Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, September 18, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Vigil
September 18, 2021

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday. It’s one of the saddest dialogues in the Gospel. Repeating what we heard in last week’s Gospel, Jesus tells the apostles, “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.” Rather than consoling him, they start arguing about which one of them is the greatest. Whenever 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 took him aside and tried to rebuke him. On a third occasion, James’ and John’s mother approached and immediately asked Jesus to appoint her two sons to the chief positions in his Messianic reign. If there were ever any greater illustration of the evil of what Saint James called “selfish ambition,” this is it. To get a sense of the ugliness of the apostles’ egocentric jockeying for position, imagine that your father came to you and told you that the doctor had just given him two weeks to live and, instead of consoling him, instead of even caring about him, you immediately shifted your attention to who would get the house, or the car, or to ask him before it would be too late to help you get a promotion at work. That’s what was happening in these scenes. It’s sad and ridiculous.
• But Jesus never tried to eliminate his followers’ ambition, but to purify it and direct it toward true greatness. He told them the path, which would be his path, the path 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 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.
• Sometimes 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 ambition.” 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^thanniversary 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?
• 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.
• 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. “For the Son of Man also came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Jesus wants us to receive his grace to grow in the desire to give our life to ransom others from slavery and death.
• 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. We think of great missionaries like Saint Paul and Saint Francis Xavier, the North American Martyrs, and others. We think about religious sisters who taught so selflessly generations of Catholic school students instilling within them the knowledge and love of God. We think about so many lay 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.
• We can ask whether we have the ambition truly to become great in faith rather than remain mediocre, to become great in humility rather than thinking ourselves too great on our own or too small despite God’s abundant grace, to become great in self-sacrificial love or average, to become great in holiness rather than undistinguished, to be great in passing on our love for Jesus rather than keep this treasure to ourselves.
• The reality is that, just like to 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 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 of coming to Mass, supporting the Church and not committing mortal sins. Please. He 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 would be given us besides.
• 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. Saint John Vianney once lamented that if his parishioners received Holy Communion more often and more deeply, they would become saints. 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 for Sunday Mass, and prepare to receive the fruits of Jesus’ betrayal, suffering, death and resurrection, let us ask the 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. Praised be Jesus Christ!

The Gospel on which this homily is based was: 

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