Proclaiming in Tandem Jesus as the Way, Truth and Life, Feast of SS. Philip and James, May 3, 2019

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Feast of SS. Philip and James, Apostles
19th Anniversary of the death of John Cardinal O’Connor, Founder of the SVs
May 3, 2019
1 Cor 15:1-8, Ps 19, Jn 14:6-14

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:

 The following points were pondered in the homily: 

• Today we celebrate the feast of two apostles together, Saints Philip and James the Lesser. The reason why we celebrate them together is historical, because their relics were brought to the Church of the Holy Apostles (Dodici Apostoli) and buried there together in the ninth century, similar to the reason why we celebrate on October 28 the feast of Saint Simon and Jude, because their relics are interred together in the Basilica of St. Peter. While it would certainly be fitting for us to celebrate them individually, as we do the other eight apostles (including St. Matthias who took Judas’ place), there is a certain fittingness to fête them jointly, since when Jesus initially sent out the twelve to proclaim his kingdom by words and deeds, he sent them out in pairs. It’s quite possible that Philip and James were at one time explicit partners in the proclamation of the Gospel and hence their feast is an opportunity for us to examine something that perhaps we don’t ponder enough: who are our partners in the proclamation of the Gospel? If it’s important for police officers to have partners on whom they can depend, how much more important is it for those called to proclaim the Gospel, not only so that we can have each other’s back, but so that we can more easily put into practice the Gospel we proclaim to others. St. Gregory the Great once commented that the reason why Jesus sent out the apostles to proclaim the Gospel two-by-two even though they could have theoretically covered twice as much ground if he had sent them out individually was so that as they proclaimed the Gospel, they would be able to learn and show how to love one another, how to forgive one another, how to live in communion. So today as we ponder what we need to learn in the Word of God, we can do so in the context of examining how we can proclaim the Gospel better in tandem with others and who are those whom the Lord has put into our lives with whom we can preach. Certainly Christian married couples are sent out two-by-two. But it behooves all of us to look around to see what friendships we can nourish, what bonds we can form, so that we can live the Gospel better and proclaim it more effectively.
• In today’s first reading, St. Paul tells the Corinthians and us about the importance of proclaiming the Gospel. “I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received,” and then he describes for us Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection and appearances. To pass on the Gospel was “of first importance,” in other words, the most important thing he could do and they in turn could do. Why? He told them right before, because it is the Gospel that “you indeed received and in which you also stand [and through which] you are also being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.” When we receive the Gospel with faith and hold fast to it, our lives our made secure — we stand in it firmly — and we are being saved through it, always in the present tense. The Gospel places our life on the most solid foundation of all and leads to salvation. How could we not want to share that gift with others? As we collaborate with others in the desire to share the Gospel, we strengthen others on that foundation and ever-present work of redemption.
• But the Gospel is not a group of teachings or facts. The kergyma — what St. Paul preached about Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection — is not a bunch of words that we say. It is a relationship, an intimate covenantal bond with Jesus through the Holy Spirit and in him with the Father. Jesus reveals this in his dialogue with the apostles during the Last Supper, which we have as today’s Gospel. Jesus says, “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life,” words that would have startled Jews, who always prayed in the Psalms for God to show them his paths so that they might know and walk in his truth, who always begged him to show them the path of life. Jesus was saying, “I am that Path, I am that Truth, I am that Life.” To pass on the Gospel is to help one enter into the life-changing relationship with Jesus, so that they will know where they are supposed to head, what they are supposed to believe, and how they are to live and experience life to the full. Jesus says that it is through the way, truth and life he both reveals and is that one comes to see and know the Father. When St. Philip asks Jesus to show them the Father, Jesus reveals that anyone who has seen him — the perfect image of the invisible God — has seen the Father because he abides in the Father and the Father in him, because the Father speaks through him and the Father dwells in him doing his works. What’s startling is that Jesus tells us that if we abide in him, if we follow him who is the Way, believe in Him who is the Truth, and enter into Him who is the Life, the Father through Jesus will be able to work in us and those works will be even greater than the works Jesus himself has done in life: “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father. And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” It was one thing for the eternal Son of God to do the works of the Father in Palestine. It will be something even greater for his Mystical Body to do works throughout the world. Jesus himself raised the dead, cured lepers, made the blind see, exorcised demons, fed multitudes with paltry starting material and rose from the dead. What we will be able to do in his name is bring him from heaven to earth under the appearance of bread and wine, forgive sins in God’s name, and love others far more quantitatively extensively than he has loved us. And in so doing, bring many others to receive the life, the truth and the path who is Jesus and to which he calls us all — bring many others to communion with God and with us.
• St. Philip was one who was always bringing others to enter into communion with Jesus and through, with and in Jesus with the burgeoning Church. Right after Jesus called him, he brought his friend Nathanael to Jesus. Little did he know that Nathanael would likewise become a partner in the Gospel. It was Philip who helped find the boy with five loaves and two fish — which we would normally hear about today on Friday of the Second Week of Easter — which was the raw material for Jesus’ multiplication of the loaves and fish. It was Philip whom the Greeks asked to introduce them to Jesus before the Passion. He was a bridge for others to come to Jesus and that is what every Christian ought to be. This is of “first importance” in the Christian life. St. James the Lesser likewise had this function. Many scholars believer he was the first leader of the Church in Jerusalem, the James we encounter in Acts 15 in the Council of Jerusalem. When SS. Paul and Barnabas brought them the case of the Gentiles in Antioch and whether they needed to accept all of the Jewish law and practices — including circumcision — before becoming Christians, St. James, together with St. Peter and the other members of the Church, said that they did not, facilitating their entry into the Church. He knew that Jesus was the way, not the isolated works of the Jewish midrash of the Mosaic law, which Jesus himself spoke again in his dialogues with the Scribes and Pharisees. Of first importance was the kergyma. Of first importance was Jesus. So it is always.
• Today we mark the 19th anniversary of the death of Cardinal John O’Connor, the founder of the Sisters of Life and your spiritual father. He was one who was always preaching as of first importance the Gospel he received, he was one who was constantly seeking to bring others to Jesus, he was constantly related to Jesus as his Way, Truth and Life and strove to help others to come to relate to him that way, too. By his faith in the Lord, he did great works, and perhaps is greatest and most prophetic was the founding of the Sisters of Life. In the midst of a culture of death, he founded you to show the life that comes from Jesus, the truth that Jesus teaches about the human person denied in Dachau and in abortion facilities, the way to happiness that comes from Jesus through loving God and others with compassion. His work continues through you. I like to think, too, that God has arranged it for me to receive a little bit of his spirit as well. As some of you know, I live at Holy Family Rectory in the suite where he lived when he was the Auxiliary Bishop of the Military Vicariate (1979-1983). I shave at the same sink as he did, look at the same mirror, hang my clothes in the same closets, look out the same windows. This morning as I was typing up this homily in the same room where he doubtless prepared some of his, I thought that he must be pleased that a priest in his own quarters was heading out to celebrate Mass for his priestly soul with the spiritual daughters he loves so much. Today we entrust that soul to the Heavenly Father and ask God to bless the Sisters of Life with the apostolic fruitfulness we see in his life and in the lives of SS. Philip and James.
• SS. Philip and James entered into communion with each other even more deeply when the Lord made them one body during the Last Supper. And he sent them out to bring others into that same communion. Cardinal O’Connor and the Sisters of LIfe never had a great bond then here at the altar, the root and center, the source and summit, of his priestly life and the font of all apostolic activity. Today the Lord invites us into that same mutual abiding with him and with others so that just as he said to SS. Philip and James he made say to us at the end of today’s Mass: “Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord!” May we be as faithful to our joint mission as they were to theirs!

The readings for today’s Mass were: