Cooperative Ambition for True Greatness, 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B), September 19, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Missionaries of Charity Convent, Bronx, NY
25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
September 19, 2021
Wis 2:12.17-20, Ps 54, James 3:16-4:3, Mk 9:30-37

To listen to an audio recording please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• Today’s Gospel will hopefully never seek to shock us. Jesus is talking for the second time about his upcoming suffering. We had the first time last week, when Jesus described what type of Messiah he would be. It was clear not only how much it was on his mind but how much he wanted it on the apostles’ radar. He was about to be betrayed into the hands of those who would mock, scourge, crucify and kill him. He was about to become the fulfillment of the prophecy of the Book of Wisdom in the first reading, when they would beset, revile the Just One because he in his goodness was obnoxious to them, because his very being reproached them for their transgressions of the law. They were going to torture and condemn him to a shameful death, in fact, the most shameful death of all, crucifixion.
• We would have expected, when Jesus was talking about this to his twelve closest friends, who had spent the previous two years with him, that they would have been concerned about him. Rather than consoling him, however, they start arguing about which one of them is the greatest. Whenever, in fact, Jesus spoke about his upcoming crucifixion, it always seemed to bring out the worst in them.
  • We saw last week that when Jesus told them about it for the first time, St. Peter, the newly named rock, took him aside and tried to rebuke him, earning for himself in return the worst rebuke in the Bible, the name Satan, for trying to lead rather than to follow Jesus, for thinking not as God thinks but as human beings do.
  • Later, when Jesus would announce yet again that the chief priests and the scribes would condemn him to death, deliver him to the Gentiles to be mocked, spat upon scourged and crucified, James and John, two of the three closest of the disciples, came up to him and asked him to do whatever they asked, and what they wanted was to sit one on his right and the other on his left as he entered his kingdom — oblivious to the fact that those spots were already pre-ordained by the Father for a good and bad thief. Immediately after that chutzpah, the other apostles, recognizing what the sons of Zebedee had done, got indignant at James and John, not because of the way they were trying to use Jesus, but because they were not gutsy enough to ask for what they all openly desired but didn’t have the temerity to ask.
  • And perhaps the worst example of all occurred during the Last Supper. After Jesus indicated to them, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me,” the apostles got into yet another dispute over which of them was the greatest. Rather than thinking about who would be the despicable traitor, they were thinking about who would be numero uno, not recognizing at the time that, because their flesh was weak, all of them would end up betraying him.
• To get a sense of the ugliness of the apostles’ egocentric jockeying for position, imagine that a father came to his children and told them that the doctor had just given him two weeks to live and, instead of consoling him, instead of even showing that he cared about him, they immediately shifted the attention to who would get the house and the car, or asked him to intervene before it would be too late to help them get promotions at work. That’s what was happening in these scenes. It’s sad and ridiculous. These were all examples of what St. James would describe in today’s second reading as “jealousy and selfish ambition,” from “coveting” and “envy” that leads us obsessively to “ask wrongly” in order to satisfy our “passions.” The apostles were seeking their own interests, not those of the Lord. They were using him, not loving him. What happened with them is a perennial warning to the Church, to the disciples of the Lord.
• But Jesus never tried to eliminate his followers’ ambition, but to purify it and direct it toward true greatness. Often in the Church people are trained to regard all ambition and aspirations to greatness almost as sinful violations of humility, as if every ambition is what Saint James calls “selfish.” But there’s a huge difference between a passion for self-aggrandizement — an ego-indulging hunger for riches, honor, power, a desire not just to be the best but to be acknowledged as the best — and a holy zeal for the things of God and his kingdom. Saint Paul told us in his first Letter to the Corinthians, “Strive eagerly for the greatest spiritual gifts,” and said that they were not things like prophetic gifts, faith to move mountains, heroic feats of enduring suffering, but faith, hope and especially a charity that is patient, kind, not arrogant or rude. We think about how ambition worked in the life of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the 500^th anniversary of whose conversion we are celebrating this year. Prior to the Battle of Pamplona, where he had his leg shattered by a cannon ball, he vainly sought worldly honor on the battlefield and in the courts of royals. After convalescing for many months, studying the life of Christ and reading the lives of many saints, he was filled with a sacred ambition and asked, “Why can’t I do what” what Saint Dominic and Saint Francis have done? He became instead ambitious to do everything for God’s greater glory. St. Francis Xavier, his former roommate and fellow founding Jesuit, had the ambition to bring whole nations to the Lord. St. Teresa of Avila had the ambition to reform the Carmelites so that it might sing forever of God’s glory. Saint Teresa of Calcutta, in response to the Lord’s request, had the ambition to satiate Jesus’ infinite thirst for souls.
• He told them the path of holy ambition was that of cruciform self-giving: “If anyone wishes to be first,” he said, “he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.” To be great we must excel 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. A little child is not even able to thank us, for changing diapers, feeding, clothing and more. 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 reward us. That’s the type of service we’re called to give. That’s the kind of ambition to which we’re supposed to aspire. An ambition not for the first place in the eyes of the world but the first place in the eyes of God, one in which we’re not envious of others’ success but try to make it happen out of love.
• In the Gospel, Jesus spoke several times about true greatness and described the characteristics of Christian greatness. Let’s examine five things he wants us to become truly great in:
  • First, Jesus wants us to be great in faith. He praised the Syro-Phoenician mother and the Roman Centurion for their great faith and longed that all in Israel would emulate it. All the more, he would want us, his followers, to have great faith. And we should aspire to it, begging him, “Lord, increase my faith!”
  • Second, Jesus wants us to be great in humility. In response to the disciples’ question, “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven?,” Jesus called a child over and said, “Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.” To be great in humility is not contradictory, just paradoxical. Just like a child is totally dependent on his or her parents, so Jesus wants us to become great in our filial dependence on all God wants to give. The temptation is for us to think we don’t need God, that we’re self-sufficient. The chief sin of the prodigal son was to treat the Father basically as if he were already dead, to get the inheritance now, forgetting that a far more important treasure than half the father’s wealth was the relationship with the Father. Jesus indicates for us that the path to greatness is to become great in recognizing our need for, and receiving with gratitude, all God wants to give.
  • Third, Jesus wants us to be ambitious in our total imitation of his self-sacrificial love. “Whoever would be first among you must be the servant of all,” he tells us. Later on in St. Mark’s Gospel he spoke directly of the contrast between earthly and worldly ambition when he said, “You know that those who are supposed to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mk 10:43-45). Jesus wants us to receive his grace to grow in the desire to give our life to ransom others from slavery and death, just as he did. During the Last Supper, after he washed the disciples’ feet, he told them, “Do you know what I have done to you?  You call me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them” (Jn 13).
  • Fourth, Jesus wants us to be ambitious to be saints. “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect,” Jesus said, echoing the prophets’ call for us to be holy as the Lord, our God, is holy, to be merciful as our Father is merciful, so that we might fully become the image and likeness of the God who created us.
• Fifth, Jesus wants us to be great in living by his truths and passing them on to others. “Whoever keeps these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called great in the Kingdom of heaven,” he tells us in the Sermon on the Mount. He wants us to excel in sharing the faith by our example and by our words. He came to light a fire on the earth and is longing for it to be enkindled. We think of great missionaries like Saint Paul and Saint Francis Xavier, the North American Martyrs, and others. We think about religious sisters and brothers who taught so selflessly generations of Catholic school students instilling within them the knowledge and love of God. We think about so many catechists who patiently pass on the faith to children, teens, and adults. We think about parents, grandparents and godparents, who make it their priority to pass on the faith. We think about truly apostolic friends who seek to share with those they care about the faith they care about the most.
• Are we striving to become truly great in these ways Jesus indicates or according to worldly categories? Are we thinking as God does or as human beings do? We can wear the priestly vestments or religious habits, but have the desires of our heart been as transformed as our clothing? The reality is that, just as he did with the apostles, Jesus has told us over and again that he will be betrayed, mocked, tortured, and ignominiously crucified and on the third day raised. It was ugly for them, in anticipation of what he would endure, for them to elbow each other for worldly advancement, ignoring the reality and meaning of his passion, death and resurrection. I would argue, knowing what Jesus has endured for us and our salvation, that it is much uglier for us now to remain only at the level of worldly desires. The Son of God became man not so that we might ambitiously seek the things of this world while just doing the minimum spiritually. Jesus died and rose so that we might live new lives, in the world but not of it, seeking first the kingdom of God and God’s holiness, recognizing that everything else of true value will be given us besides.
• The greatest disciple of all time is the woman God the Father chose to be the mother of his Son and that Son from Calvary chose to be our mother. She is the greatest in faith, humility and holiness, she receives us as her children and seeks to breastfeed us on her faith, hope and love. God has permitted her to intervene in time on various occasions to call us back to the Gospel, to the hope that God has in us, so that we might truly live as his image and likeness. 175 years ago today she appeared to two child farmers in LaSalette France. I am a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, where in Attleboro, there is the National Shrine of Our Lady of LaSalette, famous for its Christmas lights, but where the events of the apparitions are portrayed with the help of beautiful statues on their exquisite grounds and where the priests of Our Lady of LaSalette have exercised an important ministry of conversion for many years. I have also had the privilege to go to the Shrine of the Apparitions in the French Alps twice. What happened there on September 19, 1846? As two children — Melanie Calvat and Maximin Giraud — were grazing their cows on the mountainside, they came upon a woman seated on a rock sobbing. On Wednesday we celebrated the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows and ponder Mary’s tears on Calvary. Normally if we were to see our mother crying, we would immediately spring into action to try to comfort her as needed. We need to ponder the image of our Lady bawling her eyes out with her face in her hands and her elbows on her knees, because without grasping it, we won’t be able to grasp her love, and we may not be opening ourselves fully to receive that love.  Her tears initially frightened the 14-year-old girl and 11-year-old boy, but she told them not to be afraid, to come close, because she wanted to announce to them great news. That was the great news of conversion.
• The two kids had built of the stones they found as their cows were grazing a little shrine called “Paradise” and that’s close to where a Mary, radiant as a ball of fire, at first was seated, to show them that not everyone was on the way to Paradise. Not even were they not seeking greatness, but not even goodness; they weren’t even keeping the minimal aspects of our faith but sinning in the fundamental categories in which they should have been striving. She lamented in particular four practices common then that are still very common today, all of which point to the way that we don’t live in a manner worthy of our calling, loving God and loving our neighbor: Mary indicated that so many were blaspheming the name of God; missing Sunday Mass; failing to pray, and not even taking the conversion of Lent seriously. Through this apparition she was calling them, and through them all of us, to do the opposite: to use our thoughts and speech to praise God; to prioritize the great gift of her Son in the Eucharist; to become people who pray; and to repent and believe in the Gospel and live a repentant life. She wore a radiant crucifix that had two symbols on it, one a hammer and another a pair of pincers, which was a sign of the freedom that everyone has, the freedom to refuse God and hammer Jesus to the Cross by sin, or the freedom to love God and take the pincers to remove the nails. That is the choice that faces every Christian. She weeps when we choose the nail, not just because of what that meant for Jesus her Son but what that means for each of us with the hammer in our hand. She rejoices when we take out the pincers to try to remove the nails by which our sins hammered his hands and feed to the Cross. We pick up the pincers every day we love God, every time we love our neighbor, every time we commit to live with humility, gentleness, patience and communion.
• The message of Our Lady in LaSalette is one of hope, hope for conversion, hope ultimately for greatness by grace. Melanie and Maximin were not practicing Catholics when Mary appeared and seldom said their prayers. Their conversion led to the conversion of many others, beginning with Maximin’s father. When he was drunk and yelled at his son for speaking about this Lady so much, the 11-year-old responded that Our Lady had spoken of him. That pierced his father and he came to the place where Mary had appeared to the children, where a stream had begun to flow where Mary had sat. He drank some of the water and received a spiritual healing, to give up his firewater and live off of the Living Water. He became a daily Mass goer for the rest of his life. That conversion is a sign of hope to everyone. Pope Francis said about the apparition this morning at St. Peter’s Square, “Mary’s tears make us think of Jesus’ tears over Jerusalem and of his anguish in Gethsemane: they are a reflection of Christ’s suffering for our sins and an appeal that is always contemporary, to entrust ourselves to God’s mercy.” Saint John Paul II spoke of this hope, too, in 1996, during the 150th  anniversary of the apparitions. “The message of La Salette,” he said, “was given to two young cowherds in a period of great suffering. People were scourged by famine, subjected to many injustices. Indifference or hostility toward the Gospel message worsened. As she appeared, bearing upon her breast the likeness of her crucified Son, Our Lady showed herself to be associated to the work of salvation, experiencing compassion for her children… La Salette is a message of hope, a hope sustained by the intercession of her who is the Mother of all peoples…  At La Salette, Mary clearly spoke of the constancy of her prayer for the world: she will never abandon the people created in the image and likeness of God, those to whom it has been given to become children of God. May she lead to her Son all the nations of the earth.”
• The great way we recalibrate our ambitions is to live a truly Eucharist life. In the Holy Eucharist, Jesus goes beyond what he did on Calvary. He humbles himself so much as to become our very spiritual nourishment, seeking to transform us on the inside so that with him we may give our body and blood, our sweat and tears, all we are and have out of love for God the Father and for others. When we seek what Jesus gives and teaches us in the Eucharist, when we receive him as he deserves and desires to be received, God can make us great not at others’ expenses but precisely through lovingly lifting them up. The Eucharist is where we learn to receive Jesus with love and in receiving him to recognize and receive him in children and everyone else he sends us. This Sacrament of love teaches us how to love. And so, as we prepare to receive the fruits of Jesus’ betrayal, suffering, death and resurrection, let us ask our Eucharistic Lord for the grace to be filled with a desire for what really matters and for all the help he knows we need to act on that holy ambition for the greatest spiritual gifts.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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