Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, Vigil

May 13, 2023

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/5.13.23_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. It’s a continuation of what Jesus said to the apostles on Holy Thursday night in the Upper Room. He told them he was communicating these things before they happened, so that when they happened, the apostles would believe. He was preparing the apostles not only for his betrayal, crucifixion and death that would occur within hours, but even more for the post-Resurrection reality of the Church, which is why the Church always ponders these passages throughout the second half of the Easter Season so that we might believe more firmly, in the light of the resurrection, everything Jesus says.

* This Sunday, the Risen Lord Jesus speaks to us specifically about four promises, four blessings, four different ways he wants to relate to us.

* The first promise is, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments and I will ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth.” In 1565, these words were put by Thomas Tallis into one of the most famous and beautiful motets of all time, which I am playing now in the background. It’s the promise that if we love Jesus by keeping his commandments, to love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength, and to love our neighbor as he loves us, then he and the Father will give us the Holy Spirit to be always with us. Earlier this week, on May 8, the Church in the United States celebrated the Memorial of Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich, born in Bayonne, NJ at the beginning of last century and the first American to be beatified in the United States, which took place at the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark in 2014. She wrote in one of her spiritual reflections, “God’s purpose in my life is this in general: To teach men that Our Lord’s promise ‘If any man love Me, he will keep My Word; and My Father will love him and We will come to him and make our abode with him’ is held out to every soul regardless of calling; and is the perfect realization of His prayer and ours: Thy kingdom come.” God’s desire is to come and dwell within us. This is what we pray for when we ask, “Thy Kingdom come!,” we’re asking to dwell with God in his kingdom, beginning now, within. That’s the Mission of the Holy Spirit who has been sent to us, for whose outpouring on Pentecost we are now beginning to pray. This is the first, incredible promise Jesus makes to us that comes from our seeking to live in his life, our seeking to do his will and remain in his word by keeping his commandments.

* One of the Holy Spirit’s chief works is to convince us we are beloved sons and daughters of God the Father. The Holy Spirit is poured into our hearts so that we might cry out, “Abba, Father!,” so that we might recognize the intimacy of a relationship with God as “dad.” That leads to Jesus’ second promise in this Sunday’s Gospel: “I will not leave you orphans.” In the midst of a culture in which there’s a true crisis of loneliness, in the midst of human lives in which sometimes we can feel abandoned, just like Jesus did on the Cross, in which the apostles felt like sheep without a shepherd after the crucifixion, Jesus promises that we will not be left orphans. He will not allow us to be abandoned by Father and mother.