Faithfully Confessing and Following Christ All The Way, 24th Sunday (B), September 15, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
September 15, 2024
Is 50:5-9, Ps 116, James 2:14-18, Mk 8:27-35

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

The following text guided today’s homily: 

• There’s great confusion today about who Jesus Christ is. Most everyone knows about him. About 2.5 of the 8.0 billion people alive profess themselves to be his followers. Muslims think he was just a prophet, like the other famous prophets in Jewish history. Many of the leading Jews, then and now, deem him a heretic and a blasphemer. The ancient Romans thought he was a revolutionary. Most people today consider him a famous moral teacher, alongside Confucius, Buddha, Socrates, certain Hindu gurus, and various figures in own age like Ghandi, Martin Luther King and others. Even among Christians, there are many who, rehearsing the Christological heresies of the first centuries, deny or underemphasize Jesus’ divinity or humanity leading to all types of issues at the level of faith and morals. That’s why what Jesus does for his first followers is so important for each of us today. He first surveys, “Who do people say that I am?” and then he asks each of us, “Who do you say that I am?” We are the people who say that Christ is more than just a holy and good man, more than an inspiring prophet who announces ethical, even divine, words and ways. We are the people who confess, with Peter and the Church built on him, who Jesus really is. This is the faith that brings us together: Jesus is not merely the long-awaited Messiah come to set us free, but the Son of God, who not only announces the words of God, but is their Author. Our faith in Christ, however, must be more than something we say on our lips. It must be something we confess by the way we live. And that’s what Jesus today is going to help us to do, because many of us make the same mistakes the people of Jesus’ day, even his followers, did.
• In response to the first question, the poll of what other people were saying, the disciples were eager to respond. They informed Jesus that the people were numbering him among the greatest Jewish heroes of all time, like the prophets Elijah and Jeremiah, and, more recently, John the Baptist. But Jesus didn’t stop with those results. First, because it wasn’t enough to rest on what the surveys said, on what others believed, despite the exalted circles into which people were placing Jesus. Second, because the assessments weren’t true. Jesus was far greater than Elijah, Jeremiah and John. He was greater than Abraham, Moses, David and Solomon. Third, because Jesus hadn’t come so that people would merely remain “fans” or “admirers” of him because that would not lead to their salvation; he had come to set them on the path on which he had come into the world to lead them.
• And so he asked the second question, “Who do you say that I am?” At this point, all but one of the disciples remained mute. It was easy to communicate what the crowds were saying, but to put oneself on the line, to make a personal, public confession, required courage and conviction. I’ve always found it somewhat surprising that Nathaniel, or Barthlomew, didn’t speak up. In his first conversation with Jesus, after Jesus said he had seen him under the fig tree, he exclaimed, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God, you are the King of Israel” (Jn 1:49). The latter meant he was the Messiah; the former far more than the Messiah. But this time he timidly kept his mouth shut. Simon Peter, however, put out into the deep. God the Father had led him to recognize that Jesus was indeed much more even than what the others were saying and had the guts to be the first to say it. “You are the Christ!,” he said. Christ, the Greek word for Messiah, communicated that Jesus was the long awaited one foretold by all the prophets. In St. Matthew’s version of the scene, he recalls Peter’s also confessing Jesus, like Nathaniel, to be the very own Son of God. To make that admission was to bring into the foreground a whole series of expectations. The Messiah was to be the one who would bring back the Kingdom of David, who would kick out all foreign powers, who would return Israel to prominence. And as we see in other parts of the Gospel, Jesus’ closest followers were all ambitiously hoping to receive choice positions in Jesus’ messianic administration.
• That’s why, as soon as Peter enunciated Jesus’ true identity, Jesus began to teach them what type of Messiah he would be, how he would inaugurate his kingdom, and how they were share in and announce it. It blew their mind. Rather than uniting the Jews and defeating and expelling the Romans, rather than leading the twelve tribes to triumph, he would instead suffer greatly, be rejected by the chief priests, the scribes and the elders and be killed. He would fulfill the prophecies of the Suffering Servant Songs in Isaiah, which we heard in the first reading, in which he would give his back to those who beat him, his cheeks to those who plucked his beard, his face to those who would buffet him and spit on him. Jesus told them all of this “openly,” St. Mark tells us, so that they would know it clearly. To get a sense of their shock, it would be like someone who had just won a Presidential election in his victory speech saying that rather than lead his supporters and the country to greatness, he would instead be seized by members of his party in collaboration with the opposing parties and various foreign powers, be humiliated, tortured, and finally hung from a national monument.
• But Peter, emboldened by his previous affirmation and obviously desiring not only to be the principal advisor of the Messiah but bodyguard, took Jesus aside and “began to rebuke him.” “God forbid anything like this should happen to you!,” he said, according to St. Matthew’s eyewitness account. He couldn’t fathom that a Messiah would be rejected and killed rather than conquer. It was totally incompatible with Jewish Messianic expectations for the long-awaited one to suffer in this way. But Jesus wanted to help him and all of the apostles recognize that, yes, he was the Messiah, but his kingdom and the liberation he was bringing were far different than what they were expecting. He tells Peter not, “Get away from me!” but, “Get behind me!” Jesus wasn’t ridding himself of Peter, but he was pointing out what Peter had been trying to do: lead the Lord rather than followthe Lord. To tell him to get behind him was to make him a disciple rather than a roadblock. He also told him the reason why he was behaving like an obstacle: “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” Peter was seeing only with human eyes, from human political hopes, rather than with the eyes of faith, the eyes that God seeks to give us. Peter at first grasped what the crowds didn’t, that Jesus wasn’t just one of the prophets of old, but rather the Messiah. But Jesus was helping him to realize the type of Messiah he really is, rather than just Peter imagined he would be, so that Peter — and all the others — would be able to confess him in far greater depth.
• So Jesus called them all together and said that not only would he suffer, but if we sought to remain with him, we must suffer too. “Whoever wishes to come after me,” he said, whoever wants to share in his kingdom and reign with him, “must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” As if that is not challenging enough, he adds: “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel, will save it.” To use the analogy given before, Jesus was saying that anyone who wanted to support him would have to say no to worldly ambitions, pick up his own noose, and follow him to the national monument. But as we pondered and celebrated yesterday on the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross, the cross Jesus is asking us to assume is not fundamentally an instrument of torture, pain and suffering but a sign and means of the love that can make even that much pain and suffering bearable. It’s a weapon of holiness, a sign of victory precisely over selfishness, sin and the death to which they lead.
• Let’s bring the conversation around. Jesus asks each of us, individually and constantly, what he asked his first followers. “Who do you so that I am?” It’s not enough for us to rest on what others say, on what the Catechism teaches, about what the Doctors of the Church, or the Pope, or Bishops, or founders, superiors or novice mistresses, or our parents, grandparents and godparents have said. All of that is helpful, but it’s not sufficient: we all must make a consequential admission, to state clearly who Jesus is, and not just as an intellectual assertion, but to confess in such a way as to conform our life to that truth, getting behind Jesus, thinking as God does, denying ourselves, picking our own cross daily and following him. It’s obvious that this is a very challenge reality, because, just like at Peter’s time, these commands go against worldly ways. Rather than affirming ourselves, Christ calls us to deny ourselves. Rather than fleeing from suffering, Christ tells us to seize the Cross and die out of love for God and others. Rather than doing our own thing, he tells us to follow him. Rather than seeking to save our life by our own wits, he tells us that the only way to save it is to lose it in loving service of God and others, perhaps even to the point of death.
• This is what St. James points to in today’s second reading when he distinguishes between living faith in Jesus and dead faith with no power to save. “Faith by itself, if it has no works,” the apostle underlines, “is dead.” If faith remains simply a thing of the head and doesn’t affect the heart, the hands, the feet, and our choices, then it is powerless. If faith is alive, then it produces works of faith, it leads to works of love (see Gal 5:6; 1 Cor 13:2). That’s why St. James gets very practical, to help us to determine if our faith is alive. “If a brother or sister,” he states, “is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” It’s not enough, he’s saying, that we be “concerned” for others, that we sympathize with those in difficult situations. We must act on that concern and sympathy by doing what we can to help those in need. To have living faith we need to do more than know and approve of Jesus’ statement, “Love one another as I have loved you,” but to put that Christ-like love into practice. There are people around us who do not have proper clothing, who lack daily food. There are many more people who are not “clothed in Christ” (Gal 3:27), who are “spiritually poor” as St. Teresa of Calcutta said, who are malnourished and starving for the word of God. The question for us is: What are we trying to do about it? Our faith, if it is alive, must translate into the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. Thanks, Sisters, for giving the whole Church an example of a truly living faith overflowing in love.
• What Jesus is doing is to trying to lead us along the path of salvation, along the narrow way he himself was charting, along the Way of the Cross. We live in a self-affirming age and Jesus calls us to self-denial so that we might have self-mastery and be capable of self-gift. We live in a hedonistic age that is addicted to pleasure and phobic about pain and Jesus calls us to take up or seize (rather than just reluctantly accept) the Cross, the instrument on which we will die to ourselves, so that he in turn may live. Then he calls us to follow him as he gives his life for others’ salvation, as he washes other people’s feet and calls each of us to love others as he has loved us first. He asks us, “Who do you say that I am?,” and then reminds us, “I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you gave me welcome, naked and you gave me clothing, ill and you gave me comfort, in prison and you visited me.” To confess Jesus is, therefore, something we do not just with our lips, but with our life, as we choose to have among ourselves the same attitude Jesus did, who, as St. Paul reminds us, “though he was in the form of God, … emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, [and]  humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.” The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council stressed this when they said, “Christ fully reveals man to himself and makes his supreme calling clear,” and indicated that we are called to follow him on the path of cruciform self-giving love: “Man cannot find himself except in the unselfish gift of himself to others” (Gaudium et Spes, 22, 24). We must “lose” ourselves to gain life. We must die to ourselves and allow God to raise us from the dead. We must unselfishly give ourselves for others. This is Christianity. This is the Gospel.
• Today, on September 15, the Church normally marks the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows and we see in the Blessed Mother, the perfect disciple, how to have truly living faith and embrace the holy way Jesus puts before all of us today. Mary never hesitated to confess who her Son was and gave him in response her loving trust and total surrender, with cheerfulness even amidst her maternal tears. She followed her Son faithfully, denying herself, picking up her motherly cross, and following him to Calvary as co-redeemer. She’s given to us as a model of how to confess her Son through entering into his passion. As we pray in the famous hymn Stabat Mater that is sung as a sequence before the Gospel on the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows, we ask her to help us imitate her unforgettable confession. “O sweet Mother! font of love, touch my spirit from above, make my heart with yours accord. Make me feel as you have felt; make my soul to glow and melt with the love of Christ, my Lord. Holy Mother, pierce me through, in my heart each wound renew of my Savior crucified. Let me share with you his pain, who for all our sins was slain, who for me in torments died. Let me mingle tears with thee, mourning him who mourned for me, all the days that I may live. By the cross with you to stay, there with you to weep and pray, is all I ask of you to give. Virgin of all virgins blest! Listen to my fond request: let me share your grief divine.Let me to my latest breath, in my body bear the death of that dying Son of yours.” Today we ask her for the grace to imitate her in having the same mind of Christ, in sharing his love for us and the whole human race, in his capacity to deny himself, pick up his cross and perfect the greatest love that lays down one’s life for one’s friends. We seek, like Mary, to bear in our body the self-denial and cruciform death of Jesus, so that we may experience his risen life and joy.
• Every Mass we’re given the opportunity to confess who Christ is when the Church proclaims, “The Gospel of the Lord” and “The Body of Christ.” We’re supposed to listen to Jesus’ words just like the apostles tried in Caesarea Philippi and elsewhere. We’re called to receive him with the faith of Mary at the Annunciation, St. John at the Last Supper and Mary herself did in the apostles’ post-Ascension Masses. We’re called to be transformed by both the Word of God and the Word made Flesh to put this faith into action as we, like Mary at Calvary, enter by means of the Eucharistic sacrifice, into his passion, death and resurrection. In this Eucharistic Revival, it’s important for us to grasp that our response to Jesus in the Eucharist manifests our reply to the question he places in the Gospel. It manifests whether we have living or dead faith. If we confess the Eucharistic Jesus to be the Messiah and Son of God, then we will seek to order our whole life to the fulfillment of the Last Supper, Calvary and the Empty Tomb, which is our Eucharistic communion with him. To live a Eucharistic life is to imitate Jesus’ outpouring on Calvary, to stop thinking as human beings do but as Jesus does, and to stop acting like all the rest, but to imitate Jesus, to follow Jesus, and to collaborate with Jesus and all those he calls to be his collaborators, becoming broken, like the sacred host, for the world. And Jesus here strengthens us so that our faith will overflow into extreme love in imitation and communion with his. “Who do you say that I am?” As we, with all the Church, confess Jesus today as Messiah and Son of God, and as we prepare to receive him within in Holy Communion, let us ask him for the grace that in all actions we may witness to him, by the faithful, courageous way we, with him, faithfully lose our lives to give them out of love for him and others.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

The Lord GOD is my help,
therefore I am not disgraced;
I have set my face like flint,
knowing that I shall not be put to shame.
He is near who upholds my right;
if anyone wishes to oppose me,
let us appear together.
Who disputes my right?
Let that man confront me.
See, the Lord GOD is my help;
who will prove me wrong?

Indeed someone might say,
“You have faith and I have works.”
Demonstrate your faith to me without works,
and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works.

He began to teach them
that the Son of Man must suffer greatly
and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes,
and be killed, and rise after three days.
He spoke this openly.
Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
At this he turned around and, looking at his disciples,
rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan.
You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

He summoned the crowd with his disciples and said to them,
“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
and that of the gospel will save it.”

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