Sunday Readings: Three Groups to Greet the Pope

User's Guide to Sunday, Sept. 20

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Sunday, Sept. 20, is the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B).

 

Mass Readings

Wisdom 2:17-20, Psalms 54:3-8, James 3:16-4:3, Mark 9:30-37

Pope Francis is coming to America, and this Sunday’s readings can be read as a description of the three types of responses he is likely to get.

 

The Catholic Critics

The first group is described in the Gospel and can be called the Catholic critics.

Last week, we heard the Gospel from Mark, Chapter 8, in which Jesus renames Simon Peter the Rock, making him the first pope. This week, in Mark, Chapter 9, the apostles begin arguing about who is greater. And so we see in the historical record of the Gospels that the Church’s first act upon receiving a pope was to bicker about his shortcomings.

We are still bickering.

There is a healthy place for dialogue among Catholics about the direction the Church is taking. But there is also an unhealthy attitude that dismisses the Pope as meddlesome or foolish and turns to naval-gazing.

Jesus tells the apostles two attitudes that should replace sniping: humble obedience and loving service. Jesus Christ was obedient unto death, fulfilling the will of the Father and giving himself to the least ones. That is his definition of Catholic greatness.

 

The Secularist Opponents

The next group to greet the Pope is presented in the first reading, from the Book of Wisdom. This is a reading we hear again in association with the Passion:

“Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us; he sets himself against our doings [and] reproaches us for transgressions.”

This sounds like the opponents of the Pope who see his words as odious to modernity.

Pope Francis tends to speak bluntly about issues, taking a stance that is not very popular in America today.

The media has tried to present him as the “Great Squish,” allowing their wishful thinking to convince themselves that he is going to change Church teaching on abortion, divorce, contraception and same-sex “marriage.” But on several occasions, he has shown in no uncertain terms that he will do no such thing.

When he spoke in the Philippines against contraception and the redefinition of marriage, opponents of Church teaching found him “obnoxious to us.” He lost followers, and so did the Church. Expect a lot less love for Francis from the secular press after his visit.

 

The Sheep Who Hear His Voice

There is another reaction: the reaction of Catholics ready to accept his invitation to embrace the Gospel message in all of its authenticity.

Pope Francis has a genius for translating into modern terms the Gospel’s radical call to conversion.

The second reading today is a great example. It begins with a scathing rebuke to “jealousy and selfish ambition” in the Church. Pope Francis, in his December address to the Roman Curia, fearlessly delivered the same message to his closest advisers, in a speech that the Harvard Business Review presented as a model to modern CEOs.

The reading continues with James asking, “Where do the wars and where do the conflict come from?” and answering, “You covet, but you do not possess. You kill and envy, but you cannot obtain; you fight and wage war.”

In his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si, Pope Francis makes the same argument this way:

“When people become self-centered and self-enclosed, their greed increases. The emptier a person’s heart is, the more he or she needs things to buy, own and consume. It becomes almost impossible to accept the limits imposed by reality. Obsession with a consumerist lifestyle, above all when few people are capable of maintaining it, can only lead to violence and mutual destruction” (204).

The fact is: Pope Francis has a profound message for Catholics in America that cannot be summed up by the “left/right” political categories Americans like to use.

The readings invite us to be in this third group, trusting the Church and being wide open to what the Pope has to say.

 

Tom Hoopes is writer

in residence at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas,

where he lives with April,

his wife and in-house theologian and consultant,

and their children. CNA photo