Fifth Sunday of Easter (C), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, May 14, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, C, Vigil
May 14, 2022

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

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 the Fifth Sunday of the Easter Season. We will enter into Jesus’ words given during the Last Supper, looked at through the knowledge of the resurrection. Jesus speaks to us of his and the Father’s glory and the way it will be manifested. “Now,” he says, “is the Son of Man glorified and God [the Father] is glorified in him.” That glorification begins, paradoxically, with what Jesus himself would suffer right after saying those words: his arrest, trial, crucifixion, death and resurrection. While humanly humiliating, it is ultimately the fullest epiphany of who the God of love is, allowing his creatures even to try to murder him in order to save those murderers. As St. Paul would write to the first Christians in Corinth, Christ crucified seems scandalous to Jews and foolishness to pagans but actually puts the full power and wisdom of God on display (1 Cor 1:22-24). Or as the same apostle penned to the Christians in Philippi, Jesus became obedient even to death on a Cross but “therefore” God highly exalted him so that every knee should bend and every tongue confess to the glory of God the Father that Jesus Christ is Lord (Phil 2:1-11). Jesus’ crucifixion, rather than being the most embarrassing and lowest moment in human history, is actually, when looked at with faith, the greatest revelation of who God is, because God is ultimately love and Golgotha shows it. This is why, for example, when Jesus allows a glimpse of his glory to be seen by Peter, James and John during the Transfiguration, he is seen talking to Moses and Elijah about “the exodus he was to accomplish in Jerusalem,” about his leading us through the new and eternal Passover by his passion, death and resurrection. That glory was
  foreseen when Jesus’ garments were dazzling white on Tabor such that no bleach on earth could make them, but it was displayed fulfilled when he was stripped of his garments and bathed in blood on Calvary, because there is no greater love than laying down one’s life for one’s friends. God’s great glory is doing so.
• As we see, however, in this Sunday’s Gospel, that’s not the application Jesus gives of his glory. Rather than focusing on divine love exalted among two thieves, he describes the love he wants to see in and among us. “I give you a new commandment,” he says, “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” God’s glory is meant to be manifested not just on the Cross but in the way we lay down our lives in love for each other, in supreme moments of heroism and in ordinary daily moments of self-giving sacrifice. Just as it is paradoxical that God’s glory would be shown in a gruesome public crucifixion by his own creatures, so it is surprising that Jesus says it will be shown by the very behavior of those creatures who, receiving his love, remain in it, and share it to the same standard as that with which they were loved by God. God’s glory, in other words, is shown by loving as God loves. To return to the same passage of St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians in which Paul says that Jesus’ obedience to death is his great exaltation, the apostle urges the Christians to be of the “same mind, having the same love, … which is yours in Christ Jesus,” doing “nothing from selfish ambition or conceit but in humility counting others more significant than yourselves” and looking “not only to [your] own interests but also to the interests of others.” As Jesus will pray to the Father later on Holy Thursday, “The glory that you have given me I have given to them,” the glory of his love, so that we may be one in love just as Father, Son and Holy Spirit are united, and so that they “world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” In giving us his love — not just the example of love, but giving himself, love incarnate — Jesus has given us his glory and the way that we reveal that glory is by our mutual love, which is meant to remind everyone of the love of God. The same Holy Spirit who is the love between the Father and the Son in the eternal Godhead is given to us to help us to receive God’s love, love God in return, and love each other with the very love of God.
• If this reflection until now seems perhaps too deep theologically and not practical enough, that’s because Jesus’ words, “As I have loved you, so you also should love one another,” can, after 2,000 years of hearing them, come off as flat. They should be revolutionary. They should provoke in us, first, a cry of objection, “How can we possibly love like God loves?!” Then they should provoke wonder that God himself would call us to that divine standard. Then they should lead to pray, as we beg for what we need to live up to that standard. But for most Christians, “Love one another as I have loved you” is the most watered-down line in Sacred Scripture. Many of us think we love by the fact that we have sympathy for others, that we don’t hate others, that we hope they have a good life and don’t stick our nose into their business. Others of us, while professing to be Christians, don’t even rise to that metric, but instead think we can hate, rather than love, our enemies, because, we tell ourselves, they hated us first. We demonize figures we think are unworthy of our love, like those committing grave evils and injustices, like Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine, Chinese, Cuban and Venezuelan communists, abortion doctors and pro-abortion politicians, family members and former friends who have wronged us, and the habit just grows. The coarseness of our polarized culture has led many Catholics on Twitter, for example, to become specialists in attacking, criticizing, insulting, mocking, humiliating and condemning those with whom they disagree, even fellow Catholics, because they think differently on liturgical matters, or a particular decision of the Pope or our bishops, or other things. While we justify our grievances and our behavior based on those grievances, Jesus is asking us to love one another as he loved us on Calvary. Which is it going to be?
• The consequences are enormous, not only to our relationship with Jesus and eternal salvation, but to the mission of the Church. Jesus tells us very clearly this Sunday that the way others will know we’re his followers, the way we’ll glorify God, is through really loving each other, sacrificing for each other, forgiving each other, treating others with affection — and not just doing so “a little,” but loving with all our mind, heart, soul and strength. The corollary is also true. If we do not really love one another in deeds, then we will show we’re not Jesus’ followers but fakers, hypocrites, bad Catholics — even if we happen to be ordained or made religious vows, or given millions to Catholic schools and universities, or are known among our circles as the most devout.
• Therefore, out of love for God and his glory, and out of love for others and hope that they’ll come to know, love, serve and be happy with God in this life and forever, we need to get very practical about prioritizing love for others, starting with those we meet every day, those we live with, work with, go to school with, interact with. What sacrifices do we make for them? Do we do them with affection? Are we willing to die for them if necessary? If we’re really going to manifest God’s glory through the way we love others, however, then we must also turn to the way we love those we don’t even like. As Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, it’s easy to love those who love us, even the pagans do that; but he calls us to love even those who have made themselves our enemies. What do we do toward those who drive us crazy, who speak ill of us, who seek to harm us? It’s not enough just not to retaliate by lowering ourselves to their levels. Jesus wants us to rise to his level, to love them, to sacrifice for them, to fast for them, to pray for their conversion, to forgive them before they ask, to entrust them to his mercy, to help them out should they be in need. What a tremendous witness is given whenever anyone loves like that.
• This Sunday in St. Peter’s Square Pope Francis will canonize ten new saints. The saints are those who give God glory through their loving action and these ten, in different ways, have all done so. Titus Brandsma, a Dutch Carmelite and journalist, defended the Jews in print and was arrested by the Nazis and killed in the Dachau concentration camp. St. Charles de Foucault, a desert Trappist, recognized that Christians and Muslims did not genuinely love each other and so at great risk sought to bring that love even to desert Bedouins, being killed eventually by Algerian marauders. Indian layman St. Devasahayam Pillai, a convert from Hinduism, sought to witness the love of God to his former fellow Hindus and unmask the lack of love in the caste system and was arrested, tortured and martyred for it. St. Justin Russolillo showed particular love for poor boys and girls with vocations to the priesthood or religious life whose families did not have the resources to pay for their religious training, as well as for seminarians, religious and even priests who had temporarily abandoned their vocations because of injustices. St. Marie Rivier founded a religious order to help people love each other and forgive anti-Christian persecutors after the atrocities of the French Revolution. St. Maria di Gesu Santocanale and St. Maria Domenica Montovani both founded religious institutes to care for the sick, poor, disabled, abandoned and elderly. St. Cesar de Bus, Sr. Maria Francesca Rubatto and St. Luigi Palazzolo all founded orders to educate and catechize young people who otherwise would have received no education so that, through reading, writing and praying they might in their own lives build up families and society in the love of God. All ten of these new saints revealed through giving their life out of love for others something of the glory of God and his love shining through human creatures. Each of us is meant to give God that same glory through our love.
• This Sunday, as we prepare to receive within Christ himself in the glory of his Eucharistic humility, as we prepare to receive his love enfleshed within us, let us ask him for the grace to manifest his glory by the way we care for each other in our parish, and the way, together with them, that love overflows to change the world, as it did in these ten new saints raised to the altars.

The Gospel passage on which today’s homily was based were: 

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