Twenty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

We’re led into this challenging Gospel by the first reading from the prophet Jeremiah, “You have duped me, Lord, and I let myself be duped.”  Jeremiah seems to be saying, “I set out on this journey with you that I thought would be wonderful and consoling and gratifying; 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 to 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.  We acknowledge the positive, but we conveniently forget the negative.  It’s human nature, I guess.

Human nature wants to take Peter’s tactic: there has got to be a way out, another way besides the cross.  In Robert Bolt’s play A Man for All Seasons, Thomas More is caught in a question of conscience.  After being badgered and persecuted for years, Thomas finds himself in the ultimate pressure point.  He must declare his loyalty to King Henry VIII or be beheaded.

Thomas’s own daughter asks him why he cannot take the oath and mean something else.  That sounds pretty reasonable – and a great way out of a difficult situation.  Thomas could not do it.  Not because he was a legalist, but because he knew that embracing the cross would necessarily be part of his love for Christ and the church.

In my ministry I have seen remarkable people come to accept unimaginable suffering, even those who have been redeemed by it.  Renewal almost always involves more than a passing glance at discomfort.  Conversion happens because we stare our burden in the face and decide that we want to ask God to be transformed by divine love.

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 to Sunday Mass?”  Our journey to Jerusalem will lead us only the same way Jesus himself has taken.  “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”  That’s the great paradox.  Easier said than done.

Paul A. Magnano

Pastor