Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, Vigil

May 6, 2023

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.6.23_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 as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday.

* Last week, as you remember, Jesus spoke to us as the Good Shepherd. This week he picks up on the confidence that should flow from relating to him in this way. “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” he tells us, in words taken from Holy Thursday that the Church listens to in the light of the triumph of the resurrection. “You have faith in God. Have faith also in me.” He does not want us to worry, to be anxious, to be disturbed about anything. He wants us to trust in him. He tells us that he is going to prepare a place for each of us in his Father’s house so that where he is, we also will be. He’s referring not merely to his desire to come back again and take us to be with him eternally. He’s alluding to the fact that, right now, he has prepared a place in the Father’s house for us, for our prayers, for our hopes, sorrows, joys. When he tells the apostles, “Where I am going, you know the way,” — meaning what he already told them three times, that he would be handed over to death and on the third day rise — Saint Thomas protested that the apostles neither knew Jesus’ destination or path. That’s when Jesus summarizes everything, for them and us, in one of the most famous self-identifications Jesus ever gave, “I am the way, and the truth and the life,” emphasizing that he is the gate to the sheepfold and that no one can to the Father’s house except through him.

* We’ve heard Jesus’ self-description as the Way, the Truth and the Life so many times that their revolutionary shock value is almost entirely lost on us, but to first century Jewish listeners, they would have heard Jesus saying that he was the full realization of their three deepest religious aspirations. Jews had been praying for centuries, “Teach me your way, O Lord” and Jesus was saying, “I am the way.” They had been imploring God, “Teach me your decrees” that “I may walk in your truth,” and Jesus was saying, “I am the Truth.” They had been begging, “Show me the path of life,” and Jesus was indicating, “I am the Life.” Jesus was saying that he was the personification of their deepest religious aspirations and the answer to their most insistent prayers.

* But these aspirations were not exclusively Jewish. They point to the perennial needs that spring up in every human life. Many times we’re lost, we don’t know where to go, we’re wandering through a valley of darkness with no clear sense of direction. To all of us in those circumstances, Jesus says, “I am the Way.” There are many others who are stumped before life’s biggest questions, who are searching for answers and meaning, who don’t know what to believe, who don’t trust because they don’t know whom to trust. Jesus tells us, “I am the Truth.” “You have faith in God, have faith also in me.” And there are countless others who are struggling to have hope, who feel like they are having the marrow of existence sucked out of them, who often seek happiness and fulfillment in ways that can’t deliver. To them, Jesus responds, “I am the Life.”

* What does it mean to relate to Jesus as the Way, Truth and Life? Let’s take each of Jesus’ affirmations in turn.

* Jesus says, “I am the Way.”

* Probably every single one of us has had the experience of being lost wh...