Saints + Scripture: XXV Sunday in Ordinary Time

Simplex Edition | Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea máxima culpa!

'Tis the Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Tempus per annum, "time through the year"): Wikipedia-link.

Scripture of the Week
Mass Readings—Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
The Book of Wisdom, chapter two, verses twelve & seventeen thru twenty;
Psalm Fifty-four (R/. six[b]), verses three & four, five, & six & eight;
The Letter of James, chapter three, verse sixteen thru chapter four, verse three;
The Gospel according to Mark, chapter nine, verses thirty thru thirty-seven.

Commentary: Gospel reflection by Bishop Robert Barron (Word on Fire):

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus presents a child as the model for his disciples who want to be the most important. Jesus lays out for his disciples what is going to happen to him in Jerusalem, how he will be rejected, tortured, and killed. Oblivious to this, the disciples are discussing who among them is the most important. For Jesus, the path to greatness lies on the road to Calvary, to self-forgetting love; for the disciples—and for most people of most ages—it lies along the road to ego inflation.

What is the antidote? A child is proposed as a kind of living icon to these ambitious Apostles. We notice first how Jesus physically identifies with the child, sitting down at his level and placing his arms around him. It is as though he is saying that he himself is like a child. How so? Children don’t know how to dissemble, how to be one way and act another. They are what they are; they act in accordance with their deepest nature.

Why was this story of Jesus’ identification with children preserved by all of the synoptic Gospels? Somehow it gets close to the heart of Jesus’ life and message.

Video reflection by Bishop Robert Barron (Word on Fire): Sunday Sermon.

Video reflection by Father Greg Friedman, O.F.M. (U.S. Conf. of Catholic Bishops): Sunday Reflection.

Video reflection by Doctor Tim Gray (Augustine Institute/Formed.org): Sunday Reflection.

Audio reflection by Scott Hahn, Ph.D. (St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology): Breaking the Bread.

Mass Readings—Solemnity of Saint Matthew, Apostle & Evangelist
The First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter fifteen, verses one thru eight;
Psalm Nineteen (R/. "Their message goes out through all the earth."), verses two & three & four & five;
The Letter to the Ephesians, chapter four, verses one thru seven, eleven, twelve, & thirteen;
The Gospel according to Matthew, chapter nine, verses nine thru thirteen.