Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Vigil

September 25, 2021

 

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.25.21_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

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, in which we will enter into a dramatic dialogue in which Saint John tells Jesus that the apostles saw someone driving out demons in his name and they tried to stop him, because he was not one of their number. Jesus replied that they shouldn’t stop him, because no one who performs a mighty deed in his name can at the same time speak ill of him. Then he gives a principle: “Whoever is not against us is for us.”

* We live in a society polarized by politics and a Church rent with various sad divisions. Jesus himself admits that some are “for” him and others are “against” him. We know that eleven of the twelve apostles were for him, that Mary and Joseph were for him, that Mary Magdalene, Susanna and Joanna, the Centurion, the Syro-Phoenician women, so many of those Jesus had healed who couldn’t stop talking about him even when he asked them not to were clearly on his side. But we also witness that there are those who are actively “against” Jesus, likeSatan in the desert; some of the Scribes and Pharisees during Jesus’ public ministry, Herod the Great at Jesus’ birth, Pontius Pilate and Herod Antipas at Jesus’ death, even, for a very short time, St. Peter, whom Christ called Satan and told to get behind him when he rejected the possibility that the Lord would suffer.

* Yet, despite the reality of division, Jesus gives a principle with which he wants his followers to live: “Whoever is not against us is for us.” There’s a temptation among many serious believers to focus so much on what distinguishes us from others that we lose what unites us, and as we and others focus on those differences, we pull ourselves and push others away. We can begin with what we criticize rather than what we admire. We can fault others for what they don’t get right rather than commence with what they do. We see this tendency in the Gospel with many of the Pharisees, literally the “separated ones.” They were constantly distinguishing themselves from others that they really grew no longer to focus on uniting them. They began to pray like the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable, giving thanks that they’re not like others who are guilty of various types of notorious sins. Jesus wants us to recognize in others those parts that are united with him and not to stop them, like St. John the Beloved was trying to stop people from casting out devils, as if Jesus’ will would have been that they should suffer diabolical possession or obsession another day.

* Against this tendency to distinguish and exclude, Jesus wants us to have a different attitude, his own, who came to seek and save what was lost, to reunite the lost sheep of the house of Israel, to go out after the one and bring that person back to the 99, ultimately to reconcile all things in himself. He had come to set prisoners free, to defeat Satan once and for all, but the still-immature disciples wanted to stop someone from casting out devils, from doing the Lord’s work because, essentially, they were more concerned with what they wanted to be their exclusive prerogatives in God’s kingdom than in accomplishing his work. None of us should ever think we have a monopoly on the name, mission, message and power of Jesus.