Living for the Glory of God, Seventh Tuesday of Easter, May 18, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Easter
May 18, 2021
Acts 20:17-27, Ps 68, Jn 17:1-11

To listen to today’s homily, please click below:

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, 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 mystagogically through Thursday, we see why Jesus was living. He was living to glorify the Father. He asked God the Father to glorify him so that he could in turn glorify the Father. He glorified the Father by accomplishing the work the Father had given him to do, the work of revealing the Father’s love to the extreme in saving his sons and daughters. He also glorified the Father by leaving the disciples in the world so that they in turn could continue that saving work. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus, the Light of the World, said that his disciples would reflect his light and that others, in seeing their good deeds of love, would glorify God the Father in heaven. The greatest glorification of God the Father would take place when Jesus was exalted on the Cross. And the most luminescent, greatest, most glorifying act on our part l is when we are lifted up on the Cross with Jesus, when we are willing to lay down our lives out of love for others, in simple deeds all the way to martyrdom. So Jesus’ glorifying of the Father was to accomplish his work of salvation, to reveal the Father’s name. God had revealed himself as “I am who am” to Moses, but when Jesus came, He-who-is revealed him to be God-with-us (Emmanuel) as God-who-saves-us (Jesus). To reveal the Father’s name meant to allow people to enter into an I-thou relationship with God’s person, to know him personally as the God who is with them to save them out of love. His whole mission was to introduce us into eternal life which is to know God in this way, a personal, loving knowledge that will last forever. That is the great glory of the Father when we, through that knowledge, become men and women fully alive (St. Ireneus).
• Someone who glorified God in this way and led many others to do so is St. Paul. Today and tomorrow we have his valedictory address to the Church in Ephesus, meeting with them at the port of Miletus. He 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.” That “Gospel of God’s grace” was that God was with them personally to save them, calling them to intimacy with him. 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, to proclaim the full Gospel of God, including and especially the Cross. Last week we saw that he did not preach on the Cross in Athens, but when he arrived in Corinth, he resolved to know nothing but the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ and to preach it as God’s power and wisdom. Later, he would write to the Galatians that he glories in nothing but the Cross, by which the world has been crucified to him and him to the world. He would go so far as to say he had been crucified — glorified — with Christ and the life he now lives, he lives by faith in the Son of God who loved him and gave his life for him. He proves Jesus’ point about those disciples in the world glorifying both the Son and the Father, as his whole post-conversion life bore this witness. 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 cowardly shrinking from the Gospel. 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. We pray to the Holy Spirit in the last verse of the Veni Sancte Spiritus, “Da virtutis meritum, da salutis exitum, da perenne gaudium,” which means that we ask the Holy Spirit to give us Christ’s virtues, salvation and everlasting joy. We are called to live with that end in mind.
• 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: 

Gospel JN 17:1-11A

Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and said,
“Father, the hour has come.
Give glory to your son, so that your son may glorify you,
just as you gave him authority over all people,
so that your son may give eternal life to all you gave him.
Now this is eternal life,
that they should know you, the only true God,
and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.
I glorified you on earth
by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do.
Now glorify me, Father, with you,
with the glory that I had with you before the world began.
“I revealed your name to those whom you gave me out of the world.
They belonged to you, and you gave them to me,
and they have kept your word.
Now they know that everything you gave me is from you,
because the words you gave to me I have given to them,
and they accepted them and truly understood that I came from you,
and they have believed that you sent me.
I pray for them.
I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me,
because they are yours, and everything of mine is yours
and everything of yours is mine,
and I have been glorified in them.
And now I will no longer be in the world,
but they are in the world, while I am coming to you.”

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