22nd Sunday
Ordinary Time – Year A
Matthew 16:21-27
First Reading
1 Samuel 26:2, 7-9,12-13,22-23
David does not kill Saul.
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 103:1-4,8,10,12-13
A song in praise of God’s mercy
Second Reading
1 Corinthians 15:45-49
As we bear the image of Adam, so we will bear the image of the one from heaven.
Gospel Reading
Luke 6:27-38
Jesus teaches his disciples to be merciful as God is merciful.
Jesus began to make it clear to his disciples that he was destined to go to Jerusalem and suffer grievously at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, to be put to death and to be raised up on the third day. Then, taking him aside, Peter started to remonstrate with him. ‘Heaven preserve you, Lord;’ he said ‘this must not happen to you.’ But he turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle in my path, because the way you think is not God’s way but man’s.’
Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me. For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it. What, then, will a man gain if he wins the whole world and ruins his life? Or what has a man to offer in exchange for his life?
‘For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of his Father with his angels, and, when he does, he will reward each one according to his behaviour.’
Background on the Gospel Reading
Today’s gospel reading is a continuation of the teaching that began in last Sunday’s gospel. We continue to hear Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain. Recall that in Luke’s Gospel, this teaching is addressed to Jesus’ disciples. This is in contrast to the parallel found in Matthew’s Gospel, the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus’ words are addressed to both the disciples and to the crowds.
These words from Jesus’ teaching are familiar to us. They constitute the crux and the challenge of what it means to be a disciple: Love your enemies, turn the other cheek, give to those who ask, do unto others, lend without expecting repayment, judge not lest you be judged.
There are several similarities between Luke’s and Matthew’s report of Jesus’ great teaching. Both begin with the Beatitudes. Matthew includes nearly all the content that Luke does; the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel is longer than Luke’s Sermon on the Plain. There are, however, differences in language and nuance. For example, Matthew presents this portion of the teaching as a contrast between Jesus’ teaching and the teachings of the law and the prophets. This is in keeping with Matthew’s concern to address his predominantly Jewish audience. It is likely that Luke omits this contrast because it was unnecessary for the Gentile believers for whom Luke is writing.
Another point of contrast between Matthew and Luke’s presentation is the terminology. In Luke, Jesus contrasts the behavior of his followers with the behavior of “sinners.” In Matthew, Jesus contrasts the behavior desired with the behavior of tax collectors and Gentiles. Matthew concludes the teaching about love of enemies with the admonition to be perfect as God is perfect; Luke concludes by emphasizing God’s mercy.
In both Gospels, Jesus’ words challenge those who would follow him to be more like God. God loves us beyond our expectations, beyond anything we can possibly imagine. In response to God’s love, we are to love as God loves, beyond expectations and with a depth beyond imagining.
Called to share in the cross, Christ’s missionary option
Romeo Ballan, MCCJ
Peter’s confession is wonderful: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16:16 – last Sunday’s Gospel). But that’s not all about the identity of Jesus. It is important to affirm the divinity of Jesus Christ, but perhaps it is even more difficult to affirm his humanity, with the consequent possibility of suffering and death (Gospel). For this reason, Jesus, after receiving from his disciples the first explicit profession of faith in him as the Messiah, begins a new phase in his preaching: “Jesus began to make it clear to his disciples… (v. 21). It is just like the beginning of his public life, following the preparatory phase (baptism in the Jordan and temptation in the desert). Matthew writes: “From then onwards Jesus began his proclamation with the message: ‘repent’… (Mt 4:17). In baptism and in the desert, Jesus had chosen precise options regarding the way to carry out the mission received from the Father for the salvation of humanity: the choice to be and live as a son and a brother, the option to forgo the easy and illusory means of power, glory and well-being… Faithful to his options, which were chosen according to the mind of God, Jesus proceeded with determination towards his ‘hour’, ready for the extreme consequences. He talks about them with his disciples and friends, and rejects compromises or reconsiderations suggested by those who thought only as human beings do, according to flesh and blood (v. 17-23). Jesus clearly points out the contrast, the incompatibility between thinking in God’s way and thinking in a human fashion (v. 23).
On these premises, the revelation and the identity of Jesus with new insights continues in today’s Gospel. He is not only the Messiah-Christ, the Son of God (v. 16), but also the Servant, who must “suffer grievously… be put to death and be raised up” (v. 21). Jesus holds that his disciples, too, in the newly-proclaimed family, that is, the Church (see last Sunday’s Gospel), will have to share his options, travel on the same road, if they want to carry out his same mission. Hence he speaks openly to his disciples about the need to renounce themselves, take up the cross and follow him, to lose their own lives in his cause (v. 24-25), to become like the Samaritan and Simon the Cyrene for those most feeble, as Pope Benedict XVI has taught the young people in the recent World Youth Day in Madrid, inviting them to rebel against conformity, indifference and individualism that enslaves, and to opt instead for Christ and for the proclamation of the Gospel, a gift of life and freedom.
Before being a moral and ascetic exhortation to accept tribulations, sickness and death patiently, these demanding words are a call for the disciple to be identified with the plans of Jesus, and to share his options and his path: “The Gospel reading, in human eyes, is an exhortation to resignation; but Jesus was never resigned! Indeed, he says ‘it is necessary for me to be condemned’. Why necessary? Because the option I chose on the day on which I said ‘get behind me, Satan!’, on which I renounced power, the blandishments of physical well-being and the miracle (the three temptations rejected by Jesus in the desert), is an option that brings me inevitably to condemnation!” (Ernesto Balducci).
So it is not a Cross that is a burden, to be borne with resignation; it is the necessary conclusion to an option that Jesus took freely in the desert. He is certain of his choice, rejects the protests of Peter, the new Satan (vv. 22-23), and puts the disciple in his place: Peter is not called to point out, but to follow in the footsteps of the Master. Otherwise ‘the rock for the building’ (v. 18) becomes a stumbling block (v. 23), an obstacle. To think in God’s way is the basic condition for carrying out, with faithfulness and effectiveness, the mission that Jesus entrusts to his Church.
The missionary is like the prophet who is often a nuisance and an irritation (1st Reading). But if in his life he identifies with the Master, he bears an “inner fire” (v. 9) that is overpowering, and drives him to overcome discouragement and adversities and to offer himself, body and soul (2nd Reading) “by offering your living bodies as a holy sacrifice” (v. 1), so as to become able, through inner renewal, “to discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and mature” (v. 2). The challenges of Mission demand that the evangeliser, in what he/she does, lets the inspiration come from the one Master and Saviour: Christ. The history of the Missions is full of apostles with a deep passion for Christ and for humanity: Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, Daniel Comboni, Teresa of Calcutta, Francis Xavier… who opted for Christ rather than to gain the whole world (cf. Mt.16:26). So, too, the numerous martyrs of all times. This kind of fidelity is a sure condition of apostolic effectiveness. And of true joy in missionary service.
THE CROSS IS SOMETHING ELSE
José Antonio Pagola
It’s hard to not feel confusion and discomfort on hearing once again Jesus’ words: «If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me». We understand Peter’s reaction very well, when he hears Jesus talk about rejection and suffering, and «taking Jesus aside, he began to rebuke him». The theologian martyr Dietrich Bonhoffer says that Peter’s reaction «proves that, from the beginning, the Church has been scandalized by the suffering Christ. She doesn’t want her Lord to impose the law of suffering on her».
This scandal can become unbearable today for those of us who live in what Leszek Kolakowsky calls «the culture of painkillers», that society obsessed with eliminating suffering and discomfort by means of every kind of drug, narcotic and escape.
If we want to clarify what the Christian attitude should be, we need to understand well in what the cross consists for a Christian, since it can happen that we put it where Jesus never did.
We easily call «cross» everything that makes us suffer, even that suffering that appears in our life generated by our own sin or our mistaken way of living. But we shouldn’t confuse the cross with just any misfortune, setback or discomfort that comes about in life.
The cross is something else. Jesus calls his disciples to follow him faithfully and put themselves at the service of a more human world: God’s reign. This is what’s first. The cross is nothing else than the suffering that comes to us as a consequence of that following, the sad destiny that we must share with Christ if we truly follow his footsteps. That’s why we mustn’t confuse «carry the cross» with masochistic postures, false mortification or what P. Evdokimov calls individualistic and «cheap asceticism».
On the other hand, we need to correctly understand the «renounce oneself» that Jesus asks for in order to carry the cross and follow him. «Renounce oneself» doesn’t mean mortifying oneself just any way, punishing oneself, and even worse, annihilating or destroying oneself. «Renounce oneself» means not hanging onto oneself and forgetting one’s own «ego» in order to build our existence on Jesus. To free ourselves of ourselves in order to radically adhere to him. To say it in another way, «carry the cross» means to follow Jesus, ready to assume the insecurity, the conflict, the rejection or the persecution that the Crucified himself must suffer.
But we believers don’t live out the cross as people defeated, but as bearers of a final hope. Whoever loses their life for Jesus Christ will find it. The God who raised Jesus will raise us also to a full life.
José Antonio Pagola
https://www.gruposdejesus.com
Offer life if you don’t want to lose it
Fernando Armellini
Introduction
“In the days of trouble” (Ps 77:3) we call upon the Lord because we are convinced that “he gives life and breath and everything else to everyone” (Acts 17:25). We appeal to the saints, visit shrines, kiss relics, make novenas… always to have life. The crowds sought Jesus, “they tried to dissuade him from leaving” (Lk 4:42). They touched him “because of the power that went out from him and healed them all” (Lk 6:19). They approach him for life. Hesaid, “I have come that they may have life, life in all its fullness” (Jn 10:10).
Yet there is something of a paradox in his proposal, indeed, absurd. To achieve life, it is necessary to lose it, “I lay down my life to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down freely” (Jn 10:17-18). He justifies his choice of comparing himself with the seed: “Unless the grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much fruit” (Jn 12:24).
It takes a lot of faith to be convinced that, to have life, you must “give it up to death”(Rev 12:11). Strange, disturbing logic! God assures Abraham a posterity as numerous as thestars in the sky and asks him to sacrifice his son, Isaac, who should have begun the chain of making the promise a reality. A test like this may well be faced only by someone who firmly believes, like Abraham.
Jesus promises to introduce the disciple into this life. “The one who follows me will havethe light of life… will never see death… will never experience death” (Jn 8:12.51-52) … and goes towards the cross; he plunges into the waters of death. But ‘he will re-emerge’ on Easter Day. Blessed are those who dare to follow him: he will give them to eat of the “tree of life”(Rev 2:7). They “will be with him forever” (1 Thes 4:17), and they shall “see God as he is”(1 Jn 3:2).
First Reading: Jeremiah 20:7-9
You duped me, O Lord, and I let myself be duped; you were too strong for me, and you triumphed. All the day I am an object of laughter; everyone mocks me.
Whenever I speak, I must cry out, violence and outrage is my message; the word of the Lord has brought me derision and reproach all the day.
I say to myself, I will not mention him, I will speak in his name no more. But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; I grow wearyholding it in, I cannot endure it.
“Trust in Him and let him act and he will make the justification of your cause bright as the sun” (Ps 37:5-6). It is what a wise old man suggests to a disciple. At the end of his upright life, he is convinced that God has lavished favors and blessings on him for his righteousness. “God is good with the just, with people of clean heart” (Ps 73:1). This is the traditional doctrine of Israel, the indisputable truth of just retribution. Yet, faced with the denial of the facts, too often incomprehensible, all the dogmas of the faith seem disingenuous, drivel,sometimes even a mockery or provocation.
In the reading, the desperate reaction of a man who, faced with the absurdity of his life, turns on God with a reckless, almost blasphemous, accusation: ‘You have betrayed me!’ It is Jeremiah, the prophet, who faced persecution, mishap, and all sorts of trouble because of his fidelity to his mission. At one point, he could bear no more and cried out in a complaint to God.
Here are the facts: we are in Jerusalem during the dramatic years preceding thedestruction of the city and the deportation to Babylon. The country is on the brink of disasterand the king, Jehoiakim, a coward, is more interested in constructing his luxurious palacethan the impending ruin of his people. The priests preach a futile, imaginary religion, coldexecution of external rites and ceremonies, which do not correspond to the change of heart and a life according to God’s law.
It is in this situation that God called Jeremiah: “Go whatever be the mission I am entrusting to you, and you will speak of whatever I command you to say.” The prophet is scared; he is young; he does not know how to speak, but the Lord assures him: “Do not be afraid … for I will be with you to protect you … They will fight against you but shall not overcome you, for I am with you to rescue you” (Jer 1:7-8,19).
How can we not believe him? Jeremiah agrees, but then misunderstanding sets in. Contrast and contradiction arise, conflict with the king, the commanders of the army, and thereligious authorities. The situation explodes. Even the people, angry and disappointed, ask the prophet to be silent. The avowed enemies can no longer tolerate him. They collectevidence against him, have him arrested. They beat him and subject him to a process in which, luckily for him, he will be acquitted.
The worst seems to be over, although tension, anxiety and discomfort have marked his life profoundly and shaken his psychological balance. It is at this point that Jeremiah raises his lament mentioned in today’s reading to God. It opens with a lively image, the most daringof the entire Bible: “Yahweh, you have seduced me, and I let myself be seduced” (v. 7). The prophet likens his vocation to a seduced girl who, having been flattered by the sweet words of a young man and succumbed to his proposal, is abandoned to her fate. She has nothing more but to curse the moment she believed in a false love.
Here is how Jeremiah feels: alone against all and an object of the people’s ridicule and violence. Why did God call him to a mission that is proving to be a failure? Anguished, he wonders how he allowed himself to be seduced. Why didn’t he stick with his tranquil life with his family and working in the fields of the peaceful town of Anathoth? In his despair, he exclaims: “I’ll think no more of God and speak no more in his name” (v. 9). It is a cry loaded with anger and the bitterness of a lover trying to cut off a stormy and troubled relationship inwhich he had become involved.
But, as anyone who has experienced an overwhelming affection knows, Jeremiah fails tofree himself of the Lord who has seduced him. The passion burns in his heart like a fire that is impossible to extinguish. Despite the excruciating pain and disappointment that he undergoes, he cannot give up his mission.
Second Reading: Romans 12:1-2
I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship. Do not conformyourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.
Do our liturgical celebrations that are not accompanied by works of love interest God? The prophets said it, and Jesus recalls it often: God “desires works of love, not practices of worship” (Mt 9:13). The first words remind us that the solemn liturgies of the temple arereplaced by a new way of praising God: the sacrifice of our own lives offered for the brothers and sisters (v. 1). If our liturgies do not celebrate a life of love, they are reduced to an empty ceremony, without content, pure exterior ritual, and needless formalism.
Paul continues advising Christians not to comply with the ‘mentality of this world.’ In the language of the New Testament, this expression does not have a temporal reference but does have a qualitative one. It is the dominant mentality, the way of thinking deemed normal, prudent, and sensible by all. This logic easily penetrates the mind and heart. It is assimilatedand, without even realizing it, Christians also end up thinking like the others and adapt themselves to the current morality. This mechanism of integration is devious and dangerous. We need to become aware and be vigilant in order not to get sucked in. That’s why the apostle invites all to renew their thinking to continually discern what behavior is acceptable to God, even if it is incomprehensible to people.
Gospel: Matthew 16:21-27
Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised. Then Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him, “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.” He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life? For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father’s glory, and then he will repay everyone according to his conduct.”
The Jews of Jesus’ time lived in expectation of a better world, the ‘century to come,’filled with peace and justice. Basing themselves on Ezekiel 49, the rabbis announced that the ‘last days’ would bring a miraculous transformation of the earth. They assured that in the days of the Messiah, Palestine would be transformed into a garden, and the garden would become a forest. The fertility of the soil would increase thousands of times. There would bean abundance for all, an abundance of everything, as in the heavenly period at the beginning.
The apostles also cultivated these hopes. They were convinced that the coming of the Kingdom of God was imminent. They had realized that their master was the Christ, the long-awaited ‘Son of David.’ They had followed him to see their dreams of glory realized. The only question which, according to them, was still pending was to determine who would be entitled to the first places (Mk 9:34).
In the context of these expectations, the first of the three announcements of the Passion found in the Gospel is placed. In the middle of his public life, Jesus is aware of the need todecisively correct the convictions of his disciples. He does not want them to follow him,lolling in vain illusions. To avoid ambiguity, he openly declares that he is not walking towards triumph, but he is going to Jerusalem to suffer a lot, be killed, and be raised again on the third day (v. 21).
Human logic cannot but be upset in the face of such a proposal. The disciples cannotunderstand because they learned from the scribes that the Messiah could not die. It was taught to them that, at his coming, the righteous who lie in their graves would rise to take part in the joy of his Kingdom, and Peter, in the name of all reacts (vv. 32-33). He is not afraid of sacrifice. One day he will prove this by risking his life if necessary (Jn 18:10), but he is notwilling to commit himself to an absurd project. He will not stand on a road that leads straightto failure. He wants Jesus to know this and change his mind.
The scene that follows is highly significant and realistic. Peter takes the Master apart to cheer himself up in a moment of despair. He wants to make him understand that it is understandable that an unfortunate phrase may also escape his lips in a moment of confusion. The reaction of Jesus to the attempt to dissuade him from his path is hard, almost irritating: “Get behind me, Satan,” says our text, but the translation is not exact. Jesus does not intend to dismiss Peter but to put him on the right path. ‘Get behind me’—he says— ‘follow my steps, do not try to precede me, as one who claims to lead the way. The Father draws this and you, Peter, make a proposal that comes from worldly wisdom, from human foolishness that issenseless in God’s eyes.’
Peter is not committing a simple mistake. He is moving away from the Lord. He is actingjust like Satan, who tried to convince Jesus to focus on the domain, on the conquest of power.He had led him to a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and theirglory, saying, “All this I will give you, if you kneel down and worship me.” But Jesus had decidedly reacted: “Be off, Satan” (Mt 4:8-10). Now the same temptation—advanced byPeter—cannot but be responded to equally harshly. The scene described in today’s Gospelcan be paired with that of last Sunday. Simon had been named by Jesus as the living stone of the Church because he had received the revelation of the Father, had accepted his plan ofsalvation, and had professed his faith in the Son of the living God. Now he becomes a stumbling block because he lets himself be guided by human reasoning, which aims for glory, success and honor, which are obstacles in the path of the Master and his disciples.
After rebuking Peter, Jesus turns to all (vv. 24-27) and unequivocally puts forward his demands. There is no attempt to mitigate them, to make them more palatable. If the Masterhas chosen to give life and if “the disciple is not above the master” (Mt 10:24), the path will have to be the same.
Three imperatives characterize the radical nature of a choice that does not admit delays or second thoughts: “Deny yourself, take up your cross, follow me.”
Deny yourself means to stop thinking about yourself. It is the reversal of the principlesgoverning relations between people in this world. It is the rejection of what all believe to be positive stimuli because they push people to action: the pursuit of self-interest, the will to achieve gratification, acknowledgment and benefit. Even in the purest acts of love, there is often some veiled selfishness and ambition. The disciple of Christ is called, first, to give up any claim to personal gain, even a spiritual one. He does not do good to accumulate merit in heaven, to take a step up in spiritual progress. He acts thinking only about his brother and sister. He does not give even a minimum of consideration to the positive impact of good works on his person. He loves freely, in pure loss, as does the Father.
The second imperative, take up your cross, does not refer to the need to patiently endureeither small or big tribulation in life, even less, the exaltation of pain to please God. The Christian does not seek to suffer but to love. The cross is the sign of love and total gift. To carry it in Christ’s footsteps means to follow the way he has trod to offer your life for the same ideals and confront, if necessary, even persecution and death to remain faithful to the Gospel. ‘Carry the cross’—the sacrifice of self for good and advantage others.
The third imperative, follow me, does not mean ‘take me as a model,’ but share my choice, participate in my project, bet your life on love, together, with me.
The concluding verses (vv. 25-27) present three reasons with which Jesus tries to convince his disciple to accept the three difficult conditions he has just put forward.
The first: the one who gives his own life does not lose it but gains it (v. 25). Whoeverholds tight in their own hands the grain of wheat, who consumes it themselves or hides it,will only dissipate it. Only those who dare to lose it, ‘preserve’ it, ‘recover’ it. It also happenswith life: to earn it, ‘we must lose it.’ It is necessary to expend it on the brothers and sisters.
The second reason (v. 26): the life of this world passes quickly. It is transient, fragile, and precarious; it is not worth clinging desperately to as if it were eternal. Here numerous and wise reflections on the transience of life ring out: “You allow me to live but a short span; before you, all my years are nothing. Human existence is a mere whiff of breath. Humans are mere shadows that go about relentlessly. Being but a breath they toil and rake in wealth, not knowing who will take it next” (Ps 39:6-7)
The third reason (v. 27): the ultimate reward. The scene of judgment often occurs in the Gospel of Matthew. It is not a threat about the future but an indication of the wise choicesthat can be made in the present. What can we present to God at the end of life? Certainly notmoney accumulated, a pleasure enjoyed, or awards earned during our career. In the end, the Lord will not look at the titles of honor that we may be able to put after our name but the works of love that go with our name. When the spotlights that dazzled this world are turned off, and when the deceptive glitter of idols that enchanted and seduced are extinguished, then only the light of God will shine, and the true value of each person will appear.
READ: You must discern the will of God: what is good, what pleases, what is perfect.
REFLECT: God’s will—what is good, perfect, pleasing. This is our life’s aim. We need to discern it always to hit the mark.
PRAY: We are aware of how we often miss the mark: our sins. Let us aim to do what’s more positive so we would really be praising God.
ACT: Ponder the difference between being really discerning and merely discriminating.
