22nd Sunday of Year A

May God bestow on you the graces to offer yourself as a spiritual sacrifice always pleasing to him from now and through your life. Amen! Happy Sunday! + John I. Okoye

DOCTRINE AND &FAITH

(Jeremiah 20,7-9; Romans 12,1-2; Matt 16, 21-27: 22^nd Sunday of Year A)

              Last Sunday we learnt that Jesus who fed multitude of people with only two fishes and five loaves and walked on the sea, defying the forces of nature was declared the expected Messiah and the Son of the living God. Today, he predicts his own suffering, death and resurrection and then discusses the need for his disciples to follow him by bearing their own suffering. Jesus’ prediction does not square up well with Peter for he has a different perception of the Messiah. That is why he rebukes Jesus. From the human point of view, it is natural for Peter to be concerned about the fate of his master. According to Jesus that is precisely Peter’s problem for he is speaking from the human point of view and not from God’s perspective. Using very strong language, Jesus points this out to him. He addresses Peter as Satan, the one who acts as an obstacle (skadalon) to the unfolding of God’s will. Peter may have recognized Jesus as the Messiah but he had not yet learnt how Jesus was to fulfill this role. The gospel does not say that Jesus will, gallantly, step forward and take suffering upon himself. This would be a demonstration of his power. Instead, his fate will be a demonstration of his vulnerability. He will be taken forcefully and suffer at the hands of others. He will do this willingly, but not as a volunteer. Jesus will be a victim. He is willing to accept this victimhood like someone who understands the will of God the Father, and perfectly adheres to it. He declares in John 4, 34: I always do what the Father commands me to do. Now the will of the Father is that the road for the salvation of man should not be through success and glory but through suffering and cross and that the redemption of the world will be a price to be paid through shedding of blood.
            If Jesus is to suffer as the Messiah, the implication is that all who will follow him must like him, deny themselves of personal-interest and self fulfillment. Those who take up the cross must do so realizing their fate is sealed, since one never puts the cross down again. Disciples have a choice to follow or not to follow but if they choose to follow him, they must be ready for suffering and humiliation.

    Peter and all of us, who are followers of Jesus, will have to liberate ourselves from the imprisonment of human logic. We should like Jesus key in at once to God’s own perspective by being ready to accept the will of God in our lives. Peter was able to adopt God’s perspective only after Christ’s resurrection and the reception of the Holy Spirit who illumined his mind and strengthened his will. He later gave up his life for Jesus his master and was crucified like him. He gave his life for the love of Jesus.

 We, the present day disciples of Jesus, are first and foremost called to love. God who is love created us to share in his love. So our orientation, first of all, is to seek how to make progress in love by offerings ourselves for the love of Christ. Jesus said: Who loses his life for my sake will find it. If we seek our happiness directly we will not be able to obtain it, we will remain in our selfishness. But if we overcome our selfishness, through sacrificing a bit of our conveniences we will be blessed with the fullness of life. The gospel is full of these types of exigencies that seem contradictory: to save one’s life, it is necessary to lose it; to attain glory and held high, you need to humble yourself. The key to such seeming contradictory exigencies is always the same:  Love that neither think about oneself, nor seek its own interest, or one’s glory or one’s happiness but whose interest is to be united to Christ Jesus in love.       
            Paul’s teaching in the letter to the Romans is in line with the above thoughts. He says: Brothers I exhort you in the mercy of God to offer yourselves like a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. By the expression, living sacrifice, Paul means a disciplined life. The type of offering Paul advocates is one that is holy, that is, set apart and pleasing to God because it is a total gift of oneself. Although, Paul is not requiring a holocaust of the physical body, he is asking for an offering that is no less demanding and no less total. Rather than a bloody sacrifice, this offering will be a rational one or spiritual service. Paul goes on to exhort the Romans: Do not conform to this age. The Roman Christians have been saved through the blood of Christ and filled with the Spirit of God; they were being transformed into Christ. They have put aside the standard of the world in order to take on that of Christ and the reign of God. Here we see the transformation and renewal of which Paul speaks of. He would have the Christians bring their transformed and renewed minds into conformity with the will of God.  Therefore, what Paul expects from the Christians in Rome, he also demands from us. Happy Sunday! +John I. Okoye