Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Paul’s Chapel, Columbia University, New York
Reflection during Eucharistic Procession
November 12, 2023
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following text guided the homily:
- As we make our Eucharistic procession today, we come here to St. Paul’s Chapel, and pray in a special way for peace on our Columbia campus.=
- Lately our campus has been plagued by some real acts of hatred. The lack of peace in the Middle East has metastasized here and brought division and pain. There have been rallies in which some students have sought to justify and cheer the brutal terrorist killings of the innocent. Various students have been harassed because of their religion and national identity. Other students have been doxed outside the gate we passed through a few minutes ago. It has led to some feeling besieged rather than at home on campus. There’s a need for reparation and reconciliation. There’s a need for peacemakers and peacemaking. We come here with Jesus, the Prince of Peace, each of us asking him to make me an instrument of peace.
- Our campus has likewise experienced so far six deaths, one because of a tragic accident, another because of illness, but others because of a lack of interior peace such that they concluded life was no longer worth living. We come here with Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life, praying in a special way for all of them as well as for students who might be experiencing similar temptations.
- In the Gospel we just heard, Jesus describes that the ruler of this world, meaning the devil, was coming and the evil one would wreak his destruction, getting archenemies to co-conspire to put Jesus to death on the Cross. In the midst of all of it, however, and knowing just how flustered the apostles and anyone would become witnessing Life himself being executed on Calvary, Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you,” stressing, “not as the world gives do I give it to you.” He was at peace through it all because he was doing exactly as the Father wanted and he knew that the greatest good of all time would come out of the situation of his death and resurrection. He wanted his apostles, and all of us, to have that peace that the world can’t give or take away. Peace with him. That’s why, he said, the Holy Spirit was being sent to remind us of everything Jesus taught. That’s why he said these words after he had celebrated the Eucharist and given his own Body and Blood to them. Both gifts were so that they would be able to keep their communion with him in the midst of all of the chaos, in the midst of the evil of the mobs shouting out “Crucify him! Crucify him!” and beyond. Jesus offers us that peace. As we receive him in Holy Communion, we enter into communion with the Prince of Peace, who helps us from within to become not just a peace wisher but a peace maker, seeking to bring him, his peace, his reconciliation, ultimately his love to others. All peace ultimately flows from the tranquility of order that flows from being right with God and that’s what he wants to offer us so that we can be his instruments to share that gift with all those who long for peace.
- Someone who was an apostle of peace is the one after whom this Chapel is named. Saul of Tarsus, we remember, was once a man who brought terror to the first Christians, supervising St. Stephen’s execution by stoning, ripping Christians out of their homes and bringing them for trial, even asking for a commission to head 137 miles north of Jerusalem to Damascus to do the same to the Christians there. But Christ met him outside the gates of Damascus and the trajectory of his life, and all of human history, was changed. He became thereafter not only the greatest evangelizer in history but also one of the greatest peacemakers of all time, seeking to bring Christ and his peace to others.
- He starts eight of his letters (Romans, First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Second Thessalonians and Philemon) with the words that are a fitting summary of all that he was trying to bring to those who would accept the Gospel: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
- He was quite clear where our peace comes from. As he told the Romans, “Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 5:1). Christ, he told the Ephesians, “is our peace, he who made both one and broke down the dividing wall of enmity, through his flesh” (Eph 2:14), reconciling, he told the Colossians, “all things for him, making peaceby the blood of his cross (1:20). He summarized the purpose of Christ’s incarnation and the substance of the Kingdom of God he established by declaring that Jesus “came and preached peaceto you who were far off and peace to those who were near” (Eph 2:17).
- Christ’s mission of peace, reconciling us to the Father through the forgiveness of sins and reconciling us to others, St. Paul said, must have consequence for each of us. He told the Corinthians, “God has called you to peace” (1 Cor 7:15). He defined peace as a fruit of the Holy Spirit whom Jesus sent to us to remind us of him (Gal 5:22).
- He prayed for those in Thessalonika, “May the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and in every way” (2 Thess 3:16). Therefore, he told the Colossians, “Let the peace of Christ control your hearts, the peace into which you were also called in one body” (Col 3:15).
- But the gift of peace was likewise supposed to lead to action. He told the Christians in Rome, “Let us then pursue what leads to peace and to building up one another” (Rom 14:19). And he urged the Ephesians to lace up their sandals to have their feet read to bring the “gospel of peace” to others (Eph 6:15).
- So today, we have indeed put on our footwear, to bring Jesus in the Eucharist, the Gospel of Peace incarnate, here to campus. We ask him to give and leave us his peace at all times and in every way, so that it may control our hearts and change them, and help us pursue always what leads to peace and building each other up. Christ is indeed our peace and has given us that peace through his Eucharistic sacrifice culminated by the shedding of his blood on Calvary. We thank him for that gift. We ask him to help us to receive it and remain in it. We ask him to help us help others come to experience it, because the same Christ who has called us to peace calls them.
- Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! Amen!
The Gospel passage on which the homily was based was:
A Reading from the Holy Gospel according to John
Jesus said to his apostles, “The Advocate, the holy Spirit that the Father will send in my name — he will teach you everything and remind you of all that [I] told you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid. … I will no longer speak much with you, for the ruler of the world is coming. He has no power over me, but the world must know that I love the Father and that I do just as the Father has commanded me. Get up, let us go.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
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