25th Sunday B * September 22, 2024

25 th Sunday B

September 22, 2024

My father was often telling my brother, sister, and I, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything.”  I am not sure this came from him, but he liked to say this.  As I look back on his life, it seems to me he followed this advice himself. I rarely heard him say a bad word about others.  (He may have, but maybe I have chosen not to remember those occasions.) 

As I get older it seems harder to follow this advice.  We turn on the radio or TV and someone is being critical about a politician or a political party.  It is easy to criticize the boss or someone who is in authority. The words “I could do better" slip out, without thinking about what we are saying.

In the gospel today the disciples are talking about who is the greatest.  When Jesus asks him about their conversation, they feel like the boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar.  Just as long as they thought Jesus couldn’t hear it felt ok to talk about who is greater, but once they find out Jesus heard them they are shamed into silence.

How often do we speak ill of someone else when they are not around, but would never consider doing so to their face?  Trash talk seems ok when the person is not there to defend themselves, but we are silent when they are around.  This is how a bully acts. A bully is all bluster and wind when with his cronies, but if confronted he is silent.  This was what happened to the disciples. When their words were spoken back to them they were shamed into silence.

“If you don’t have anything good to say, say nothing.”

In the section of Mark’s gospel we are reading from this month, Jesus is giving important teachings to the disciples.  This section of the gospel is the “listen up” section.  Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem and the cross and he wants to make sure his disciples can continue on without him when he is gone.

Last week Jesus spoke to the disciples about the cross, “Can you carry a cross?" 

Today we hear him speaking about what it means to be a disciple.

Mark tells us that Jesus sits down to speak with the disciples.  When a Rabbi or teacher sat down it was recognized that his words would be important.  This is the “listen up” position.

Today Jesus teaches about what it means to be a disciple.  A disciple is about service.  A disciple is like a child.  A child in the time of Jesus was one without a voice or authority.  The child was just above a slave and the child would be about helping out others.  A child would not question “who is greater”; a child knows he/she is powerless.

The disciple in Jesus’ kingdom is a disciple who thinks of the other first and is of service to others.  Pope Francis said; “if we are to be shepherds we must smell like the sheep.”  To serve is a willingness to be one with the poor and needy.

I am reminded of the words of President John Kennedy, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country.”

Maybe part of being a disciple is making a decision to speak only the good news to others. Trash talk or criticism can be just fodder for the rumor mill.  The book we read from each week is called The Gospel, The Good News.  What we need is more good news, not trash talk.  Let us speak in such a way that we would not mind the one we were speaking about hearing what we said.

Jesus reminds us, again and again, that being a disciple is not easy.  One way we can school ourselves in discipleship is to be quiet.  We watch our words and are careful not to speak about another in a way we would not be comfortable speaking to his/her face.

My father was not perfect, but maybe he hit upon a good way to live life.

“If you can’t say anything good, don’t say anything at all.”

Easter Sunday 2025

By Fr. Chris Welch • May 12, 2025
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Second Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy), Year C

By Deacon Paul Cerosaletti • April 27, 2025
How many of you recall the following hymn refrain? Misericordes sicut Pater Misericordes sicut Pater… It is the refrain from the hymn of the same title that was composed for the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy, which Pope Francis opened in the first week of Advent in 2015 and concluded with the feast of Christ the King on November 20, 2016. You may recall that throughout that Jubilee Year, we opened our Masses with that hymn and sang that refrain. Misericordes sicut Pater… …Merciful like the Father …Merciful like the Father. How appropriate that on this Sunday, the second Sunday of Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday, is also the weekend in which we have laid our Holy Father Pope Francis to rest, and entrusted him to the tender, eternal mercy of God the Father. It was no coincidence that Pope Francis declared the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy. Pope Francis believed Mercy is the primary expression and experience of God’s love for us, and Mercy is the primary expression and experience of the love that God calls us to share with each other. So important was his belief and trust in God’s Mercy, that when he was ordained to the order of Bishop, he took as his episcopal motto “ miserando atque eligendo ” ( which roughly translates from Latin as “having mercy, he chose him”). It is taken from a homily written by St. Bede the Venerable, an eighth-century saint and Doctor of the Church, reflecting on the call of St. Matthew by Christ to become an apostle. St. Bede wrote, “[Jesus] saw the tax collector [Matthew] and, because he saw him through the eyes of mercy and chose him, he said to him: Follow me .” So important was his belief and trust in God’s Mercy, that when Francis was elected as Pope, he kept this episcopal motto as his papal motto. This motto expresses so simply and beautifully truths of our faith: God loves us deeply; God expresses that love to us through His mercy for us in our sinfulness; and that despite our sinfulness, God calls us . God calls us to trust and hope in God’s love for us and calls us to express the same love and mercy for one another. That call is reflected also in the Gospel account of Matthew’s call to discipleship by Jesus, which concludes with Jesus challenging the Pharisees, saying “Go and learn the meaning of the words, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice'” (Mt. 9:13). Jesus challenges us in the same way. He calls the Pharisees – and us – out of ritual acts of worship and piety that are not also accompanied by acts of mercy! Jesus is clear about this. In the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus says, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Lk. 6:36). In his Papal Bull announcing the Extraordinary Year of Mercy, Pope Francis describes God the Father’s mercy for us as like “that of a father or a mother, moved to the very depths out of love for their child…a “visceral” love…gush[ing] forth from the depths naturally, full of tenderness and compassion, indulgence and mercy” (Misericordiae Vultus, no. 6). He also describes God’s Divine Mercy as a ”wellspring of joy, serenity, and peace.” (MV 2). These words bring to mind the visceral atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross for our sins, when blood and water sprung forth from Christ’s side as the cleansing waters of baptism. It is that visceral sacrifice which we recall in the Divine Mercy chaplet when we pray, “O Blood and Water which gushed forth from the Heart of Jesus as a fount of mercy for us, I trust in You!” It is that cleansing sacrifice that we recall when we pray in the Anima Christi prayer, “Water from the side of Christ, wash me.” And it is that same merciful cleansing in which we hope and trust, as we place all that burdens us into the waters of God’s grace, as we have done here, symbolically, in placing our Lenten stone-burdens in this fountain of Holy Water from the Easter Vigil Baptismal pool. As we contemplate God’s Divine Mercy, we place our trust and our hope in that Divine Mercy, recalling the words our late Holy Father Pope Francis left us with: “Mercy will always be greater than any sin, and no one can place limits on the love of God who is ever ready to forgive” (MV 3); “Mercy [is] the bridge that connects God and man, opening our hearts to the hope of being loved forever” (MV 2). Misericordes sicut Pater Misericordes sicut Pater…

Palm Sunday, Year C

By Deacon Paul Cerosaletti • April 13, 2025
I have long thought that the Church gives us the two Gospel passages we hear today — the account of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem and the account of his Passion and death — for very practical reasons: this is the last Sunday before Easter when we will celebrate Christ’s Resurrection and not everyone is able to attend and celebrate the Triduum liturgies during Holy Week. Therefore, the Church places these two critical Gospel passages together so that we hear and experience them in a regular Sunday Mass setting — literally, to ‘fit them in’ before Easter. But there is another equally, if not more, important reason we are to experience these Gospel passages together. And I honestly don’t know if the Church intends this reason or not, but I believe the Holy Spirit intends it. These two Gospel passages remind us as much as any passage that Jesus Christ, while fully Divine, is also fully human. He is like us in all manner except one, in committing sin. He therefore shares with us the experience of the full range of our humanity. In these two Gospel passages we experience Christ moving from triumph to tragedy, from soaring to suffering: the triumphant, soaring entry into Jerusalem and the suffering and tragedy of His Passion and crucifixion. Christ’s human experience is also our human experience, for do not we all experience triumph and tragedy, soaring and suffering? Therefore, we do not have a God and Savior who cannot sympathize with our human experience, but rather one who shares it with us! And we have a God and Savior who not only soared and suffered for us, but soars and suffers with us. Not just two thousand years ago, but right here, right now, in every minute of our lives. For what did Jesus promise? “I am with you always , until the end of time.” (Mt 28:20) When we soar and triumph, Jesus is with us, by our side. And when we suffer and experience tragedy, especially, Jesus is with us, by our side. We are encouraged to give thanks to God in our triumphs and soaring. And we are invited to unite our suffering with Christ’s suffering and offer it up for whatever or whomever is in need. Christ’s suffering was not pointless, and united to His, neither is ours. We offer it up, trust, and hope. Sisters and brothers, that hope comes from our knowledge of the rest of the Gospel story that we will experience with Christ: that His triumph and tragedy, His soaring and suffering does not end in death, but in the glory of Easter Resurrection.