Jesus’ and Paul’s Farewells, Seventh Tuesday of Easter, May 19, 2015

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Church of the Holy Family, New York, NY
Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Easter
May 19, 2015
Acts 20:17-27, Ps 68, Jn 17:1-11

Today’s homily was not recorded. The following points were considered in the homily: 

• One of the most important things in life is to have a clear sense of our goal, our direction, our purpose. As the old aphorism goes, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will do.” Many people are lost, even in the midst of hurried journeying, because they don’t really have a clear sense of the ultimate direction of their life. St. Ignatius of Loyola called us to make decisions as if we were doing them before the Lord our Judge looking back over our whole life, because thinking in light of eternity can help us to discern what is truly important. The Imitation of Christ likewise urges us to live each day as if it is our last, because, one again, if we knew that our time was limited, we’d prioritize the important and let the unimportant pass.
• In today’s readings and today’s feast, we see two great examples of living with a clear purpose that comes from God.
• In the Gospel, taken from Jesus’ priestly prayer on Holy Thursday on which we will focus through Thursday, we see why Jesus was living. He was living to glorify the Father. He was living to accomplish his work of salvation. He was living to reveal the Father’s name, and as Pope Francis has reminded us, the name of God is mercy. He was living to give us the Father’s words. As we’ll see tomorrow, he was living to consecrate us in the truth of the Father’s word. As we’ll see on Thursday, he was living to help us to enter into the communion of Trinitarian life and to express it to others. This focus of Jesus explains everything he ever did. And he turns to us and says, “Follow me!” He wants us to live with the same focus on God’s glory and our glorification in him, on receiving and extending the work of salvation, on bringing honor to the Father’s name by living and proclaiming his words, on living according to our baptismal consecration, on really seeking and allowing God to bring his desire to make us one as the Persons of the Trinity are one.
• One of those who allowed Jesus’ work to be accomplished in him was St. Paul. Today and tomorrow we will have his valedictory address to the Church in Ephesus, meeting with them at the port of Miletus. Today describes his sufferings, tears and trials, the imprisonments and hardships that he endured and those that still awaited him, but through all of it, he says, he “did not shrink from telling you what was for your benefit,” “from proclaiming to you the entire plan of God,” from “bear[ing] witness to the Gospel of God’s grace. doing so in the square and in private, “in public or in your homes.” As he said to the Romans elsewhere, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel,” because he thought the whole Gospel was “good news” with power to save, and he wanted everyone else to know the truth that would set them free. So he was able to say humbly, “I consider life of no importance to me if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus.” Everything was with that goal in mind. What a beautiful thing it would be if at the end of our life we were able like Paul to look back with no regrets for our cowardice in shrinking for the Gospel, for the ways we were ashamed of it because we worried more about human respect than others’ salvation. The Holy Spirit for whose outpouring we’re praying during this Decenarium gave him courage and will give us courage, too. He will help us to live with the purpose God has given us, considering life of no importance in this world provided that we can live in a way to enter into eternity and bring many others with us.
• The reason why the Second Vatican Council called the Mass the “source and the summit of the Christian life” is because it is in the Mass that each day we renew our purpose and direct ourselves toward eternity. We come to glorify God, to hear Jesus announce to us his words, to accomplish his work of salvation, to consecrate us within his own consecration to the Father on the altar, to make us one body, one Spirit in Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s by directing our whole life to what we do here, and receive from here our marching orders and direction each day, that we will come to celebrate forever the reality to which this Mass points, the eternal glory of God forever in heaven, where St. Paul, the Blessed Mother and all the angels and saints await us.

The readings for today’s Mass were: