Today is August 24, the Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time.
We read at today’s Mass, “For behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last” (Lk 13:30).
The Gospel today reminds us that the kingdom of God often appears upside down compared to the world’s standards. Jesus tells us that those who are first in worldly terms may be last in the kingdom, while those who are last here will be first in heaven. It’s a startling inversion that challenges us to examine what we truly value.
G.K. Chesterton once described the skeptic as a man standing on his head. His feet, Chesterton wrote, “are dancing upwards in idle ecstasies, while his brain is in the abyss.” Such a life is unstable because it rests on the wrong foundation. Success, power and self-assertion may look like solid pedestals, but they leave us fragile, restless and overwhelmed by sadness. We’ve all seen how quickly joy fades when it is rooted in these things.
Following Christ
Christianity, however, turns us right side up. Chesterton put it beautifully: by faith, “joy becomes something gigantic and sadness something small.” The Gospel shows us that humility, service and sacrifice provide the firm ground our hearts seek. By choosing these, we stand not on our heads, but on our feet.
Jesus asks us to embrace this seeming paradox: to put others first, to count losses as gain, to find life by giving it away. What looks upside down to the world is in fact the only way to stand securely according to heaven’s design.
Those who appear last by worldly measures — those who love quietly, serve faithfully and endure humbly — will be first in the joy of God’s kingdom. To follow Christ is to embrace this inversion, trusting that the Gospel alone sets us firmly on our feet.
Let us pray,
O God, who cause the minds of the faithful to unite in a single purpose, grant your people to love what you command and to desire what you promise, that, amid the uncertainties of this world, our hearts may be fixed on that place where true gladness is found. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.
