+ Our readings today that have to do with the suffering and
Passion of Christ, come about 10 days after the Feasts of
both the Exaltation of the Holy Cross,
and Our Lady of Sorrows: there is a
certain sense of exigency in the air: something really important is being
talked about here.
And what could be more
important than the price of our salvation,
and how it affected the lives of others who were there at the time.
In
the gospel passage, Jesus first elicits from St. Peter a
declaration that he is in fact the Christ
of God: the anointed one, sent to bring the history of Israel to a major
turning point! But then, after Jesus tells them all what he has to do as the
Christ, to bring about the salvation of all mankind: “be rejected, and killed
are rise after three days,” Peter rebukes Jesus and tells him to reconsider
this “unthinkable prospect,” –
unthinkable, because he is thinking only in human terms of what will happen:
Jesus then adds fuel to the fire of incredulity when he says that not only he must take up a cross and suffer
and die, but everyone who wants to be a true and authentic disciple of his must
do the same – if they want to share in the third part of Jesus’ original
declaration “rise again after three days,”
the disciple will die with Jesus, yes, but as Jesus himself here
promises, he will also rise with him!
And so the choice is ours, it
is always ours: are we willing to believe that the Cross of Jesus merited
newness of life for himself; and that imitation of him will yield the same
results for us?
The
first reading from the Prophet Isaiah relates the spirit in which
Jesus embraced the shame of his Passion: no, it would not be easy at all to “go
through with it” – but God would be his help, and he would get through it, and
the spiritual lives of a great many would be salvaged.
For us, then, today, while the
cause of our salvation rests solely on
our belief that Jesus is the Christ – the Divine Son of God – and that he did in fact suffer and die and
rose – for the forgiveness of our sins and so that the gates of heaven
could be opened for us – let us also remember that this belief must be accompanied by cooperative acts of
loving service to others motivated by love of God: for as Saint James tells
us in his ever classic way: faith of
itself, if it does not have works, is dead – and it will not be able to
qualify us then for participation in the supernatural life of God!
With
our Blessed Mother Mary, who knows about integrating suffering
into a life of deep faith and works, may we count on her prayers this day, to
aid us in being always pleasing to her Son, and to his Father in heaven. Amen.
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