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Previous Reflections
- 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Walking on Waters of our Fears
- 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time
- 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time
- 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time
- Sixth Sunday of Easter: The Holy Spirit, the Forgotten God!
- Fifth Sunday of Easter Catechesis (5.10.2020)
- May, Month of the Blessed Virgin Mary
- Third Sunday of Easter Catechesis (4.26.2020)
- Catechesis on Divine Mercy Sunday (4.19.20)
- Easter Sunday Catechesis (4.12.20)
- Holy Thursday Catechesis (4.9.2020)
- Palm Sunday Catechesis (4.5.2020)
- Novena to the Holy Spirit
- Novena to the Holy Spirit Instructions
- Novena Prayers to Mary Undoer of Knots
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22nd sunday in ordinary timeAve Crux, Spes Unica (Hail Cross, Our Only Hope)!
Dear Holy People of God,
Last Sunday, we encountered the beautiful text between Simon Peter and Jesus Our Lord, in which two things stood out: The first, regarding the person of Jesus: Who do you say I am, asked Jesus to the apostles. Under the inspiration of God, Peter gave the right answer, the faith of the Church: You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. As I said at the homily at the 8:30 am Mass, to say that Jesus is the Christ means Jesus is Savior. Then we are left with the question: How is Jesus saving me today? What does it mean to say Jesus is my Savior? In the final analysis, salvation means making us whole, bringing us to the point of completeness, happiness and freedom, joy. Salvation is the fulfillment of the heart’s greatest longing, which ultimately is found in God, as Augustine aptly wrote in book One of the Confessions: You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You. In other words, to say that Jesus Christ is my Savior means simply this: my life, with all the issues I have to deal with, cannot be made whole, cannot be brought to perfect happiness, without Jesus. And that is what Peter’s response to the question of Jesus amounts to.
The second aspect that stood out has to do with the beatitude that Jesus utters in response to Peter’s answer: You are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my Church, and the gates of the underworld will never prevail against it! As I said at the 11 am and 1 pm Masses, the Church is the story that God himself has created – to use an expression by Benedict XVI. There is so much in the Church that is good: the sacraments, the life of faith, the world of God preached, the care for the poor, the sick, the elderly and the lonely, education, social justice, pro-life, et. cetera. At the same time, we are conscious of sin in the Church, sin which darkens the Church and renders her countenance ugly. There is sin in the Church because there is human freedom. God does not make us robots. Every sin is an abuse of our human freedom. And yet, after all is said and done, the Church is the story of God. The DNA of the Church is God’s expressed will. God wants the Church because the world needs God, and the Church is the instrument that opens the window of the world to God’s oxygen. Without the Church, the world will become like a concrete bunker with no windows! Thus, in spite of the sin in Church that comes about due to human freedom, for the sake of God and the life of Christ, we should continue to love and support the Church. At the center of the Church is not a human-made product, manufactured by us, but a mystery, God. And so, we should cultivate a sense of wonder and awe when we think of the Church – sentire cum ecclesia – to think or feel with the Church. If I believe that the Church is not holy enough, not good enough, not beautiful enough, I should strive to be all these things for the Church.
So, thanks to Peter’s response, we get two beautiful teachings on Christology (the study of the person of Christ – who do you say that I am?) and Ecclesiology (the study of the nature of the Church – on this rock, I will build my Church). Hence, the Gospel of last Sunday was a synthesis of Christology and Ecclesiology. But what happens today? There appears to be a sharp change in tone on the part of Jesus: Get behind me Satan! Jesus refers to Peter as Satan – the accuser, the one who defies God! What is happening here? Why is Jesus clearly upset at Peter? Because of Peter’s rejection of the Cross! Israel awaited a Messiah that will liberate her. But a Suffering Messiah was not something that was on the radar, for, as we can see in the Book of Job that we have been reading these days as part of our Year of the Bible daily reading, suffering was viewed as punishment from God. Only sinners suffered. The righteous ones were protected by God. Health, material prosperity and the comforts of life were seen as a sign of holiness, of one blessed by God for living a good life. That explains why Job’s three friends, as we read these days, are accusing him of hidden sinfulness. But Job pleads his innocence before God. He cannot explain the meaning of his suffering, but he is aware that his suffering is not due to any sin on his part.
Suffering remains inexplicable, even today. The other day, a friend shared a story with me: He had gone to a hospital to visit and encourage the hospitalized, as a chaplain. After a very friendly conversation with a patient, he asked if they could pray together. And then the patient said: “That is the most ridiculous thing you have said. I stopped believing in God many years ago, when I lost two of my siblings and my father within the time span of just over a year. If there is a God, how could he allow that to happen?” The reality of evil has led many people to walk away from the faith. And continues to do so. And Peter is no different in today’s Gospel. Peter objects to the suffering prophesied by Jesus: Heaven forbids this from happening to you, Peter says to Jesus. And quite understandably so; no one wants evil to befall a loved one, or anyone for that matter.
But Jesus shows us God’s response to the problem of evil. God does not prevent evil from befalling Jesus. God respects the freedom of those who crucified His only Son. Evil must have its hour. The tendency to do away with evil completely, in many instances, has unleashed more evil in the world. The world is a fallen world, a broken world. Dostoevsky’s The Rebellion captures this very poignantly. But in Jesus Christ, God shows us that though evil has its hour, God has his day; the third day, the day of the resurrection. Evil will never have the last word, for though God does not take away evil, God conquers evil by bringing good out of evil, the classic example of which is the resurrection of Jesus. God allows the hour of Good Friday so that the day of the Easter Sunday would neutralize the hour of Good Friday. If God did not allow for the evil of Good Friday, then God would not have been able to save the world, for a God that does not know what human suffering and evil is, cannot save the world, for you cannot save what you don’t know. A God that does not know what it means to feel betrayed, abandoned, lonely, anxious, and afraid, cannot be useful to us. And precisely because God in Jesus Christ experienced all these, then we can be sure that God knows about our suffering and evil and that ultimately, God will transform it like God did with Jesus. So, whenever we feel like our back is against the wall, that we are sinking, that life is meaningless, think of God’s response to evil – Easter Sunday over Good Friday, and draw strength from that. God does not take away evil. But God prevents it from having the last word. The last word is: He is Risen. And just as Christ rose, so will you rise! (Fr. Maurice).