What Is Most Central in Your Life?| National Catholic Register

User’s Guide to Sunday, Sept. 22

Sunday, Sept. 22, is the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Mass readings: Wisdom 2:12, 17-20; Psalm 54:3-4, 5, 6 and 8; James 3:16-4:3; Mark 9:30-37.

In today’s Gospel, the Lord Jesus asks a crucial and probing question: “What is most central in your life?”  

The Gospel text opens: “Jesus and his disciples left from there and began a journey through Galilee.” This will be Jesus’ final journey through Galilee. He is heading south, unto his passion, death and resurrection. Our own lives are a kind of procession, as well. We, too, are making a journey through this life, our first and only journey. With every step we take, we move closer to death and, we pray, resurrection with the Lord.

The text then says: “He was teaching that the Son of Man is to be handed over to men and they will kill him, and three days after his death, the Son of Man will rise.” Jesus is telling the disciples some of the very difficult things he will go through. Yet they are dealing with their own issues. They seem to draw back and become quiet. The text says that “they were afraid to ask him any questions about this matter.” There seems to be a portrait here of Jesus in  pain and somewhat alone in that pain. 

At this moment, Jesus asks the crucial question, “What were you arguing about on the way?” It is as if to say, “What are you discussing as you make your journey in life? What are you passionate about? What piques your interest? What is going on in your mind all day long?”  The text says the disciples were debating about who was greatest. 

But what of us? It is both sad and embarrassing that so many of us who call ourselves disciples are so preoccupied with things that are futile, passing and of little importance. Even things that have some relative importance get an undue amount of our attention. Meanwhile, things that do matter, things that matter most to God, such as salvation, knowledge of him, preparation for death, judgment, repentance, love, justice, mercy, truth, goodness, decency, virtue, prayer, and frequent reception of the sacraments — all these things rank pitifully low in the lives of most people, even those who call themselves Christians and disciples. 

At the heart of the Lord’s crucial question is a diagnosis of our wrongful priorities and worldly thinking. 

The Lord turns everything on its end and says, “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.”

We as a society tend to think of greatness in terms of how much money a person earns, how much authority he has, how much influence he has or where he lives. None of these things matters at all to God, who looks to the lowly, the poor, and especially those who serve and care for others. This teaching of the Lord’s is paradoxical from any worldly perspective. The greatest are those who serve, whether they are rich or poor; those who have others in mind, who seek not their own glory but seek the glory and will of God and goodness for others. This is greatness to God; everything else is foolishness to him.

So, what are you discussing as you make your way? It’s a crucial question. Is it what matters to God or what matters to the passing world?