Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, C, Vigil

May 21, 2022

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.21.22_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 this Sunday.

* Throughout the Sundays of the Easter Season, the Church has us focus on how Jesus intends us to share in the newness of life that comes from our communion with Him risen from the dead. In today’s Gospel, Jesus talks to us about two things he died and rose from the dead to give us: love and peace. Our hearts were made for love and for peace — and will remain restless until we have them. But love and peace are not things that we can just wish into existence. No matter how many songs and poems we write about them, or talk and dream about them, they are realities that cannot be conjured or fabricated. We will not truly experience them until we follow the means Jesus describes in the Gospel. He who is the Prince of Peace and who is Love personified describes for us this Sunday the path to obtain both.

* But before we examine what Jesus says, it’s important to focus on the stakes. We live in a world that is torn by the lack of peace. It’s easy to point to the Russian atrocities taking place in Ukraine, but there are also horrible conflicts taking place in Ethiopia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mozambique, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Northern Nigeria and even the West Bank in the Holy Land. In several communist countries — China, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea — the people live oppressed and in fear of imprisonment and death and even Cardinals are arrested on trumped up charges. Even in the United States, there’s a lack of peace, as 18-year-olds murder innocent people in Buffalo supermarkets, those clamoring for social change torch cars and businesses, pro-life offices are burned down by Molotov cocktails, Churches suffer vandalism, and hundreds of thousands of our littlest brothers and sisters in the womb have their lives gruesomely terminated in the womb. This lack of peace is one of the most obvious manifestations of a lack of love, in which we objectify, label, dehumanize and oppose others rather than will their good.

* But it’s not the only sign of a crisis of love. So many people do not feel they’re loved. St. John Paul II famously said at the beginning of his pontificate, “Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it.” People suffer when they don’t experience the love of a mom and dad, especially when they’re young. They suffer when they experience rejection from those on whom they have a crush as young people. They suffer when relationships, engagements, even marriages break up. They suffer when they have only utilitarian friendships and contacts. They suffer when they’re alone. Some out of suffering the lack of love try to distract themselves through addictions to booze and drugs, others to porn and fantasy, others to promiscuity. Others, tired of living without love, thinking that others won’t care or trying to draw attention to their pain and loneliness, take their lives. The crisis of love is real and enormously costly to individuals and all of society.

* In response to the yearnings for peace and love...