Catholic Mass Readings and Reflection September 22, 2024
Twenty-Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time
22nd September 2024 (Sunday)
Psalter: Week 1
Reading of the Day
First Reading: Wisdom 2:12, 17-20
[Ungodly men said:] “Let us lie in wait for the righteous man, because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions; he reproaches us for sins against the law and accuses us of sins against our training. Let us see if his words are true, and let us test what will happen at the end of his life; for if the righteous man is God’s son, he will help him and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries. Let us test him with insult and torture, that we may find out how gentle he is and make trial of his forbearance. Let us condemn him to a shameful death for, according to what he says, he will be protected.”
Psalm 54:3-4, 5, 6 and 8 (R. see 6b)
R/. Behold, the Lord is the upholder of my life.
Second Reading: James 3:16-4:3
Beloved: Where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.
Gospel Acclamation
V/. Alleluia
R/. Alleluia
V/. God has called us through the Gospel, to obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
R/. Alleluia.
Gospel : Mark 9:30-37
At that time: Jesus and his disciples went on from the mountain and passed through Galilee. And he did not want anyone to know, for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise.” But they did not understand the saying, and were afraid to ask him. And they came to Capernaum. And when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you discussing on the way?” But they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. And he sat down and called the twelve. And he said to them, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” And he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.”
Daily Gospel Reflection
Sunday – Twenty-Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time
Guidelines: Greatness is a natural desire and aspiration of everyone. There is nothing wrong in itself. But the problem is when it is wrongly understood and wrongly pursued and acquired through false ways and means
1. In the gospel, the disciples were engaged in a discussion about who was the greatest. Today we are invited to reflect once again a little deeply and sincerely about our own concept, pursuit, and means about gaining that greatness.
2. Jesus dispels the wrong notions of greatness and clarifies what it means to be truly great and how to become rightly great.
3. In the first place, real greatness is not something material. It does not consist in money and material possessions. But the world wrongly thinks that the more you have money and an abundance of things, the more you are great.
4. Those who have little or less, those who are not well to do, and are poor are regarded as insignificant, unimportant, and not worthy, and thus are treated with disrespect and contempt.
5. Accordingly, the whole concern and struggle of life is to accumulate as much money and material things as possible. There is total disregard for the kind of means that are employed to acquire them.
6. All that matters is to become moneyed and possess things by hook or crook. That is why we find steep materialism and consumerism, deception, and unaccountability. Sane values are often thrown into the sea.
7. Real greatness is not something merely social. It does not consist in power and position, status and prestige. But the world wrongly thinks that the more you are in power and authority, the more you are in a big position and hold a high social status and prestige, the more you are great.
8. Those who are ordinary, those who do not hold a notable post or job, those who do not have an above-the-ordinary standing and ranking in society, are not respected and not taken seriously.
9. Consequently, the efforts of many are always geared to climb to the higher rungs in society, regardless of the rightness of their actions. That is why we find so much spirit of power-mongering and power-corruption.
10. We find corrosion of the right values and an explosion of compromises. We also find excessive eagerness to dominate and suppress others, with the feeling that “I am superior to others, am greater, better and worthier than others.”
11. Further, real greatness is not merely intellectual. It does not consist in great intellectual calibre, academic excellence and achievement or bundles of knowledge or reckoning honours of educative contribution.
12. The world wrongly thinks that the more you are intelligent and competent, the more you excel academically, the more you are considered great.
13. Those are just average or dull, those who are poor in grasping, those who have a poor performance track, are despised as useless. Accordingly, some spend their enormous time and energies over their intellectual pursuits. In the process, they do not realize that they become ” brain wise monsters and heart wise dwarfs “.
14. Then what is true greatness? How does one obtain it? The gospel and the other readings make it clear. True greatness consists in not desiring to be placed over others, dominating and bossing over them. It is not eager to be first in power and position but first in service.
15. True greatness is commitment to God’s will and mission. Subsequently it also implies the readiness and courage to face the consequences, to go through the ordeal of the way of the cross, even to the extent of death.
16. This is what Jesus did. This is what we find in the lives of the prophets, the righteous exemplified by the suffering servant of Yahweh.
17. True greatness is receiving even children that is the vulnerable and the uncountables and negligibles in the society. It accepts and respects them.
18. This is contrary to a mindset that one becomes great by association with big people. This is why often we find that great people have their own “social circles”, “privileged elite”. They create an aura around them with an air of inaccessibility and unconcern and uninvolvement.
19. Further, true greatness consists in receiving the example of a child. Among numerous qualities of a child, in the context, those that the truly great would embody are purity and guilelessness of heart, total trust and dependence on God, love for God and
always seeking to please Him.
20. Still further we gather some features of true greatness from the first reading from Wisdom: to be truly great is to be righteous so as to be inconvenient and opposed to the actions of ungodly; it is to be courageous to reproach them; it is to be gentle and forbearing even in the face of insult and torture.
21. The second reading from the letter of James offers us some more pointers to true greatness. It is to be free from all jealousy and selfish ambition. It is to be free from all disorder and every vile practice. True greatness consists in wisdom that leads to a life that is pure, peaceable, gentle and full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. It is to make peace and thus sow a harvest of righteousness. It is not to let loose our passions to be at war within. It is not to fight and quarrel out of avarice.
Practice: In the ultimate analysis, to be truly great is to consistently nurture spiritual tenacity and productivity and to lead a righteous and forbearing life
