Hi everyone, and welcome to Weekly Homilies with Father Mark Suslenko, Pastor of SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut. We are part of the Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford. I'm Carol Vassar, parish director of communications, and you're listening to Season 4, Episode 31 for the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Sept. 19, 2021. Our Gospel reading is from Mark, Chapter 9, verses 30 through 37
Jesus and his disciples left from there and began a journey through Galilee, but he did not wish anyone to know about it.
He was teaching his disciples and telling them, “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.” But they did not understand the saying, and they were afraid to question him.
They came to Capernaum and, once inside the house, he began to ask them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they remained silent. They had been discussing among themselves on the way who was the greatest.
Then he sat down, called the Twelve, and said to them, “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.” Taking a child, he placed it in their midst,
and putting his arms around it, he said to them, “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.”
The Gospel of the Lord
“The God Switch” by Father Mark S. Suslenko, Pastor, SS. Isidore and Maria Parish, Glastonbury, Connecticut
Whenever Jesus speaks of the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven, He often uses images that go against the grain of human reason and human wisdom. For example, He says that those who want to be first must become last, and the servant of all. He elevates a child to being more important in the kingdom of God, and sees in that child, the very revelation of God himself; the servant is greater than the master.
And as we look out at the way we live our lives, we can see that in our daily comings and goings, those ideals are really nowhere to be found.
There's something wonderful, and I think you'll agree, about watching children play, especially young ones. There's something wrong with the world when we stop seeing children play.
There's a carefree innocence about them. They kind of just jump into life, celebrate the wonder of the moment, express their innocence, without care or concern for the troubles of the world and the complexities around them. They haven't yet been scarred by the barnacles of life; those barnacles that can easily weigh us down, make us skeptical.
The playfulness and innocence of a child is something that captivates us, brings us to a deeper place, and reminds us of what is important about life itself.
And as those children begin to grow from little ones into bigger ones and become more a part of the world, we watch their play change as well. Now they find themselves on the school yard, and they have to run a race. They're encouraged to do their best to succeed, and the goal and the purpose of this race is to be the one that comes out ahead at the end of that line. And so they have to work and they have to work because becoming first is seen as the ideal to achieve. Succeeding over and above the other children is something that is a benefit. And we bring this mentality into our lives in other ways. That the person who has the more is the one that's more successful, the one who is better qualified is, the one who gets more money. The person who has all of their ducks in the row is the one who receives esteem.
And so we find ourselves orientated to this success- driven lifestyle that says, in order for me to be a prophet in this world I have to succeed. I have to be first. I have to stand out amongst others. I have to get the highest scores. I have to get the most points. I have to win the most games. And this success- driven mentality becomes the mantra that plays over and over in our lives.
We can't let our guard down. We have to succeed. We have to be the best salesman. We have to be the best politician. We have to be the best, the first, the greatest.
It's no wonder, then, with this mentality that even the disciples go to Jesus and they're arguing amongst themselves who's going to get to that place? After all they're putting in all of this effort into the Gospel, into their relationship with Jesus, obviously, it's going to pay off. And one of them is going to stand out amongst the others and get the prize.
It's the same dynamic: who's going to win? Who's going to succeed? And Jesus says "You've got it all wrong." that's not the gospel. That's not God. If you want to be in that first place, then get yourself into the last place and serve everyone else in line. In other words, be the one to help everyone else get to the goal. And you be the last one to enter.
And they're saying, "Whoa, wait a minute. We didn't buy into this."
Because what happens to us is we begin to change our God switch; our God switch. And we begin to rely too much on our own resources and our own merits for finding our way through this life. So we actually convince ourselves that all of this success that we run after and strive after and encourage our kids to obtain is all their own doing, and that at the end of it all, it's all dependent upon them, and how much effort they put into things, what talents they bring to things and what they can achieve. And it becomes the God of me: my abilities, my talents, my success, my story.
And Jesus says there's a risk in here because it's not about what's out there. It's not about achieving this secular goal. It's not about finding success in this world. It goes deeper to a matter of the heart and the soul. It's a matter of how much you desire, not the things of this world, but the matters of God; of how much you desire to connect with your Creator, to live in accordance with his will and to allow the joy that He can bring to be yours.
And how we measure whether our eyes and our minds and our hearts are fixed on that desire, how we measure, whether we're paying attention to our soul and nurturing the deeper recesses of ourselves, is how we look at our life. When you get up in the morning, are you grateful to God for another day of being able to put your feet on the floor.
When you get up in the morning as you face the trials that are going to come your way that day, the challenges, are you looking to God for inspiration, guidance and light? As you begin to make the choices that we all need to make day in and day out, are you using your relationship with God to check whether they are moral, right and true. Whether they are life- giving and whole, or just self-serving and self- profitable? At the end of the day are we giving gratitude to God for coming to another day's end and giving proper praise and worship to God as much as we can in this life?
Do you see? It matters where we invest our time and our energy.
It matters how we see ourselves and which God we worship: the God of our own merits and our own successes, or the God who is responsible for my inner being myself, my soul.
You know, Saint Oscar Romero, and I've used this quote before, said aspire not to have more, but to be more, to be more. And this is where it gets to be a little tricky.
We all know that at some point in time, we do not know the day or the hour, how old we would be, or where we'll be on life's journey, but these eyes that are so accustomed to looking out and seeing the world as it is; these eyes that are used to conducting the business of our lives, as we know it, will one day close for the last time.
And when they do, and we open them in eternity, what are we bringing with us? What are we bringing with us? What we have achieved here? What we have in our bank account? The house that we've acquired? The success that we've achieved? We leave it all behind and we go only with our soul. That's all we can take.
And we can rely on the mercy of God. There is no doubt that when we close our eyes in death, God's mercy is there. God's love and abundance welcomes. The wonder and glory of God is going to abound, but it's here too. It's here in creation. It's here in the love we share with one another. It's here in the sacraments of the church: the Eucharist that we share. God's mercy and God's love is available, but if we don't need it now, what makes us think that we're going to need it then?
If we've relied on our own resources, exclusively to get us through the journey of this life, when we close our eyes and deaths, what else do we have but ourselves? And it could be, it could be, that we face God square on, in-person, face-to-face and not recognize that what we're truly looking for is Him. We may not know that what we receive in eternal life is what our heart truly requires.
There is a risk in closing our eyes in death, and there has to be a reason why Jesus consistently turns the tables on human wisdom and convention, saying, "You may think it is this way, but it may not be the way you think." It isn't God who's going to make that decision for us. We will make that ourselves.
You know, it's often been said that the path to hell is paved with good intentions. I'm not so sure how true that adage really is. It could be more true that the path to hell is paved with the absence of desire, the absence of a desire. If we have no desire for God now, if God doesn't factor into the essence of our lives as they unfold each moment of every day, what makes us think that when we close our eyes in death we're going to desire anything else?
Father Mark Suslenko is the pastor of SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut. Learn more about our parish community www.isidoreandmaria.org. And follow us on social media: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Our music comes free of charge from Blue Dot Sessions in Fall River, Massachusetts. I’m Carol Vassar. Thanks for joining us.