Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Seventh Sunday of Easter and the Ascension, Vigils
May 11, 2024
To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.11.24_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 as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with us this Sunday. I should probably say “conversations” in the plural, since, depending upon where you live in the United States, you will have one of two Gospels. Those in New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Nebraska will hear the Gospel of the Seventh Sunday of Easter. Those everywhere else will have the Gospel of the Ascension of the Lord Jesus, since the bishops in those ecclesiastical provinces decided in 1998 and 1999 to transfer the Ascension from the 40th day after Easter to the Seventh Sunday. They did so because they recognized that if they didn’t, Catholics who do not attend on Holy Days of Obligation would always miss this celebrating liturgically this very important event in the Lord’s life. Ironically, however, in making that decision to move the Ascension to the 43rd day after Easter, the bishops in those provinces were eliminating that Catholics would hear Jesus’ words on the importance of Christian unity from the 17th Chapter of St. John’s Gospel, a third of which is proclaimed on the Seventh Sunday each year. That Catholics in the US do not have unity with regard to the celebration of the Solemnity of the Ascension is unfortunate and I would like to make what is now an annual appeal: that just as the Church is praying for unity to be restored to the celebration of Easter between Catholics and Orthodox Christians, so we might pray and speak to the Catholic bishops in our land about restoring unity to the celebration of the Ascension on the 40th. Since, however, we are still in a situation where there is not unity, please permit me to say something about both Gospels, conscious of the fact that, since Jesus is our interlocutor in every prayerful and consequential liturgical conversation, everything is intrinsically coherent.
* We’ll take the Gospel for the Seventh Sunday of Easter first, since it happened first in time. In it we have the awesome privilege not only to eavesdrop on the extraordinarily rich interpersonal dialogue Jesus had with God the Father the night he was betrayed but to enter into that conversation.
* In the section of John 17 we have this year, Jesus mentions five things:
* First, Jesus prays that God the Father will protect us, that we may be one in communion just as Father, Son and Holy Spirit is one. A little later he asks the Father specifically to keep us from the evil one. The point is that the devil constantly seeks to divide us, whereas God wants to bring us into true communion with Him and each other. Any of us who really believe in Jesus, who love him, must pray and work for unity. The fact that Christians as a whole have been divided by so many schisms across the centuries, the fact that even Catholics are often divided into ideological camps, is a great scandal, one that Jesus wants you and me to help remedy.
* Second, Jesus prays that we may “share [his] joy completely.” As he told us last Sunday, he came so that his joy might be in us and our joy be made complete. The Easter Season is meant to help us to focus precisely on that joy, the joy that flows from God’s love, from his continuous presence, and from his triumph over sin and death. If we don’t live the Christian faith with joy,
