Year B

Jan 28 2025

How to Be a Hero

It is healthy to want to be a hero. A nine-year-old girl wants to be Wonder Woman, jumping from a cliff to land on a horse. Elsewhere, a twelve-year-old boy wants to soar into space to rescue planets. A twenty-year-old young woman wants to work with the homeless to gladden their lives.

All young people want to be heroes.

A seminarian and I were working on his homily in my office. As he talked, I heard an undercurrent of that desire for heroism in his unpacking of the scriptures. So I brought it up. He shrank back from the word “heroic” and said, “I don’t want to be proud.”

I winced. Heroism is not a bad thing, something to be quashed in the young. To want to be heroic is motivating. It drives you toward excellence. It keeps you going when life gets tough. Heroic virtue is one of the hallmarks of the saints. They glorified God as they were torn apart by lions.

Heroism is good. Young people want to be heroes.

Jesus understood this drive. He just shifted the focus. Jesus didn’t say to James and young John, “Don’t wish to be the greatest.” He said, “Whoever wishes to be great will be your servant.” He didn’t say, “Don’t wish to be first.” He said, “Whoever wants to be first, will be the slave of all.” He didn’t say, “Don’t wish to be great.” He said, “This is how to be great.”

Jesus wants heroes.

Jesus himself is the Hero of heroes. Jesus himself shows us how to be heroic. He suffered and died to show us what heroism looks like. For God’s sake, let us not settle for mediocrity. For God’s sake, let us be great! God’s great, God’s heroes, God’s saints: to God be the glory for our heroic lives!

Consider/Discuss

What are the tugs and pulls around the issue of heroism? What is the difference between the temptation toward “being proud” and the drive toward “being heroic”?
In your spiritual growth, where are you cultivating heroic virtue? Where do you find yourself sliding into “oh, well”?

Living and Praying with the Word

Jesus, you show us how to be heroic—how to serve and not stop serving, how to give and not stop giving, how to love and keep loving unto death. We want to be like you. On our own, when things go well, we cheer for ourselves and think that we are great. Show us what true greatness is. Help us to strive for nothing less. For we want to give you glory with our lives. Come, Holy Spirit, and empower us to be heroes for God.

Jan 28 2025

Scripture Study for

This last of the Servant Songs of Isaiah is the most perplexing, not least because it claims that in the mysterious plan of God, the Servant’s suffering will contribute to the salvation of others (53:5). Although our translation reads that God was “pleased to crush him in infirmity,” more recent translations reflect the idea not of divine pleasure but of divine will, which is not the same thing. It was God’s will that the Servant remain faithful despite the suffering, and this same suffering is now offered for the very people who cause it. The Servant will be glorified, however, and will see the fruitfulness of his suffering, which will not have been for nothing.

The author of Hebrews has been developing the point that the Son of God entered into the human experience, including death, to bring his brothers and sisters to glory. Now Jesus is able to fulfill perfectly the function of the High Priest, which was to worship God and to intercede for the faithful. The humanity and suffering of Jesus mean that he is able to commiserate with us, not standing aloof and indifferent to our struggles and need for mercy but finding common cause with us in our human weakness. Thus there is no need to fear when approaching “the throne of grace,” because we find there a sympathetic and infinitely effective advocate.

For the last several chapters in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus has repeatedly told his disciples that they must be like children, that they must give up everything, that the last will be first and the first last, that they must take up their crosses. Yet the sons of Zebedee, two of Jesus’ closest followers, have not absorbed any of this. Indeed, as Jesus’ closest companions, they expect to receive honors when he establishes the kingdom. Jesus once again tries to drive home his points about humility, spiritual poverty, and exercise of authority. The Son of Man is a model for them, and he approaches the world in a very different way, which the disciples still do not understand or accept.

Jan 28 2025

A Second Chance?

It is 36 A.D. A man sits at the table, and amuses himself with his coins. He likes the way they gleam in the morning sunshine when he pours them from one hand into the other. His wife came by just now. She burst in the door to tell him about all the healings that Jesus’ disciples are doing.

He remembers that day. He had answered the questions correctly. Jesus had looked at him with love. He had felt so good inside, so happy to be approved by the Master. Then the man had said, “Go, sell all you have, give to the poor and then come, follow me.” But he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. He is still heavy of heart about that.

When she raves about how wonderful the apostles are, Peter this, John that . . . over and over again . . . Could he have been one of the Twelve? He could be working miracles now. But no. He keeps flipping his coins, thinking.

Jesus’s eyes: that look of love still haunts him. Might there have been a second chance for him? If the man asked again, now, would he go? Not with the son of the carpenter—for they had killed him.

“I am a good man,” he objects. “Is it my fault that my father was wealthy, even holding property in Cyprus? I have followed the commandments all my life.” Is it impossible for a rich man to enter into heaven?

He hears that voice: “Follow me.” He sees that love in his eyes. The sun is going down. He stands. He calls his wife, “Come!” The apostles are talking about there being so many people, so many needs, and what are they to do? The man kneels down before them as he had once knelt before Jesus. He lays his bags of coins at their feet.

Peter recognizes him from that day, and rushes over. “Welcome home! Thank you! You have heartened us today!”

Consider/Discuss

If Jesus asked you to leave everything that you have right now, how would you respond? To what might you cling most closely? House or brother or sisters or mother or father or children or lands . . . What treasure gleams more brightly than Jesus?
Like today’s account, sometimes a Gospel story just seems to need a sequel. There are lots of biblical people we never hear from again. Whatever happened to the twelve-year-old girl whom Jesus raised? What about the little boy who brought Jesus the loaves and the fishes? What happened to Simon’s mother-in-law—what kind of life did she end up with? Let your imagination play with one of those secondary biblical characters. Or write your own story. Does Jesus give people a second chance? Or a third? Or a fourth?

Living and Praying with the Word

Lord, you have filled us with your love. You never stop calling us to follow you, to leave behind that which holds us back, to prefer you before all else. Help us to measure prosperity aright, for you prosper the work of our hands. Immerse us at daybreak with your kindness. Satisfy us at sunset with your peace. We give this day to you.

Jan 28 2025

Scripture Study for

Biblical wisdom literature regularly affirms that wisdom, often personified as a woman, is a greater treasure than anything else because wisdom gives insight into the ways of God. Those who prize wisdom and seek to live according to her teachings are assured of living in accordance with God’s will, which naturally leads to happiness. The traditional author of Wisdom, Solomon, is the representative par excellence of the person who prizes wisdom above all earthly wealth. Wisdom is more beautiful, splendid, and enriching than any other of God’s creations because she is “a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty . . . the spotless mirror of the power of God, the image of his goodness” (7:25, 26). Nothing brings humans closer to God than wisdom.

The section of Hebrews between last week’s and this week’s readings (3:1 — 4:11) contains an exhortation to remain faithful, learning from the experience of Israel, whose infidelity in the wilderness led an entire generation to be denied entry into the Promised Land, or their “rest.” Thus those who would follow Christ into their “sabbath rest” must remain faithful. The author has drawn on several passages from scripture (in which we hear “the word of God”) to make this point, and now affirms that this same “word of God,” identified implicitly as Jesus, brings either salvation or judgment, depending on one’s response. This word of God, which cannot be deceived, sees further within us than we are able to see ourselves.

At first glance Jesus’ correction of the man who calls him “good” seems like a needless quibble, but its point soon becomes clear. The man has kept the commandments from his youth, so why ask Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life? What more might there be to do? Perhaps he assumes that he actually lacks nothing, that he himself is “good.” Jesus’ correction then appears to be a lesson in humility. The man reveals that he is not able to truly follow Jesus because he clings not only to his possessions, but perhaps also to a sense of his own “goodness.”

Jan 28 2025

A Broad, Expansive Love

A friend came into the break room and announced, “Today, my husband and I have been married for thirteen happy years!” We all congratulated her. When the room quieted, she said, “Well . . . we’ve been married for twenty-four.”

Marriage can be beautiful. Marriage can be broken. There is nothing that can get an argument going as much as the topic of marriage. That was true in the times Jesus lived in. That is still true in our own.

Some of the priests whom I coach in homiletics tell me that they’d rather talk about anything else than preach on marriage and divorce. They know people in their pews who have been hurt by betrayal and brokenness; some had their childhood ripped apart when their family split up, leaving wounds that have never healed. Why would you want to awaken that pain?

The words of Jesus teaching about the permanence of marriage can feel rigid and even harsh from a Teacher who was neither. Yet his words have been slung like a weapon ever since. But what is the ideal that Jesus, the man of love, is looking for?

At the center of this scripture are the words “joined together.” They connote a God-given intimacy; not just walking beside someone, not simply a physical union, but an integral give-and-take of one’s whole life. Jesus extols becoming childlike, but childishness has to be left behind for two people to come together to serve one another.

Sometimes we get glimpses of God’s expansive vision for what marriage can be. I recall Tom and Sally at daily Mass. She was frail and leaned like the Tower of Pisa. He led her into church by the elbow. When he smoothed her hair, she looked up at him and smiled. They had gone through many decades and many sufferings, but the two of them seemed to be “joined together” in mutual joy. I think they made God smile.

Consider/Discuss

God’s vision for marriage is broad and expansive—a gift of belovedness from one person to another. Where have you seen that vision take hold? Who do you know as a model of being “joined together”?
Just as the Pharisees put Jesus to the test over the issue of marriage and divorce, so our culture wrangles over the issue of marriage. It is deeply divisive topic. What kinds of disputes arise among your family and friends? In Christian charity, how can you speak to those conflicts in a way that will be heard as love?

Living and Praying with the Word

Jesus, you saw a model of marriage in your childhood home in Nazareth. And yet even your Holy Family was not free from its trials. Early on, Joseph thought about divorcing Mary. There may have been conflicts about how to raise you properly, whose fault it was you got left behind in the temple, how to carry on as Joseph lay dying. Married life is full of the tug and pull of conflict. Send your grace upon all families. Help us to handle our differences with love and kindness. Your vision is that we be one. On our own, we cannot make it happen, but come, Prince of Peace and make it so.