May Jesus Christ be
praised and may his holy Mother pray for us.
There is something
different in our Gospel reading today.
For several months our Gospel readings have begun with the Lord Jesus teaching his disciples or speaking a parable to the crowds. Today there is a different word. Today, our Gospel begins: “Jesus began to show his disciples.”
Living out the teaching
of the love of the Father, proclaiming the goodness of creation, and announcing
a universal call to holiness of life, would lead the Lord Jesus to a lonely
cross on Calvary. He begins to show his
disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly, be killed, and rise
again. Last Sunday we heard Peter’s
confession of faith. Today we hear
Peter’s objection to the suffering of the cross, and the correction that the
Lord Jesus offers to him.
At the time of Jesus, there was great religious expectation for the
coming of a messiah. However the messiah
that they expected would be a political and military ruler who would overthrow
the Romans, restore the Kingship at Jerusalem, and make his power felt throughout
the world. And yet now, believing and
confessing that this Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, the
disciples are confused. Expecting a
military ruler, they now see a shepherd who promises to become a suffering
servant. The cross of Jesus would be
daily offered to them, and sharing in his cross they would share in his
promised victory. This conviction about
and this experience of the Lord Jesus would change how the disciples thought,
how they lived, and ultimately how they died.
It was the same for Jeremiah in our first reading. He was called as a
young man to a prophetic office. The
majority of the book of Jeremiah deals not with his prophetic words, but his
prophetic actions. He taught and showed
that he had experienced the power of the Most High God, but that his call to be
the Lord’s prophet had led him to derision and reproach. Jeremiah suffered for the message that he
believed and that he proclaimed.
Saint Paul, in his Letter to the Romans, invites us “by the mercies of
God, to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.” When we were baptized into Christ, we were
anointed priest, prophet and king. We
each received, in virtue of our baptism, a priestly office of sacrifice so that
we are capable of and responsible for offering ourselves as living and holy
sacrifices to the living and holy God.
We offer ourselves in sacrifice each time we, like Jeremiah, are
criticized or mocked for our faith. We
offer sacrifice when we daily take up the cross and the suffering of illness,
our own suffering or in compassion the suffering of another. We offer the sacrifice of praise when our
hearts and lips are joined in prayer.
And in simplicity, we offer the sacrifice of fidelity to our vocation,
confident that the daily sacrifice of our daily duties is holy and acceptable
to the Father.
But chiefly brothers and sisters, we offer our sacrifices in union
with the one sacrifice of Christ. Made
present daily in the celebration of the Eucharist, we are invited to join in
the offering of Christ to the Father. We
join and are joined to the cross of Christ and to his victory each time we are
present, really present, for the celebration of the Eucharist.
As we celebrate this Eucharist today, let us be attentive to the ways
that the Lord Jesus is showing us his love.
Let us fix our gaze on Jesus, the shepherd and suffering servant. And let us gather our daily sacrifices and
crosses, the light and the heavy, and present ourselves as a living sacrifice,
holy and acceptable to God.
Preached at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church,
Monroe, NC
