Sunday Reflections
22nd Sunday of Year A
I am weak but I believe
+ A reading from the holy Gospel according to
Matthew 16:21-27
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.’
1. This Sunday’s readings reminds us that the heros of the Word of God were not super men. They were weak men and women who took time to understand the God they served. They went through moments of doubts, discouragement and confusion before getting fully committed to their vocation. The first reading (Jer 20:7-9) presents us with the prophet Jeremiah and his struggles to accept the difficult mission of telling his compatriots two bitter truths: Jerusalem would be destroyed and the citizens would go into exile because of their iniquity. To announce such misfortune was not easy. Jeremiah resisted God’s call. He opted to abandon his mission. But God did not give up on him. He made him understand that he had to carry out the mission. Jeremiah ended up accepting the task. He declared that God seduced him and that he allowed himself to be seduced. By saying this, he indirectly affirmed his willingness to follow God’s way in spite of the challenges that this involved. Jeremiah went through phases of darkness, doubt and depression before arriving at the conviction that God is worth serving even when this brings suffering.
2. In the gospel, this conviction didn’t come easy for Peter too. Last Sunday, Jesus called Peter the rock upon which to build his Church. Today when Jesus declared that the Kingdom would be inaugurated through his passion and death, Peter showed his incomprehension by discouraging Jesus from accepting such a fate. Jesus seemingly over reacted to this lack of understanding by calling Peter Satan, that is the one who sows division. Peter was about to sow division between Jesus and the will of God the Father to bring salvation to the world through the suffering servant. Jesus took the opportunity to teach his followers that salvation is tied to suffering. Being a Christian means being a follower of one who was crucified on a cross.
3. Today, many people erroneously believe that being a Christian is synonymous with being shielded from suffering and pains, that it means material riches and protection from evil, that it means healthy and successful life. Peter thought the same at the beginning of his mission as the leader of the Apostolic College. But Jesus insists that only those things that help one to get into the kingdom are useful. These include joys, pains, suffering, success, failure and even death. For him, it will be of no profit to a person to have gained the whole world and then suffer the loss of one’s soul. This teaching on the salvific nature of suffering is not too difficult to understand if we apply it to ordinary human life.
4. Let us look at economic investment for example. An elderly statesman told me that when he was a civil servant, he contented himself with the minimal basic necessities while investing most of his earning in shares. Later in his life, he was so rich that he even built a Church, a monastery, a convent and other socially motivated projects for common good. The money for these projects came from the sacrifices of saving and investing instead living in affluence. When Jesus says that the Son of man will come in glory to reward each person according to his behaviour, he meant that those who sow must reap while those who refused to sow will have nothing to reap.
5. Life in the modern world presents us with multiple options. Some of these options promise easy life without suffering, they are the wide roads but they lead to perdiction and many follow them. Today’s second reading invites us to follow the narrow road, the difficult road that Jesus followed. St. Paul was clear in his appeal:” Do not model yourselves on the behaviour of the world around you, but let your behaviour change, modelled by your new mind. This is the only way to discover the will of God and know what is good, what it is that God wants, what is the perfect thing to do”(Rom 12:2). In as much as we should not look for sufferings, we strive not to flee necessary sufferings that will lead to gain.
