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Homily for Tuesday of the 7th Wk in OT, 21 Feb 2023, Mk 9:30-37
Premonition is the word that comes to my mind over today’s Gospel. Jesus is talking about the things that are about to happen to him in Jerusalem. St Mark records three instances when Jesus predicted his passion, death and resurrection—in chapters 8, 9 and 10.
Sometimes we hear our loved ones talking this way—like when we hear them practically sounding like they’re saying goodbye or they’re already expressing their last will and testament. The common tendency is to dismiss it as morbid talk and not to pay any attention to it. Some might even deliberately change the subject.
Mark says they did not understand what he was talking about but they didn’t ask him any questions or even seek clarification about what he meant. Fast forward, after all the tragic things had happened already in Jerusalem, they probably looked back and said—he has told us about this but we were not paying attention to him.
PAY ATTENTION. This is the point in the series of admonitions that we heard today from our first reading from the Book of Sirach. The author is using the metaphor of the waiter, or the servant who “waits on his master.” He talks like a father admonishing his son what to do in order to be ready for times of adversity. He says, “Prepare yourself for trials… wait on God with patience…accept what comes your way, be steadfast, be patient, be like gold and silver that’s tested in fire…”
In the Gospel, Jesus is presenting the image of a child, in response to his disciples who were preoccupied with aspirations for greatness as he was explaining to them what his whole mission in Jerusalem was about.
I wonder if the writer of that book THE LITTLE PRINCE did not have Jesus’ admonition in today’s Gospel in mind when he spoke of adults as people who were preoccupied with what they considered as “matters of consequence”. He caricatures them as ridiculous characters who go around like headless chickens in business suits who miss out on the things that are really essential in life, the things invisible to the eye but which only the heart can see.
By putting a child in their midst, Jesus was in effect telling them what it took to be truly a child of God, which is what true greatness for him was about. To achieve true greatness, they had to be ready to be treated as the least of all.
