Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

We’re led into this challenging gospel by the first reading from the prophet Jeremiah, “You duped me, O Lord, and I let myself be duped.”  Sometimes it’s translated, “You have seduced me, Lord, and I’ve let myself be seduced.”  These are both softenings of the original text.  What Jeremiah is really saying is closer to, “You have raped me, God, and I have let myself be raped.”

Jeremiah seems to be saying, “I set out on this journey with you that I thought would be wonderful and consoling and gratifying and self-promoting; instead it’s turned out to be a life with an awful lot of suffering.  I don’t know why I ever followed you!”

This lament prepares us for the gospel.  Today’s gospel reading is quite a reversal from last week’s, an earlier part of Matthew 16 where Jesus is praising Peter, “You are a rock, Peter.  You’re the leader.  You’ve got the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven.  You did it right.”  You can just see Peter strutting around with immense self-confidence, thinking, “I’m the best.”

And now, just a few verses later, the infallible pope shows himself, in fact, to be very fallible when Jesus goes so far as to call Peter a devil.  How can one who got it so right now get it so wrong?  Well, I hope that is comforting, because it’s true of all of us – both sides can coexist in the same person.

I was ordained in Rome in the great basilica of St. Peter: there, written in Latin and Greek around the top of the cupola, it says, “Thou are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.”  This is as it should be, but I wonder why there wasn’t a second ring of words saying, “Get behind me, Satan!  You are an obstacle to me.  You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do,” as it says in Matthew today.  We acknowledge the positive, but we conveniently forget the negative – it’s human nature, I guess.

When we start on our journey toward God, maybe we don’t realize it, but the motivation is almost all about ourselves.  I’m reflecting on my own spiritual life journey.  During high school, at Seattle Prep, I’m buying my eternal fire insurance policy.  I’m looking for personal advancement toward heaven.  This isn’t love of God yet.  It’s very well-disguised self-interest.  I’m not really in it for God.  I’m in it for myself, but it takes a while in the seminary to recognize that.

That’s why Jesus says it so strongly and I put it on my book shelf in Rome: “If you don’t lose your life, if you’re in this to gain your life, you haven’t yet understood what I’m talking about.  You’re missing the point.”  Jesus isn’t saying this just to Peter or to myself.  He’s speaking to all who seek to follow him.

We start the journey largely out of self-interest, taking care of ourselves while thinking we’re worshiping God.  But we’re doing the “work of the devil,” as it were, precisely because it is passing for love of God, but it isn’t.  Whoever wishes to save their own life must lose it, because it’s still all about “me” and my private gateway to heaven.  It’s not about God, truth, love, others, or the bigger world.

How could such smallness be God’s great salvation?  Why would that show any transformation, which is what the second reading talks about?  “Be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”  This is Peter’s moment of initiation, when he turns from earlier, selfish motivations to being drawn by actual desire for God and God’s big picture.

It’s probably the ultimate challenge, a complete reversal of direction for each of us when somewhere in the middle of life we have to ask the question, “Why am I doing what I’m doing?  Why am I coming here for Mass on Sunday?  Does God need me to come to church?”  I don’t think so.  God is doing quite well without you and without me, and yet it’s God who invites us into this great assembly.

We’re really not coming here for God.  We’re here, I believe, for ourselves, to find out what life’s all about.  What does it all mean?  It’s we who have to change.  It’s we who have to reverse direction and recognize that it’s in letting go of what we think is our identity that we actually find our true self.  That’s the great paradox.

Let me say it plainly: our lives are not about ourselves.  We are one little instance of this mystery of life that’s been going on for billions of years.  All we can do is surrender to that Mystery that is larger than ourselves, bigger than me, more wonderful than me, and which will draw me forward, almost in spite of myself.  Despite our struggles, we are persistent, especially in our search for God.

St. Benedict says in the Rule that seeking God is often “harsh and bitter.”  All we can do is trust it and allow it and suffer it, and surely enjoy it too.  Being holy and being real always go together.  It’s not a matter of doing it right, it’s a matter of “doing it!”  It is a matter of letting go and losing who we think we are, to fall into who we really are, and always will be.  Amen?  Amen.

Paul A. Magnano

Pastor