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 c...
