Our
readings today that have to do with the suffering and Passion of Christ, come
only days before the Feasts of both the Exaltation
of the Holy Cross, tomorrow on Monday, and of Our Lady of Sorrows, on Tuesday: 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, and
on Tuesday her Feast of Sorrows, to aid us in being always pleasing to her Son,
and to his Father in heaven. Amen.
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