Being Transformed by the Renewal of Our Minds and Lives, Twenty-Second Sunday (A), September 3, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
September 3, 2023
Jer 20:7-9, Ps 63, Rom 12:1-2, Mt 16:21-27

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

This is the text that guided the homily: 

• A huge welcome to all our new students and a great welcome back to all of our returning students. This new academic year about to start is one in which we hope to grow together in love of God and of each other. Jesus wants to accompany us up close so that we can make 2023-2024 a true year of the Lord.
• As we begin the readings of Sacred Scripture give us much to ponder and pray about. We begin with what motivates us as we are beginning this year of studies and overall human growth. For what do we hunger? What drives us as we approach our studies, our work and our various extracurriculars? What are our goals, to which the various components of our life this year are supposed to be means? Many, we know, are motivated ultimately by the things of the world, like making money, becoming famous, seizing some power and taking charge, perhaps romance or various forms of pleasure. Others have far more modest goals, like surviving the year, overcoming various anxieties or issues. But it’s important for us as Catholics to ask what is our heart set on as we begin this year. Even if we might have a confused and conflicting mix of drivers, deep down within, what is our principal motivation?
• The Psalm today describes the most fundamental human desire. It’s thirst for God. We prayed earlier in the famous words of Psalm 63, “O God, you are my God whom I seek. For you my flesh pines and my soul thirst like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water. Thus have I gazed toward you in the sanctuary, to see your power and glory, for your kindness is a greater good than life. … My soul clings fast to you; your right hand upholds me.” On Monday, we celebrated the feast of St. Augustine, who famously wrote at the beginning of his Confessions, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” His young life took many detours. He looked for God in various ancient philosophies, in oratorical brilliance, in the pleasures of the flesh, but he didn’t find what he was seeking. He wrote in the Confessions, “In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you. … You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.” St. Augustine wrote what he did, among other things, so that we could learn from his mistakes. He wants us to grasp that we’ve been made by God for God and that even the best things of the world, apart from God, will ultimately never satisfy. God wants to pour his living water to quench our existential thirst. He wants to feed our deepest hungers with his word, with his love, and with the Sacrament of Love, the-word-made-flesh. Real maturity, which is what we all seek, means first a capacity to take responsibility; second, it means to learn how to prioritize, to give up bad things for good, and good things for the sake of something better. Doing so is the path to meaning, to fulfillment, to true and lasting happiness. So as we begin this new year, which is a time to set good resolutions, I’d urge you maturely to make resolutions above all about how to act on the thirst God has placed in you for him, how to burn for his peace and find it, how to rest in him, study in him, and ultimately live in him. Your heart will be restless until you do.
• For us to get there, however, most of us need some level of conversion. St. Paul talks about the new life we need in today’s second reading, when he tells the ancient Christians in Rome and Christians in every era: “Do not conform yourselves to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.” The ultimate purpose of the mind is so that we may discern what God is saying to us, asking of us, and showing us. Students at Columbia here are blessed with the gift of powerful intellects and in the 17 schools at Columbia those intellects are trained in various disciplines. But in many of those classes, students are trained to conform themselves to this age, to the present way of looking at things, and even to some its fads. St. Paul is called us not to conform ourselves to these ever changing trends, but to have our mind renewed, indeed reborn, by focusing on our relationship with the Lord. We aspire here at Columbia Catholic Ministry and the Thomas Merton Institute for Catholic Life to help in that renewal of the mind by offering an array of short classes on various aspects of the faith, Bible studies, lectures, one-on-one and group conversations, and more, so that just as you’re learning about history, biology, engineering, literature, philosophy, languages and other subjects, you may also learn about God and even to encounter him personally. This is the renewal the God who gave us our brains most wants us to have. Please come hungry and thirsty as we seek to learn together.
• But the renewal of our minds is meant to lead to the renewal of our hearts and the renewal of our whole life. That is pointed to in the dramatic scene in today’s Gospel. Last Sunday, Jesus called Simon Peter “the Rock” on whom he would build his Church and promised that “the gates of Hell will not prevail against it.” Today, Jesus calls Peter, “Satan,” and tells him, essentially, that the gates of Hell are prevailing against him. Why? Because Peter was objecting to Jesus’ words that he would suffer, be killed and be raised: “God forbid it, Lord!,” he shouted, “this must never happen to you!” We might think that Peter’s was just the concern of a friend trying to prevent Jesus from suffering harm, but the Lord Jesus saw something much deeper. The reason why he called him “Satan,” was because Peter at that moment was, without realizing it, playing the part of Satan the tempter, effectively trying to steer Jesus away from doing his Father’s will of giving his life out of love to save ours. The reason why Jesus said, “Get behind me!,” is because Peter was trying to lead Jesus rather than to followhim, and no creature can ever do that to the Creator, and no disciple can ever do that to the Master. Jesus very directly summed up what was the cause of Peter’s fall: “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” Peter needed a renewal of his mind, to grasp how the way of the Cross was not a contradiction to the will of God but the culmination of that divine plan. Likewise Peter, the other apostles, and almost every Christian since, has needed a renewal of the mind with regard to what Jesus said immediately after. It was tough enough to accept “the way God thinks” when that meant that the “Christ, the Son of the Living God” was going to undergo great suffering and be crucified. But Jesus said that if we wanted to be his disciples, we would need to do the same. “If anyone wishes to become my disciple,” Jesus tells us forthrightly at the end of today’s Gospel, “he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” We obviously desire to be the Lord’s true disciple. That’s why we’re here at Mass tonight. We also hope our family members, friends and others we care about to be true disciples of Jesus, too. But we and they cannot be Jesus’ disciples unless we do what he indicates — deny ourselves rather than affirm ourselves, pick up our Cross daily, and follow Jesus rather than doing our own thing. This means thinking as he thinks, willing as he wills, choosing as he chooses, serving as he serves and loving as he loves.
• In the midst of a world that seeks to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, we are scandalized by the Cross, Jesus’, ours and others’. Like Peter, we would prefer to call the shots, too, and lead God rather than follow him. But that’s ultimately because we have a partial view of the Cross. When we look at it, we can fundamentally see it as an ignominious instrument of brutal public execution, as a sign of literally excruciating pain. But that’s not its fundamental meaning for Jesus and for those who believe in him. It’s a sign and way of the self-giving love that makes even that much pain bearable. It’s a sign of Christ’s heroism and his disciples. Jesus is calling us through the Cross to unite ourselves with him in his self-giving love. Lots of people sacrifice so much for worldly gain. Athletes work out and practice to exhaustion and even hurling for the sake of making the team or winning a championship. Students pull all nights to finish papers or cram for exams. Medical students can defer having much free time of their own, or even families, for years to make it through medical school and residencies. Jesus is calling us, rather, to a similar, indeed even greater, standard of sacrifice for him and for others, to deny and even die to ourselves out of love for him and our neighbor. And he would only be calling us to this form of ordinary Christian heroism if he knew, with his help, that we were up to the challenge.
• Paul speaks about this challenge in the second reading when he urges us, by the mercies of God, to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, our spiritual worship. The body, for Paul, is a sign of the person, body, soul and spirit. To offer our bodies as a living, holy, and pleasing sacrifice is to say to God and to others, “This is my body, this is all I am and have, given for you.” St. Paul says that this is our “spiritual worship,” but the real words he uses in Greek are logike latreia. Latreia means worship or adoration, something given only to God. Logike comes from Logos, which means word, which St. John uses at the beginning of his Gospel to say, “In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God and the Logos was God.” That’s where one gets the word “spiritual,” basically meaning divine. But logike likewise means “logical” or “rational.” What St. Paul is essentially say is that the only worship of God that makes sense is to offer all that we have as a living, holy and pleasing self-gift to God and to others. It’s not just to give something. But to seek to love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength and to love our neighbor as Christ has loved us first. That’s what it means to deny ourselves in order to affirm God and others, to die to our egos so that we can put on the mind of Christ, to lose our life in order to save it. That’s what it means to follow Christ along the path of cruciform love.
• But doing so is not going to be easy. This summons to become like God can sometimes be bitter. We see that bitterness in the first reading. The Prophet Jeremiah, as you remember, was called as a teenager to be the prophet of the Lord. He tried to get out of it by saying he was too young, but God told him he wasn’t to young and lacked eloquent, but the Lord told him, “Say not, ‘I am too young.’ To whomever I send you, you shall go; whatever I command you, you shall speak. Have no fear before them, because I am with you to deliver you.” Then he placed his words in Jeremiah’s mouth. But as soon as Jeremiah starting calling God’s people in Jerusalem and Judah to conversion, he suffered for it. People mocked him. Some even tried to kill him. He felt like there were people set out to entrap and harm him on every side. He gave witness to it in today’s first reading, complaining, “You duped me, O Lord, and I let myself be duped. … All day long I am an object of laughter; everyone mocks me. … The word of the Lord has brought me derision and reproach all the way.” If we choose to unite ourselves to Christ, live the Christian, and share the Gospel by words and example, we will, just as Jesus promised, similarly experience some suffering. It will happened when we don’t engage in gossip and backstabbing when others want accomplices. It will occur when others want to cheat and we stay honest. It will take place when others want indulgence and we choose chastity, or sobriety, or temperance. It will result if others want to understand freedom as the ability to do whatever they want, even to taking another human being’s life, and we defend the dignity of every person along the entirety of the human lifespan. It will ensue if others choose partisanship and we choose community. In an age of demagoguery and various ideologies, we will discover, as several commentators have quipped, that Christianophobia is the last acceptable prejudice. That suffering, or even the fear of it, may tempt us to stay silent, sit on the sidelines or even abandon Jesus’ way. Jeremiah was tempted in that direction. But then we see what happened to him. He recognized he couldn’t. He wrote, “I said to myself, ‘I will not mention him, I will speak his name no more,’ but then it became like fire burning in my heart, imprisoned within my bones; I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it.” We see that in his life, as he continued to proclaim God’s word. We see it in St. Peter’s, who, after being called Satan and summoned to conversion, ended up giving the supreme witness to Christ and the Gospel. We see it in the life of St. Paul, who after persecuting Christians spent the rest of his life trying to make Christians, once exclaiming, “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel!” We see the same thing in so many saints, both the famous ones we celebrate in the liturgical calendar as well as the saints next door, who are intrepid witnesses to the integrity of the Gospel and true love of God and neighbor. The Lord today, at the beginning of this year, wants to make our bones burn with a desire for others to come to know God, to thirst for him, to seek his will and to live it.
• One of the problems for Jeremiah is that he felt so alone as he did what God was doing. He experienced abandonment, even “terror on every side.” But that’s not the normal way. Jesus founded a Church, a family, precisely to help us grasp that we’re never alone and to sustain us in all aspects of life, from the happiest celebrations to the heaviest crosses. That’s what we aspire to be at Columbia Catholic Ministry. To accompany each other as we thirst for the living God, as we allow God to renew our minds, as we offer our lives as a pleasing sacrifice, as we deny ourselves, pick up our Cross and follow the Lord along the way of the Cross, which is, paradoxically, the way of happiness, holiness, and heaven. We hope that you will join us on this team founded by Jesus as we seek together with wish an imperishable crown. We hope you will join us in this family as we strive in common to live by faith, to grow in faith, and to share it as a gift with others who need God in their lives just as much as we do.
• Toward the end of today’s Gospel, Jesus asks a somewhat haunting question. “What profit would there be,” he said, “to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life?” Jesus took on our human nature and entered the world so that we might have life and have it to the full. But in order to have it all, we must think as God thinks, not as human beings do, we need to be transformed by the renewal of our minds so that we may discern and do God’s will, and we must thirst above all for God the living God and seek to unite all things to him. What profit would there be to gain the whole world — Columbia degrees, Nobel Prizes, MVP awards, championships, money, power, pleasure, fame and more — but in the end lose what’s most important, lose God, and lose the ultimate purpose and meaning of our life? It doesn’t have to be an either or, but there must be a priority. And at the beginning of this new school year, through the help of the word of God, the Lord is helping us to make a wise choice.
• Every Mass we attend we are strengthend to make that choice. It’s here that God seeks to renew our minds with the holy Word of God. It’s here that we offer our bodies to God as sacraments of our entire being, body and soul. It’s here where we gain the strength to choose him over every other thing in the world combined and to have his very own life ignite us from within like fire in our bones to go with him and help him save the world. It’s here where we meet his thirst with our thirst, and to give him here at Mass and throughout the liturgy of our life the only worship that makes sense, the total self-gift of ourselves to him and for others in response to his love in giving himself totally for us and our salvation. This is what it means to conform ourselves to the way God thinks. This is the way of true and thorough renewal. This is the means by which we gain more than the whole world.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Whenever I speak, I must cry out,
violence and outrage is my message;
the word of the LORD has brought me
derision and reproach all the day.

I say to myself, I will not mention him,
I will speak in his name no more.
But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart,
imprisoned in my bones;
I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it.

Then Jesus said to his disciples,
“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,
take up his cross, and follow me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world
and forfeit his life?
Or what can one give in exchange for his life?
For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father’s glory,
and then he will repay all according to his conduct.”

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