Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, September 14, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, B, Vigil
September 14, 2024

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, when we will eavesdrop and participate in perhaps the most pivotal dialogue in the Gospel, when Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” and “Who do you say that I am?”
• In response to the first question, the poll of what other people were saying, the disciples were eager to reply. They informed him that the people were numbering Jesus among the greatest Jewish heroes of all time, like the prophets Elijah and Jeremiah, and, more recently, John the Baptist. But Jesus wasn’t going to stop at that preliminary question. First, because it wasn’t enough to rest on what the surveys said, to rely 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 didn’t want those with him merely to remain “fans” or “admirers” of him because that would not 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?” All but one of the disciples remained mute. It was easy to communicate what the surveys said, but to put oneself on the line, to make a personal, public confession, required courage and conviction. I have always been amazed that Nathaniel, a.k.a. Bartholomew, didn’t say anything, since the first time he met Jesus, he cried out that Jesus was the “Son of God” and “King of Israel,” but for some reason now he lacked the chutzpah to say it again. Likewise many of the apostles by this point were trying to jockey to be the greatest in the messianic administration they expected Jesus to inaugurate, but none had the courage to speak up. Simon Peter, however, put out into the deep. God the Father had led him to recognize that Jesus was indeed far greater than what the others were saying, and he had the guts to be the first to say it. “You are the Christ!,” he declared. 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 to be more than the Messiah, but the very own Son of God. To make such an 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.
• But lest they jump to that confusion, Jesus, as soon as Peter had enunciated his true identity, 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 to defeat and expel 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. Jesus told them all of this, St. Mark tells us, “openly,” 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 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 follow the 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 saw 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 see the type of Messiah he really was, 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.
• Jesus continued the consequential conversation by calling the apostles together and saying that not only would he suffer, but if we sought to remain with him, we must suffer, too. It’s a challenging message that we shouldn’t water down. “Whoever wishes to come after me,” Jesus said, whoever wants to share in my kingdom and reign with me, “must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” As if that is not demanding 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 public hanging.
• 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 the Bishops, or our parents, grandparents and godparents have said. All of that is helpful, but it’s not sufficient: we all must make a consequential and personal admission, to state clearly who Jesus is and to conform our life to that truth. How would we answer that question if we were asked it today? The great philosopher and apologist Peter Kreeft recently wrote, “The question Jesus asked his Apostles is the same question he asks us: ‘Who do you say that I am?’ Am I just a holy messenger, just a prophet, like John the Baptist or Elijah? Or am I your Mister Fix-It, your Superman, your superhero? Or am I your obedient servant to all your foolish and fallen desires? Or am I Mr. Nice Guy, or Super Social Worker, or Mr. Political Correctness?” C.S. Lewis famously said that Jesus is either a lunatic, a liar, or Lord: a lunatic who crazily believed he was God incarnate; a liar who knew he wasn’t but claimed to be; or truly Son of God, divine, the Savior, the King of the Universe.
• Who do we say Jesus is? If we confess him to be who he really is, then that means, as Jesus describes in the Gospel, getting behind him, thinking as God does, denying ourselves, picking our own cross daily and following him. It’s obvious that this is a very taxing 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. 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, as he calls 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.
• We have a chance to reply to the question, “Who do you say that I am?,” at every Mass, in response to Jesus’ real presence. From the altar, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the Lord, asks us, “Who do you say that I am?,” and we have the privilege to proclaim our faith in him, echoing with wonder the words of the centurion that despite our unworthiness the Messiah and Son of God desires to come under our roof. As we prepare to make our confession on Sunday with the whole Church, let us ask him for the grace to model our life on the mystery of his passion, death and resurrection and give witness to him by the faithful, courageous way we, with him, lose our lives to give them out of love for him and others.

The Gospel passage on which the homily was based was: 

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