This Sunday’s Gospel reading is familiar, but it seems to
be missing some verses. We hear Jesus asking his disciple: Who do people say I am. We hear Peter’s answer, You are the Christ, but then Jesus moves
on to speak about how he would suffer greatly. We are missing something. Actually, we are missing a lot.
There are no references to Jesus changing Simon’s name to Peter, no references
to Peter being the rock on which the Church will be built, no references to
Peter being entrusted with the Keys of the Kingdom. All this is found in the Gospel of Matthew, but today’s reading
is from the Gospel of Mark. Mark’s gospel emphasizes the demands of
Christianity. For example, where in the Gospel of Matthew Jesus says, anyone who loses his life for my sake will
find it. Mark expands this to anyone
who loses his life for my sake and the sake of the gospel will save it. The
good news of Jesus Christ demands sacrifice, even the sacrifice of our lives[1].
Mark’s emphasis is the cross. This is not just the cross that Jesus
died on. The cross that Mark presents is the cross we are called to embrace. Sacrificial
love must be the way of the followers of Christ. That is what the Letter of
James is speaking about in today’s second reading when he says, I will demonstrate my faith to you through
my works.
This is not how we want to hear religion
presented. We want religion to be
less demanding. We want to hear that if we just do our best to be decent
Christian people, our lives will be easy now and there will be eternal rewards
in the hereafter. But Jesus never promised us that our lives would be easy. He
said that they would have meaning, and purpose, and relevancy. This is what He
means when He said that we have to lose our lives for His sake and the sake of
the Gospel to find life.
In his great book, Letters
to a Young Catholic, George Weigel speaks about the weakness that Peter
exhibited in the days before Easter and Pentecost. One time Peter walked on
water towards Jesus, but then lost his focus, and began to drown[2].
In today’s Gospel, Peter tried to stop the Lord from accomplishing the will of
the Father, thus aligning himself with the devil. That is why Jesus called him Satan. Peter publically denied
Christ three times. Yet, Peter allowed his life to be radically changed by
Christ. Weigel notes that the
evangelists, the writers of the gospels, did not present the disciples as
plastic saints, but as weak men who realized that the only way they could keep
their eyes fixed on Jesus would be to become courageous heros. And they did
become courageous heros. Peter left the security of his little fishing business
in Galilee to journey through a world that wanted all people serious about God
dead. He went to the capital of that pagan world, Rome, where he knew his
proclamation of the gospel would cost him his life. He was condemned to be
crucified, but, tradition has it, when he was brought to the place of
crucifixion, right next to where the Basilica of St. Peter stands now, he asked
that he be crucified head down because he did not deserve to be crucified like
the Savior.
Yes, Peter had been weak. He had failed. But, as
Weigel reminds us, weakness and failure have been part of the Catholic reality
from the beginning and extending to modern times. This includes the weakness,
failure, stupidity and cowardice among its ordained leaders. But purification
among Catholics in whatever their vocations in life may be and their
rededication to Christ demonstrate that with Jesus Christ failure is not the
final word. Emptiness and
oblivion, Weigel writes, are not our destiny. Love is the final word, and love
is the most living thing of all because love is of God.
When we keep our eyes focused on the Lord, we can do
what might seem impossible, be that walking on water or living an authentic
Catholic life. We can live our
lives as the gift for others that our lives were meant to be. Weigel writes
that we can discover the depths of our lives by emptying ourselves of our own
self concerns. I particularly love this quote, “In the Catholic view of things,
walking on water is an entirely sensible thing to do. It’s staying in the boat, hanging tightly to our own sad
little securities, that’s rather mad.”
There are times that we have all acted in a rather
insane way. How could it possibly
be sane for us to walk away from Jesus Christ? Yet, we do this. We have held
onto our sins as though we could not live without them. We have made our
possessions our security. And we have sacrificed our opportunity to follow
Christ, to live for Christ and to die for Christ. But then, we have
returned. We are here now, aren’t
we? We are here because we know
that sacrificing ourselves for Christ, living an authentic Catholic life, gives
us the greatest life we could ever possess, the life of Jesus Christ.
Are we going to join the Disciple Peter, the one whose
view of life was limited to the physical world, or will we join the Apostle
Peter who lived and died for the spiritual? This is the fundamental choice of our lives. We are called upon
today to follow Christ, to embrace our faith, to share our faith, and, when it
is needed, to suffer for our faith.
We pray today for the courage to live our faith ●
[1]
24th Sunday of Ordinary Time (B), September 13, 2015. Readings: Isaiah 50:5-9ª;
Responsorial Psalm 116:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9; James 2:14-18; Mark 8:27-35.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario