+ Our readings today that have to do with the suffering and Passion of Christ, come this year one day after the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, yesterday, and if this was not Sunday the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, today: 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!
To bring our Blessed Mother Mary into this scenario: she was with Jesus in mind and heart throughout all the events of Holy Week culminating in to brutal murder of her Son, her Beloved, her Child; and yet, she demonstrates how she listened to the whole narrative that Jesus related, and she kept in mind, in the front, and not the back therefore, that there would be a “third day of rejoicing” and triumph and JOY!! and so because she held the entire picture in her mind, she can also help us do the same when we face challenging, yes even impossible situations and circumstances in our lives. And so this sub-feast day today, by circumstances, we can look to her and pray to her as “Mother of Sorrows/Mother of Joy!” both irrevocably joined together. As the Red Cross of Suffering, always now leads to the Gold Cross of Victory, so to, the Mother of Sorrows is always and forever also, MOTHER OF JOY! she is our Mother of Hope and Mercy and Mother of our JOY!
I will walk before the Lord,
in the land of the living!
