Take your Seat: Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time 2025

Take your Seat:

Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time 2025 

August 31, 2025

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Sirach 3:17-29; Psalm 68; Hebrews 12:18-24; Luke 14:1-14

 

These readings talk about right relations with our neighbor through the language of humility. We chafe at those who lord it over us as righteous, and we have the same reaction to those who try to be seen as humble, which is really an act of prideful arrogance. Those who take the lowest seats so they can be elevated at the table are full of pride. What we need is for people to recognize that their position at the table is a privileged one. Some people never make it there at all, and those are the people we are asked to invite.

 

The Church is trying hard these days to bring greater awareness at who can have a seat at the table, a seat that is one of service, not honor. For centuries, because the Church developed from within a European monarchical context with a vertical hierarchy of authority, and that system no longer adequately represents our worldwide communion. The Church is moving towards a more horizontal model of responsibility where service and authority are held by lay leaders. The Church has changed dramatically since the Second Vatican Council where the laity are assuming roles that were once part of the clergy.

 

The way of proceeding that is being implemented is designed to break the foundations of clericalism, legalism, and rigorism within our attitudes. Jesus tried to disrupt the system of the Pharisees and Sadducees because it moved people away from honoring God to misplace it upon honoring the religious authorities. We are in a process of making adjustments so that we recognize your valuable and unique contributions. You are gifted in many ways, resourceful, and competent, and the Church of the present and the future needs you at the table with your many talents and energies.

 

We need a church that emphasizes adult faith formation and a meaningful education. It is time to move past an adolescent type of church in order to serve the real needs of the world – the suffering, the pain, the loneliness, and the confusion that exists among so many people. We need to be there, to spiritually accompany, one another, on this journey through life where there are death, illness, incapacity, destruction, and violence. We need a Church that puts the values of Jesus into action into daily life. Church is so much more than Sunday worship services. Church exists beyond the catechism and magisterial teachings. Church is so much more than a liturgical gathering. It is a life lived well and broadly. Church is lived on the highways and byways of our travels. We need a maturing Church of discerning God’s will. 

 

Humility is defined as rightly knowing who one is. I know who you are. You are talented, caring, generous people of remarkable abilities. I am always edified when I hear your life stories. You have enormous potential and resources to shape the movement guided by the Holy Spirit. The Church needs you to take your seat at the table, a table where people are sometimes reluctant to invite you, and we need your voice and energy. You belong at the table. Come take your seat of privilege. Consider that Jesus is asking you to stand up, to come forward, and to assume to a higher position. Consider that Jesus is calling you from your seat of comfort to a great seat of honor, privilege, and service – for the Greater Glory of God. We’ll help you get what you need.

 

Scripture for Daily Mass

Monday: (1 Thessalonians 4) For if we believe that Jesus died and rose, so too will God, through Jesus, bring with him those who have fallen asleep. Indeed, we tell you this, on the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord,
will surely not precede those who have fallen asleep.

 

Tuesday: (1 Thessalonians 5) Concerning times and seasons, brothers and sisters, you have no need for anything to be written to you. For you yourselves know very well
that the day of the Lord will come like a thief at night.

 

Wednesday: (Colossians 1) We always give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love that you have for all the holy ones because of the hope reserved for you in heaven.

 

Thursday: (Colossians 1) From the day we heard about you, we do not cease praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God's will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord.

 

Friday (Colossians 1) Christ Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him.

 

Saturday (Colossians 1) You once were alienated and hostile in mind because of evil deeds; God has now reconciled you in the fleshly Body of Christ through his death, to present you holy, without blemish, and irreproachable before him, provided that you persevere in the faith

 

Gospel: 

Monday: (Luke 4) Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue on the sabbath day. He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah.

 

Tuesday: (Luke 4) He taught them on the sabbath, and they were astonished at his teaching because he spoke with authority. In the synagogue there was a man with the spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out in a loud voice, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?

 

Wednesday (Luke 4) At sunset, all who had people sick with various diseases brought them to him. He laid his hands on each of them and cured them. And demons also came out from many, shouting, "You are the Son of God."

 

Thursday (Luke 5) He saw two boats there alongside the lake; the fishermen had disembarked and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, he asked him to put out a short distance from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.

 

Friday (Luke 5) "The disciples of John the Baptist fast often and offer prayers, and the disciples of the Pharisees do the same; but yours eat and drink." Jesus answered them, "Can you make the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?

 

Saturday (Luke 6) Some Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the sabbath?” Jesus said to them in reply, “Have you not read what David did when he and those who were with him were hungry? How he went into the house of God, took the bread of offering, which only the priests could lawfully eat, ate of it, and shared it with his companions?”

 

Saints of the Week

 

September 3: Gregory the Great (540-604) was the chief magistrate in Rome and resigned to become a monk. He was the papal ambassador to Constantinople, abbot, and pope. His charity and fair justice won the hearts of many. He protected Jews and synthesized Christian wisdom. He described the duties of bishops and promoted beautiful liturgies that often incorporated chants the bear his name.

This Week in Jesuit History

 

• August 31, 1581: In St. John's Chapel within the Tower of London, a religious discussion took place between St. Edmund Campion, suffering from recent torture, and some Protestant ministers. 
• September 1, 1907. The Buffalo Mission was dissolved, and its members were sent to the New York and Missouri Provinces and the California Mission. 
• September 2, 1792. In Paris, ten ex-Jesuits were massacred for refusing to take the Constitutional oath. Also in Paris seven other fathers were put to death by the Republicans, among them Frs. Peter and Robert Guerin du Rocher. 
• September 3, 1566. Queen Elizabeth visited Oxford and heard the 26-year-old Edmund Campion speak. He was to meet her again as a prisoner, brought to hear her offer of honors or death. 
• September 4, 1760. At Para, Brazil, 150 men of the Society were shipped as prisoners, reaching Lisbon on December 2. They were at once exiled to Italy and landed at Civita Vecchia on January 17, 1761. 
• September 5, 1758. The French Parliament issued a decree condemning Fr. Busembaum's Medulla Theologiae Moralis.