Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Third Sunday of Easter (B), Vigil

April 17, 2021

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.17.21_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.

* If ever there were a day for a party, it was the day Jesus rose from the dead! It was the happiest day in all of human history, made more jubilant by ending the terrible despair and dejection of the disciples over the previous two days. And once the immense shock of seeing Jesus risen from the dead walk through the closed doors of the Upper Room to greet them had worn off, St. Luke tells us that the disciples were “incredulous for joy and amazed.” But they didn’t run out for gallons of wine or ask Jesus to convert water into champagne. Jesus didn’t call for cakes and fruit and other Middle Eastern celebratory fare. Instead, in the midst of the joy of his resurrection, Jesus turned the Upper Room into a vocational training school and began to finish the training of the disciples and apostles to fulfill his saving mission. There was a certain urgency involved in this that Jesus didn’t want to put off until the morrow: the fields were white and ready for the harvest (Jn 4:35) and Jesus wanted the apostles and the disciples with them to get ready to go out to take in that harvest.

* In the Gospel, we see how he finishes his preparations so that they might become his witnesses to all nations. He did it in three steps.

* First, he allowed himself to be seen, to be encountered, to be embraced — They were troubled and he came to give them his peace. This, we can say, points to the need for prayer, to come into the presence of the Lord, so that he may likewise give us his peace. He showed them his body and invited them to touch him. He wasn’t a ghost. He wasn’t imaginary. He was real. St. Luke tells us that they were amazed and incredulous for sheer joy. This points to the need for us to recognize that Jesus’ presence with us isn’t phantasmic, but real. He’s not a ghost but he’s got real flesh and blood. We can see him. We can touch him and not just on the “outside” but on the inside. All of this points to the importance of the Eucharist, which is meant to amaze us and make us “incredulous for sheer joy.” This truth that seems too good to be true actually is true, God is with us in his risen body and blood, and he comes to give himself to us. Any apostle needs to live a Eucharistic life, to be amazed at God’s gift of himself and bring that joy out to others.

* Second, “he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.” — Just like he had done hours before with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, whose hearts he had made burn as he interpreted to the things about himself in the scriptures, so Jesus filled his apostles with a similar fire, showing them, too, how everything foretold had been accomplished. He was the fulfillment of Joseph’s being betrayed by his brothers; of the innocent Abel, killed by his brother Cain; of Isaac, who carried the wood of the sacrifice on his shoulders to be sacrificed on Mount Moriah (which later became Jerusalem); of the Suffering Servant, whom Isaiah prophesied would be “wounded for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities”; of the Passover Lamb, who needed to be slain and eaten for the Jews to be set free; of all of the prophecies of the traits of the Messiah and more. As St. Luke’s Gospel summarizes,