Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, October 16, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Vigil
October 16, 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, when we will eavesdrop on the dialogue Jesus has with the apostles James and John and, then, with all of the other apostles, on the subject of ambition.
• The brothers James and John with great chutzpah ask Jesus for a blank check: “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” Jesus indulges them by asking, “What do you wish me to do for you?” and they reply, “Grant that in your glory we may sit one at your right and the other at your left.” The two fishermen wanted to be the Messiah’s right and left hand men, his two viceroys or executive vice-presidents, in what they anticipated would be Jesus’ glorious Messianic reign. But Jesus responded, “You do not know what you are asking,” and then gave them yet another indication of the expectation-shattering type of kingdom he would be establishing: “Can you drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized,” alluding to the cup of suffering prophesied by Isaiah and the cleansing ablution of blood that would take place on Good Friday. To his question, the brothers impetuously respond, “We can,” and Jesus foretold that they ultimately would, but reminded them that God the Father had already prepared those who would sit at his right and left, which would be the Good and Bad Thief on Calvary, the Sheep and the Goats at the General Judgment, and likely, dynamically, Mary and Joseph in heaven.
• Hearing this conversation, however, the other ten apostles objected and became angry at James and John, not because of the brothers’ impudence, but out of their own jealousy: they themselves wanted the positions that the brothers had the guts to ask for. Their anger gave Jesus the opportunity to give one of the most important instructions to the apostles and to the whole Church about the path to greatness, about the means to become like him, about the way to reign with him and advance his kingdom. We need to focus carefully and persistently on what Jesus says, because it goes so much against our worldly ways.
• Four weeks ago, you may recall, we had an opportunity to focus on ambition and the path to greatness in God’s kingdom, because the theme was a common one in St. Mark’s Gospel, because the apostles were so obsessed about which of them would be the greatest and their voracious egocentric hunger came to the surface at least four times, all disgustingly when Jesus spoke about how he would suffer, be betrayed and crucified to establish his kingdom. We spoke then about how Jesus didn’t seek to suppress their ambition but to reorient it, pushing them to become great in faith, great in humility, great in holiness, great in knowing and transmitting the faith by word and example, and great in sacrificial love. This Sunday we focus with Jesus on that last Christian ambition.
• Jesus tells the apostles, “You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them and their great ones make their authority over them felt.” It’s still the same way today. Greatness is determined by how much power one wields in politics, how much money or influence one has in business, how many magazine covers and Twitter followers one has in entertainment. Greatness is determined by the capacity to command or lead others from above. Jesus says that in his kingdom it cannot be that way. “Whoever wishes to be great among you,” he states emphatically, “will be your servant. Whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.” In his kingdom, those who are great would lead and love from below, from serving, from sacrificing, from even dying for others. Then he gives the reason: “For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Jesus was calling them not to “lord it over” others but “under” others. To be great, in other words, would come not principally through Christ’s power, but by sharing his love.
• Jesus Christ would put these words about serving others rather than being served into action during the celebration of the Last Supper on the night he would be betrayed, when he stood up, took off his outer garment, tied a towel around his waist, and began to wash the filth off his disciples’ feet, a menial task normally done by servants and slaves. The apostles, naturally, resisted Jesus’ debasing himself in this way. After he was finished, Jesus said, “Do you know what I have done for you? You call me teacher and Lord — and rightly so, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.” (Jn 13:5-17). Real greatness in Christ’s kingdom would not be determined by fighting for seats at tables, but by fighting for the towel. The highest would not be the one to whom others would lift glasses in toasts but the one who would be able to drink the cup of Christ’s blood and in turn say to others with Christ, “This is my blood, shed for you.” Christ’s cabinet would be filled not by those who would kiss his butt, but by those who would put their own butts on the line for Him and for others, by being baptized into Christ’s death through their own suffering and death.
• The greatness to which Jesus wants us to aspire, therefore, has nothing to do with any type of terrestrial pecking-order. Real greatness, he described, is to become most like him, to share in his greatness, in his holiness, in his total self-giving love. Twenty times in the Gospel Jesus told his disciples, “Follow me!,” and in this Gospel Jesus was telling us that the path to greatness is to do what he himself was doing: “For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for the many.” St. Paul would later describe to the Philippians (Phil 2:3-11) that Christ’s example was the stairway to heaven when he called on us to imitate it: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross.” This safe-abasing loving service is the root of Christ’s greatness.
• John and James and the other apostles were chosen by Jesus because, even though at first they had very human and selfish desires and motivations, they were capable of conversion so that Jesus’ categories would eventually become their own. Once they saw the fullness of Jesus’ teaching in his suffering, death and resurrection, they experienced a real metamorphosis, a total transformation of their worldly ambition into Christ-like ambition. They saw that the path to prominence was not lined with glitter but thorns. This was obviously not an easy conversion, but 11 of the 12 of them eventually made it. They drank Christ’s cup, they were baptized into his death and now are seated at his side in heaven.
• The Lord Jesus wants all of us to undergo the same transformation. He wants all of us to desire true greatness, to trade in our false notions that real greatness means you have a butler and valet, a chauffeur and a pilot, and a whole staff of people serving at our beck-and-call, to a notion that the greater we are, the more we will in fact serve others. But having the intellectual notion is not enough. Jesus wants to give us the help to make the choice to follow him on the way to greatness. This is the path that after the resurrection the apostles chose. This is the path that the saints choose. When St. Gregory the Great (590-604) signed his letters, unlike previous popes who used the expressions, “The vicar of Christ,” “The bishop of Rome,” “Pontifex Maximus” (the greatest bridge-builder between heaven and earth), and “the successor of St. Peter,” Gregory signed his letters, “Gregorius, Servus servorum Dei,” “Gregory, the Servant of the Servants of God.” And he earned that title, giving all he had in service to Christ’s flock, each of whom is called to be the servant of God. For Gregory, the Church hierarchy was founded by the Lord to be a “lower-archy,” to be a ladder of service. The same goes for every hierarchy. Those who have been invested by the Lord with greater responsibilities — whether in the domestic church of the home, the parish, the Diocese, the workplace, the school — are called by the Lord to serve the rest and help them to serve others. They’re called never to “lord it over others,” but to love others as Christ has loved us, serving them in the same self-giving way with which the Lord has served us. For Christ, to reign is not to be served but to serve, to give one’s life in exchange for others’. Anyone who wishes to reign with Christ must do the same. All of us, like Gregory, are called to become servants of all the servants of God — and this will be the means by which others after us, and most importantly the Lord, will call us “great,” just like we call Gregory.
• The greatest means Jesus gives us to help us become great occurs at Mass. When Jesus humbly bent down at the beginning of the Last Supper to wash his followers’ feet, he was just getting started. Later he would abase himself even further, changing bread and wine into his body and blood so that we, his servants, could consume him and live off of him. This is the chalice he places before us to drink, to which he hopes we will respond with as much trust and zeal as John and James did. Jesus, in giving himself in ransom for us in the Eucharist, wants us to make that type of love the path of our life. He simplifies everything he’s taught us about the path to true greatness in the words he will say again to us on Sunday: “Do this in memory of me!”

The Gospel on which this Sunday’s homily was based was: 

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