Bellarmine University 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/102024.cfm Jesus gives us a challenging instruction today: “whoever wishes to be great among you will … be the slave of all.” We might understandably be repulsed by Jesus’ language of slavery. Who would want to be a slave? We have a horrifying legacy of enslavement in the United States, a legacy that extends to the Caribbean and Central and South America. Slavery has never been a positive force in the world, including in the Greco-Roman culture where Jesus lived. So, it is a shock to Jesus’ listeners then and to us to today when he calls himself a slave and tells them he will be a human sacrifice. By calling himself a slave, Jesus is not saying that he doesn’t have dignity and value, as he is a human being created in the image of God. Nor that his labor and his body can be used up and thrown away by others. Rather he is attacking the human desire to use other people in this way. So-called “gr...
These posts are the collected homilies of Deacon Ned Berghausen, permanent deacon of the Catholic Archdiocese of Louisville, assigned to St. Agnes Catholic Church. The title "Foot Washer" refers to the Last Supper (John 13:1-20) in which Jesus washed the feet of the apostles and challenged them, "“Do you realize what I have done for you? If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet. I have given you a model to follow."