During election season, with political ads playing continually, it is easy to be cynical and short-sighted. Today’s reflection invites us to look at the bigger picture: that we are part of the great transformation of the world into Love, even if that can be difficult to recognize. More importantly, what are we doing to hasten Love’s inevitable victory?

September 22, 2024: Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
Wisdom 2:12, 17-20
Psalm 54:3-6, 8
James 3:16 – 4:3
Mark 9:30-37

Our Role in the Great Transformation

A Reflection by David Jackson

Today, all of us are living in a Great Transformation. The old is falling away. A new center is emerging. Let us draw one another close and find new ways of building community that put Jesus' foundational people – the outcast, the vulnerable, and those on the margins – at our center. Let us be intentional in choosing our leadership role. How am I being called to participate in my own transformation as well as the world? We ask Wisdom to guide us through this process of dying and rising.  We are part of a Great Transformation, and we pray and hope that we might come through it bearing even greater resemblance to the One whose Love is leading the way.

This week’s passage from the Book of Wisdom invites us to be transformed even through injustice. The text says:

"The wicked say:
Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us;
he sets himself against our doings,
reproaches us for transgressions of the law
and charges us with violations of our training.
Let us see whether his words be true;
let us find out what will happen to him.
For if the just one be the son of God, God will defend him
and deliver him from the hand of his foes.
With revilement and torture let us put the just one to the test
that we may have proof of his gentleness
and try his patience.
Let us condemn him to a shameful death;
for according to his own words, God will take care of him."

But the focus of the passage is not on “the wicked,” but rather the reaction of the just, which is gentle and patient (although it is worth noting that the passage does not presume the Just One lets themselves be taken advantage of).

Fr. Walter Burghardt said, "Your role as Christians is to play the compassionate Christ wherever you live and move and have your being. To be a Christian, it is not enough to believe, to repeat the Creed each Sunday.  The New Testament Letter of James is brutally clear on that score ‘What does it profit, my brothers, sisters, if someone says he or she has faith but has not works? Can faith save him or her? Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead’ (James 2: 14, 17).

"Yours is an awesome responsibility. Only [the people of God] can play Christ day by day in every acre of God's earth. Not by preaching: not by changing law into gospel, medicine into faith healing, economics into a Christian calculus. Rather by being the best that you can be, a wondrous wedding of technical competence and Christian compassion. By realizing that despite the denial of Killer Cain, you are indeed your "brother's keeper", your sister's keeper. By affirming with your life that you are proud to bear the name ‘servant,’ even ‘suffering servant,’ for the sake of the other."
(Fr. Walter J. Burghardt, To Christ I Look. September 1988)

Clearly Fr. Burghardt was a prophetic and powerful homilist. We are in a Great Transformation, and we are called to serve the human family and all creation as we live into who we are called to become. Personally, I feel this call to transformation it in climate warming and its effects. I feel this transformation it in the direction Pope Francis is leading the Church. I see it in many theological issues, the presence and prominence of our LGBTQIA+ siblings in the Church, for example.  Where do you see transformation happening?  What are you willing to do to hasten its effects in our world? … And in your heart?

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     David Jackson was a Catholic Priest for 48 years. He received an M.A. in scripture from Catholic Theological Union in 1982. For many years he published reflections on the Sunday readings. He became disillusioned with the direction that the USCCB was taking and after his last term as pastor he requested laicization.
On September 10th 2024 he and Alva celebrated their 14th wedding anniversary.
He has been a member of an Intentional Community which celebrates a Zoom liturgy together every Sunday. He is one of the presiders who prepares the Liturgy. His degree in Scripture brings insights to the celebrations. He also has questions directed to him about the readings of the day.  He is glad to participate in presenting reflections for Dignity.

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