True Disciples Climbing to the Heights on the Highway to Heaven, Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), September 7, 2025

Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Chapel of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
September 7, 2025
Wis 9:13-18, Ps 90, Philemon 9-10.12-17, Lk 14:25-33

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

The following text guided today’s homily: 

• Early this morning in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Leo canonized two great young men, Saints Pier Giorgio Frassati (1901-1925) and Carlo Acutis (1991-2006). Both show us you don’t need to be old to be holy, you don’t have to come from a devout family, you don’t need to leave the world, family and friends behind and live some form of extraordinary existence. Rather you have to live with a vivid awareness of the incredible love of God and aim to live one’s whole life in union with him. Both had a great love for the Eucharist and sought to receive Jesus each day once they became truly aware of the treasure. Both were extraordinary friends to large groups of their peers. Both were zealous in their care for others, especially the poor. Both were heroic in their brief but intense periods of physical suffering that would take their lives by acute polio and leukemia respectively. Their relatable and imitable examples have made the call to holiness far more palpable and less intimidating to millions. Their joint canonization is like a message: that the Lord Jesus is sending them as a pair to help encourage each of us to follow them in following Him. St. Pier Giorgio wrote on the back of a photo of him rock climbing up a steep cliff, “Verso l’alto,” which summarizes his entire life: “Toward the heights.” St. Carlo urged us to join him on the “highway to heaven,” which he said is a truly Eucharistic life, “always close to Jesus,” which was his rule of life. Today we seek to join them as disciples climbing to the summit on the heavenly highway.
• To do that, we need to have a clear sense of the goal, of the destination, of the eternal Jerusalem. Jesus in the Gospel speaks to us with two memorable images about what we could call “starting with the end in mind.” Before beginning to build a tower, he says, we need to make sure we have the resources to complete it. Likewise, before the first battle is waged, we need to know that we have enough troops to win the war. It’s important advice in any endeavor. But it’s essential in the Christian life. Jesus gives three conditions in the Gospel to help us determine if we’re sagely beginning with the end in mind, to help us know whether we’ve got the bricks to finish the job and the troops to fight the good fight. The conditions are challenging, but Jesus regularly challenges his disciples in the Gospel. So what are the conditions?
• The first condition is to love God above everyone and everything. Jesus says, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” To understand what he is saying, we have to grasp the Hebrew term for “hate.” It doesn’t mean to “detest” but to “put in second place.” Jesus, after all, calls us to honor our parents, not hate their guts. He calls us to love even our enemies, and so we are certainly called to love our siblings! The point of Jesus’ expression is that He must be our greatest love, our supreme good. To be a faithful disciple of the Lord, we must love Him more than we love ourselves or our loved ones. Jesus cannot just be a part of our life but he must be the center. If we love others more than him, if we love our life more than him, we won’t have enough fuel in the plane to cross the Atlantic. This is a clear characteristic we find in the two new saints we celebrate today. Saint Pier Giorgio used to climb out his bedroom window to go to daily Mass while his parents thought he was still asleep, because he anticipated their opposition. His mother once fought his desire to receive Jesus in Holy Communion every day until he won her over. God was first for him. Similarly, Carlo’s family wasn’t practicing, but he put God in his proper place and eventually his prioritization led his parents back to keeping the promises of their baptism. They show us that what Jesus summons us to do can be done.
• The second condition concerns our willingness to suffer for him who suffered all for us. Jesus says, “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” To be a faithful follower of the one who saved us on Calvary, we need to be prepared to suffer out of love for him and others; otherwise, we will not be able faithfully to fulfill the journey of the Christian life. The clearest example of this is the martyrs, who were prepared to die rather than to sin, who were prepared to embrace the Cross all the way because they knew that the Cross would unite them to Christ. But we see this as well in Christian doctors, medical students and pharmacists who refuse to take part in any way in any practices that harm or take life, even if they might suffer professionally; we see this in people who stick up for Christ and his teachings even when they suffer derision as a result at college, work or in their families; we see this in those who sacrifice money and time to care for others and for the mission of the Church. If we’re not willing to endure suffering, if we run away from the cross rather than seek to embrace it together with Christ, then we won’t have what it takes to follow Christ all the way, uphill, through Calvary to heaven. That’s what’s we see in the lives of Saints Pier Giorgio and Carlo. They were both willing to accept the moral suffering that came from others’ mocking them for their prioritizing Jesus and living differently than the worldly. We see it, too, in the way they suffered at the end of their life. Pier Giorgio bore his enormous pains and gradual paralysis silently so that his family could have its attention on his dying grandmother. Carlo offered his sufferings for Pope Benedict XVI. They not only embraced their Cross but united themselves to Christ on the Cross, making up what was lacking in themselves of Christ’s sufferings for the sake of the Church. They show us, again, that what Jesus asks, though hard, is doable, and their fidelity inspires us.
• The third condition is meant to help us find and place in Christ our real treasure. Jesus says, “None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.” This seems to be a shockingly challenging condition, but Jesus was driving at something he had said elsewhere in the Gospel. “No one can serve two masters; for he will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other” (Mt 6:24). He then gave that sentence a clear practical application: “You cannot serve both God and money” (Mt 6:24). Unless we give up our love of money, unless we make the choice not to serve money, unless we sever the cord of being possessed by our possessions, unless we become detached from them and use them for God’s kingdom, then, he says, we cannot be his faithful follower. We cannot help but think here of the Rich Young Man, who, when presented by Jesus with the path to true fulfillment through giving up what he owned, bestowing the money on the poor, storing up treasure in heaven and then coming after him, chose his stuff rather than Jesus. Jesus says that we cannot be his disciple unless we’re prepared to choose differently from the Rich Young Man, unless we’re ready to use all that we have — every last possession — to obtain the pearl of great price. Otherwise, we will be vulnerable to valuing Jesus less than thirty pieces of silver and won’t have the courage to trade everything else we have to obtain his kingdom. This is something that characterized the lives of our two young saints. Pope Leo during the canonization Mass homily earlier today said that today’s first reading from the Book of Wisdom shows us that God and his wisdom are far more valuable than money, than merely human relationships, than our health and even our life. In response to the Book of Wisdom’s query to God, “Who ever knew your counsel, except you had given wisdom and sent your Holy Spirit from on high?” Pope Leo said, “This question is in the Book of Wisdom and is attributed to a young man like [Saints Pier Giorgio and Carlo], King Solomon. Upon the death of his father David, [Solomon] realized that he had many things, power, wealth, health, youth, beauty and the entire kingdom. But it was precisely this great abundance of resources that raised a question in his heart: What must I do so that nothing is lost? Solomon understood that the only way to find an answer was to ask God for an even greater gift, his wisdom, so that he might know God’s plans and follow them faithfully. He realized, in fact, that only in this way would everything find its place in the Lord’s great plan.” Pope Leo continued: “The greatest risk in life is to waste it outside of God’s plan. Jesus, too, in the Gospel … calls us to abandon ourselves, without hesitation, to the adventure that he offers us with the intelligence and strength that comes from his Spirit that we can receive to the extent that we empty ourselves of the things and ideas to which we are attached in order to listen to His word.” This is what we see in the lives of the two new saints. They both came from wealthy families but rather than seeking and serving money, they sought to give it away. Pier Giorgio would take the third class on the train and use the savings from the first-class fares to buy medicines, food, clothing and other goods for the poor. When asked by his friends why he took the third class when his parents had give him money for first, he said, “Because there isn’t a fourth.” Carlo brought his piggy bank to school to give it to needy classmates. He regularly used his allowance to buy blankets, sleeping bags, and thermoses he’d fill with warm liquids to bring to the homeless around him in Milan. Pier Giorgio and Carlo show us that it is possible to live by Jesus’ third condition. They manifested that whatever resources we have are meant to be blessings not just for ourselves but for others, that our goods allow us to be agents of divine providence by we enter more into his charity and the poverty by which he makes us rich.
• It’s tempting to try to soften Jesus’ three conditions, as if he really didn’t or couldn’t mean them literally, because they are so challenging to our human weaknesses. We’re tempted to try to reduce the price tag of the faith, as if Jesus were running a Yard Sale and we can haggle the cost down to something we think a price worth paying. To be Jesus’ disciple, to enter into his kingdom, however, requires a challenging and decisive choice. We have got to be willing, as Jesus says elsewhere, to “pluck out [our] eyes” and “cut off [our] hands” if that’s what it takes to follow him (Mt 5:29-30). We have got to be willing even to lose our life, because it is only the one who loses his life who will find it again in God (Mk 8:35). Unless we have a clear idea of the cost of discipleship and are prepared to pay it, Jesus implies, we’ll compromise on our faith and won’t be able to complete the journey of the Christian life. With great love, authentic spiritual fatherhood, and trust in us, Jesus wants to help us reflect on what means it’s going to take to achieve the end and to will those means, just like Carlo and Pier Giorgio show us.
• And Jesus reminds us that while there is always significant cost to our discipleship, the rewards are so much greater. Jesus promised us as much elsewhere in the Gospel after Peter asked him, “Lord, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” Jesus responded, “Truly I tell you, … everyone who for my name’s sake has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields” — almost the very words he gives in today’s first condition — “will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life” (Mt 19:29). There’s no greater promise than that! As we count the cost of discipleship and with God’s help pay the price, we know that in return we will receive Christ, who is the pearl of great value and the treasure buried in the field, worth sacrificing all we are and have to obtain! This is the great lesson we learn today from our two new saints, who received far more than 100 times blessing in this life in terms of the depth of their friendships on earth and, as we mark today in an infallible act of the Church, eternal life.
• In the second reading today, we see the true transformation power that our Christian faith is supposed to have in our life. St. Paul tells Philemon to relate to his escaped slave Onesimus, who had cared for Paul in his Roman imprisonment, as a brother not as a slave. Somewhat incredibly, he stresses that Philemon’s attitude toward Onesimus should be marked far more by the reality of their common baptism than by Roman class structure and law. Onesimus had escaped and for that reason needed at a minimum to be marked for life by a red-hot iron with a F for “fugitive” on his forehead. He could even be crucified at Philemon’s whim. But Paul sent Onesimus back to Philemon and asked Philemon to receive Onesimus not as a escaped slave but as a brother in the Lord, to welcome him as he would welcome Paul himself or even Christ himself. This is amazing: The reality of the indelible mark of baptism on Onesimus’ soul was to be far weightier, Paul suggested, than the branded F that should be seared into Onesimus’ forehead. And we have every reason to believe that that is exactly how Philemon welcomed Onesimus back, otherwise we almost certainly wouldn’t have had this personal letter of St. Paul preserved. This points to the type of revolution the Christian faith is supposed to work. Our faith in Christ, and what we know he asks of us, is supposed to be the central reference point for how we look at ourselves, how we look at others, and how we make our decisions. Philemon received God’s grace to welcome Onesimus no longer as a piece of property, no longer as someone who had stolen from him, but as a beloved spiritual sibling. This is the newness of life Christ came to give us. This is the way we’re called to love him, and his wisdom, and his kingdom, more than anything else. Just as the Christian faith called for a revolution in Philemon’s thinking, decision-making, and relationships, so it’s supposed to transform our thinking, our decision-making, and relationships. Our faith in Jesus is supposed to revolutionize the way we relate to our family, our property, our pleasures, even our own life. It certainly had that impact St. Pier Giorgio’s and St. Carlo’s lives. Pope Leo focused this morning on how their lives were totally changed by their faith in Christ to treat others as beloved brothers and sisters, even as Christ himself. The Holy Father offered their way of life as a beacon for our own. “Both Pier Giorgio and Carlo,” he proclaimed, “cultivated their love for God and for their brothers and sisters through simple acts available to everyone, daily mass prayer and especially Eucharistic Adoration. … Pier Giorgio said, ‘Around the poor and the sick, I see a light that we do not have.’ He called charity the foundation of our religion, and like Carlo, he practiced it above all through small, concrete gestures, often hidden, living what Pope Francis called a holiness found in our next-door neighbors.” Their lives, he concluded, “are an invitation to all of us, especially young people, not to squander our lives, but to direct them upwards and make them masterpieces. They encourage us with their words, ‘Not I, but God,’ as Carlo used to say, and Pier Giorgio, ‘If you have God at the center of all your actions, then you will reach the end.’ This is the simple but winning formula of their holiness. It is also the type of witness we are called to follow to enjoy life to the full and meet the Lord in the feast of heaven.”
• The great way they lived was centered on the Eucharist, which Carlo famously said is the highway — the straightest and fastest path — to enfleshing the Gospel message we hear today and the entirety of the Christian life. Pope Leo quoted Saint Carlo today, “In front of the sun, you get a tan. In front of the Eucharist, you become a saint.” The Eucharist is the fruit of Jesus’ leaving his Father’s side in heaven, his carrying the cross, his renouncing all earthly possessions, his “hating” even his own life, so that we might have life to the full, starting even in this life. The Eucharist is where Jesus strengthens us for the battles of life and gives us sturdy bricks, day by day, to become a temple with a high bell-tower capable through its peals of bringing others to worship God alongside us. Today as we celebrate the canonization of Saints Carlo and Pier Giorgio, let us seek to imitate their love for the Eucharistic Jesus who seeks to do in us what he beautifully did in them. In response to Pier Giorgio’s famous motto, “Verso l’Alto,” “to the heights,” let us through his intercession lift up our hearts to the Lord, and, as we elevate Jesus’ Body and Blood to the Father at the consecration, let us ask God’s help so that we might keep our hearts focused on where our true treasure is. And following through on Carlo’s indication of the Christian Eucharistic highway, let us through his intercession step on the gas in the highspeed lane as we ascend the path Jesus has marked out for us on the road to where now Carlo and Pier Giorgio and all the saints rejoice forever.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download