were going,
he gave the impression that he was going on farther.
But they urged him, “Stay with us,
for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.”
So he went in to stay with them.
And it happened that, while he was with them at table,
he took bread, said the blessing,
broke it, and gave it to them.
With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him,
but he vanished from their sight.
Then they said to each other,
“Were not our hearts burning within us
while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?”
So they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem
where they found gathered together
the Eleven and those with them who were saying,
“The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!”
Then the two recounted what had taken place on the way
and how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
The post Arise and Walk, Easter Wednesday, April 3, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
15 min
April 01, 2024God Raised Jesus: Of This We Are All Witnesses, Easter Monday, April 1, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Easter Monday
April 1, 2024
Acts 2:14.22-33, Ps 16, Mt 28:8-15

To listen to a recording of today’s homily, please click below:
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The following points were attempted in the homily:
Today on this beautiful Easter Monday, we encounter a huge contrast in the readings about how to respond to the startling fact of Jesus’ resurrection.
The chief priests and the elders of the people responded with denial. It wasn’t enough for them to use betrayal to arrest Jesus, illegality to try him, slander to accuse him before Pilate and malice to whip up the crowd to choose a murderer Barabbas over him. Now when the guards they had requested be placed at the tomb returned to them to tell them what happened during the night — that angels appeared, that there was a burst of light, that the stone was rolled back, that Jesus wasn’t there but his garments were left — the chief priests and the elders reacted once again with evil. They bribed the guards “with a large sum of money” to lie, to say that while they were asleep, Jesus’ disciples came and stole his body and somehow carried him naked while the Sabbath was still occurring to some other part of the city. Of course if they were asleep, they would have had no idea what happened to Jesus’ body! But once people have become accustomed to living a lie, they’ll begin to wrap it with many other lies not even grasping the implausibility. There are still many who want to deny the reality of the resurrection but as St. Thomas Aquinas once wrote, if the Resurrection didn’t happen, then the fact that a bunch of barely literate fishermen and nobodies from Galilee could convince so many down-to-earth people throughout the ancient world falsely that it did and all be willing to lay down their lives for that invented reality would be a greater miracle than the miracle of the Resurrection itself!
There are some who deny the resurrection asserting that Jesus had just risen from the dead in disciples’ hearts, as a thing of faith. St. Paul responded very sharply to these ideas that were prevalent in ancient Corinth. If Christ didn’t rise from the dead then our faith is worthless. It’s all based on a lie. There are others who, while not denying the fact of the resurrection, want to deny its consequences. They don’t want to live with the Risen Jesus. They choose to remain down in the dumps. They choose not to seek the things that are above with the Risen and living Jesus, as we heard St. Paul urge the Colossians yesterday morning, instead choosing the things of darkness, sadness, sin and death. We need to be alert to these signs even in ourselves, that there are parts of us that want to deny the power of Jesus’ resurrection because we prefer not to be transformed in the dramatic way that the resurrection transformed Jesus’ dead body! Pope Francis wrote in his apostolic exhortation The Joy of the Gospel that many Catholics behave as if life is a long Lent without Easter, as if they’re perpetually returning from a funeral. Not even the fact of Jesus’ resurrection can brighten their day because the prefer to focus their attention and live in the negative. There are also other Catholics, far more common, who likewise don’t live in practical denial of the Resurrection, who don’t behave as if they’re perpetually returning from the cemetery, but who don’t comport themselves as if their life is much influenced by the reality of the Resurrection. To the extent that Easter is a transformative experience for them, it means mainly that they can eat chocolate or drink wine and beer again after the Lenten Season! The resurrection is meant to transform us at the depth of our being just like it did Christ’s first disciples. One of the questions I always ask myself is: how would I behave today if today were the day of Jesus’ physical resurrection? Would the various challenges I’m facing today really seem all that daunting if I encountered Jesus Christ come to me from the tomb? Most of our lives would change dramatically if today were the day of the Resurrection. That’s the type of transformation we are supposed to experience because the risen Lord Jesus is still very much alive and seeks to come to meet us every day. Rather than people perpetually returning from a funeral or from the various mundane tasks and pleasures, Christians should be people who seem always to be conscious of presence of the Risen Lord!
The type of response that God wants us to have to Jesus’ resurrection we see in the women today and in St. Peter. Mary Magdalene and Mary the wife of Clopas run away from the empty tomb both “fearful and overjoyed,” fearful because they had never confronted a reality like that and overjoyed because they sensed that it meant that Jesus had in fact risen. Note that they weren’t merely joyful, but “overjoyed,” because they couldn’t contain their joy. They were almost assuredly not ancient track stars, but nevertheless were running away from the tomb and toward the apostles because they were exceedingly excited and couldn’t wait to share the news. Jesus surprises them on the journey, greets them and tells them not to be afraid. Their reaction was humbly to adore him, falling down at his feet. St. Matthew says they embraced his feet; St. John will tell us tomorrow that Jesus will tell Mary not to embrace his feet, a conflict that seems to be able to be resolved more easily if Jesus allowed them to embrace him for a short time before reminding them that they had a mission: “Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee and there I will see them.” And off they went!
We see one of those brothers 50 days later telling others about Jesus’ resurrection. St. Peter on Pentecost bluntly told the crowds, that Jesus of Nazareth “delivered up by the set plan and foreknowledge of God, you killed, using lawless men to crucify him. But God raised him up, releasing him from the throes of death, because it was impossible for him to be held by it. … God raised this Jesus; of this we are all witnesses.” That’s what’s supposed to happen with the resurrection. Just as during the Easter Vigil Jesus from the Paschal Candle lit our tapers through a minister and we lit others’ tapers, so Jesus announces to us the resurrection and then we’re called to run overjoyed to tell others, and they in turn are called to share that good news in a chain of love stretching all the way back to this morning’s Gospel scene and stretching forward to Jesus’ second coming.
In response to those who deny the resurrection, either the fact or the practical consequences, Christ is calling all of us to affirm it, to be witnesses to the resurrection, not just as an historical fact that passes every historical test of common sense, but as a lived reality, because people see in us those who live a truly redeemed life. Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th century German Philosopher who coined the phrase “God is dead” and whose writings on the will-to-power were at the heart of Nazism, once said that he might have been able to believe in a Redeemer if he had ever met anyone redeemed. We might paraphrase him to say he might have been able to believe in Jesus and his Resurrection if he had ever met someone who radiated Jesus’ risen life. That’s what’s supposed to happen whenever anyone meets a Christian. There may be days when this is more challenging, but if we’re ever going to be living signs of Jesus risen then, we have to begin by being risen signs of Jesus on Easter, on Easter Monday, throughout the Easter Octave and the Easter Season. And we need to let that risen joy overflow naturally toward others, just like the women did, just like St. Peter did.
The way we enter more deeply into Jesus’ risen life is here in Holy Communion, where we receive his Risen body and blood. As we prepare not only to drop down on our knees and pay him homage, not only to grasp his feet, but receive him within so that his Body and Blood will go from our brains to our toes, we ask him to strengthen us with the joy of this encounter that we, like the two Marys and Peter, will run to tell others this good news. This is the day the Lord has made! Let us rejoice and be glad in it! Alleluia!

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
ACTS 2:14, 22-33
On the day of Pentecost, Peter stood up with the Eleven,
raised his voice, and proclaimed:
“You who are Jews, indeed all of you staying in Jerusalem.
Let this be known to you, and listen to my words.
“You who are children of Israel, hear these words.
Jesus the Nazorean was a man commended to you by God
with mighty deeds, wonders, and signs,
which God worked through him in your midst, as you yourselves know.
This man, delivered up by the set plan and foreknowledge of God,
you killed, using lawless men to crucify him.
But God raised him up, releasing him from the throes of death,
because it was impossible for him to be held by it.
For David says of him:
I saw the Lord ever before me,
with him at my right hand I shall not be disturbed.
Therefore my heart has been glad and my tongue has exulted;
my flesh, too, will dwell in hope,
because you will not abandon my soul to the nether world,
nor will you suffer your holy one to see corruption.
You have made known to me the paths of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence.
My brothers, one can confidently say to you
about the patriarch David that he died and was buried,
and his tomb is in our midst to this day.
But since he was a prophet and knew that God had sworn an oath to him
that he would set one of his descendants upon his throne,
he foresaw and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ,
that neither was he abandoned to the netherworld
nor did his flesh see corruption.
God raised this Jesus;
of this we are all witnesses.
Exalted at the right hand of God,
he poured forth the promise of the Holy Spirit
that he received from the Father, as you both see and hear.”
Responsorial Psalm
PS 16:1-2A AND 5, 7-8, 9-10, 11
R. (1) Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Keep me, O God, for in you I take refuge;
I say to the LORD, “My Lord are you.”
O LORD, my allotted portion and my cup,
you it is who hold fast my lot.
R. Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.
or:
R. Alleluia.
I bless the LORD who counsels me;
even in the night my heart exhorts me.
I set the LORD ever before me;
with him at my right hand I shall not be disturbed.
R. Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Therefore my heart is glad and my soul rejoices,
my body, too, abides in confidence;
Because you will not abandon my soul to the nether world,
nor will you suffer your faithful one to undergo corruption.
R. Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.
or:
R. Alleluia.
You will show me the path to life,
fullness of joys in your presence,
the delights at your right hand forever.
R. Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Gospel
MT 28:8-15
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went away quickly from the tomb,
fearful yet overjoyed,
and ran to announce the news to his disciples.
And behold, Jesus met them on their way and greeted them.
They approached, embraced his feet, and did him homage.
Then Jesus said to them,
“Do not be afraid.
Go tell my brothers to go to Galilee,
and there they will see me.”
While they were going, some of the guard went into the city
and told the chief priests all that had happened.
The chief priests assembled with the elders and took counsel;
then they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers,
telling them, “You are to say,
‘His disciples came by night and stole him while we were asleep.’
And if this gets to the ears of the governor,
we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.”
The soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed.
And this story has circulated among the Jews to the present day.
The post God Raised Jesus: Of This We Are All Witnesses, Easter Monday, April 1, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
14 min
March 31, 2024Running To and From the Tomb, Seeing and Believing, Easter Sunday, March 31, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Campus Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Easter Sunday
March 31, 2024
Acts 10:34.37-43, Ps 118, Col 3:1-4, Jn 20:1-9

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
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The following text guided the homily:
Every Easter, the Church has us enter into the drama of what happened at the tomb of Jesus. St. Mary Magdalene went very early before sunrise to the tomb, saw the stone rolled away, and immediately worried that grave robbers had gotten there before her. Despite the fact that Jesus had predicted three times that after he had been betrayed, mocked, scourged, crucified and killed he would rise on the third day, the possibility of his resurrection was far from her mind. She ran to St. Peter and St. John and anxiously informed them, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb and we don’t know where they put him.” So the two apostles ran to the tomb — if they left from the Upper Room, it would have been a sprint of about 12-15 minutes in tunics and sandals. The younger John outpaced Peter and arrived at the tomb first. He must have arrived a good deal before Peter, because he says he had time to bend down at the entrance and look in and see the burial cloths as he waited for Peter finally to catch up and enter first. The great Catholic novelist Graham Greene once said that these seemingly insignificant details helped lead to his conversion. He wrote to a priest friend, “In St. John’s Gospel, the run between Peter and John towards the tomb, Peter leading the way until he lost breath and then they young man arriving first and seeing the linen cloths but afraid to go in, it’s like reportage.” In other words, it’s not the work of a novelist, but of a witness and participant, providing details of what really happened rather than weaving a tale. This fact-telling journalistic veracity led Greene to trust in all of the rest of the elements as well. When Peter and John entered they saw the burial cloths there and the cloth that had covered Jesus’ head not rolled up in a separate place. John tells us that he “saw and believed.” What did he see that caused him to believe? He grasped that no grave robber, if he were intending to steal a corpse, would strip the cadaver and transport a dead man naked. Nor would he carefully roll up the head covering, as if he were making a bed in someone else’s hotel room. John intuited that the only way that those cloths would have been found in the way they he discovered them were if what Jesus had three times told them would occur on the third day — that Jesus had to rise from the dead — had in fact happened.
This dramatic scene raises the important subject of the credibility of the resurrection of Jesus. St. Paul emphasized in his First Letter to the Christians in Corinth, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain and you are still in your sins.” There were some in Corinth, based on the platonic dualistic idea of a good soul trapped in a bad body that there can be no such thing as the resurrection of an evil body and therefore that the body of Jesus, too, could have never risen. The apostle emphasized, “If Christ has not been raised, then empty is our preaching; empty, too, is your faith” (1 Cor 15:12-17). Everything in our faith, in fact, hinges on the fact of Jesus’ bodily resurrection. If he did not rise from the dead, then the slowest one to leave this Church tonight and abandon Christianity would be the biggest fool. When I was younger, every year around Easter various major print and television magazines would do stories putatively about the resurrection but in fact trying to debunk it by saying that if Christ’s body were actually found, that it would make really no difference to their supposedly Christian faith. Some scholars even ridiculously argued that finding Jesus’ corpse would even strengthen their faith, because then, they said, their Christian life would not be grounded on an historical fact of a resurrection but on faith in one. But the occurrence of such pseudo-sophisticated arguments, not to mention the prevalence of so many people who don’t really engage the historicity of the resurrection and what it would mean for everyone if it is true, makes it imperative for Christians to be able to be able to make the case for the truth of the Resurrection in response to critics, doubters, and what we might call the indifferent masses. It’s all the more important for Christians at Columbia to be able to do so, because to whom more is given, more is to be expected; our knowledge of the most important truths of faith should therefore be commensurate, even superior, to our knowledge of any and every other discipline.
It’s important to note that Christians have had to respond to challenges to the resurrection of Jesus since the beginning. The empty tomb itself is not proof that Jesus rose from the dead, just that Jesus’ body was not there on Easter Sunday morning; it doesn’t answer the question as to why his body wasn’t there. Tomorrow at daily Mass, St. Matthew will tells us that the Jewish authorities — who had pressured Pontius Pilate to provide a guard for Jesus’ tomb because lest the disciples of Jesus be able to remove his body and claim that Jesus had risen on the third day as he promised them he would if they destroyed the temple of his body — then had to bribe, “with a large sum of money,” those same guards to lie and say that the disciples stole Jesus’ body while they were sleeping. St. Matthew, writing about 30 years after the Resurrection had taken place, notes, “This story is still told among the Jews to this day.” But that suborned perjury is of course ridiculous to anyone with common sense: if the guards say they were asleep, how could they then possibly know what happened to Jesus’ body? How would the disciples not have awakened them in moving the huge stone from the tomb? Why would they have wanted to steal Jesus naked and carry him unclothed through the streets of Jerusalem? Most importantly, why would they have come at all to take the corpse of someone who had just been crucified as a criminal and who, if he didn’t rise from the dead, was a liar who not only got himself killed, but, as we will in the Acts of the Apostles, would get his disciples in a lot of trouble as well?
Others over the centuries have tried to posit that Jesus hadn’t really died but just swooned on the Cross as a result of the accumulated trauma of the scourging, crown of thorns, carrying of the Cross and six hours on the Cross, but of course this wouldn’t make sense of Jesus’ heart being pierced with a lance with a torrent of blood and water coming out to prove he was dead, not to mention that if this is what had occurred, Easter Sunday would obviously have been different, with feelings of sympathy toward Jesus and acts of first aid. It would also make Jesus and all of the apostles co-conspirators in the hoax of a resurrection.
A third counter-explanation for the resurrection is that the disciples were all unwitting recipients of collective hallucination: missing Jesus so much, wanting Jesus to rise so badly to validate everything he taught and did, they claim to have seen him after his death and body-snatching. Once Mary Magdalene claimed to see him, it set off a chain reaction in which nearly everyone else began to think they saw him, too. But this does not agree with the data or with common sense. An hallucination would mean that one of the disciples would see someone and mistake him for Jesus; but what happened was that various disciples saw Jesus and mistook him for someone else. Mary Magdalene saw the Risen Jesus and thought he was a gardener; she didn’t see a gardener and jump to the confusion he was the Risen Jesus. The disciples on the Road to Emmaus saw and spoke with Jesus, but thought he was just a casual passer-by; they didn’t see an anonymous wayfarer and naively guess he was Jesus. The apostles in the Upper Room saw Jesus and thought he was a ghost; they didn’t see a ghost and mistake him for Jesus. At the sea shore of Galilee, Peter, John and five other disciples saw Jesus on the shore and thought he was a stranger telling them to cast their nets on the other side of the boat; they didn’t see a stranger in the morning haze and conclude he was Jesus. Most poignantly is St. Thomas the Apostle, who was totally prejudiced against Jesus’ resurrection. He resisted forcefully and insisted on experimental proof before he would accept the testimony even of the apostles. To ensure that he or the other apostles wouldn’t be hallucinating, he demanded before believing to probe Jesus’ wounds. That’s precisely what he did.
The positive case for the resurrection involves two categories of evidence. They are, essentially, the same categories that would be used in a modern trial: the inherent coherence and credibility of the evidence and testimony themselves; and the credibility of the witnesses giving the testimony. With regard to the evidence and testimony, there are two main sources. The first is the empty tomb. Although not in itself proof that Jesus rose from the dead, it is evidence that the Christian explanation is plausible: Jesus’ body was simply not found in the tomb and it was never found afterward there or anywhere else. The second source of evidence is found in theappearances of the Risen Lord. Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene; the disciples on the road to Emmaus; the ten in the upper room on Easter Sunday; the eleven the following week; Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, James and John and two other disciples fishing in the Sea of Galilee; 500 disciples most of whom, St. Paul tells the Corinthians, were still alive when Paul was writing and therefore could be interrogated; James, and then ultimately Paul on the road to Damascus. All of these people testified to seeing the Risen Lord. Either all of them were deceived in one way or another by some false image (which would have been an extraordinary feat in its own right!), or all of them were lying, or they were telling the truth that they had indeed seen Jesus risen from the dead.
To determine which of these three seems most likely, we do so on the basis of the credibility of this witnesses. And it’s difficult not to be overwhelmed by the evidence in favor of their believability. The men who were testifying to Jesus’ being risen from the dead were people who had abandoned the Lord in the Garden when he was alive but merely seized. Why would they speak boldly after his death? If Jesus hadn’t risen, they would be testifying to a liar, someone who had deceived them for three years, had gotten them to leave their families, their businesses, and their livelihoods in what would have turned out to have been a grand hoax. They would have more likely resented, even hated, Jesus rather than posthumously praised him. The apostles, moreover, would have had nothing to gain financially from propagating such a falsehood. They traveled, by Jesus’ instructions, with no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, and no extra tunic. They had no notable persuasive abilities, all coming from obscure Galilean villages with little education — and, let’s be honest, proclaiming a crucified man as risen from the dead would not have been an easy sell even for famous Roman orators. How would these fishermen, tax collectors, and other relative nobodies have gone to the ends of the earth to plant a made-up story of the resurrection? In proclaiming the Gospel, moreover, they were ostracized from their religion, repeatedly beaten and ultimately killed. Why would they have gone through all of this unless they had truly seen the Lord risen from the dead, just as they testified? St. Paul’s case was slightly different, but in some ways even more powerful. He was a Christian killer, terrorizing the Christians of the 30s in the Holy Land like Nero did in Rome in the 60s. Why would Saul of Tarsus have changed all of a sudden and become a Christian when it would have meant the loss of his position within the Jewish authorities as well as the fact that some of his former colleagues would put a contract on his head for the rest of his days? Yet this extraordinarily intelligent man said in simple, highly believable language, “Last of all, as to one untimely born, Jesus appeared also to me.” Again, either Paul was a liar, completely deceived, or telling the truth. The evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of his telling the truth, as it is with all of the other witnesses.
I’d like to bring up one other potential form of evidence, which takes us back to what Peter and John saw in the empty tomb, the burial cloths of Jesus. Why did St. John seem to focus more on their presence in the tomb than the absence of Jesus’ body? Perhaps it is because they were more than just abandoned burial bands, but something that would help the two apostles see and believe. It’s inconceivable that the apostles would have just left those linen cloths behind, considering that they had once wrapped Jesus. Is it possible that they could have contained some positive testimony to Jesus’ resurrection? The most famous relic in Christianity, perhaps the most studied artifact in history, is what we call the Shroud of Turin, which many believe is that actual burial cloth of Christ. The Catholic Church officially does not have a position on its authenticity. It’s not a matter of Catholic faith whether it is the authentic burial cloth with which Mary and Joseph of Arimathea would have devoutly wrapped Jesus’ crucified body, but a matter of reason. But it’s hard for me as a scientist, looking at all of the evidence for the Shroud and all that cannot be explained, and not conclude that the case for its authenticity is way stronger than the case against it. It’s never been demonstrated how such a faint image of the front and back of a crucified manhas ever gotten on a Shroud. It contains a witness with facts that were not known until recent centuries, like the fact that Romans used to crucify victims through the wrists, not the hands, because the hands can’t support the weight of the body. All painted images throughout the centuries always showed Jesus with nail marks through the hands. How could have an ancient or medieval forger ever known that? Moreover, what’s incredibly striking is that on May 28,1898, when the first photos were taken of the Shroud by Secondo Pia, as he was developing the negatives, he saw the image much clearer, a sign that the Shroud was a negative of a negative. There is no possible way anyone prior to the invention of photography in 1822 would have any clue how to work that into some form of painting. I could multiply other details with regard to the crown of thorns, the lacerations on the body, the blood stains, the ancient herringbone flax patterns in the fabric of the Shroud, the middle eastern pollen found on the Shroud, the 3-D information contained in the image of the intensity which allows for a 3-D image to be made, and more, but all of them together are totally consistent with what we know about crucifixion in Jesus’ time, consistent with the accounts of the Gospel, and consistent with the resurrection being an instantaneous burst of radioactive energy coming simultaneously from all dimensions of the body that would have left such an image on the surface of the Shroud. While Catholics don’t have to believe in the authenticity of the Shroud, the scientific and historic evidence in favor of its authenticity is one more ground, in my opinion, for the credibility of the resurrection. Just like with Juan Diego’s tilma with the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, there’s simply no other plausible explanation as to how such an image could have ever been gotten on the Shroud.
What does all of this mean for us? We learn more than just the evidence for a debate with non-Christians. We learn ultimately three things.
The first regards our faith. If Jesus rose from the dead, it changes everything. This is the most important event in the history of the world. In the midst of darkness, Christ the Light rose. Imagine the darkness of the first disciples, the tremendous dejection, having thought everything was lost when they saw Jesus killed, laid in the holy sepulcher and the tomb sealed and watched by guards. Into this darkness shone the brilliant light of the Resurrection. That’s why St. Paul will tell us in today’s second reading, “If, then, you were raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.” Rather than our faith being in vain, the faith is the most important thing of all.
Second, we see that God didn’t call necessarily the smartest, bravest, most capable people to give witness to his resurrection. He called ordinarily people, down to earth, the exact opposite of naïve, whose sincerity and simplicity became a powerful motive of credibility to what they were announcing. We, too, might not be the most brilliant or talented proponents of the faith, but Jesus calls us to give witness just as he called them, and just as he called countless others throughout the centuries down to our own day. We do have a role in the new Acts of the Apostles that is being written for the third millennium.
Third, the persuasiveness of the testimony of the resurrection depends at least somewhat on the credibility of one’s lived faith, on the credibility of the Gospel we preach by our actions. The apostles were credible because they could not possibly have had “mixed motives” in proclaiming the Gospel. Either it was true, or they were deceived, but what was excluded was their proclaiming a falsehood for personal benefit. This is still the case of Christian credibility today. Why, for example, was Saint Teresa of Calcutta’s lived Gospel so persuasive to so many people, Christians and non-Christians alike? Because it was all love. She had nothing to gain financially from spending her nearly 50 years lovingly caring for the maggot-infested dying people in Calcutta. Her vocation, and those of the sisters in her community she founded, could not possibly be understood as a “good career move!” And yet she joyfully proclaimed that they were doing it out of nothing but love for Jesus, which left those who observed her with one of two possible responses: either she was benevolently deluded or she really was inspired by a living relationship with Jesus Christ, just as she said.It’s similar with us. We’re called to live the Christian life with such joyful, self-giving heroism that proclaims to everyone that we really believe the Great News that Jesus lives, that he loves us, and that we love him — and leave others with the choice that either we’re crazy or we’re right! We’re ultimately called to give witness to the world that Jesus is someone worth living for completely and, if need be, worth dying for. He certainly was for the first apostles. He certainly was as well for the saints, martyrs and countless ordinary men and women throughout the centuries. Through this Holy Eucharist, when we have the privilege to receive the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of the Risen Lord Jesus, may we be strengthened to follow their example and be witnesses of this Greatest News Ever Told to others here on campus, here in this city, and ultimately to anyone and everyone we meet. Jesus has truly risen! This fact changes everything! And he is still here with us under Eucharistic form! Alleluia!
The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading I
Acts 10:34a, 37-43
Peter proceeded to speak and said:
“You know what has happened all over Judea,
beginning in Galilee after the baptism
that John preached,
how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth
with the Holy Spirit and power.
He went about doing good
and healing all those oppressed by the devil,
for God was with him.
We are witnesses of all that he did
both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem.
They put him to death by hanging him on a tree.
This man God raised on the third day and granted that he be visible,
not to all the people, but to us,
the witnesses chosen by God in advance,
who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.
He commissioned us to preach to the people
and testify that he is the one appointed by God
as judge of the living and the dead.
To him all the prophets bear witness,
that everyone who believes in him
will receive forgiveness of sins through his name.”
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 118:1-2, 16-17, 22-23.
R (24) This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.
or:
R Alleluia.
Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good,
for his mercy endures forever.
Let the house of Israel say,
“His mercy endures forever.”
R This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.
or:
R Alleluia.
“The right hand of the LORD has struck with power;
the right hand of the LORD is exalted.
I shall not die, but live,
and declare the works of the LORD.”
R This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.
or:
R Alleluia.
The stone which the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone.
By the LORD has this been done;
it is wonderful in our eyes.
R This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.
or:
R Alleluia.
Reading II
Col 3:1-4
Brothers and sisters:
If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above,
where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.
Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.
For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ your life appears,
then you too will appear with him in glory.
Sequence
Victimae paschali laudes
Christians, to the Paschal Victim
Offer your thankful praises!
A Lamb the sheep redeems;
Christ, who only is sinless,
Reconciles sinners to the Father.
Death and life have contended in that combat stupendous:
The Prince of life, who died, reigns immortal.
Speak, Mary, declaring
What you saw, wayfaring.
“The tomb of Christ, who is living,
The glory of Jesus’ resurrection;
bright angels attesting,
The shroud and napkin resting.
Yes, Christ my hope is arisen;
to Galilee he goes before you.”
Christ indeed from death is risen, our new life obtaining.
Have mercy, victor King, ever reigning!
Amen. Alleluia.
Alleluia
Cf. 1 Cor 5:7b-8a
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed;
let us then feast with joy in the Lord.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Jn 20:1-9
On the first day of the week,
Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning,
while it was still dark,
and saw the stone removed from the tomb.
So she ran and went to Simon Peter
and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them,
“They have taken the Lord from the tomb,
and we don’t know where they put him.”
So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb.
They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter
and arrived at the tomb first;
he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in.
When Simon Peter arrived after him,
he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there,
and the cloth that had covered his head,
not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place.
Then the other disciple also went in,
the one who had arrived at the tomb first,
and he saw and believed.
For they did not yet understand the Scripture
that he had to rise from the dead.
The post Running To and From the Tomb, Seeing and Believing, Easter Sunday, March 31, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
33 min
March 30, 2024The Night That Sets Christian Believers Apart, Easter Vigil, March 30, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Campus Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Easter Vigil 2024
March 30, 2024
Gen 1:1-2:2, Ps 104, Gen 22:1-18, Ps 16, Ex 14:15-15:1-6.17-18, Is 54:5-14, Ps 30, Is 55:1-11, Is 12:2-6, Bar 3:9-15. 32, Ps 19, Ez 36:16-28, Ps 42, Rom 6:3-11, Ps 118, Mk 16:1-7

To listen to an audio recording of tonight’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.30.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
At the very beginning of tonight’s Easter Vigil, the Church said something astonishing. After we made the Sign of the Cross and greeted each other in the Lord, the Church describes the meaning of what we’re celebrating: “Dear Brothers and Sisters, on this most sacred night in which our Lord Jesus Christ passed over from death to life, the Church calls upon her sons and daughters, scattered throughout the world, to come together to watch and pray.” We remember that those words “watch and pray,” to keep a contemplative vigil, is exactly Jesus what Jesus told Peter in the Garden would help to strengthen his frail flesh to align with his willing spirit. As we gather to be strengthened by the Lord and to help strengthen each other, the Church then makes an astounding promise: “If we keep the memorial of the Lord’s paschal solemnity in this way, listening to his word and celebrating his mysteries, then we shall have the sure hope of sharing his triumph over death and living with him in God.” The Church gives us an assurance that the Church makes in no other liturgy throughout the year. She gives us basically a guarantee that if we learn how to celebrate and live the Easter Vigil, then we will share, in this life and forever, Jesus’ victory over sin and death and abide in communion with him in the heart of the Trinity. This is because the Easter Vigil synthesizes the entire Christian faith. If we live by what this liturgy teaches us, we’re promised the most important gifts of all in this world and in the next. If this is what the Easter Vigil is about, aren’t we all glad we came? If this solemn promise is made to those who “keep the paschal solemnity” in prayerful vigil, “listening to [God’s word] and celebrating his mysteries,” then it’s therefore really important for us to praythis Easter Vigil, to listen to what God is saying to us, and to respond to what he indicates, making not just this holy night but our whole life a living exposition of the faith contained in these mysteries.
The Easter Vigil is broken down into four parts and each has great lessons for us of the mysteries the Church beckons calls to celebrate. The first part is the Lucernarium, the Liturgy of Light.
As we bless the Easter Fire, we ask God that “by these paschal celebrations, we may be so inflamed with heavenly desires that with minds made pure we may attain festivities of unending splendor.” The fire burns away impurities and inflames us with its light and warmth. We next bless the Paschal Candle, which is meant to symbolize Jesus. As we trace a Cross and mark a year, we proclaim Christ’s eternity: “Christ yesterday and today, the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and the Omega. All time belongs to him and all the ages. To him be glory and power through every age and for ever. Amen.” Then we put five incense sticks in the paschal candle reminding us of Christ’s wounds that now rise up like incense in prayer for us: “By his holy and glorious wounds,” the priest prays, “may Christ the Lord guard and protect us.” Then as we light the candle, we pray, “May the light of Christ rising in glory dispel the darkness of our hearts and minds.”
We begin the procession singing three times, “The Light of Christ.” Christ is the Light and we celebrate the mystery of how he seeks to illumine us. From the Paschal Candle, from Christ, all our own candles are lit, as we pass on Christ’s light to each other, symbolizing the transmission of the faith. Then we sing the Easter Proclamation, which is a deeper description of how we’re supposed to live this mystery of light. It’s called the “Exultet” because it begins with expressing the great rejoicing not only of “Mother Church” but the “hosts of heaven,” the “angel ministers of God” and the whole earth at the radiant glory of the “light from [our] eternal King.” We beg for the grace to have this “holy building shake with joy, filled with the mighty voices of the people.” And then we describe what makes this night different from every other: “This is the night that even now, throughout the world, sets Christian believers apart,” because, if we live it, it separates us “from worldly vices and from the gloom of sin, leading [us] to grace and joining [us] to [God’s] holy ones.” It’s a night that shows the “wonder of [God’s’] humble care for us,” his love and charity “beyond all telling” because to ransom us from death he “gave away [his] Son.” This holy night, we continue, has a “sanctifying power” that makes us holy by dispelling wickedness, washing faults away, restoring innocence, giving joy and the hope of resurrection to those mourning the loss of loved ones, driving out hatred, fostering peace and humbling the mighty. It weds heaven to earth, the divine to the human, in an embrace that is meant to bring us on earth to the divine and heavenly. And we pray that the light of Jesus risen from the dead that we and the candle now bear, “may persevere undimmed,” overcoming all darkness and be found by Christ still burning brightly when he returns as Bridegroom. That’s what it means to live by faith, to be burning with “ardent mind and heart” out of love for Christ, incandescent with the love with which he has first ignited us and reignites us in the Easter Vigil.
Our prayerful vigil begins by celebrating this mystery of light, receiving it, rejoicing in it, walking in it, and joyfully sharing it. And if we do this together with the other parts of what we celebrate tonight, the Church promises us heaven.
The second part of the Easter Vigil is Liturgy of the Word, which is the most striking thing that distinguishes the Easter Vigil from every other Mass. Instead of one Old Testament reading and one Psalm, there are seven and seven respectively, each followed by a special prayer. The New Testament reading and the Gospel are often chanted, not read. The priest intones the Alleluia — and a special triple Alleluia at that — instead of a cantor or a choir. Instead of a single verse in between the Alleluias, there’s a whole psalm. If the Liturgy of the Word is considered a feast, then at the Easter Vigil we are served a 17-course meal of the most important lessons God has ever taught us in the history of salvation. The priest introduces what this second part of the Easter Vigil is all about right before it commences, saying, “Dear brothers and sisters, now that we have begun our solemn Vigil, let us listen with quiet hearts to the Word of God. Let us meditate on how God in times past saved his people and in these, the last days, has sent us his Son as our Redeemer. Let us pray that our God may complete this paschal work of salvation by the fullness of redemption.” We’re supposed to listen not just with our ears and minds but with our hearts, so that we may commit ourselves with love to what we’re hearing, enter in time into the great mysteries of salvation to which each reading points, and allow God thereby to bring this “paschal fullness of salvation” to completion in us.
In the first reading, we recall God’s creation of the world and his special creation of us in his image and likeness. We rediscover who we are in his plans and how “very good” we are. But we also see in conscience that we haven’t always lived according to that image and likeness as a communion of persons in love, reflecting the Trinitarian love. That’s why, in the responsorial psalm, we beg God the Father, “Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth” and in the prayer after the Psalm, we ask Him for the grace “to perceive how still more wonderful is the new creation … by which you redeemed your people through the sacrifice of our Passover, Jesus Christ.”
In the second reading, we witness the depth of Abraham’s faith and trust in God in his willingness to sacrifice his own son, though whom he believed he would become the father of many nations. The Church has us all sing in response what motivated Abraham’s trust: “You are my inheritance, O Lord,” and in the prayer we call to mind how God has fulfilled the promise he made to Abraham precisely through Christ’s death and resurrection, which has brought the salvation to us all.
The third reading focuses on the exodus, when God liberated his holy people from Egypt through the Red Sea, the most powerful foreshadowing of what Jesus was going to do for us through our entering into his Passion, Death and Resurrection via baptism, something the priest calls to mind in the prayer he says after this reading: “O God, whose ancient wonders remain undimmed in splendor even in our day, for what you once bestowed on a single people … now you bring about as the salvation of the nations through the waters of rebirth.” That’s why we respond just as the Israelites did having passed through the Red Sea: “I will sing to the Lord, for he is gloriously triumphant!”
The fourth reading reminds us that God has made a spousal covenant with us to which he has remained faithful despite centuries of infidelities. That’s why we exclaim with gratitude for his mercy, “I will praise you Lord, for you have rescued me.”
In the fifth reading, Isaiah reminds us of the Lord’s great invitation: “All you who are thirsty, come to the water,… that you may have life.” We reply that we will “draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation!” That obviously is meant to lead us to the third part of the Easter Vigil, the Liturgy of Baptism, during which several of our fellow students will joyfully draw that water from the font of salvation and the rest of us will renew our baptismal promises.
The sixth reading focuses on the wisdom of God given to us in the gift of his commandments, which show us the path to life and true love. We respond, “Lord, you have the words of everlasting life!” If we keep our end of the covenant of his commandments, we will live forever!
In the last Old Testament reading, God tells us through Ezekiel of his promise to give us a “new heart and a new spirit” by “sprinkling clean water upon us and taking away our stony hearts.” We respond to this offer, “Like a deer that longs for running streams, so my soul longs for you, O God!” In the prayer we ask for the fulfillment of this desire for a new spirit and a new heart by asking God to help “the whole world know and see” that in the Sacrament of Baptism, “what was cast down is raised up, what had become old is made new, and all things are restored to integrity through Christ.”
All of these readings prepare us for what Christ in fact accomplished by his life, death and the resurrection we celebrate tonight. These are realities we enter into, as St. Paul says in tonight’s epistle, through the saving waters of baptism. In baptism, we enter into Jesus’ death so that, as St. Paul writes, “just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we, too, might live in newness of life.” Through his life, death and resurrection, and our entrance into the Christian life through baptism, Christ fulfilled each of the things we just learned from the Old Testament readings: he restored us in God’s image; he made us a spiritual son or daughter of Abraham; he led us through the Passover from sin into grace, death into life; he constituted us his beloved bride, washing us by water and the word to make us holy; he quenched our thirst with Living Water; he simplified the commandments by giving us a new one, to love God the Father and others as he has loved us; and he accomplished the great heart transplant and infused the new spirit through sprinkling us with the clean waters of baptism and giving us the fire of the Holy Spirit so that we might really live a new life.
We celebrate all of this tonight. The Old Testament readings constitute essentially God’s “catechumenate,” his baptismal preparation course from the beginning of time until Christ’s resurrection. St. Paul initiates God’s own “mystagogy,” his teaching us about the consequences that the new life of baptism is meant to have in us, and — through our living and spreading the faith with the joy of this holy night — in the lives of so many we know and love.
If we really listen to the word of God proclaimed to us tonight as doers of the word, then, together with the other three lessons, the Church promises us eternal happiness.
The third part of the Easter Vigil is the Baptismal Liturgy in which the Lucernarium and Liturgy of the Word culminate, as new Christians enter into this history of salvation and all of those who have already been baptized renew the graces, commitment and gratitude for our own baptism. In the prayer blessing the baptismal water, we call to mind how the waters of creation, of the flood, of the Red Sea, of the Jordan, and from Christ’s pierced side were all prophecies of the healing, saving waters of baptism. We ask God the Father to send the Holy Spirit into the water to wash us clean from our old life “so that we may be found worthy to rise to the life of newborn children through water and the Holy Spirit.” Tonight we rejoice that our brothers and sisters Emily, Isa, Zarria and Magdalene outright, and James conditionally (if his baptism was not valid), after several months of prayer and preparation, will receive this great gift. The priest immerses the Paschal candle symbolizing Christ’s triumph over death, of light over darkness, into the baptismal font and prays, “that all who have been buried with Christ by Baptism into death may rise again to life with him.” We light our candles anew, just like our baptismal candles were lit at our baptism, and renew all of our baptismal promises, rejecting the devil, his evil works and empty promises, and professing anew our total trust in God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in the holy Catholic Church God founded to continue his saving work, the communion of saints to which he calls us, the forgiveness of sins that he beckons us to receive and share, and the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting that we’re guaranteed to receive if we “keep the memorial of the Lord’s paschal mystery in this way.” To strengthen the five who will be baptized, as well as Natalia who will be entering the Church after their baptism, each will receive the Sacrament of Confirmation, which literally “confirms” and “seals” them in the gift of Baptism and the life according to the Holy Spirit to which it leads. We are so happy for all of them.
The fourth and final part of the Easter Vigil is the Liturgy of the Eucharist, in which we prepare ourselves to enter into communion with the Risen Christ whose Resurrection was announced in the Gospel. There’s no need to highlight what is the same at every Mass during the year, but there are a few elements that are different about the Easter Vigil that are important for us to grasp. In the Preface, we pray that it is truly the right thing to do, both a responsibility and the gift of redemption, to praise and thank God at all times, but we pray that it is fitting “on this night above all to laud you yet more gloriously.” The reason is because his Son has “taken away the sins of the world; by dying he has destroyed our death and by rising, restored our life.” That’s why, “overcome with paschal joy,” we praise him together with all the angelic hosts and with Christians of every land. Tonight is when we should be overwhelmed with joy for the gift of Jesus in the Eucharist and seek to praise him with greater glory than ever. During the Eucharistic Prayer, we also add two elements. Before we call to mind the saints whose memory and example we always venerate, we pray, “Celebrating the most sacred night of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ in the flesh,” conscious that we, with great rejoicing, receive that Risen flesh here under the sacramental signs. And later, when we are accustomed to beg God graciously to accept this oblation of his whole family, we add, “which we make to you also for those to whom you have been pleased to give the new birth of water and the Holy Spirit, granting them forgiveness of all their sins.” That’s obviously a special reminder of the more than 150,000 adult catechumens in the United States who, like Emily, Isa, Magdalene, and Zarria, will be welcomed into the Church tonight in our country alone but it also recalls how each of us, like Natalia and Harrison, has received that gift of forgiveness and new birth, which brings us into the heart of the mystery we are celebrating. If there’s any Mass in which we should celebrate with joy, in which we should be filled with extra thanksgiving and more glorious praise to God for all that he has done and continues to do for us and others, it is at the Easter Vigil. And there’s no greater way for us for us to “keep the memorial of the Lord’s paschal solemnity,” no better path for us to enter into his new and eternal Passover, no more fitting means for us to “celebrate his mysteries,” than in the Eucharist. As we have been marking during the ongoing Eucharistic Revival, the Mass is the greatest way for us to “listen to his word” and “come together to watch and to pray.” It’s the path Christ has left us so that we may enter into the “sure hope of sharing his triumph over death and living with him in God.”
This is the night, the most sacred night, in which all of this occurs. May we be so inflamed by the word we hear and the mysteries of light, life and love we celebrate that we may attain the “festivities of unending splendor” to which this Easter Vigil is just a foretaste, in that kingdom where all those who have lived the Lord’s paschal solemnity now rejoice forever, singing Alleluia without end.

The readings for tonight’s Mass were:
Reading I
Gn 1:1—2:2
In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth,
the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss,
while a mighty wind swept over the waters.
Then God said,
“Let there be light,”” and there was light.
God saw how good the light was.
God then separated the light from the darkness.
God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.”
Thus evening came, and morning followed—the first day.
Then God said,
“Let there be a dome in the middle of the waters,
to separate one body of water from the other.”
And so it happened:
God made the dome,
and it separated the water above the dome from the water below it.
God called the dome “the sky.”
Evening came, and morning followed—the second day.
Then God said,
“Let the water under the sky be gathered into a single basin,
so that the dry land may appear.”
And so it happened:
the water under the sky was gathered into its basin,
and the dry land appeared.
God called the dry land “the earth, ”
and the basin of the water he called “the sea.”
God saw how good it was.
Then God said,
“Let the earth bring forth vegetation:
every kind of plant that bears seed
and every kind of fruit tree on earth
that bears fruit with its seed in it.”
And so it happened:
the earth brought forth every kind of plant that bears seed
and every kind of fruit tree on earth
that bears fruit with its seed in it.
God saw how good it was.
Evening came, and morning followed—the third day.
Then God said:
“Let there be lights in the dome of the sky,
to separate day from night.
Let them mark the fixed times, the days and the years,
and serve as luminaries in the dome of the sky,
to shed light upon the earth.”
And so it happened:
God made the two great lights,
the greater one to govern the day,
and the lesser one to govern the night;
and he made the stars.
God set them in the dome of the sky,
to shed light upon the earth,
to govern the day and the night,
and to separate the light from the darkness.
God saw how good it was.
Evening came, and morning followed—the fourth day.
Then God said,
“Let the water teem with an abundance of living creatures,
and on the earth let birds fly beneath the dome of the sky.”
And so it happened:
God created the great sea monsters
and all kinds of swimming creatures with which the water teems,
and all kinds of winged birds.
God saw how good it was, and God blessed them, saying,
“Be fertile, multiply, and fill the water of the seas;
and let the birds multiply on the earth.”
Evening came, and morning followed—the fifth day.
Then God said,
“Let the earth bring forth all kinds of living creatures:
cattle, creeping things, and wild animals of all kinds.”
And so it happened:
God made all kinds of wild animals, all kinds of cattle,
and all kinds of creeping things of the earth.
God saw how good it was.
Then God said:
“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.
Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea,
the birds of the air, and the cattle,
and over all the wild animals
and all the creatures that crawl on the ground.”
God created man in his image;
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
God blessed them, saying:
“Be fertile and multiply;
fill the earth and subdue it.
Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air,
and all the living things that move on the earth.”
God also said:
“See, I give you every seed-bearing plant all over the earth
and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit on it to be your food;
and to all the animals of the land, all the birds of the air,
and all the living creatures that crawl on the ground,
I give all the green plants for food.”
And so it happened.
God looked at everything he had made, and he found it very good.
Evening came, and morning followed—the sixth day.
Thus the heavens and the earth and all their array were completed.
Since on the seventh day God was finished
with the work he had been doing,
he rested on the seventh day from all the work he had undertaken.
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 104:1-2, 5-6, 10, 12, 13-14, 24, 35
R. (30) Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.
Bless the LORD, O my soul!
O LORD, my God, you are great indeed!
You are clothed with majesty and glory,
robed in light as with a cloak.
R. Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.
You fixed the earth upon its foundation,
not to be moved forever;
with the ocean, as with a garment, you covered it;
above the mountains the waters stood.
R. Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.
You send forth springs into the watercourses
that wind among the mountains.
Beside them the birds of heaven dwell;
from among the branches they send forth their song.
R. Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.
You water the mountains from your palace;
the earth is replete with the fruit of your works.
You raise grass for the cattle,
and vegetation for man’s use,
Producing bread from the earth.
R. Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.
How manifold are your works, O LORD!
In wisdom you have wrought them all—
the earth is full of your creatures.
Bless the LORD, O my soul!
R. Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.
Reading II
Gn 22:1-18
God put Abraham to the test.
He called to him, “Abraham!”
“Here I am,” he replied.
Then God said:
“Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love,
and go to the land of Moriah.
There you shall offer him up as a holocaust
on a height that I will point out to you.”
Early the next morning Abraham saddled his donkey,
took with him his son Isaac and two of his servants as well,
and with the wood that he had cut for the holocaust,
set out for the place of which God had told him.
On the third day Abraham got sight of the place from afar.
Then he said to his servants:
“Both of you stay here with the donkey,
while the boy and I go on over yonder.
We will worship and then come back to you.”
Thereupon Abraham took the wood for the holocaust
and laid it on his son Isaac’s shoulders,
while he himself carried the fire and the knife.
As the two walked on together, Isaac spoke to his father Abraham:
“Father!” Isaac said.
“Yes, son,” he replied.
Isaac continued, “Here are the fire and the wood,
but where is the sheep for the holocaust?”
“Son,” Abraham answered,
“God himself will provide the sheep for the holocaust.”
Then the two continued going forward.
When they came to the place of which God had told him,
Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it.
Next he tied up his son Isaac,
and put him on top of the wood on the altar.
Then he reached out and took the knife to slaughter his son.
But the LORD’s messenger called to him from heaven,
“Abraham, Abraham!”
“Here I am!” he answered.
“Do not lay your hand on the boy,” said the messenger.
“Do not do the least thing to him.
I know now how devoted you are to God,
since you did not withhold from me your own beloved son.”
As Abraham looked about,
he spied a ram caught by its horns in the thicket.
So he went and took the ram
and offered it up as a holocaust in place of his son.
Abraham named the site Yahweh-yireh;
hence people now say, “On the mountain the LORD will see.”
Again the LORD’s messenger called to Abraham from heaven and said:
“I swear by myself, declares the LORD,
that because you acted as you did
in not withholding from me your beloved son,
I will bless you abundantly
and make your descendants as countless
as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore;
your descendants shall take possession
of the gates of their enemies,
and in your descendants all the nations of the earth shall find blessing–
all this because you obeyed my command.”
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 16:5, 8, 9-10, 11
R. (1) You are my inheritance, O Lord.
O LORD, my allotted portion and my cup,
you it is who hold fast my lot.
I set the LORD ever before me;
with him at my right hand I shall not be disturbed.
R. You are my inheritance, O Lord.
Therefore my heart is glad and my soul rejoices,
my body, too, abides in confidence;
because you will not abandon my soul to the netherworld,
nor will you suffer your faithful one to undergo corruption.
R. You are my inheritance, O Lord.
You will show me the path to life,
fullness of joys in your presence,
the delights at your right hand forever.
R. You are my inheritance, O Lord.
Reading III
Ex 14:15—15:1
The LORD said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to me?
Tell the Israelites to go forward.
And you, lift up your staff and, with hand outstretched over the sea,
split the sea in two,
that the Israelites may pass through it on dry land.
But I will make the Egyptians so obstinate
that they will go in after them.
Then I will receive glory through Pharaoh and all his army,
his chariots and charioteers.
The Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD,
when I receive glory through Pharaoh
and his chariots and charioteers.”
The angel of God, who had been leading Israel’s camp,
now moved and went around behind them.
The column of cloud also, leaving the front,
took up its place behind them,
so that it came between the camp of the Egyptians
and that of Israel.
But the cloud now became dark, and thus the night passed
without the rival camps coming any closer together
all night long.
Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea,
and the LORD swept the sea
with a strong east wind throughout the night
and so turned it into dry land.
When the water was thus divided,
the Israelites marched into the midst of the sea on dry land,
with the water like a wall to their right and to their left.
The Egyptians followed in pursuit;
all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots and charioteers went after them
right into the midst of the sea.
In the night watch just before dawn
the LORD cast through the column of the fiery cloud
upon the Egyptian force a glance that threw it into a panic;
and he so clogged their chariot wheels
that they could hardly drive.
With that the Egyptians sounded the retreat before Israel,
because the LORD was fighting for them against the Egyptians.
Then the LORD told Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea,
that the water may flow back upon the Egyptians,
upon their chariots and their charioteers.”
So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea,
and at dawn the sea flowed back to its normal depth.
The Egyptians were fleeing head on toward the sea,
when the LORD hurled them into its midst.
As the water flowed back,
it covered the chariots and the charioteers of Pharaoh’s whole army
which had followed the Israelites into the sea.
Not a single one of them escaped.
But the Israelites had marched on dry land
through the midst of the sea,
with the water like a wall to their right and to their left.
Thus the LORD saved Israel on that day
from the power of the Egyptians.
When Israel saw the Egyptians lying dead on the seashore
and beheld the great power that the LORD
had shown against the Egyptians,
they feared the LORD and believed in him and in his servant Moses.
Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the LORD:
I will sing to the LORD, for he is gloriously triumphant;
horse and chariot he has cast into the sea.
Responsorial Psalm
Ex 15:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 17-18
R. (1b) Let us sing to the Lord; he has covered himself in glory.
I will sing to the LORD, for he is gloriously triumphant;
horse and chariot he has cast into the sea.
My strength and my courage is the LORD,
and he has been my savior.
He is my God, I praise him;
the God of my father, I extol him.
R. Let us sing to the Lord; he has covered himself in glory.
The LORD is a warrior,
LORD is his name!
Pharaoh’s chariots and army he hurled into the sea;
the elite of his officers were submerged in the Red Sea.
R. Let us sing to the Lord; he has covered himself in glory.
The flood waters covered them,
they sank into the depths like a stone.
Your right hand, O LORD, magnificent in power,
your right hand, O LORD, has shattered the enemy.
R. Let us sing to the Lord; he has covered himself in glory.
You brought in the people you redeemed
and planted them on the mountain of your inheritance —
the place where you made your seat, O LORD,
the sanctuary, LORD, which your hands established.
The LORD shall reign forever and ever.
R. Let us sing to the Lord; he has covered himself in glory.
Reading IV
Is 54:5-14
The One who has become your husband is your Maker;
his name is the LORD of hosts;
your redeemer is the Holy One of Israel,
called God of all the earth.
The LORD calls you back,
like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit,
a wife married in youth and then cast off,
says your God.
For a brief moment I abandoned you,
but with great tenderness I will take you back.
In an outburst of wrath, for a moment
I hid my face from you;
but with enduring love I take pity on you,
says the LORD, your redeemer.
This is for me like the days of Noah,
when I swore that the waters of Noah
should never again deluge the earth;
so I have sworn not to be angry with you,
or to rebuke you.
Though the mountains leave their place
and the hills be shaken,
my love shall never leave you
nor my covenant of peace be shaken,
says the LORD, who has mercy on you.
O afflicted one, storm-battered and unconsoled,
I lay your pavements in carnelians,
and your foundations in sapphires;
I will make your battlements of rubies,
your gates of carbuncles,
and all your walls of precious stones.
All your children shall be taught by the LORD,
and great shall be the peace of your children.
In justice shall you be established,
far from the fear of oppression,
where destruction cannot come near you.
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 30:2, 4, 5-6, 11-12, 13
R. (2a) I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me.
I will extol you, O LORD, for you drew me clear
and did not let my enemies rejoice over me.
O LORD, you brought me up from the netherworld;
you preserved me from among those going down into the pit.
R. I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me.
Sing praise to the LORD, you his faithful ones,
and give thanks to his holy name.
For his anger lasts but a moment;
a lifetime, his good will.
At nightfall, weeping enters in,
but with the dawn, rejoicing.
R. I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me.
Hear, O LORD, and have pity on me;
O LORD, be my helper.
You changed my mourning into dancing;
O LORD, my God, forever will I give you thanks.
R. I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me.
Reading V
Is 55:1-11
Thus says the LORD:
All you who are thirsty,
come to the water!
You who have no money,
come, receive grain and eat;
come, without paying and without cost,
drink wine and milk!
Why spend your money for what is not bread,
your wages for what fails to satisfy?
Heed me, and you shall eat well,
you shall delight in rich fare.
Come to me heedfully,
listen, that you may have life.
I will renew with you the everlasting covenant,
the benefits assured to David.
As I made him a witness to the peoples,
a leader and commander of nations,
so shall you summon a nation you knew not,
and nations that knew you not shall run to you,
because of the LORD, your God,
the Holy One of Israel, who has glorified you.
Seek the LORD while he may be found,
call him while he is near.
Let the scoundrel forsake his way,
and the wicked man his thoughts;
let him turn to the LORD for mercy;
to our God, who is generous in forgiving.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.
As high as the heavens are above the earth,
so high are my ways above your ways
and my thoughts above your thoughts.
For just as from the heavens
the rain and snow come down
and do not return there
till they have watered the earth,
making it fertile and fruitful,
giving seed to the one who sows
and bread to the one who eats,
so shall my word be
that goes forth from my mouth;
my word shall not return to me void,
but shall do my will,
achieving the end for which I sent it.
Responsorial Psalm
Is 12:2-3, 4, 5-6
R. (3) You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation.
God indeed is my savior;
I am confident and unafraid.
My strength and my courage is the LORD,
and he has been my savior.
With joy you will draw water
at the fountain of salvation.
R. You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation.
Give thanks to the LORD, acclaim his name;
among the nations make known his deeds,
proclaim how exalted is his name.
R. You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation.
Sing praise to the LORD for his glorious achievement;
let this be known throughout all the earth.
Shout with exultation, O city of Zion,
for great in your midst
is the Holy One of Israel!
R. You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation.
Reading VI
Bar 3:9-15, 32–4:4
Hear, O Israel, the commandments of life:
listen, and know prudence!
How is it, Israel,
that you are in the land of your foes,
grown old in a foreign land,
defiled with the dead,
accounted with those destined for the netherworld?
You have forsaken the fountain of wisdom!
Had you walked in the way of God,
you would have dwelt in enduring peace.
Learn where prudence is,
where strength, where understanding;
that you may know also
where are length of days, and life,
where light of the eyes, and peace.
Who has found the place of wisdom,
who has entered into her treasuries?
The One who knows all things knows her;
he has probed her by his knowledge–
The One who established the earth for all time,
and filled it with four-footed beasts;
he who dismisses the light, and it departs,
calls it, and it obeys him trembling;
before whom the stars at their posts
shine and rejoice;
when he calls them, they answer, “Here we are!”
shining with joy for their Maker.
Such is our God;
no other is to be compared to him:
he has traced out the whole way of understanding,
and has given her to Jacob, his servant,
to Israel, his beloved son.
Since then she has appeared on earth,
and moved among people.
She is the book of the precepts of God,
the law that endures forever;
all who cling to her will live,
but those will die who forsake her.
Turn, O Jacob, and receive her:
walk by her light toward splendor.
Give not your glory to another,
your privileges to an alien race.
Blessed are we, O Israel;
for what pleases God is known to us!
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 19:8, 9, 10, 11
R. (John 6:68c) Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.
The law of the LORD is perfect,
refreshing the soul;
the decree of the LORD is trustworthy,
giving wisdom to the simple.
R. Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.
The precepts of the LORD are right,
rejoicing the heart;
the command of the LORD is clear,
enlightening the eye.
R. Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.
The fear of the LORD is pure,
enduring forever;
the ordinances of the LORD are true,
all of them just.
R. Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.
They are more precious than gold,
than a heap of purest gold;
sweeter also than syrup
or honey from the comb.
R. Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.
Reading VII
Ez 36:16-17a, 18-28
The word of the LORD came to me, saying:
Son of man, when the house of Israel lived in their land,
they defiled it by their conduct and deeds.
Therefore I poured out my fury upon them
because of the blood that they poured out on the ground,
and because they defiled it with idols.
I scattered them among the nations,
dispersing them over foreign lands;
according to their conduct and deeds I judged them.
But when they came among the nations wherever they came,
they served to profane my holy name,
because it was said of them: “These are the people of the LORD,
yet they had to leave their land.”
So I have relented because of my holy name
which the house of Israel profaned
among the nations where they came.
Therefore say to the house of Israel: Thus says the Lord GOD:
Not for your sakes do I act, house of Israel,
but for the sake of my holy name,
which you profaned among the nations to which you came.
I will prove the holiness of my great name, profaned among the nations,
in whose midst you have profaned it.
Thus the nations shall know that I am the LORD, says the Lord GOD,
when in their sight I prove my holiness through you.
For I will take you away from among the nations,
gather you from all the foreign lands,
and bring you back to your own land.
I will sprinkle clean water upon you
to cleanse you from all your impurities,
and from all your idols I will cleanse you.
I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you,
taking from your bodies your stony hearts
and giving you natural hearts.
I will put my spirit within you and make you live by my statutes,
careful to observe my decrees.
You shall live in the land I gave your fathers;
you shall be my people, and I will be your God.
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 42:3, 5; 43:3, 4
R. (42:2) Like a deer that longs for running streams, my soul longs for you, my God.
Athirst is my soul for God, the living God.
When shall I go and behold the face of God?
R. Like a deer that longs for running streams, my soul longs for you, my God.
I went with the throng
and led them in procession to the house of God,
Amid loud cries of joy and thanksgiving,
with the multitude keeping festival.
R. Like a deer that longs for running streams, my soul longs for you, my God.
Send forth your light and your fidelity;
they shall lead me on
And bring me to your holy mountain,
to your dwelling-place.
R. Like a deer that longs for running streams, my soul longs for you, my God.
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. Like a deer that longs for running streams, my soul longs for you, my God.
Epistle
Rom 6:3-11
Brothers and sisters:
Are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus
were baptized into his death?
We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death,
so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead
by the glory of the Father,
we too might live in newness of life.
For if we have grown into union with him through a death like his,
we shall also be united with him in the resurrection.
We know that our old self was crucified with him,
so that our sinful body might be done away with,
that we might no longer be in slavery to sin.
For a dead person has been absolved from sin.
If, then, we have died with Christ,
we believe that we shall also live with him.
We know that Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more;
death no longer has power over him.
As to his death, he died to sin once and for all;
as to his life, he lives for God.
Consequently, you too must think of yourselves as being dead to sin
and living for God in Christ Jesus.
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 118:1-2, 16-17, 22-23
R. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.
Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good,
for his mercy endures forever.
Let the house of Israel say,
“His mercy endures forever.”
R. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.
The right hand of the LORD has struck with power;
the right hand of the LORD is exalted.
I shall not die, but live,
and declare the works of the LORD.
R. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.
The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone.
By the LORD has this been done;
it is wonderful in our eyes.
R. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Mark 16:1-7
When the sabbath was over,
Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Salome
bought spices so that they might go and anoint him.
Very early when the sun had risen,
on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb.
They were saying to one another,
“Who will roll back the stone for us
from the entrance to the tomb?”
When they looked up,
they saw that the stone had been rolled back;
it was very large.
On entering the tomb they saw a young man
sitting on the right side, clothed in a white robe,
and they were utterly amazed.
He said to them, “Do not be amazed!
You seek Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified.
He has been raised; he is not here.
Behold the place where they laid him.
But go and tell his disciples and Peter,
‘He is going before you to Galilee;
there you will see him, as he told you.’”
The post The Night That Sets Christian Believers Apart, Easter Vigil, March 30, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
27 min
March 30, 2024Easter Sunday, Conversations with Consequences Podcast, March 30, 2024
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Easter Sunday
March 30, 2024

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.30.24_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy for me to wish you and your family a Happy Easter as we enter into the consequential conversation the Lord Jesus, risen from the dead, wants to have with each of us on Easter Sunday. The Church gives us several Gospels that we can ponder. At the Easter Vigil this year, we have St. Mark’s version of the three women at the tomb seeking to anoint Jesus’ cadaver worried about who would roll back the stone from the entrance of the tomb, only to find the stone removed and an angel waiting for them inside, informing them that the crucified Jesus had been raised and that they were to go tell Peter and the disciples. At Mass on Easter morning each year, St. John describes how he and Simon Peter, having been informed by Mary Magdalene, ran to the empty tomb, beheld the burial cloths and the head covering, and John saw and believed. There’s a third Gospel that can be used at later Masses on Easter Sunday, one that involves a lengthy and consequential conversation between the Risen Jesus and the two disciples walking home to Emmaus that took place early in the evening of the day on which he rose from the dead. That’s the Gospel I’d like to consider this year.
I thought it would be most appropriate because, as I mentioned in our reflection last week, the Church in the United States is preparing for its first national Eucharistic Congress in 83 years that will take place in July in Indianapolis and preceding it will be something unparalleled in Church history: a nationwide Eucharistic Pilgrimage in which priests and pilgrims will be making essentially a Eucharistic sign of the Cross over our country like a benediction through four national Eucharistic processions that will converge in Indianapolis. One pilgrimage will leave from the Canadian border in Minnesota; another from the Mexican border in Texas; a third from the Pacific Ocean in San Francisco; the fourth from the Atlantic in New Haven, Connecticut. All along the way parishes and dioceses will join those making the 65-day journey to celebrate our Eucharistic Lord and journey with him through the cities and towns of our country, much like Jesus’ first disciples traversed the cities of Jericho and Jerusalem and the towns and villages of Galilee, Samaria and Judah. What’s happening in these processions is essentially a continuation of what occurred on the Road to Emmaus, as the Risen Lord Jesus seeks to accompany us in his Risen Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, in the Holy Eucharist just like he accompanied Cleopas and the other disciple, perhaps Mary, the wife of Cleopas, on the journey from Jerusalem to their home. The Road to Emmaus was only seven miles; the four Eucharistic pilgrimages together will journey closer to 7,000 miles. But what takes place is meant to be the same: a life-changing between the Risen Lord Jesus, who has chosen to remain with us until the end of time under the appearances of Bread and Wine in the Holy Eucharist in order to accompany us on the pilgrimage of life that we and the Church make. The same Risen Lord Jesus who calls us to follow him journeys with us.
I’d like to focus on a few of the elements from the Emmaus Gospel that are meant to be consequential in terms of our approach to the celebration of Easter as well as to the way we relate to the Risen Lord Jesus in the Holy Eucharist.
The first is that the Risen Lord Jesus wants to enter our conversations. As the two disciples were leaving from Jerusalem and all that it symbolized and heading downhill and downcast into darkness, Jesus, whose risen physical appearance and voice they didn’t recognize, drew near, walked with them and asked, “What are you discussing as you walk along?” They wondered whether he was the only person in Jerusalem who was oblivious to the things that had happened to Jesus of Nazareth, how they had placed their hopes in him to redeem Israel, but he had been crucified, and how women had returned from the tomb saying his body was missing and angels had appeared announcing that he was alive. Jesus, the anonymous wayfarer, calls them “slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke” and revealed to them how Moses and all the prophets had shown it was “necessary that the Messiah suffer in this way and so enter his glory.” In other words, the crucifixion wasn’t a contradiction of the messianic prophecies, but a confirmation. As Jesus opened up the Scriptures, their slow hearts began to burn. Notice the problem wasn’t so much with their heads, but with their hearts; not with their reason but with their will and emotions. They didn’t want to believe what Jesus had said three times before, that the Son of Man must be betrayed, handed over to the religious authorities, be crucified and raised. But the Risen Lord Jesus entered into their disappointment, accompanied them, and sped up their hearts by showing them how the reason they were sad and departing Jerusalem contained the seed of their return. The same Jesus wants to enter our lives, our crushed expectations, our doubts. He wants to help us with the Word of God see things, including the hardest things like the suffering and death of loved ones, in the proper light. And he seeks to do this each day in the Holy Eucharist. In the liturgy of the Word at Mass, on Sunday and each day during the week, the Church starts with Moses, the Prophets, the Psalms, and adds the very words of Jesus as well as of his apostles to help us see daily life in his light. Similarly in personal prayer before Jesus in Eucharistic adoration, Jesus speaks to us “heart to heart” to burn away whatever slows and weighs down our heart. We celebrate both of these during the Eucharistic Revival. And in the Eucharistic Pilgrimage, we show how Jesus wants to join our journey on the very streets we live, walk, bike, and drive.
The second moment of the scene we can ponder is when the two disciples, reaching home, turn to Jesus, still not recognizing him, and urge him, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.” That invocation has turned over the course of the centuries into a great Christian aspiration. It even became the title of a Eucharistic apostolic exhortation St. John Paul II left us 20 years ago. Stay with us, Lord! Jesus wants to be invited in. He wants to stay with us. But he won’t force himself on us. The Risen Lord Jesus, as he was preparing to ascend to the Father, promised us that he would be with us always until the end of time. But we can structure our life either with him or without him. He wants us to bid him to stay with us full-time, to stay with us at home, school, and work, to stay with us in the morning, midday and evening, to live our whole life in communion with him. That’s what the Eucharistic makes possible. And he keeps that promise in the most concrete way in the Holy Eucharist, where he stays with us in our tabernacles full-time and, for a while after each Holy Communion, literally dwells within us. The Eucharistic Revival is meant to help each of us appreciate the incredible gift of the Lord’s real presence and to bid him to stay with and within us always.
The third moment of the Emmaus scene we should examine is what Jesus did in their home. St. Luke tells us that “While he was with them at table, Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke it and gave it to them.” We know what the sequence of those four verbs means: we hear them every Mass. Jesus, three days after the Last Supper, after the liturgy of the Word along the seven mile journey, was celebrating the liturgy of the Eucharist at their table, changing the bread into his Risen Body. “With that,” St. Luke continues, “their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight.” As soon as Jesus made himself present in the Eucharist, the unrecognized traveler disappeared. Later they recounted how Jesus made himself known to them in the “breaking of the bread,” one of the expressions the first Christians would use to refer to the celebration of the Mass. Jesus wants all our eyes to open to recognize him in the Eucharist. There are many Catholics who, despite Church teaching, still relate to the Eucharist as a thing, rather than as Someone, rather than as Jesus Christ. Like the disciples on the journey, their eyes don’t recognize Jesus even when he walks with us, even when he speaks. The Eucharistic Revival is meant to heal our blindness and deafness with regard to the Risen Lord Jesus in the Holy Eucharist and to help us respond with love to Jesus as he reveals himself in the breaking of the bread.
The last element we can take up is what happened next. They couldn’t keep the joy of meeting the Lord Jesus to themselves. Even though they had journeyed seven miles downhill into darkness, even though they were doubtless drained by the drama of Christ’s crucifixion, St. Luke tells us “they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem.” They hastened seven miles up hill, at least a two hour journey, so that they could share with the eleven apostles what had taken place along their journey home and how the Lord had made himself known to them. This points to the joy we should have at meeting the Risen Lord. It points to the way we ought to leave each Mass, each time we’re with Jesus in Eucharistic Adoration. We encounter the same Lord Jesus the two disciples did. St. John Paul II wrote in his exhortation “Stay with Us, Lord,” “Once we have truly met the Risen One by partaking of his body and blood, we cannot keep to ourselves the joy we have experienced. The encounter with Christ, constantly intensified and deepened in the Eucharist, issues in the Church and in every Christian an urgent summons to testimony and evangelization. … Entering into communion with Christ in the memorial of his Pasch also means sensing the duty to be a missionary of the event made present in that rite. The dismissal at the end of each Mass is a charge given to Christians, inviting them to work for the spread of the Gospel and the imbuing of society with Christian values.” This is what the Eucharistic Revival is meant to provoke in us, this urgent vocation to witness and sharing our faith, especially the greatest news that God-with-us, Emmanuel, is still very much with us, just as he promised, until the end of time. In the Eucharist, the Risen Lord wants to enter into our conversations, doubts, journeys — in short, into our whole life — bringing the light of his Resurrection, making our hearts burn, and helping us to recognize him at our side. And he wants to inspire us to share news of this love with others, so that they, too, may learn to say to him, “Stay with us, Lord!” The Lord has risen. He has truly risen. And in the Eucharist he wants to remain with us always, to journey with us, all the way through time into eternity. This is our faith. This is the faith of the Church. How privileged we are to profess and live it, in Christ our Lord. Amen! Alleluia!

The Gospel on which the homily was based was:
Gospel
Lk 24:13-35
That very day, the first day of the week,
two of Jesus’ disciples were going
to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus,
and they were conversing about all the things that had occurred.
And it happened that while they were conversing and debating,
Jesus himself drew near and walked with them,
but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.
He asked them,
“What are you discussing as you walk along?”
They stopped, looking downcast.
One of them, named Cleopas, said to him in reply,
“Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem
who does not know of the things
that have taken place there in these days?”
And he replied to them, “What sort of things?”
They said to him,
“The things that happened to Jesus the Nazarene,
who was a prophet mighty in deed and word
before God and all the people,
how our chief priests and rulers both handed him over
to a sentence of death and crucified him.
But we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel;
and besides all this,
it is now the third day since this took place.
Some women from our group, however, have astounded us:
they were at the tomb early in the morning
and did not find his body;
they came back and reported
that they had indeed seen a vision of angels
who announced that he was alive.
Then some of those with us went to the tomb
and found things just as the women had described,
but him they did not see.”
And he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are!
How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke!
Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things
and enter into his glory?”
Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets,
he interpreted to them what referred to him
in all the Scriptures.
As they approached the village to which they were going,
he gave the impression that he was going on farther.
But they urged him, “Stay with us,
for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.”
So he went in to stay with them.
And it happened that, while he was with them at table,
he took bread, said the blessing,
broke it, and gave it to them.
With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him,
but he vanished from their sight.
Then they said to each other,
“Were not our hearts burning within us
while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?”
So they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem
where they found gathered together
the eleven and those with them who were saying,
“The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!”
Then the two recounted
what had taken place on the way
and how he was made known to them in the breaking of bread.
The post Easter Sunday, Conversations with Consequences Podcast, March 30, 2024 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
11 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.