We analyze the quark mass dependence of the Roper mass to one-loop order in relativistic baryon chiral perturbation theory. The loop integrals are evaluated using infrared regularization which preserves chiral symmetry and establishes a chiral counting scheme. The derived chiral expansion of the Roper mass may prove useful for chiral extrapolations of lattice data. For couplings of natural size the quark mass dependence of the Roper mass is similar to the one of the nucleon.