Sunday, September 21, 2003
25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings:
Wisdom 2:12, 17-20 Let us persecute the just one, who bothers us
Psalm 53:3-6, 8
James 3:16 - 4:3 True and false wisdom
Mark 9:29-36 Second announcement of the passion

 The just one is tried. The text places us in a confrontation between the wise and the wicked. The wise are the Jews who keep God’s Law and faithfully observer the religious traditions of the people of Israel; the wicked are the pagans and the Jews who have allowed themselves to be contaminated by the Greek culture. The author of the Book of Wisdom defines very well the attitude for these two types of persons and these two philosophies of life.

 The wicked attack the just, denounce their attitudes and their procedures and their pretence to keep themselves in God’s friendship and favor. They test them, they even condemn them to a disgraceful death, and while at it they try to prove if God really is what the just assert.

 The test serves the authors of the New Testament when they define Jesus, the Son of God, as «the just one par excellence» or «the servant of Yahweh», and to define their cause for the poor, in contrast to the attitudes of those who try to rid themselves of Him.

 The author of the Letter of James tell us that in the community where envies and divisions exist, you find all kind of evil, while where wisdom reigns, in the sense of today’s first reading, we find God and his project of love. We are invited to ask ourselves: where do the wars and struggles among human beings come from? Is it not the desires of pleasure that struggle in our body? We are shown that it is the greed to have more to waste, that leads us to kill. This is the crude reality in which we find ourselves today with the phenomenon of social corruption and neo-liberal politics that attack our society like a cancer.

 The text of today’s Gospel places us in the second phase of the catechesis that Jesus directs to his disciples, referring to the consequences that will follow from accompanying him to Jerusalem and the demands of this accompaniment.

 The disciples do not understand what Jesus means when he speaks to them about his own destiny: they do not understand that the Son of man has to die and rise on the third day, and therefore they cannot understand why the first have to place themselves in the last place. Jesus responds to their lack of understanding with a simple instruction meant to help them grow, correct their faults and prepare them for the generous donation of themselves for others. As is the custom in Mark, Jesus instructs his disciples in a home. The home was the meeting place for the first Christians for the celebration and for catechesis; here we see a catechesis directed to the community.

 The teaching of Jesus is an invitation for us to change, for the arrival of the Kingdom has changed the plans of this world: the last will be the first; the poor will be satisfied; those who loose their lives will gain them; and those who want to be in first place have to be in the last and the servants of all. This message is directed to the entire community, but especially to those who hold responsibility in them.

 The gesture that Jesus uses, of embracing and placing a child in the middle of the disciples, should not be understood as if the children were a symbol of innocence, purity and tenderness; the symbol is an invitation to gather in with love the most simple, humble and needy, in other words, the smallest. The children, in Jesus’ time, were worthless, insignificant, powerless, they were «the last»: that is why Jesus saw them as the first in the Kingdom. In this sense, to be a disciple of Jesus means to «not be» for a society that had values that are exactly the opposite of those of the Gospel. Let us not forget that in the Kingdom there are no categories, we are all equals, and therefore, we all have the same value. It is today?s society that has generated hierarchies, has organized people as being of more or less value, according to its own priorities.

 What Jesus revealed -with a paradox- was very serious: Jesus identified his own lot and that of God with the lot of the children, those who didn’t have any rights or anyone to look after them, the last, the value-less, the unimportant. Because he really identified himself totally with them, he put himself on their side, he took their cause as his own. Therefore he said that all good done for them was done for him himself, and, definitely, for the Father. He once again turned the scale of values of society upside down, or better, he set them upright. A society that cares only for those above or in which those from above make all the decisions or serves exclusively the interests of those above, does not guarantee either the Kingdom or Life; these can survive only in a world which from below looks after those of below, those who have no rights.

For personal consideration

The urge to better one’s self, the desire to be the first, the goal of triumph and success in life… appear, at first glance, to be legitimate aims of human beings; the problem, usually, is in the means that we use to achieve these goals. Jesus never said that we should not desire to be the first, rather the opposite: he invites us to do it, but he points out that the only really human and humanizing way to do it is through love and service to the Cause of the Kingdom, which s also the Cause of the poor. Am I trapped in this false mystique of competition, of rising to the top whatever the cost, of searching for success and money no matter what?

 For the group?s consideration

 Study the first reading in the total context of chapter two of the Book of Wisdom, of which today?s reading is but a very small section. The ‘just one’ is pursued by his contemporaries not by whim or by an irrational hate, but rather because he makes them uncomfortable and his just life itself makes his enemies face up to their evil. By relating this reading to the gospel of the prediction of the Passion, the liturgy is interpreting that in Jesus we see the fulfillment of the case of the just one in the book of Wisdom: Jesus was killed because he bothered the powerful, because he proclaimed that God was on the side of the poor and pointed out in injustice of the powerful.

 Jon Sobrino points out the ?Jesus-like? martyrs of these last decades in Latin America, very different than the martyrs of many other centuries, and very similar to the martyr Jesus and the just one of the book of Wisdom. This martyr-like presence of the just one is (or should be) permanent? Do we see it today in our Church? Does our institutional Church bother some unjust, powerful person(s)? And our local community? If it is not making people uncomfortable, why? Are there no unjust, powerful people? Or are there no prophets in our communities or in our Church?

  For the Prayer of the Faithful

 - For all the Church, that it may understand and accept the Christ of the Gospel and proclaim him without fear, we pray to the Lord.

 - For all believers, that there be eliminated from among us all forms of dominion and power over people, we pray to the Lord.

 - For all who try to live as disciples of Jesus, that we may know how to accept him as the one who came not to be served but rather to serve, and know how to imitate him, we pray to the Lord.

 - For all of us who gather around the table of the Lord, that we make our Eucharist a sign of our availability to serve and to give our lives for the poor and the little ones, we pray to the Lord.

 - For our community, that it may shine in its efforts to be the last in honor and power, and thus the first to serve others, we pray to the Lord.

 Community Prayer

God our Creator, you who sent your Son Jesus to show the world that «not everything is allowed» and to show us the true sense of human life in a world build on injustice and power; teach us to follow the footsteps of your son Jesus, the persecuted just one, so that the Church will fulfill its mission that you gave it. We ask this through the same Jesus, Our Lord.