Homily for 7th Sunday of Easter

Homily for the
7th Sunday of Easter

May 17, 2026
John 17: 1-11
The Fountains, Tuckahoe, N.Y.
Our Lady of the Assumption, Bronx

The Last Supper (by Dagnan-Bouveret)

“This is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ” (John 17: 3).

Don’t most people want to live forever?  Live happily, of course, with sound health of body and mind and peace of heart.

Our Lord Jesus has already attained that eternal life, the life of the resurrection.  We believe that’s true also of his mother, our Blessed Lady, who was so intimately united with Jesus in this earthly life—united not only in a physical sense thru conceiving, birthing, and raising him in Nazareth but united also thru her will and her love, exemplified by her answer to God’s messenger, Archangel Gabriel:  “May it be done to me as you say,” i.e., God’s will be done in me.

That is knowing the only true God and the one whom he sent.  That’s God plan, his hearty desire, for each one of us, that we should attain eternal life with the Father and the Son thru their Holy Spirit.

How can we know God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ?  How can we unite our hearts and minds with them so that we may attain eternal life with them?

Our mother Mary gives us the 1st clue:  submitting our hearts, minds, and will to God.  May all that he wants for us be done!  May we carry out his will in us.

2d, we must come to know Jesus Christ more intimately.  We can’t do that physically like Mary.  But we can know him thru his word in the sacred Scriptures.  Read the Bible, especially the Gospels, where we meet and hear him speak.  We can open our hearts to him.  He tells us, “Knock, and the door will be opened to you” (Matt 7:7).

And that’s our invitation to prayer, the 3d means of knowing Jesus more intimately.  We open our hearts to him thru prayer.  We come to understand his words and knowing his will for us thru prayer—by speaking to him and listening to him.

Our 4th means of knowing Jesus more intimately is the sacraments.  We come to the Holy Eucharist, thru which our physical union with Jesus actually begins.  “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world” (John 6:51).  That physical union leads us to spiritual union, the union of our hearts and wills with him.  So he “gives eternal life to all” whom the Father has given to him as his own people (17:2).

The other sacrament so essential for us (after we’ve been baptized and confirmed) is Reconciliation, the confession of our sins and forgiveness by having the grace of God’s Holy Spirit poured out upon us once more—by which we experience Jesus’ “abiding presence among us,” as we prayed in the collect.  His abiding presence in us is our eternal life, to his glory, the glory of God the Father, and our glory too.