Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for Easter Sunday (A), Vigil

April 11, 2020

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.11.20_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 Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us. It’s a conversation that should be anything but routine, especially this year, as most of us need to celebrate Easter at home. Just like Jesus entered the closed doors of the Upper Room where the apostles and Mary were living during their time in Jerusalem, just like Jesus entered the home of the disciples in Emmaus where they recognized him in the Breaking of the Bread of Life, so Jesus wants to enter our homes this Easter and help us to enter into his triumph of light over darkness, joy over sadness, love over hatred and life over death.

* There are various consequential conversations that happened on that first Easter. The angel spoke to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary at the tomb saying, “Do not be afraid. You are seeking Jesus the crucified. He is not here, for he has been raised, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, “He has been raised from the dead!” They receive the incredible news of Jesus’ resurrection and then are called to share that news. We have Jesus’ very intimate conversation later with Magdalene in the Garden where because of her sadness she couldn’t discern the risen Lord’s presence and mistook him for the gardener before he called her by name. The same Jesus wants to call us by name and to recognize his victorious presence with us. We have the conversation of Jesus with the two crestsfallen disciples on the Road to Emmaus whose hopes that Jesus might have been the Messiah had been crushed by his death, but Jesus helped to open their minds to the meaning of the Scriptures and made their hearts burn when they began to recognize that Jesus’ crucifixion was not a contradiction of his Messianic mission but a confirmation. The same metamorphosis Jesus worked in them he wants to effect in us, helping us to understand everything, especially our greatest sadnesses, within the light of God’s words and will, so that our hearts might burn, that we might recognize him in the Eucharist, and that we might, like the Emmaus disciples, go uphill in darkness to share that light. We have the dialogue of the Risen Jesus with the apostles in the Upper Room when he asked them, “Why are you troubled? Why do questions arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and feet, that it is I,” and then he strengthened them in their Mission to bring his triumph to the ends of the earth. Jesus wants to answer our questions and to strengthen us to complete that same Mission.

* It is a huge disappointment — for priests and faithful alike — that we are not able to celebrate Jesus’ victory together in packed Churches. But even though we are not able to celebrate Easter together liturgically, even though we are not able to receive Jesus’ risen body and blood in holy Communion, even though we are not able to welcome into the Church as scheduled the new Catholics who have been preparing through baptism to enter into Jesus’ death and resurrection, the reality of what we memorialize on Easter remains. And it should impact our lives just as it impacted Mary Magdalene in the Garden, the ten apostles cowering in the Upper Room, the confused disciples on the Road to Emmaus, doubting Thomas before Jesus’ wounds,