Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, C, Vigil

May 14, 2022

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.14.22_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 each of us the Fifth Sunday of the Easter Season. We will enter into Jesus’ words given during the Last Supper, looked at through the knowledge of the resurrection. Jesus speaks to us of his and the Father’s glory and the way it will be manifested. “Now,” he says, “is the Son of Man glorified and God [the Father] is glorified in him.” That glorification begins, paradoxically, with what Jesus himself would suffer right after saying those words: his arrest, trial, crucifixion, death and resurrection. While humanly humiliating, it is ultimately the fullest epiphany of who the God of love is, allowing his creatures even to try to murder him in order to save those murderers. As St. Paul would write to the first Christians in Corinth, Christ crucified seems scandalous to Jews and foolishness to pagans but actually puts the full power and wisdom of God on display (1 Cor 1:22-24). Or as the same apostle penned to the Christians in Philippi, Jesus became obedient even to death on a Cross but “therefore” God highly exalted him so that every knee should bend and every tongue confess to the glory of God the Father that Jesus Christ is Lord (Phil 2:1-11). Jesus’ crucifixion, rather than being the most embarrassing and lowest moment in human history, is actually, when looked at with faith, the greatest revelation of who God is, because God is ultimately love and Golgotha shows it. This is why, for example, when Jesus allows a glimpse of his glory to be seen by Peter, James and John during the Transfiguration, he is seen talking to Moses and Elijah about “the exodus he was to accomplish in Jerusalem,” about his leading us through the new and eternal Passover by his passion, death and resurrection. That glory was

foreseen when Jesus’ garments were dazzling white on Tabor such that no bleach on earth could make them, but it was displayed fulfilled when he was stripped of his garments and bathed in blood on Calvary, because there is no greater love than laying down one’s life for one’s friends. God’s great glory is doing so.

* As we see, however, in this Sunday’s Gospel, that’s not the application Jesus gives of his glory. Rather than focusing on divine love exalted among two thieves, he describes the love he wants to see in and among us. “I give you a new commandment,” he says, “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” God’s glory is meant to be manifested not just on the Cross but in the way we lay down our lives in love for each other, in supreme moments of heroism and in ordinary daily moments of self-giving sacrifice. Just as it is paradoxical that God’s glory would be shown in a gruesome public crucifixion by his own creatures, so it is surprising that Jesus says it will be shown by the very behavior of those creatures who, receiving his love, remain in it, and share it to the same standard as that with which they were loved by God. God’s glory, in other words, is shown by loving as God loves. To return to the same passage of St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians in which Paul says that Jesus’ obedience to death is his great exaltation, the apostle urges the Christians to be of the “same m...