Friday February 21, 2003 Homily by Fr. Robert Altier Sixth Week in Ordinary Time
Reading (Genesis 11:1-9) Gospel (St. Mark 8:34-9:1)
In the readings
today, we once again see two completely opposing ideas. We have the people at
Babel building their tower up into the sky and trying to make a name for
themselves, trying to be God, in essence. There is a little bit of humor that
Moses has worked into the story – as they tried to basically topple God – and
Moses says that God had to come down from His throne to even look at what they
had made to be able to show that what they thought was so great was really
quite puny in comparison to the glory of God. The idea was not so much the
grandeur of what they had built, but rather, the idea in this case is the
arrogance of the people who are doing it; it is their own pride. Rather than
building the tower, rather than that being the focus, it is their own self that
really is what we need to look at, the arrogance, the pride, the selfishness.
Then we see the Gospel, and Our Lord tells us that whoever wants to come after
Him must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow the Lord. And He tells us
that we are going to have to lose our life in order to save it.
These people in the
first reading are trying to make something of themselves, and the Lord is
telling us that we have to make nothing of ourselves rather than to make
something of ourselves. If we really want to be something, we have to become
nothing, because that is the only way we will have everything – if we give
everything up – because the more that we are hanging on to anything here, the
less that we can have of God. And so we have to let go of everything because
God Himself is everything, and when we possess God we have all.
Again, when we look
at what Our Lord says, He asks a simple question: What profit is there for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his
soul? You can make a great name for yourself. You could build
buildings up to the sky. You could make a city. You could have all kinds of
extraordinary things. Your name could be known throughout all the earth. And
you could fail to get to Heaven. What good is it? We put our focus in this
world so often on the wrong thing. It just reminds us once again of that quote
of Mother Theresa: “God does not care if we are successful; He only wants us to
be faithful.”
It does not matter
that you have a name in this world; it does not matter at all. What matters is
that we are faithful to Him so that we can be with Him forever. The only people
– the only people – who are truly
a success in this world are the ones who make it to Heaven. If you really think
about it, success has to be determined not by what we do in this world (that
is, by what kind of a name we make for ourselves or how much money we have
amassed or what we have done or whatever it might be) but it really has to be
gauged by the end. If we go to Heaven, we have been a success. If we go to
hell, we have been a total failure, no matter what it is that we have done in
this world that worldly people would think is great. That is what we need to
look at. We need to get our focus correct and stop trying to impress the
people, stop trying to make a name for ourselves. All we need to do is bring
ourselves to nothing so that we can have everything, to humble ourselves, to
take up our cross, to lose our lives in order to have true life, to put
ourselves aside so that the Lord can live in us and through us.
That is what we
have to be about: to follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, Who humbled
Himself completely, made Himself nothing, took on the form of a slave, went to
the Cross, and died for us. All we have to think about is Him. He is God, Who
took on a human nature, Who came into this world and lived a humble life in a
little Podunk town in the middle of nowhere, preached to a handful of people,
and was killed for telling the truth. Look at what God has done. At the same
time, we can look at Herod, who tried to make himself great even to the point
of calling himself that: Herod the Great. He built great castles for himself
and he built a huge temple that took 46 years to build, and it all came to
nothing.
So we see those two
differing ways of looking at things. One, to puff ourselves up; and the other,
to make ourselves humble. One, to look out for ourselves in this world; and the
other, to look at the next world. What profit does one show if they gain the
whole world and lose their life in the process? They show no profit. They are a
total and absolute failure and a disgrace. If we want to be successful then we
need to be faithful to Jesus Christ, to humble ourselves, to take up our cross
and follow Him, not only to Calvary – but through Calvary – to the Resurrection
and to eternal life.
* This text was
transcribed from the audio recording of a homily by Father Robert Altier with minimal editing.