24th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (B)
September 13, 2015
1. Sometime ago, and I love to recall it, a theological colleague wrote a magazine article to which he gave a mile-long title. It reads: “The Incredible Christian Capacity for Missing the Christian Point”. What in the world did the author mean by this title? Take St. Peter in the Gospel this evening. Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests and the Scribes, and to be killed and on the third day to be raised. What did Peter do upon hearing what Jesus had to say? He took Jesus aside and began to chastise him, saying: “God forbid, Master! No such thing will ever happen to you.” No matter what good intentions Peter might have had, nevertheless, he missed the whole point of Jesus’ remark. He just did not realize that the cross (and of course the resurrection), first for Jesus and then for ourselves, is always at the very center of our Catholic faith. No wonder Jesus had to turn to Peter and say to him – “Get behind me!” – he even calls him Satan – “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” St. Mark records this event immediately following Peter’s marvelous profession of faith! But we must not be too harsh in our judgement on Peter; he was just the first of many down through the centuries, including ourselves of course, who often prove quite adept at missing the Christian point.
2. From our earliest days we have lived under the sign of the cross. On the day of our baptism, the priest said to us – calling us by name – “The Christian community welcomes you with great joy. In its name, I claim you for Christ our Savior by the sign of his cross.” When we first began to study the Catechism, when we first began to understand Good Friday and Easter Sunday, we learned to pray – “We worship you, O Lord; we venerate your cross; we praise your resurrection; through your cross, you have brought joy to the world”.
3. How often we ourselves miss the Christian point. There’s always the temptation to think that we are the ones who have to work out our salvation on our own. We think that in our efforts to gain heaven, we are like basketball players in the game itself, while the Lord Jesus, our model and our coach, stands on the sidelines urging us on. This is not the picture. This really would mean that Jesus never really had to die for us. The truth is – it is the Lord Jesus, through his cross and resurrection which he shares with us, who accomplishes the essential work of getting us to heaven. In every human person’s striving for holiness, the main actor is always the Lord Jesus. (Let me suggest, dear reader, a little test as to how we understand our Catholic-Christian lives. Think of the theater marquee which announces what movies are playing inside the theater. Our lives with the Lord are better dramas and more important dramas than any that we will see in a movie. How should the marquee read? – “My Life with God”, starring me. Also playing God. Or more properly, should it read? – “God’s Life with Me”, starring God. Also playing – me. I come in sometime during the second act carrying a tray.) In our Gospel reading today, after speaking with Peter, Jesus speaks to all his disciples and of course to us here and now in these words: “Whoever wishes to come after me, must deny himself, take us his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life, will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake, will find it.” The best way to understand these words is to think of them in connection with our baptism. St. Paul asks us – “Are you not aware that we who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death?” In other words, baptism is the sacrament of the Lord’s dying and rising, and therefore the sacrament of our dying and rising in the Lord. Baptism sets the pattern for the Christian life. It is a two-fold pattern that reflects the dying and rising of Christ the Lord. What does this mean? It means that in baptism we die with Christ, that is, we die to sin and to what is not of God. But in baptism we live the new life the Lord has won for us on the cross – the life of grace, the life of our divine adoption, the life proper to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit – it is a life of love of God and neighbor in what we call eternal life. Most people who do not know the Lord Jesus may describe their existence in this way: first we live and then at some moment we die, and such a death means nothingness for there is no other life. But we who follow Jesus say to ourselves and to the whole world if the world wants to listen: first we die in Baptism and then we live and the life we begin to live is everlasting life, first in faith, ultimately in glory. This might help us understand Jesus’ words about dying to ourselves which is difficult and therefore a cross for us. It means, of course, saying “no” to sin and selfishness in order to say “yes” to love of God and love of neighbor. When St. Ignatius of Loyola was seeking the first members of what he would call the Society of Jesus, he had his eyes on the brilliant and affluent Francis Xavier, and he would repeat to Francis the words – “What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit one’s life?”
4. We must not complicate our Christian faith. As Pope Benedict XVI reminded us – “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea but the encounter with an event, with a person”, that is with the very person of the risen Christ. It’s good for us to realize that our Catholic faith is best understood in two phrases – the love of God and the cross of Jesus – but here too we don’t want to miss the Christian point. We have often heard the expression “the cost of discipleship”, a good expression but subject to misunderstanding. My friend, whom I quoted at the opening of this homily. reverses the expression “the cost of discipleship” and calls it “the discipleship of cost”. It’s not a question of becoming the Lord’s disciple and then perhaps but not necessarily to endure suffering and pain. It’s not discipleship that might generate suffering and death; rather it’s suffering and death that generate discipleship. It’s not as though discipleship is first and then there might come suffering and death, but what the Lord seems to be calling for is this – as we embark upon discipleship, we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death. The cross is not a terrible end to a God-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. Is not the Lord saying to us when he calls us – Come and die with him. But the good news is that if we share in his dying, we will also share in his rising.
5. It is important that we do not miss the Christian point in today’s Gospel. The Lord says – “Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; whoever loses his life for my sake will save it”. This is the paradox of the Gospel. This is also the law of life. Self-seeking which is inauthentic life leads to death. Self-giving which is true life is the secret for eternal life. Listen to what the Lord Jesus says to his followers and to us in the Gospel of John: “Unless the grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat. But if it dies, it produces much fruit.”
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