Seventh Sunday of Easter and the Ascension, Conversations with Consequences Podcast, May 20, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Seventh Sunday of Easter and the Solemnity of the Ascension
May 20, 2023

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 this Sunday.
• Depending upon where you live, that conversation may be different, because those in New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Nebraska will hear the Gospel of the Seventh Sunday of Easter, while those everywhere else will hear what those in the states I just mentioned heard on Thursday, the Gospel of the Ascension of the Lord Jesus. The reason for the confusion is in 1998 and 1999, bishops in most regions of the United States decided to transfer the Ascension from the 40^th day after Easter to the Seventh Sunday, believing that if they didn’t, Catholics who seldom attend on Holy Days of Obligation would always miss celebrating liturgically this very important event in the Lord’s earthly life. Ironically, however, in making that decision to move the Ascension to the 43^rd day after Easter, the bishops in those provinces were preventing Catholics from hearing Jesus’ words on the importance of Christian unity from the 17^th Chapter of St. John’s Gospel, a third of which is proclaimed on the Seventh Sunday each year. For us as we prepare for Sunday, we can focus a little on both Gospels since Jesus is our interlocutor in every prayerful conversation with the Gospel and, therefore, everything is intrinsically coherent.
• We’ll take the Gospel for the Seventh Sunday of Easter first, since it happened 43 days earlier in time on Holy Thursday. In it we have the awesome privilege not only to eavesdrop on, but enter into, the prayer Jesus made to God the Father the night he was betrayed. Jesus begins by asking the Father to glorify him so that he could glorify the Father. That mutual glory would happen, he says, through his giving his life for us so that we might have life everlasting. He defines eternal life as ultimately knowing God, knowing not in the sense of acquaintances or even great friends but biblically, knowing someone in a totally committed spousal form. That mutual glory would happen, Jesus continued, by Jesus’ accomplishing the work the Father had given him to do, which was to save the human race through his passion, death and resurrection. That glory would also happen, Jesus says, by his being glorified in us, the Church, through our continuation of his mission. Jesus tells God the Father that while he is coming to him, we will remain in the world, and so he prays for us for four things, as we see later in John 17.
  • First, that we may be one, just as Jesus and the Father are one. That way, he says, everyone will know that the Father sent the Son and loves us just like he loves the Son. That’s an incredible prayer, that our communion with each other would resemble the communion in the Blessed Trinity. That’s why prayer and work for Church unity are so important for any true disciple of Jesus.
  • Second, that God the Father protect us from the evil one. This is what Jesus taught us to pray at the end of the Our Father, that we may not be led into temptation but delivered from evil. God the Father does protect us, while still leaving us free, meaning we must choose to entrust ourselves to him rather than presumptuously thinking we can cavort with evil with no consequences.
  • Third, that God the Father make us saints. Jesus asks that God the Father will consecrate us in the truth of God’s word. That word consecrate means to sanctify, and hearing and living God’s word is the means.
  • The fourth flows from the first three: that the love with which the Father loves the Son may be in us and Jesus be in us. Jesus wants us to be filled with his love, which means filled with the God Father, Son and Holy Spirit who is love. This is what happens when we truly united with God and each other, when we’re free of the evil one, when we become holy as God is holy.
• That conversation between Jesus and the Father is ultimately one of the most consequential conversations that has ever occurred. Jesus wants us to cooperate with that prayer for unity, for protection, for sanctity and for love. But we see in John 17 that he prays not only for us, but for “those who will believe in me through the word” of the apostles and their successors, that they, too, might receive that great gift. And that takes us to the Gospel of the Ascension.
• I’m recording this brief homily from Jerusalem where I’m leading a pilgrimage of students from Columbia University where I’m the Catholic Chaplain. The place of the Lord’s ascension on the Mount of Olives is presently a Muslim mosque, but every year on the Ascension, the caretakers allow Catholic Christians to celebrate Mass there for 24 hours around the clock, a devotion led by the Franciscans who are caretakers of so many Christian holy sites. Last year on another pilgrimage I was able in the morning to concelebrate Mass in the little shrine marking the spot from which Jesus ascended and I look forward to revisiting that spot later today. The Church ponders in the Gospel for the Ascension this year what is called Jesus’ great commission, the words he gave to the eleven apostles right before he was taken to heaven. Jesus praised the Father in John 17 for having given him “authority over all people,” and now, 43 days later, he said to the apostles, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold I am with you always until the end of time.” Jesus was saying that his power and authority in heaven and earth would be exercised through the Church, through the sacraments, beginning with baptism; through the Word of God, as his teaching was brought to all nations; through the moral life, by means of observing all that Christ commanded; and through a full-time communion of life and love with God-with-us, who promised to be with us until the end of time. Jesus was sending out the Church, he was sending out us, to continue his preaching, to continue his sanctifying through the sacraments, to continue his charity, loving others as he has loved us, and to continue his communion, remaining with God as he is with us until the end of time. This is the way in which Jesus’ prayer for union, protection, sanctification and love will be brought to fulfillment. The Solemnity of the Ascension is an opportunity for us to examine how seriously we take the mission Jesus gave us of trying to bring him to everyone we know. Jesus ascended into heaven to take the training wheels off our Christian life. He trusted us enough to entrust to us the continuation of his saving work.
• But he didn’t leave us alone in the fulfillment of that mission. He gave us the Holy Spirit. As he was preparing to ascend, he told the apostles not to depart from Jerusalem but to wait for the “promise of the Father” when “in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” The work of proclaiming the Gospel to every creature, of entering into the life of God through the Sacraments and moral life, of growing in holiness, love and union is not a work we can accomplish on our own. The Holy Spirit is sent to us to bring about that moral miracle. Ascension Thursday begins the Church’s annual decenarium, or ten days of prayer, in anticipation of the feast of Pentecost, which we will celebrate next week. It’s a time for us, like the first apostles, to huddle around Mary, praying and waiting for the outpouring of this divine gift, who will help us glorify God the Father and God the Son and, with tongues of fire, proclaim with ardent love that God is with us, saving and sanctifying us still. And so whether in our parishes we’ll be celebrating this weekend the Seventh Sunday of Easter or the Ascension, it’s fitting to be praying together with the whole Church this prayer for the Holy Spirit who gives the Church and the world rebirth: “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and enkindle in us the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth.” My prayers from Jerusalem. God bless you!

The Gospels on which today’s homily was based were: 

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