Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul, Philadelphia
The Pontifical Mission Societies
Northeast Regional Meeting of Diocesan Directors
Tuesday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
February 25, 2025
Sir 2:1-11, Ps 37, Mk 9:30-37
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
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The following text guided the homily:
As we come together today for Mass in this beautiful Cathedral, diocesan directors of the various offices of The Pontifical Mission Societies, not to mention those who prioritize the Lord here for daily Mass each lunch time, Sirach confronts us in the first reading with some sobering, but at the same time life-giving words. We ponder them within the context of the prayers for our Holy Father, Pope Francis, as he becomes a living icon of these words.
Joshua Ben Sirach begins today’s passage by saying, “When you come to serve the Lord, … prepare yourself” not for a stream of consolation, but “for trials.” He then describes them: we should get ready for a “time of adversity,” “crushing misfortune,” even “a crucible of humiliation.” These trials are all tests, meant to help purify us, he says, just as “in fire gold and silver are tested.” For that reason, while we’re experiencing them, we should not think that God has abandoned us, but we should faithfully remember that God is helping us to learn how to be great, to learn how to love him and trust in him so that we might truly serve him and become the servant of all. So he tell us “Be sincere of heart and steadfast, incline your ear and receive the word of understanding undisturbed in time of adversity, wait on God with patience, cling to him, forsake him not, … accept whatever befalls you, be steadfast when sorrowful, be patient in crushing misfortune, trust God and God will help you … and direct your way. Wait for his mercy, trust him and your reward will not be lost, hope for good things, love him and your hearts will be enlightened.” Sirach urges us to urge us to turn to those means by which God gives us consolation in trial. “Study the generations long past,” including those who have given their lives out of fidelity, “and understand: has anyone hoped in the Lord and been disappointed? … Persevered and been forsaken? … Called upon God and been rebuffed?” God, he insists, “saves in time of trouble and is a protector to all who seek him in truth.”
These thoughts from Sirach about how to prepare ourselves for trials, misfortunes and even humiliating crucibles when we come to serve the Lord, are a powerful preparation for the Gospel. Jesus stresses today for the apostles the same lesson that they rejected in Caesarea Philippi and that Jesus reemphasized as Peter, James and John were descending with him the mountain. Jesus reiterates, “The Son of Man is to be handed over to men and they will kill him, and three days after his death the Son of Man will rise.” He has already made plain that if they wish to be his disciples, they must deny themselves, pick up their own cross and follow him. The Cross, in other words, is not an optional part of Christianity. It’s at the core of our communion with the Lord. Just like on the previous occasions, and just like during the Last Supper when all of them again jockeyed for preeminence after Jesus told them that one of them would be betray him, so again here they cared more about their own ambitious position in what they presumed would be the pecking order of Jesus’ messianic administration than they did about Jesus and his telling him he was about to be betrayed and executed. In response to the third articulation of these shocking words, Jesus’ friends and followers and would-be servants do not console him or even ask him questions to try to understand. Instead, they begin to debate who’s better than whom. It’s pathetic. It would be like if a mom said she had two weeks to live and the kids, rather than focusing on her, began immediately in her presence to talk about who is her favorite or who gets her car or jewelry. But Jesus never tried to eliminate his followers’ ambition, but to purify it and direct it toward true greatness. He told them the path to greatness, which would be his path, is the way of cruciform love: “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.” To be great we must become great in sacrifice, in loving service. And to illustrate exactly what he was describing, lest we interpret it according to our comforts, he took a child and said, “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.” An infant is someone who cannot will to reward us, with whom we cannot engage in a quid pro quo. An infant is not even able to thank us. While it’s true that whenever we love, we receive more than we give and that those who love children receive so many blessings in return, Jesus’ point is that we need to love those who cannot explicitly reward us. That’s the type of service we’re called to give, to which we’re supposed to aspire.
Those are super important words for us who want to do what the Lord is asking of us. Sometimes with the distance and safety of 2,000 words, we can look at the apostles and judge them for their selfish lack of love and human ambition. But the situation for us is even starker. Unlike the apostles who were called in faith to believe that Jesus would be betrayed, arrested, tortured, crucified and on the third day rise, we know that Jesus endured all of these things for our salvation. And he didn’t do it so that we could set our hearts on the corner office, the retirement home in Florida, a huge bank account or other things on which human beings can set their aspirations. If it were wrong for them to hear about Jesus’ death and then turn to their own worldly pursuits, it’s even worse for us. We have seen the fulfillment of all Jesus’ promises and now it’s our turn to follow him on the way, to seek to be his true and faithful servant, continuing his mission, not according to mundane criteria of greatness but according to divine.
Pope Francis is teaching us these lessons now through his suffering. He is proclaiming the Gospel even from a hospital bed. In this Jubilee of Hope he is pointing to Christ Jesus as our hope and showing us now a witness of the great hope of the Christian life: that because of all Jesus did through his passion, death and resurrection, eternal life with him is possible for us. He’s summoning us on the path of true Christian greatness, which is holiness, which can only happen through self-denial, picking up our Cross and following Jesus.
So today we’re called to grasp that when we come to serve the Lord, as we have today, we cannot really do so unless we’re willing and able, in fact ambitious, for self-denial, for crucifying ourselves to the world, for following Jesus along the path of the grain of wheat. For those of us asked to carry out the Great Commission, these words teach us about the type of missionaries Jesus wants us to be, as well as the type of Gospel he is asking us to help resonate throughout the world. We are called to study not just the generations long past, including the generation of Jesus and the apostles, but St. Katherine Drexel present in this Cathedral, St. John Neumann, the fourth Bishop of Philadelphia, and so many other. They hoped in the Lord and were not disappointed. In this Jubilee of Hope, Pope Francis, in his Bull of Indiction, reminds us: Spes Non Confundit, St, Paul’s words to the Romans: Hope does not disappoint, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Rom 5:5).
So today as we prepare to come to this altar and receive the foremost outpouring of God’s love and service in giving us himself in the Eucharist, we prepare ourselves with faith and hope for the trials that will come today and we pray for the Holy Father in his present crucible.
The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 SIR 2:1-11
My son, when you come to serve the LORD,
stand in justice and fear,
prepare yourself for trials.
Be sincere of heart and steadfast,
incline your ear and receive the word of understanding,
undisturbed in time of adversity.
Wait on God, with patience, cling to him, forsake him not;
thus will you be wise in all your ways.
Accept whatever befalls you,
when sorrowful, be steadfast,
and in crushing misfortune be patient;
For in fire gold and silver are tested,
and worthy people in the crucible of humiliation.
Trust God and God will help you;
trust in him, and he will direct your way;
keep his fear and grow old therein.
You who fear the LORD, wait for his mercy,
turn not away lest you fall.
You who fear the LORD, trust him,
and your reward will not be lost.
You who fear the LORD, hope for good things,
for lasting joy and mercy.
You who fear the LORD, love him,
and your hearts will be enlightened.
Study the generations long past and understand;
has anyone hoped in the LORD and been disappointed?
Has anyone persevered in his commandments and been forsaken?
has anyone called upon him and been rebuffed?
Compassionate and merciful is the LORD;
he forgives sins, he saves in time of trouble
and he is a protector to all who seek him in truth.
Responsorial Psalm PS 37:3-4, 18-19, 27-28, 39-40
R. (see 5) Commit your life to the Lord, and he will help you.
Trust in the LORD and do good,
that you may dwell in the land and be fed in security.
Take delight in the LORD,
and he will grant you your heart’s requests.
R. Commit your life to the Lord, and he will help you.
The LORD watches over the lives of the wholehearted;
their inheritance lasts forever.
They are not put to shame in an evil time;
in days of famine they have plenty.
R. Commit your life to the Lord, and he will help you.
Turn from evil and do good,
that you may abide forever;
For the LORD loves what is right,
and forsakes not his faithful ones.
R. Commit your life to the Lord, and he will help you.
The salvation of the just is from the LORD;
he is their refuge in time of distress.
And the LORD helps them and delivers them;
he delivers them from the wicked and saves them,
because they take refuge in him.
R. Commit your life to the Lord, and he will help you.
Alleluia GAL 6:14
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
May I never boast except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel MK 9:30-37
Jesus and his disciples left from there and began a journey through Galilee,
but he did not wish anyone to know about it.
He was teaching his disciples and telling them,
“The Son of Man is to be handed over to men
and they will kill him,
and three days after his death the Son of Man will rise.”
But they did not understand the saying,
and they were afraid to question him.
They came to Capernaum and, once inside the house,
he began to ask them,
“What were you arguing about on the way?”
But they remained silent.
For they had been discussing among themselves on the way
who was the greatest.
Then he sat down, called the Twelve, and said to them,
“If anyone wishes to be first,
he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.”
Taking a child, he placed it in their midst,
and putting his arms around it, he said to them,
“Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me;
and whoever receives me,
receives not me but the One who sent me.”
