Tuesday of the 26th week of Ordinary Time – 30 September 2025
Homily
Jesus' journey to Jerusalem is one of the major themes of Luke's Gospel. Today's Gospel begins with these words: ‘As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus, with a determined look on his face, set out for Jerusalem.’ This short sentence, which seems like an elegant and innocent introduction, is in fact so intense that it makes one shudder when one examines it closely. It must be said that translators, in whatever language, have had difficulty conveying the full force of the Greek expressions used by Luke. ‘As the time was fulfilled...’ says our translation. Luke says, literally, ‘As the days were about to be fulfilled...’ This is the same expression Luke used in his account of the birth of Jesus: ‘As the time was fulfilled that she (Mary) should give birth...’ We have therefore reached a decisive moment, the end of time, the definitive birth of Jesus. And this definitive birth, this end of time, will be his death. Our translation says: ‘As the time was fulfilled for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus, with a determined face, set out for Jerusalem.’ This beautiful paraphrase conveys the meaning of the Greek sentence quite well. But a literal translation would be much more brutal. It would have to be translated as: ‘As the time approached when he was to be eliminated’.
What is Jesus' attitude towards this brutal end to his ministry, which is already looming? Not only is he aware of it, but he faces it head-on and resolutely moves towards his goal. ‘With a determined face, he set out for Jerusalem.’ Here too, if we were to translate literally, we would say: ‘he hardened his face to set out for Jerusalem’, or, according to another translation that conveys the meaning quite well, ‘he set out irrevocably for Jerusalem’.
Jesus' mission on earth will end in resounding failure, called the Cross. He is aware of this from very early on. This does not prevent him from being totally faithful to his mission and resolutely accepting failure. In this, he teaches us a great deal. Even in the purely natural order, human life is not normally a long series of successes. It is made up, at all levels, of alternating successes and failures. The person who matures and grows throughout their life is not the one who denies their failures, but the one who knows how to deal with them, that is, to accept them clearly for what they are, to learn from them, to put an end to a chapter, then calmly turn the page and start another chapter. There is always the temptation either not to recognise failure for what it is and to pretend to take it as a success, or to revel in it in a masochistic way. Jesus' attitude is quite different: he has set out on a path and will not deviate from it, even though he knows that Jerusalem will kill the last of the prophets, as it has killed so many others.
Today we commemorate Saint Jerome.
Armand Veilleux