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,