Fr. Roger J. Landry

Chapel of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx

Seventh Sunday of Easter, Year C

May 29, 2022

Acts 7:55-60, Ps 97, Rev 22:12-14.16-17.20, Jn 17:20-26

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.29.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* On Thursday we celebrated the Ascension of the Lord. I had the privilege to do so in Jerusalem, on the Mount of Olives, at the place where traditionally the Ascension is believed to have occurred. The Lord’s Ascension on the 40th Day after Easter is a time for us to stoke our desire for heaven, where he has gone to prepare a place for us. It is an occasion for us to pray for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, which he instructed us to do before he was taken up, which the members of the early Church faithfully did around Mary in the Upper Room, and which the Church continues to do every year in the decenarium (ten days) of prayer for the gift of the Holy Spirit each year in anticipation of Pentecost. And it’s a chance for us to focus on the mission Jesus has given to us as he ascended, to be, together with the Holy Spirit, his witnesses to the end of the earth, proclaiming the Good News that the Son of God not only took on our humanity, entered our world, lived, worked, taught, healed, fed, forgave, suffered, died, rose and ascended, but is with us always until the end of time.

* These three main focuses of Ascension are reinforced by the Church on the Seventh Sunday of Easter. The first reading from the Acts of the Apostles has us ponder St. Stephen, who “filled with the Holy Spirit, looked up intently to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God [the Father],” and then, as the stones were raining down upon him, cried out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” The Holy Spirit helps us to look intently upon, to concentrate on, heaven and the glory of God and to get us to entrust ourselves into Jesus’ lovingly scarred hands. In the second reading from the Book of Revelation, the last chapter of the Bible, that sense of consecration to Jesus is strengthened. The ascended Jesus tells us, “Behold, I am coming soon,” and “the Spirit and the Bride,” the Holy Spirit guiding the Church, say in response, “Come! … Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!” Jesus’ ascension into heaven is not a time for us to say “goodbye!” and then move on to our own pursuits, like those referred to in Jesus’ parable who say to each other, “The Master is long delayed” and proceed to get drunk and take advantage of others (Mt 24:48). Rather it is a time for us to grow in longing for the Lord, to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in saying, “Come!,” and to give witness to Jesus in words, in life, and even in death like St. Stephen.

* In the Gospel, taken from Jesus’ great, intimate priestly prayer on Holy Thursday, we see that Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, rather than focusing on his imminent suffering, was instead praying for us, praying for each of these three realities. He was praying that we would be united with him in heaven. “Father,” he implored, “they are your gift to me. I wish that where I am they also may be with me, that they may see the glory that you gave me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” He prayed for that the witness that he was summoning us to give would be fruitful. “Holy Father,” he said, “I pray not only for them,” meaning the apostles, the first wave of those he would send out to continue his mission, “but also for those” — namely us — “who will believe in me through their word.” He had previously prayed to God the Father in this great Priestly Prayer, with words we heard last year and that come immediately before today’s passage, “I gave them your word.