Living in the World with the End in Mind, Seventh Tuesday of Easter, June 4, 2019

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Easter
June 4, 2019
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 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. God 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.
• St. Paul was someone who came to discover this personal knowledge. As Saul, we know, he focused religiously on his duties in correspondence to the Mosaic law. But when Jesus met him on the road to Damascus, he revealed that the faith was ultimately one of personal knowledge: “Saul, why are you persecuting me?” “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.” From that point forward, he committed himself to knowing nothing but the Lord Jesus Christ. He lived by faith in the Son of God. He said that for him to live was Christ. 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.” 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. 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 for 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 Veni Creator Spiritus, “Per te sciamus da Patrem noscamus atque Filium,” which means that we come to know the Father and the Son through the Holy Spirit, who introduces us into intimate relationship with the Father. We pray similarly 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: