Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Friday of the Second Week of Easter

Memorial of Saint Anselm

April 21, 2023

Acts 5:34-42, Ps 27, Jn 6:1-15

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.21.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted: 

* The readings of the Easter Season are an annual mystagogical catechesis of the way in which we live together with the Risen Jesus. In this second week, we begin with Nicodemus, which allows us to ponder Jesus’ words about the meaning of Baptism, the rebirth from above God gives us by the Holy Spirit so that we may go wherever the Spirit blows us, so that we might think as God thinks, so that we might live the truth not as a reluctant disciple but as a fervent, courageous disciple.

* In today’s Gospel, we shift from a focus on Baptism to a focus on the Eucharist and begin what I like to call the “Second Octave of Easter,” dedicated to eight different sections of the sixth chapter of the Gospel of St. John, which focuses on how Jesus’ gift of himself in the Eucharist is not only prophesied by the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fish but also prophesies the eternal wedding banquet. Jesus worked this miracle and gave us the words we’ll be hearing between now and Saturday of the third week of Easter knowing that we would be focusing on them in the Church after his Resurrection. He gave them to the Church so that we would know how to grow in the power of his resurrection, that, as we’ll hear in upcoming days, if we enter into communion with him through eating his flesh and drinking his blood, we will have eternal life and he will raise us on the last day.

* Today we ponder the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fish, which has various Eucharistic resonances. The first is Jesus’ compassion on the crowds. They were hungry and he was going to feed them. In the Eucharist, he feeds our souls with the only nourishment he considers worthy of them, himself. Then we see the collaboration of the apostles and the young boy. Jesus through whom all the plants, fish and animals in the world were made, could have easily created food out of nothing to feed the multitudes, but he wanted to involve his followers. All the apostles could find in a crowd of 5,000 was what a boy had carried, doubtless only for himself: five small buns and two sardines. But Jesus took them, gave thanks to God (the Greek work is eucaristein) and gave them to the crowds. Likewise in the Eucharist Jesus begins with what we give him — the bread and wine that are not only God’s gifts but the “work of human hands” — and multiplies those efforts in an even greater miracle. Finally we see the “leftovers.” Clearly Jesus could have worked the miracle without leftovers, but there were twelve wicker baskets left, one for each apostle, to remind each of them in a sense of what we’re supposed to do with the Eucharistic food we’ve received, to go and give our own bodies and blood, our own love to the extreme, our own compassion for others’ deepest hungers to those in need. There’s no need for us to “horde” the Eucharist, to keep our relationship to ourselves; rather Jesus fills our baskets to overflowing so that we may lavishly share his gifts with others.

* This gift of risen life through communion with the Risen Jesus is what makes us strong. And it’s what in turn makes us a sign. Today we see those consequences in the apostles brought before the Sanhedrin. The Rabbi Gamaliel, the teacher of Saul of Tarsus, talked the members of the Sanhedrin out of their desire to do to the apostles what they had conspired to do to Jesus. This was a totally different theology than that which Caiphas had enunciated weeks e...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Thursday of the Second Week of Easter

April 20, 2023

Acts 5:27-33, Ps 34, Jn 3:31-36

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.20.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* The Easter Season is meant to be a post-baptismal mystagogy, the period in which the Church helps the newly baptized — and those baptized many years before — enter into the reality of the mystery of Christ’s risen life received in the Sacraments, pondering his words, and living the truth so that all our works may be seen as done in God, as we heard earlier this week. Throughout this Second Week of Easter, we have been pondering the mystery of our baptismal sharing in Christ’s risen life through Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus about spiritual rebirth. Tomorrow we will begin eight days of focus on the Eucharistic reality of the Christian life, our ability to receive Jesus’ risen Body and Blood each day. And all of these truths we’re able to see enfleshed by the members of the early Church in the readings from the Acts of the Apostles.

* Today we have the concluding words of the chapter of Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus in which Jesus — or St. John, the text is a little ambiguous and scholars go back and forth about whether St. John is quoting Jesus or whether he is giving his own theological reflections on why Jesus said what he said — describes his own mission and the life of anyone born anew from above, as we have been in Baptism. St. Paul told us on Easter Sunday morning, as he told the Colossians, “If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are 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.” Today Jesus describes this difference between living with Him risen from the dead or living according to the old Adam: “The one who is of the earth is earthly and speaks of earthly things,” Jesus says, “but the one who comes from heaven is above all. He testifies to what he has seen and heard.” Jesus testifies to what he has seen and heard and a Christian must be a witness to what he has seen and heard in his encounters with Christ in person, in prayer, in the Sacraments. The disciple and apostle of Jesus must be someone who seeks, thinks and testifies to what is above. Jesus describes that not everybody wants to live with hearts aloft. He says that he came as light into the world but many preferred the darkness. “No one accepts his testimony,” Jesus says, referring in general to the fact that most don’t seek the things that are above, most don’t leave the darkness to enter the light, most don’t allow Jesus to change their fundamental orientation at its root, most don’t really convert and continue to lift up their hearts to God. But, Jesus adds, “Whoever does accept his testimony certifies that God is trustworthy for the one whom God sent speaks the words of God. He does not ration his gift of the Spirit.” We believe what Jesus says on the basis of our faith in God. Because we trust in God we trust in what he says and gives witness to. The one born from above allows the Holy Spirit to give witness within him, not putting up any resistance to what God is doing. The Holy Spirit is a witness — just as much as the apostles — to Jesus’ risen life and when we are reborn from him, we give witness together with him. We don’t ration the Holy Spirit’s work, and he helps us, as St. Paul described to the Galatians and the Romans, to “live by the Spirit,” which allows us to be “concerned with the things of the Spirit.”  And for that reason, Jesus says,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Wednesday of the Second Week of Easter

April 19, 2023

Acts 5:17-26, Ps 34, Jn 3:16-21

 

To listen to today’s homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.19.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in today’s homily: 

* Today in the readings we see illustrated for us in words and deeds the great Christian paradoxes between love and rejection, salvation and judgment, light and darkness. We see the full meaning of Jesus’ resurrection but at the same time we witness how some people prefer to continue to live as spiritual cadavers rather than experience the risen life Jesus has come to give us. This is the essential drama of human life.

* St. John begins today by giving us the most beautiful — and probably famous — synthesis of the Gospel: “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” God loves us so much that he himself died so that we would live forever. He didn’t want to lose any one of us. The incarnation, life, preaching, passion, death and resurrection of Jesus were all one big rescue mission. “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,” St. John continues, “but that the world might be saved through him.” That salvation comes ultimately through our participation in his life through the Sacrament of Baptism, about which Jesus has been speaking to Nicodemus this week. It’s a theme particularly relevant for me today on the anniverary of my baptism.

* Despite Jesus’ not coming into the world to condemn it, there is still a condemnation, however, there’s still a judgment. It’s the condemnation and judgment that happens when we refuse to accept Jesus’ rescue. St. John describes it in these terms: “Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God. And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed.” We see so much here. Everything begins with faith but faith must become operative, it must be faith working through love (Gal 5:6). The work of the evil one is often the reverse: he starts with getting us to do deeds contrary to our faith — with “works” that are “evil” — and then to have the shame over such Christian misbehavior start to lead our whole life into darkness. We do one deed of darkness and prefer to keep it hidden. That leads us more and more into a life of darkness such that we begin to hate the light.

* Later Jesus would add, in an excised passage, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains upon him.” Judgment, condemnation and the wrath of God sadly remain on the one who does not respond with faith to Jesus and enter into his light and life, not because that’s what God wants — he wants all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth — but because in freedom someone chooses to reject God’s work of salvation. The “wrath” of God basically means a state of alienation from God, brought about not by the act of divine punishment but by the choice of people to live and walk in darkness out of a self-love so strong that it turns on God and “hates” his light. Those who live in the peace of God, on the other hand, believe in Jesus, believe in what he says, choose to align their life to the truth he reveals and come to see and experience all things in his holy...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Tuesday of the Second Week of Easter

April 18, 2023

Acts 4:32-37, Ps 93, Jn 3:7-15

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.18.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily:

* Today in the Gospel, Jesus continues his dialogue with Nicodemus, the “reluctant disciple,” who came to Jesus by night because even though he knew that God was working through Jesus, he wasn’t courageous enough to make a commitment and risk being seen with him during the day, something that might compromise his prestige and status among the members of the Sanhedrin. In yesterday’s excerpt of their conversation, Jesus told him that unless one is “born from above” he cannot see the Kingdom of God. But rather than trying to assimilate what Jesus was indicating with images and to understand how the analogy of physical birth related to the mystery of spiritual regeneration, Nicodemus responded by trying to treat the mystery of rebirth as an absurdity: “How can a man once grown old be born again?,” he asked. “Surely he cannot reenter his mother’s womb and be born again, can he?” Nicodemus was too smart not to grasp that that was not what Jesus was implying.

* So Jesus tried to help him to accept the fact of the need for rebirth from above without the necessity of understanding how by means of another analogy, the one that begins today’s reading. “Do not be amazed that I told you, ‘You must be born from above,’” Jesus said. “The wind blows where it wills and you can hear the sound it makes but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” When we feel a cool breeze outside, we don’t spend time wondering whether it originated in Chicago or Philadelphia or whether it’s on its way to Connecticut or to New Jersey. We just acknowledge the breeze and are grateful for it. Jesus says we should approach the way the Holy Spirit blows with the same acceptance and not get distracted by how the Holy Spirit is bringing about our spiritual rebirth or where he wants to blow us later. We’re called to acknowledge what he’s doing with trust.

* But Nicodemus doesn’t buy that either. “How can this happen?,” he retorts. That’s where Jesus seeks to humble him, because it was his pride that was preventing him from being a true disciple in the light. “You are the teacher of Israel,” a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin, “and you do not understand this?” … If I tell you about earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?” He wasn’t really even buying what Jesus was saying about the wind; how could he accept what Jesus was saying about the divine Ruah (Holy Spirit)? Jesus indicated the reason why he wasn’t understanding: because he wasn’t accepting Jesus as a witness who spoke the truth. “Amen, amen, I say to you, we speak of what we know and we testify to what we have seen, but you people do not accept our testimony.” Because he wasn’t humbly accepting Jesus as a divinely sent witness to these things, he wasn’t accepting what Jesus said. Jesus would point to a similar truth elsewhere in the Gospel with regard to his teaching by parables. He taught spiritual truths by using images of mustard seeds, yeast, soil, and wedding banquets so some may understand but others may “hear but not understand [and] look but never see” because their heart was “fat” and didn’t want to convert (Mt 13:10-17). Jesus used images as spiritual litmus tests to expose people’s hearts and see whether people would put in the time to search for the truth the images contained, whether they really wanted to convert or just to have a “dialogue” or “...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Monday of the Second Week of Easter

April 17, 2023

Acts 4:23-31, Ps 2, Jn 3:1-8

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.17.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today there’s a huge contrast between the spiritual timidity of Nicodemus, a powerful member of the Sanhedrin, in the Gospel and the spiritual audacity of the humanly powerless apostles and members of the early Church in the Acts of the Apostles. These readings are given to us as we begin, with this second Monday of Easter, the period of mystagogy in the Church, helping all of the newly baptized, along with all baptized members of the Church, to appreciate the change that has occurred in us through baptism, the change that’s supposed to take place from an unbaptized Nicodemus to a Christian like Peter and John and the other first disciples.

* Let’s begin with Nicodemus. He comes to Jesus at night. He’s too afraid to come to Jesus by day because Jesus was a controversial figure and he didn’t want publicly to be associated with him. We’ll see the same thing when Jesus is being tried. He’ll ask a question to try to slow down the proceedings, but he doesn’t defend Jesus publicly, even though he knows Jesus is innocent of the charges being made against him. He’s obviously struggling with understanding the full import of Jesus’ miracles. He admits, “No one can do these signs that you are doing unless God is with him,” and it seems he wants to believe, but his main problem — like we were analyzing with the apostles after the resurrection last week — is not of his mind but of his heart: he doesn’t yet have the courage to become a disciple in the light. Jesus points to the reason why: “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless one is born from above, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” He needs God’s help. He can’t process what’s happening by former categories. He needs new wine skins. Nicodemus seeks to ask a question about entering anew into a mother’s womb — which was not a question of curiosity or modality, as if that were possible, but one in which he seemed to be suspending disbelief to engage in silly talk —  but Jesus was describing the rebirth God needs to give us, so that one may live by the Spirit rather than by the flesh. This is what happens to us when we are reborn by water and the Holy Spirit in baptism. As St. Paul told us during the Easter Vigil, “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.” That’s our rebirth. And it’s carried out by the work of the Holy Spirit, the “pneuma” (Greek) or “ruah” (Hebrew) — words meaning both “spirit” and “wind” — who “blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” To be a disciple of Christ is to put up our sails to allow the Holy Spirit to blow us where he wishes us to go. It’s a docility, confidence and boldness that comes from life according to the Spirit. It’s something that the future Pope Francis, in a 2006 retreat to Spanish Bishops, said in very strong language that Nicodemus, “the reluctant disciple,” did not have. Baptism is supposed to make us bold, because, by the power of the Spirit, we’ve entered in Christ’s death — and therefore death has lost its sting and fearsomeness! — and into his triumphal new life.

* We see that type of Spirit-led boldness in the members of the early Church.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Divine Mercy Sunday

April 16, 2023

Acts 2:42-47, Ps 118, 1 Pet 1:3-9, Jn 20:19-31

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.16.23_Homily_CCM_1.mp3

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* The connection between the celebration of Easter and today’s feast of Divine Mercy was apparent last Saturday night at the beginning of the Easter Vigil, when the Church throughout the world solemnly sings something that at first hearing might seem almost blasphemous. Deacons or priest-deacons, in the Easter Proclamation, chant, referring to Adam’s and Eve’s sin in the beginning, “O Felix Culpa!,” “O happy fault, that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!” The idea behind calling any sin — Adam’s, Eve’s or ours — blessed is normally attributed to St. Augustine, but it’s a really just a paraphrase of what St. Augustine taught. The famous convert of Hippo actually wrote, “For God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist.” And it’s likely that he was influenced not only by his experience of the multitude of sins of his youth that eventually brought him such a great Redeemer but by the preaching of the saintly bishop who had helped bring him to conversion in Milan. St. Ambrose would often from different angles stress this theme. In a commentary on a Psalm, he declared, “The Lord knew that Adam would fall and then be redeemed by Christ. O happy ruin, which has such a beautiful reparation!” (Commentary on Ps 39:20). Elsewhere he wrote, “We who have sinned more have gained more, because your grace [of mercy, Lord] makes us more blessed than our absence of fault does” (Commentary on Ps 37:47). And in one of the Prefaces of the Ambrosian Liturgical rite that traces itself to him, the priest sings to God, “You bent down over our wounds and healed us, giving us a medicine stronger than our afflictions, a mercy greater than our fault. In this way even sin, by virtue of your invincible love, served to elevate us to the divine life” (Sunday XVI). So strong is this line of thought penetrating the Exsultet, that later the Church sings at the Easter Vigil, “Our birth would have been no gain had we not been redeemed.” Were it not for Christ’s redemption, it would have been better for us — just like Jesus had said during the Last Supper about the one who would betray him — never to have been born.

* But the roots of the shocking expression about the felix culpa of Adam and Eve — and its connection to the mystery of Christ’s resurrection — go back far before Saints Ambrose and Augustine. There are deep Scriptural foundations for this profound Easter affirmation. St. Paul told us in his letter to the Romans, “All things,” and here can we think of our sins, faults and failings, “work together for the God for those who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Jesus himself would say, in the great chapter 15 of St. Luke’s Gospel, about the Lost Sheep, Lost Coin and Lost Son: “Heaven rejoices more for one repentant sinner than for 99 who never needed to repent!” And we see that truth played out in Simon the Pharisee’s house when Jesus defends the sinful woman who washed his feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. Jesus affirmed that the one who has been forgiven little loves little, but the “one who has been forgiven much, loves much.” We grow to love Jesus in correspondence to how much we’ve experienced his mercy. And the more we receive his mercy, the bigger the celestial celebration.

* That’s why today’s celebration of Divine Mercy as the culmination of the Easter Octave is so important.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY

Divine Mercy Sunday

April 16, 2023

Acts 2:42-47, Ps 118, 2 Pet 1:3-9, Jn 20:19-31

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.16.23_MCs_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* Last Saturday night, in the Easter Vigil, the Church throughout the world solemnly sung something that at first hearing might seem to border on blasphemy, as deacons or priest-deacons, in the Easter Proclamation, chanted, referring to Adam’s and Eve’s sin in the beginning, “O Felix Culpa!,” “O happy fault, that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!” The idea behind calling any sin — Adam’s, Eve’s or ours — blessed is normally attributed to St. Augustine, but it’s a really a paraphrase of what St. Augustine said. The famous convert of Hippo had actually written, “For God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist.” And it’s likely that he was influenced not only by his experience of the multitude of sins of his youth that eventually brought him such a great Redeemer and led him to write about it in his famous “Confessions,” but by the preaching of the saintly bishop who had helped bring him to conversion in Milan. St. Ambrose would often from different angles stress this theme, something that may have helped St. Augustine realize that God wanted to transform the manure of his past into fertilizer for new growth. “The Lord knew that Adam would fall and then be redeemed by Christ,” St. Ambrose declared. “O happy ruin, which has such a beautiful reparation!” (Commentary on Ps 39:20). Elsewhere he said, “We who have sinned more have gained more, because your grace [of mercy, Lord] makes us more blessed than our absence of fault does” (Commentary on Ps 37:47). And in one of the Prefaces of the Ambrosian Liturgical rite, the priest sings to God, “You bent down over our wounds and healed us, giving us a medicine stronger than our afflictions, a mercy greater than our fault. In this way even sin, by virtue of your invincible love, served to elevate us to the divine life” (Sunday XVI). So strong is this line of thought penetrating the Exsultet, that later the Church sings, “Our birth would have been no gain had we not been redeemed.” Were it not for Christ’s redemption, it would have been better for us — just like Jesus had said about the one who would betray him — never to have been born.

* But the roots of the shocking expression about the felix culpa of Adam and Eve go back far before Saints Ambrose and Augustine. There are deep Scriptural foundations for this profound Easter affirmation. St. Paul told us in his letter to the Romans, “All things,” and here can we think of our sins, faults and failings, “work together for the God for those who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Jesus himself would say, in the great chapter 15 of St. Luke’s Gospel, about the Lost Sheep, Lost Coin and Lost Son: “Heaven rejoices more for one repentant sinner than for 99 who never needed to repent!” And we see that truth played out in Simon the Pharisee’s house when Jesus defends the sinful woman who washed his feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. Jesus affirmed that the one who has been forgiven little loves little, but the “one who has been forgiven much, loves much.” We grow to love Jesus in correspondence to how much we’ve experienced his mercy. And the more we receive his mercy, the bigger the celestial celebration.

* The future Pope Francis commented in a 2010 book-length interview about this central truth of the Catholic faith, when he declared, “For me, feeling oneself a sinner is one of the most beautiful things that can happen,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Divine Mercy Sunday, Vigil

April 15, 2023

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.15.23_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy for me to be with you at the end of the Easter Octave as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us. It’s a dialogue that happened on the night Jesus triumphantly rose from the dead. It’s a colloquy that reveals Jesus’ true priorities, why he entered the world, why he suffered, died and rose. He did it all to impart Divine Mercy. That’s why since 2001, this Sunday, the exclamation point of the Easter Octave, is called Divine Mercy Sunday, and is meant to help us focus on and enter far more deeply into that great mystery and gift.

* Late in his pontificate, St. John Paul II, who established Divine Mercy Sunday, was asked what was the greatest problem facing the world. He didn’t say the threat of nuclear mutually-assured destruction, global warming, endemic poverty, terrorism, scandals in the Church, or the impact of particular sins that continuously cry out to heaven — even though he took all of those problems seriously. To the surprise of most, he said that the greatest problem was “unexpiated guilt.” He recognized that after two World Wars and the Cold War, the Holocaust, the genocides in Armenia, the Ukraine, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur, after so many atrocities from tyrannical governments, after the waterfalls of blood flowing from more than two billion abortions worldwide, after the sins that have destroyed so many families, after so much physical and sexual abuse, after lengthy crime logs in newspapers every day, after the scourge of terrorism, after so much hurt and pain, the terrible weight of collective guilt crushes not only individuals but burdens structures and whole societies. This is only growing as we witness atrocities in Ukraine, in northern Nigeria, in Yemen, in China, in Louisville, Nashville, Hialeah, Half Moon Bay, Monterey Park, Uvalde and the list goes on. The modern world is like one big Lady Macbeth, compulsively washing our hands to remove the blood from them, but there is no earthly detergent powerful enough to take the blemishes away. We can converse with psychiatrists and psychologists, but their words and prescriptions can only help us deal with our guilt, not eliminate it. We can confess our sins to bartenders, but they can only dispense Absolut vodka, not absolution, and inebriation never brings expiation. We can escape reality through distractions and addictions — drugs, sports, entertainment, materialism, food, power, lust, and others — but none can adequately anaesthetize the pain in our soul from the suffering we’ve caused, endured or witnessed. Whether we admit it, whether we realize it, the whole world is longing for redemption, forgiveness, reconciliation, and a restoration of goodness. We’re yearning for a second, third or seventy-times-seventh chance. We’re pining for a giant reset button for ourselves and for the world. And if we can’t have that personal and collective do over, then at least we ache for liberation from the past and, like the diminutive tax-collector Zacchaeus in the Gospel or Charles Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge, for a chance make up for has been done. We want, need and pant for atonement. And in response to that perpetual, urgent and ever new need, God responds with his mercy. Where sin abounds, grace superabounds. And so St. John Paul II emphasized, and Pope Francis has continued to emphasize,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Friday of Easter Week

April 14, 2023

Acts 4:1-12, Ps 118, Jn 21:1-14

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.14.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances all had a purpose: to strengthen the disciples and apostles in the reality of the Resurrection so as to help them to become living signs of the Resurrection — of the mercy, joy and life associated with it — to all the nations. But that transformation was a radical one and took time. As we’ve been seeing all week, with Mary Magdalene, the disciples in Emmaus, and the apostles in the Upper Room, the Risen Jesus meets with initial incredulity, then shows him that his resurrection is real, teaches them how it was the fulfillment of all he and the prophets had foretold, sees them respond with faith, and gives them a mission to bring news of his resurrection and all that he had told them to others. Today, Jesus doesn’t meet with initial incredulity but rather a lack of recognition. Then he leads Peter and the other six disciples on a journey of growth in faith in order to strengthen them for the mission of witnessing to him before others. Part of this journey was to reconstitute them in the meaning of their calling after the lack of confidence coming from their initial response to his Passion, death and Resurrection.

* Jesus had told Mary Magdalene to ask his apostles to meet him in Galilee, as we just sang in the Easter Sequence. Finally Peter and the others were in Galilee and Peter decided to spend the night catching upcoming meals. The other apostles decided to join him. But just like happened the first time he had met Jesus three years earlier, Peter toiled all night but caught nothing. In the morning, amidst what was probably normal haze and fog, a supposedly unfamiliar voice came from the shore telling them to cast their net on the other side of the boat. Jesus’ voice, just like his other sensible appearances, had mysteriously changed after the resurrection. The fishermen obliged and they caught so many fish that their nets were at the breaking point. That’s when St. John recognized by faith that it had to be the Lord who had called out to them. St. Peter, so excited it was the Lord, put his clothes back on and hopped into the water and swam 100 yards to be with the Lord as soon as possible — just like he exuberantly had hopped overboard during a storm to meet Jesus who had been walking toward them on the water.

* When the apostles reached the shore, Jesus had breakfast going with fish and bread on a fire and asked for them to bring some of the fish they had caught. Jesus was teaching them that after his resurrection, he was with them in their work, with them as he provided for their meals, and with them in basically all good aspects of their life. But he was particularly showing them that he would be with them in their continuance of his work as fishers of men. St. John tells us that they caught 153 fish. In addition to being the actual number of fish they caught — a sign that they took every one as precious, because 153 is not an estimate but a sign they actually counted each one — 153 had symbolic significance: it was both the number of known nations in the world at that time and what the ancients believed was the number of species of fish. For that reason, the early saints of the Church interpreted it as Jesus’ showing that he was sending them out as “catholic” as “universal” fishers of men to all 153 nations, to catch all “153” temperaments of men, women, boys and girl (fish).

* But he also had a deeper mission in mind for Peter.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Easter Thursday

April 13, 2023

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/4.13.23_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 even more powerfully by eating a piece a baked fish, which only a real person 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,